Francis Noble Ratcliffe was a twenty-five year old British animal ecologist fresh from Oxford University when, in 1929, the Empire Marketing Board released him to study the spread of flying foxes in the fruit growing regions of Queensland and New South Wales. While technical pamphlets were the expected outcomes, the 1938 publication of Flying Fox and Drifting Sand brought together what he called his 'youthful wanderings' in one of Australia's most treasured environmentalist books. The travelogue suggested that the author was won over by the rough charms of the far north, the outback and its people. He reserved his far less flattering first impressions of postcolonial Australia for his private letters. Reproduction of this material in part or whole is permitted for non-commercial uses.
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