The greatest engineering feat of 19th century Australia
The greatest engineering problem facing Australia – the tyranny of distance – had a solution: the electric telegraph. This is a history of the Overland Telegragh Line from Port Augusta to Port Darwin, written for its 150th anniversary.
MAN TRACKS tells of stirring episodes in the pursuit, of lawbreakers in the primitive lands. Every chapter is authentic. Patrols through the Kimberleys, the wild Fitzmaurice River country, the nor'-west of Western Australia, the Northern Territory, and Central Australia; each incident recorded from the lips of the pursuers and pursued whether ......
Before he became famous with his books, Ion Idriess wrote paragraphs and short stories for The Bulletin newspaper in the 1920s and early 1930s, often under pseudonyms like "Gouger" (a miner of Opals). This collection was first published in hardback in 2013, and makes for great reading about early prospecting and Australians living in the Wild.
From life in small New South Wales country towns to the glitter of Sydney, this memoir explores life in a changing Australia, from ages 7 to 17. Especially written and recorded for ABC Radio, this book evokes an innocent Australia through a quietly comic delivery.
The Daily Telegraph Obituaries of 21st-Century Eccentrics
In the late 1980s the Daily Telegraph transformed the traditionally dry and stolid world of obituaries, ushering in a new way of writing about the dead that was vivid, gently subversive and richly comic. Telegraph obituaries became a byword for entertaining journalism, celebrated for their deadpan tone and sympathetic eye for human quirks and ......
The true story of the only Westerner ever to break out of Thailand's Bangkok Hilton
“This is one of the world’s most notorious—and remarkable—heroin traffickers: Melbourne man David McMillan. Despite still being on the run, McMillan has written a book, Escape, about … his amazing breakout in Bangkok” The Australian.
The Lives and Gardens of Humphrey Waterfield and Nancy Tennant
Humphrey Waterfield and Nancy Tennant met in 1932 when she was 35 and he 24. Theirs was the creation of Hill Pasture 'the most beautiful small garden in England' and the restoration of Le Clos du Peyronnet garden in Menton, France. A portrait of a deeply committed 'non-marriage' set against two world wars and the transformative power of nature.
The 5th in a series of 6 books written at a time of imminent Japanese invasion, this one gives us the full story of WW1 sniper Billy Sing, and other Australian snipers at Gallipoli and the Middle East.
In 1920, though, as the three ex-diggers talked across the bar at the West Coast, swapping stories of the War and goings-on in Cooktown and along the coast, the pioneer vision would have still been fresh and sustained by hope and dreams. All that was needed was a little luck – which might come from the Chinese gambling den across the way, or at ......