Alice Girl shares childhood in outback page turner

But she also loved nothing more than having her head down in boxes of books borrowed from School of the Air library or typing her own stories at the homestead.

So it is no surprise the successful lawyer has turned back to writing with her debut memoir, Alice to Prague, published last year.

The best-seller traces Tanya's adventures in post communist Czech Republic, where she taught English for 2.5 years in the 1990s.

Just a year on, Tanya has released her second book, a prequel to these events, An Alice Girl, sharing vivid recollections of her childhood on the station.

It covers the late 1960s until 1974 just before she went to boarding school.

"I was working on the first book when a friend said to me you know to most people growing up on a station in the outback is as foreign as living on the other side of the world," she said.

"I started thinking about all the aspects of my childhood and really wanted to tell those stories to Australia and the rest of the world so they would know about the inspiring, driven people in the bush and their love of the land."

Tanya was only three years old when her parents Grant and Janice took her and her two younger siblings M'Lis and Brett to live on the 1500-square kilometre station.

At the time, the homestead was powered by a 32-volt generator and a trip to town was a full day's journey.

"The first time I saw the enormous, white washed, rambling building with cattle yards, I thought it was like a palace, but one of the saddest things was seeing the beautiful landscape change in the 10-year drought," she said. "There was a saying at the time that you could tell where kids had slept by the red outline the next day when they woke up."

Tanya remembers life on the station being hard work, often working side-by-side with stockmen during mustering and in the yards, in between SoTA lessons or holidays.

But she says it strengthened her character and taught her valuable life lessons, including independence.

"The biggest one was never to give up, you had to get the cattle back to the yards, you couldn't give up half way through," she said.

"Kids in the bush were the stable workforce."

Tanya says she was fortunate there was not much of an age gap between her siblings M'Lis and Brett, who would make their own fun, including pretending to chase cattle duffers.

Another brother Ben came along later.

But the isolated existence in the MacDonnell Ranges inspired her creative side, finding company in characters in books she was reading.

"I used to write stories on Dad's typewriter from a young age too," she said.

"The best present I got given was when I was 10 years old my parents gave me a typewriter of my own."

Tanya, who returned to live in the red centre three years ago, hopes An Alice Girl is a fitting tribute to the pastoralists of central Australia, including her parents, who endured plenty of triumphs and challenges.

Grant, who passed away in 2019, was a life member of the NT Cattlemen's Association, and Janice was the inaugural president of the Isolated Children's Parents' Association.

Details: allenandunwin.com