[2] Her early life there features heavily in her literary work, including in her two-part biography Craft for a Dry Lake (2000) and Position Doubtful: Mapping Landscapes and Memories (2016).
[5] However, due to a number of frustrations of the bureaucracy of working for the Department of Native Affairs, Mahood's father soon left to work for Colonel Rose in the animal industry branch (AIB) and this job meant that the family travelled throughout the Northern Territory on a regular basis and the family spent four years living in Finke as a part of her father's role.
However, Mahood believes that it is in response to the popular perception that it was a "mongrel bit of country" and that they were crazy to try to establish a station there.
Joe was killed helicopter mustering in 1990[6] and this sad event prompted Mahood to make her first trip back to Mongrel Downs in 1992.
[8] Wandering with Intent (2022) is Mahood's third major work and is a collection of essays, many of these had been published earlier is essay formats including "Blow-ins on the cold desert wind" (2007) and "Kartiya are like Toyotas: white workers on Australia's cultural frontier" (2012): both of which were originally published in the Griffith Review.