Elizabeth and Mary Durack were brought up on tales from the fabled land called The Kimberleys, and when they finally lived there, it shaped them in unexpected ways.
When Michael Durack arrived in Fremantle port, stepping off the state ship after a long journey from the Kimberley, his children were eagerly awaiting his homecoming. The father of six would always bring fascinating gifts from the far north such as a baby crocodile or a pony. His stories of the far away country, settled by the Durack forebears in the 1880s, was a fabled, incredible place.
But the Durack pastoral dynasty was not one that would automatically pass from father to son, or daughter. In fact it was a business with debt, and Michael's daughters would continue the family's historic connections with the region through their paintings and writings.
Life was far from easy for the Durack girls, which surprised academic Brenda Niall, as she began a huge project to write about Mary and Elizabeth. A trove of letters written between them during the 1930s and 40s was very revealing, as they struggled to bring up children with absent husbands, and forge a career.
She says a number of myths were broken as she worked on the book, and she also realised how storng the sisters' sense of social justice was to become, over the treatment of Aboriginal people, upon whom their pastoral industry relied.
Brenda Niall's book True North: the story of Mary and Elizabeth Durack includes a number of family photographs, and Brenda's favourite is the cover photo.