The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Outback Odyssey by Paul Rushworth-Brown

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

Outback Odyssey by Paul Rushworth-Brown https://www.amazon.com/Outback-Odyssey-Paul-Rushworth-Brown/dp/1964700140 Paulrushworthbrown.com "Outback Odyssey" tells the story of a young man from Yorkshire who emigrates to Australia in the 1950s under the Big Brother Movement scheme. Working on a sheep station with Aboriginal stockmen, he learns the ways of the outback and pursues the legend of Wiberg's Gold. This novel promises to combine the rich historical detail Rushworth-Brown is known for with the rugged allure of the Australian wilderness.About the author Paul's novels are authentic and gritty, with twists and turns the reader won't see coming. He paints a realistic image of how peasants would have lived in the 16th and 17th centuries. However, that is only the backdrop to suspenseful and mysterious stories with romantic tones. His novel 'Red Winter Journey' https://bit.ly/3WXHVUs has been nominated for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards (Christina Stead Prize for fiction). His new novel 'Dream of Courage' has been long-listed for the Historical Fiction Club’s Book of the Year Award and will be released in November. Paul has been a guest on ABC, BBC, and America Tonight with Kate Delaney and regularly features on the Witty Writers Show in the US.

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the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Anyway, we got an amazing young man on the show. We're going to be talking about his really cool insights. He's got some amazing stories from the Outback and that's not the place where you get your steaks. We're talking about the Australia, the real Australia, where they don't actually have Outback restaurants, I hear. Anyway, we're gonna get into it with him and his book and we're gonna find out. So that's what the new term of the show is around about. Fuck around and find out. That's what we do. We find out what's going on. Today, we have, oh, what do you. We find out what's going on today.

Oh, what do you have on the show? I don't know. I'm just wandering through the ramble here. Just it's anonymous. Every year it's random. Every time Paul Rushworth Brown joins us on the show. His book is out, outback. Odyssey it is called and June 20th, 2025. We're going to get into with him.

He's a multi-book author and we'll get into some of the other works that he's taken and done. Paul's novels are authentic and gritty with twists and turns the reader won't see coming. He paints a realistic image of how peasants would have lived in the 16th and 17th centuries, or after 2026, evidently, the way we're going. However, that is the only backdrop to a suspenseful and mysterious story with romantic tones. His novel Red Winter Journey has been nominated for the NSW Premieres Literary Awards and his new novel Dream of Courage has been long listed for the Historical Fiction Club's Book of the Year and will be released in November. He's been a guest on ABC, BBC

America Tonight with Kate Delaney and regularly features on the Witty writer show in the US the US Times Have said modern writers usually don't know what it's like to live in the past But Rushworth Brown does it with a great skill and his accomplished atmospheric and thoughtful novels. Welcome the show. How are you Paul? Yeah, good. Thanks Chris. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming. We certainly appreciate it. Give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs in the sky? Just Paul Roche worth Brown.

And give us a overview of what's inside your new book. Okay. So this, uh, it's, it's actually a novel of two layers. The top layer, if you just read it at face value, it's primarily about a young Yorkshire man that emigrates to Australia in the 50s. And he goes over there as a 10 pound palm. And that was in an era where Australia was trying to keep Australia British. And they were basically inviting as many Brits over there over to Australia to basically keep keep Australia British. And he spent he spent 12 years, 12 years in an orphanage. It was loosely based on my father.

When he comes over there, the novel is about him belonging because he was in an orphanage, he doesn't really feel like he belongs. When he comes over to Australia, he goes through all the rigmarole of living in the hostel and being tested for tuberculosis and all that type of thing. They eventually send him out to Outback, Victoria to work on a sheep farm. And so that's the start of it. And then there's a bit of a romance in there. He falls in love with Amanda Olson. And Amanda Olson was the, was a great,great-granddaughter of Martin Weiberg. So the book is tied up with looking for treasure and that type of thing. But underneath, it's about an Aboriginal mob

and an elder taking him under their wing and basically teaching him the ways of the bush, how to survive in the bush. But eventually he becomes part of their mob or what you know is their tribe. Okay. You guys call them mob down there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, your toilets do flush the wrong way. So that's kind of your seasons are wrong too. They're the opposite of ours. And our America's the only right seasons. No, I'm just kidding. Like the asshole American, don't I? Uh, which is probably, but no, I love Australia. You guys, uh, you guys have the Tim Tams down there. Oh my God, don't think you started Jesus Tim Tams. But the Australians

is that Vegemite stuff. That stuff is nasty. You know, you know why it's nasty is because usually most people put too much on. That's easy. Just if you just give it a light scrape. Beautiful. Yeah. Just a light scrape and lots of butter is what they always tell me. And I always tell if I do the same thing with my dog poo in the backyard to a piece of bread, it'll taste great because it's covered in butter. So I think you guys are playing some hokey math over there, but that's okay. We love Australians. So it sounds like it's a novel, but it's part kind of some of your history and you have quite the history on it. Now, this is your third book. I can see two other ones, I think on fourth, fourth book.

And is this the first book in a series or a standalone from the others? Chris Well, the first three were basically English historical fiction, romance, adventure, that type of thing. And that was a trilogy. This one here, on my fourth novel, I wanted to write about Australiana. So there's a very, very heavy First Nations cultural insight to it. And so I wanted to write about Australiana. But basically, at the end of the book, I have, I was on a, a booked up with Beth a while back and she asked me, um, she said,

are you going to write, write another one? Cause on, on the back page it says to be continued, but it really meant it really, um, depends on, on, I suppose, um, how the public, uh, react to this one. Yeah. You guys like it, buy it up. There might be more or not. So buy it. Buy it now. That's a sophisticated sales process that I use right there. Buy it now or else I'll come over there. Anyway. The yeah, pretty amazing work you've done. So you've written four books. Do you want to get a plugin for the other three and tell us what they're about?

I think he did it before when he introduced me, but yeah. Uh, my first novel was skull Douggery, um, which takes place in 1590 and, uh, in, um, Yorkshire, second one was Red Winter Journey, which is, um, well, skull Douggery was a bit of a who done it. Uh, Red Winter Journey is, uh, well, Skull Duggery was a bit of a whodunit. Red Winter Journey is sort of like a survival coming of age story about a young Yorkshireman who was kidnapped by the parliamentary army in the English Civil War. And then the fourth one, or sorry, the third one is a dream of courage, which is said in the early 1700s.

Same type of thing, romance, mystery, adventure. Around the time there, it was a pretty crazy time in England. So there's pirates and there's bushwhackers and all sorts of things. Pirates and bushwhackers, lions and tigers and bears. Oh my. Uh, so talk to us about what, what, what brought you to writing? What, how did you become a writer? When did you start writing? When did you kind of have a click where you're like, I think I'm a writer.

Yeah. It's interesting. I suppose, um, you know, I was heavily involved as a, as a national football coach and, uh, and obviously played professional football as a young adult. When I retired from my coaching career, I thought, I'm going to try and write it. Well, first of all, I did a family history. So I spent six months writing a family history, history and trace my furthest away ancestor back to 1590 in, in Yorkshire in a place called house, which you may know from, you know, the Bronte sisters grew up there with him in heights and that type of thing. And, and then,

as I grew up there withering heights and that type of thing. And then so Skullduggery was sort of like, you know, I sort of like thought to myself this Thomas Rushworth is my great grandfather times 10. How did he live? And I suppose that was the basis of Skullduggery. And then one then Red Winter Journey and then Dream of Courage were basically following those generational marks from 1590 up to the 1700s. Oh wow. Wow. So you got quite the storied history of being in the outback and doing different things. What's, when did you finally, the light went on and you were like, I think I can write

books. Probably, uh, with probably the second one red winter journey, because it was, um, it was a nominated for the new South Wales, um, premieres literature award. Uh, so I thought to myself, I must be doing something right. And your first or second book after. Yeah. And then, uh, yeah. And then I just kept going and then probably outback Odyssey. I'm probably most, most proud of.

Uh-huh. Your latest book accumulation of four books. What do you find is happening by your fourth book? A lot of people write one book and never get started beyond that. Uh, what's your advice on writing multiple books and maybe getting better over time, I guess, technically? Yeah, well, yeah, if I compared Outback Odyssey to Skullduggery, you can definitely sort of like, you know, the character arcs are more developed. And the stories are, I suppose,

you know, just simple things like, for instance, using memory or using internal thoughts of a character, not bringing out that type of thing. That's probably the biggest thing that I've learned is in order. How do you, how do you, how did you get better at, have you taken any classes for writing? Did you ever study writing or character development or anything like that? I'm a teacher. So, um, you know, uh, I suppose as a teacher, you, uh, you have to learn how to, uh, entertain. Yeah, definitely.

Depends on the kids too. If there are those really young ones there, you got to keep them busy. Oh yeah. No, I'm a high school teacher. So, okay. Yeah. everybody, you got to keep them busy. Oh yeah. No, I'm a high school teacher. So, okay. Yeah. So, uh, you had some interesting stories of the outback and I imagine some of

those stories, you know, spin into your, uh, into the book you're talking. Uh, I think one point in the, in the pre show, you were talking about, uh, some of your ventures hitchhiking across Australia, which doesn't sound safe to me in any way, shape or form from what I know about. No, it was, it was, um, I mean, I was only 19 at the time. Oh yeah. That makes me so, um, it's better.

Yeah. You're eating better. I think, uh, the animals are eating better at 19. They got fresh meat. Yeah. But I, um, I worked as a Navi. Um, so Navi, a, um, sort of like a, just a worker on the, on the railways. So what you do out in the outback is, uh, rip up a train track and

replace it with new track. Um, so I did that for quite a while and just earned some money to finish my, my trips around Australia. What's that experience like? Tell us what it's like. The trip around Australia? No, the working in that sort of field. I mean, you're on the open, you know, there's a lot of cover out in the outback, you know? Yeah. You have to look, it gives you a real sort of like, um, uh, I suppose, uh, feeling about the land and about, um, yeah, it's, it's more of a feeling rather than a thing. And, uh, just, um, you know, like, um, doing that job, you know, we'd have to start at sort of like four o'clock in the morning because obviously it'd get too hot. Yeah.

It gets hot. Yeah. And then get home at sort of like, uh, you know, sort of like five in the afternoon. And it was too hot to sort of like have a shower because, um, in the portable showers and that, that we had the pipes are just underneath the, underneath the ground and the sun obviously all day on them would just bake them. So you turn on the cold water and it'd be, it'd be bubbling. Oh man.

That's what I like boiling hot water for nice morning. And then, and then, you know, just things like if we had a break or what we call smoke, oh, you've left a sandwich up to your mouth and before you even put it in the mouth, there'd be 50 flies on the, on the, on the top of the. Yeah. So how do you combat that? You just eat the flies or what do you do? Oh, lucky you'd eat that.

We'll snort, snort a couple of flies up every, every day. Oh, wow. That's what I like. I mean, some people do cocaine. I go with flies. Wow. That's what I like. I mean, some people do cocaine. I go with flies. Wow. That's great. Well, I mean, you know, you know, there's probably some protein there.

It looks a protein never hurt anybody. I hear. Yeah. And it was also like, you know, this type of thing, because you'd have to loosen the, loosen the stakes that held the track to the, um, or put the new stakes in to, to sort of hold the, uh, the rails down to the track. And so like doing that all day, you know, you come when you first start, you come home and your hands are basically bloody. Jesus.

Yeah. That sounds like fun work. It sounds like the kind of work you do when you, when you're doing some prison time and they take you out there and they're like, you, we've got some stuff for you to do. You're on a chain. So it's chain gain stuff, but, uh, yeah, you've got to, uh, you kind of love it. So how long did you do that for? And what do you feel it did for you?

Did it, did it give you some care? I did it for about a year and then, continued on my trip around Australia and I got up to Darwin and I actually called the boss at Queensland Railways and said, look, do you need any more men? He said yes and I was about to travel back down to Hugh to, to Hewenden. Because what they do is they sort of like lift this camp up and they move it further sort of up the track and then set up again. And so we were, we were at a place called Hewenden. And anyway, I ended up in, staying in Darwin and eventually, um, uh, went over to Bali

and sort of like traveled through, um, Asia. Got some good, got some good, uh, traveling stories there. Stuff to do when you're young, right? Yeah. Yeah. Get to see the world, kind of see what's going on around it and all that good stuff. So, um, I think there was a couple other journeys you had to, or stories you had to tell. I don't know if you want to throw them out here or, or.

Oh yeah. Uh, uh, when I got to Alice Springs, there's a there's a dry riverbed in there. Once a year, they have sort of like a they make boats, makeshift boats out of out of tinies or cans of empty cans of beer. And they have a race. But anyway, on this particular time, I think that holiday was sort of like around that particular time. Anyway, I got to Alice Springs quite late and didn't have anywhere to stay. So I actually had a one man tent with me. So I set it up in the Todd River, in this dry river bank.

Anyway, it was quite late at night and the halfway through the night, the, uh, the tent got knocked down, um, with, with me inside by a, by a group of, um, young men, I assume. Uh huh. And the hoodlums, what are they, what do they call those type of people down your way? Australians. Australians. Well, I mean, the, you know, goodlums are bad, bad, bad. Yeah. No, no, look, to be honest with you, I only found this out, out later on, but, um, in

certain parts of Australia or back then, not so much now, uh, certain areas of, um, towns and cities are reserved for First Nations people. Oh, and, uh, I think the Todd river was back then. I don't know if it still is now, but back then the Todd river was, was, was mainly kept for First Nations people. So, and explaining what First Nations people are to give us a definition. First Nations, um, are Aboriginal, um, people that, that, people that basically own Australia and have been living here for 60,000 years.

And when Captain Cook, well, some people call it an invasion, other people call it, um, settling. Um, but, um, you know, they first nations, people basically own the land. Wow. And that's, I suppose that's one of the allegorical, um, parts of the novel that come out. Oh, really? So you include some of that sort of story things in the novel. Oh yeah. It's very, and, uh, you know, fully researched.

It's very and, you know, fully researched. I've only I've only I use like official databases and historical records that are in in in the public domain for the research. But it's not I don't preach. I just tell a story. And in this novel, the the First Nations people are actually the protagonists and the, and the, the white fellows, as you call them, they're actually the antagonists. Pete Slauson Mm hmm. Do you feel like you have, you know,

based on your father's journey, do you feel like you have the connection to that? Those folks to first nations people. Yeah. Um, yeah, when I was in, uh, Darwin, I actually had an Aboriginal friend and, um, we went to the, uh, the Vic hotel and, uh, they refuse this is back in the, in the eighties and they refuse to, uh, tell to serve him. So me being me, I sort of like stood up for him anyway, to make a long story short, both of us got thrown down the stairs and kicked out. That sounds like some, uh, some scallywagging going on there. I don't know. There's scallywagging right now. I'm just making up stuff. Scallywag.

Scallywag. I don't know what that means, but, uh, sounds like some definitely adventures. And that sounds like something I would expect from the impact. Cause I've seen that movie crocodile Dundee and yeah, crocodile Dundee was, um, yeah, look, it was definitely a funny, funny movie, but, um, it was, it was, um, more of a strains of like watched it and loved it with Paul Hogan because, you know, like he was, um, it was, it was, um, more of a strange sort of like watched it and, you know, loved it with Paul Hogan because, you know, like he was, um, he's sort of like iconic in Australia, but really the movie, doc crocodile, crocodile Dundee, um, it was, uh, it was a comic. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Just fun, fun and games and fun and all that stuff. So yeah, yeah, you got to love it. Let's see. What else should we know about you and your work? Anything coming up on the, you know, any future books or anything coming up that people should know about? Oh yeah. Well, I've actually got a meeting with Carl Svensson on Wednesday. I've got interviews all this week and I've got a meeting with Carl Svensson, who's a Swedish director. He's in IMD and to he's reviewing the screenplay, which I also wrote

for a possible movie or film adaptation. Yeah. Oh, possible movie. Movie would be great. It's got a cool cover on it. Do you have any movie stars that maybe you think would be good for it? Oh, well, that's a difficult one. I haven't even thought about that, but maybe Russell Crowe.

Ah, Russell Crowe. He's going to be popular down there in Australia since he comes from there. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But the only thing is in Australia since he comes from there. Right. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But the only thing is I think he might be a bit old play Jimmy because when, when Jimmy gets to Australia, he's only 19. Oh, yeah. That's probably, yeah. I'm just thinking of another, oh, Hugh Jackman. Yeah. You Jackman.

I mean, I don't know if he can play 19, but yeah, with the right. I don't know. They have all these timeline things like, uh, scar says he did that movie with the Irishman. Yeah. Took all the old guys back in time and kind of really didn't work, but you know, Maybe, uh, maybe, um, Margot Robbie is, um, oh yeah. Is Amanda Olson. Yeah. I'd go see that movie.

She's a Margot Robbie. She's, she's a hot, she plays a lot of great movies, good actress too as well. Yeah. Um, so that, that would be fun for you. Uh, so, uh, what, what is your, what is the, you know, for those out there might be aspiring writers in our audience, what was the habit you use when you write? Do you write, try and write every day? Do you, do you have sort of ritual?

No, no rituals. I don't even plan it. Um, with, uh, with my, uh, with my novels, when I start writing is, it's almost as if sort of if a movie is taking place in front of my eyes. Really? Yeah. And I just start writing and everything seems to come, because I don't plan it. Most of my novels have quite a few twists and turns, even Outback Odyssey. And I mean, Outback Odyssey, you'd never even pick the ending. But yeah, and the fact that because I don't plan anything, if I sort of like get halfway through, or even sort of like towards the end, I can actually go back earlier in the novel and change something so that there's a twist and a turn sort of like later in the novel. And, um, yeah, so very, uh, very, um, interesting way to write. And, uh, yeah, just that, uh, I suppose I'm lucky that I can do that.

Cause a lot of people can't can't man. That's pretty good though. You can, you can pull it off and stuff. Yeah, most definitely. Well, as we go out, give people the final pitch out to order up your books, where to find you on.coms websites, all that That stuff. Yeah, most definitely. Well, as we go out, give people the final pitch out to order up your books, where to find you on dot coms, websites, all that good stuff. Okay. So I've got a website, poor us worth brown.com. Outback Odyssey is now freely available in all major book distributors, both ebooks and, um, and physical copies.

And, um, in the process of actually working with Neil Lithgow, who's a radio personality over here and, um, getting the audible audible, uh, book done. No, that's gotta be fun. Get the audible done. And I like, uh, so let's see. Uh, so do we get the dot coms in there? Yeah. All right. Sounds good then. Well, thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. It's been fun to have you on and what amazing stories. And of course that probably makes for a more rich and enriching experience

in the book. So thank you very much for coming on. Thanks Chris. Appreciate it. Thank you. And thanks so much for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss. Chris Foss won the Tik Tok, and all those crazy places in the internet. Order up his book wherever fine books are sold folks, so you can take advantage of all the wonderful stories and learnings and all that stuff in there. It's Outback Odyssey, June 20th, 2025. Fresh off the shelves. You can grab it now and be the first in your block to read it. Thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com and all that stuff. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. And that should have us out. Great.