Batty's Bush Bible

From the director of the wildly popular Bush Mechanics and Black As - a can-do guide for your next outback adventure filled with practical advice, ripper yarns and road-trip tips.

Driving around Australia is one of life's biggest adventures, if you're crazy enough to do it. But as anyone who has broken down on the Nullarbor can attest, it's nerve-wracking to head out into the big red.

David Batty knows how to get out of hairy situations because he's wound up in a bunch himself. From nearly being washed away by flash floods in the Kimberley to being marooned on an island in the Top End eating stingray, Batty's Bush Bible is chock-full of yarns from David's four decades as a film director in the most remote regions of Australia. He has lived in Alice Springs and Broome longer than he has in the Big Smoke, has traversed the Tanami Track between Alice Springs and Darwin hundreds of times and reckons he's done more laps of Australia than a Qantas plane.

This book also contains the wisdom of many of the First Nations people he has worked with throughout his career, including interviews with the original Bush Mechanics and Black As boys. You'll find out how they stuff blown tyres with spinifex, fashion mulga wood into gear sticks and keep cars going long after their used-by date - and learn how to have a whirl yourself.

Batty's Bush Bible is your guide to going bush and living to tell the tale. Filled with practical advice, ripper yarns and road-trip tips, it's designed to be picked up, put down, tossed in the glove box or, if you really need it, used for kindling to cook your tailgate dinner. So whether you're a grey nomad, living your best #vanlife or just looking to do a bit of imaginative armchair tourism, this book is your bible for how to stay out of trouble in the outback - and make your own.

About the Author

David Batty's career spans more than 40 years of writing, producing, directing and shooting documentaries in Australia and, more recently, Papua New Guinea.

He helped establish the TV production unit at the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA), for which he made a wide array of films and videos, all of which were predominantly in Aboriginal languages and often made with or featuring pre-contact people.

Later, in Broome he teamed up with producer Jeni McMahon and wrote, shot and directed documentaries and TV series, including Rodeo Road, Sisters, Pearls and Mission Girls, Jila, Desert Heart, Inventions from the Shed and Going Bush. With a long history of making programs with and for Aboriginal people, he is well known for his multi-award-winning series Bush Mechanics, which he co-directed with Francis Jupurrurla Kelly.

Batty's recent projects include directing Coniston, the story of Australia's last massacre of Aboriginal people in central Australia; the web series Black As, which tracks four young men and their wild adventures across Arnhem Land; and the eight-part series Truck Hunters for Network 10, which follows the adventures of two rat truck-building enthusiasts as they scour the countryside in search of old American trucks.

Batty lives off grid on the New South Wales south coast but heads north in winter.