Retired drover and bush poet Bruce Simpson travelled along the old Cobb & Co coach roads and stock routes in western Queensland to find the final resting places of some of our earliest settlers. He tells tales of the perils of life on 'the wastes of the Never Never' and the desperate circumstances faced by victims of accident, sickness, raging bushfires and rising floodwaters - all isolated from help by sheer distance. Along with photographer Ian Tinney, whose striking photographs document these sites for posterity, Bruce Simpson visited some of the legendary drinking places, many in ruins, of characters such as bushmen and bushrangers - bringing to life memories of Australia in a long-vanished time.