Unfinished Business
Reviewed By Janet Mawdesley September 23, 2026
Author Bob Yabsley
Distributor: Amazon aU
ISBN: 978-1764381307
Publisher: Bob Yabsley – self-published
Release Date: 2026
Website: https://www.amazon.com.au/Unfinished-Business-Unyielding-Australias-Heartland/dp/1764381300
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Legacy, Country and the Unyielding Battle for Australia’s Heartland
Modern Australia is a country that was one born from the land, the strength and belief of the early settlers to make something from the brutality of a strange country: their determination to survive against not just the devastation of the weather, the pestilence and heartbreak is the stuff folkloric is crafted from.
Bob Yabsley comes from one such family and Unfinished Business is the story of not just his pioneering family, but that of a family like so many in recent years, men of the land, who took on the might of big business, namely the Banks, and lost.
When William Yabsley leaped from the HMS Beagle in 1836, he was a deserter from the British Navy. He immediately headed North, finally settling in an area on the Richmond River which he later called Coraki.
In telling his family story, Yabsley brings to life a time of both plenty and hardship, where an opportunity saw growth, where nothing was taken for granted, life on the land was hard, and success or failure depended on the weather.
As a young man he found himself working in New Guinea, where he fell in love with flying. Always one to seize an opportunity this love of flying eventually saw him change the face of farming as he pioneered the use of Helicopters for large scale farm management.
His life was one of change, chance, good and bad decision making and sadly tragedy, with the loss of a beloved son, and finally the loss of all he had worked for through economic collapse, bad management, men who thought they knew better and downright ‘skulduggery’ supported by the Banks and Government policies of the day.
Many families who were the pioneering families have faced such hardship, but it is through the honest recollections of man who faced the worst the climate could throw at him but was beaten down in the end by the ruthlessness of the Banks, make the stories that have graced the Australian farming history come alive.
Unfinished Business is an unpolished work, which makes the story powerful, rich in the telling and in so many ways, a time capsule that is so very much needed for the generations to come.