The true story of Horrie the Wog-Dog who was adopted by the Australian Signal Platoon of the Machine Gun Battalion, in spite of all rules against keeping pets, and how Horrie not only won his stripes as a valuable addition to the group but had the further distinction of being smuggled into Australia on their return. The Wog-Dog was sneaked into ......
Late in 1930, a cricket team from the West Indies visited Australia for the first time. It arrived at precisely the time when Australia’s modern iconography was being forged: Don Bradman was in the ascendant, Phar Lap dominated the racetrack, Nellie Melba returned home, Charles Kingsford Smith was breaking aviation records and the construction of ......
In this book, Ion Idriess reflects on his life prospecting in far North Queensland from 1912 to 1914, and coincided with his earliest writing as “Gouger” for the Bulletin. In Back of Cairns, Jack gives the reader a picture of what life was like when the peninsula jungle was falling under the settler’s axe.
The Desert Column is based on the diaries that Idriess kept throughout the war. Published in 1932, it is one of Idriess' earliest works. Harry Chauvel noted in the foreword that it was the only book of the campaign that to his knowledge was "viewed entirely from the private soldier's point of view..." Idriess served as a sniper with the 5th ......
Harold Bell Lasseter claimed to have found an immense reef of gold in Central Australia and he dissapeared while searching for the reef in 1930. Lasseter claims in his diary that he had rediscovered the reef and had pegged and claimed the area (but gave no date or no location); however, suffering from starvation and sandy blight he recorded his ......
The Sentimental Bloke tells the story of Bill, a member of a larrikin push (or gang) in Melbourne's Little Lonsdale red-light district, who encounters Doreen, a young woman "of some social aspiration", in a local market. Narrated by Bill, the poems chronicle their courtship and marriage, detailing his transformation from a violence-prone gang ......
A memoir from one of Australia's most prominent lifestyle influencers, Babette Hays edited Belle and wrote several books on Australian food and house style. This book touches on her life from Damascus to Europe to Australia in the 1960s, and offers some classics of French food for an Australian palette, this time with colour photographs and the ......