North West Australia - in the Wunaamin Miliwundi Ranges, formerly known as the King Leopold Ranges between 1879 and 2020, is the setting for the story of Aboriginal leader Jandamarra and his fight again white invasion of his country. As the Sydney Morning Herald wrote in 1952:Jandamarra, who was also known as Pigeon, had been a blacktracker of ......
American-born Gus Pierce arrived in Australia and 1860 and promptly deserted, swimming ashore at Port Phillip. He worked as a photographer for Batchelders and painted scenery for the Lyceum theatre before hunting for snakes with Joe Shires – the inventor of a snake-bite cure. He compiled a strip map of the Murray River from Albury to Goolwa, by ......
An act of terrorism against women that ended with the death of a man. Murder on His Mind details the events of 16 July 2001 when security guard Steve Rogers was shot dead inside Melbourne’s Fertility Control Clinic. The Crown Prosecutor described the gunman as having gone to the clinic with ‘murder on his mind’. ‘Allanson depicts with stark ......
This books looks at Idriess and his Aboriginal prospecting friends, the Bairds, working their way through far north-east Queensland over 100 years ago, from the Daintree and the Bloomfield Rivers to Mount Molloy.
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 ......
The True Story of the Kelly Gang of Bushrangers, published in 1900, was a highly researched biography of the notorious 19th-century Victorian family of bushrangers. Chomley wrote the biography using court documents, police records and court evidence.] It is recognised as being one of the most accurate depictions of the story of Ned Kelly, ......
The Fourth Manual written for Australian soldiers and civilians in 1942, when invasion by the Japanese seemed imminent. "To attack and to ambush, to snipe and raid is the job of the Australian Guerrilla. By rifle and grenade, by machine-gun and mortar to kill them, harry them, trap them, grant them not one moment's peace day or night. Break their ......
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.
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 the 22nd edition of this book, Ion Idriess tells of his beginnings, of his childhood in Lismore, Tamworth and Broken Hill, of his apprenticeship in bushcraft, and of the growing love for the Australian Outback which illumines all his work. He tells of the jobs he had, - as rouseabout, horse breaker, horse tailer, shearer.
The true story of murder on HMAS Australia. During World War II a sailor is killed, the suspects are part of a rumoured homosexual group on board the flagship. What followed was one of the most controversial events in the history of the Royal Australian Navy and triggered unprecedented legal and political events.
Idriess latest book is the romance of the Edie Creek and Bulolo diggings, situated inland from Salamau; and the associated names of diggers as "Shark Eye Bill" (William Park), Matt Crowe, Jim Preston, Arthur Dowling, Frank and Jim Pryke... men who in pre-war years crept across the frontier, defying the Germans and dodging the headhunters.
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 ......
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.