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.
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.
When Dick and “jack Idriess went aboard the Nancy Bell at Cooktown – they thought they were signing on for a trochus-fishing expedition, would earn some money, and go back to gold prospecting. Cross-eyed Joe, a wily Filipino skipper was after something more valuable than trochus. With the appearance of the Japanese manned black lugger the boys ......
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 ......
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 ......
A novel about eccentric 19th-century Englishman Alexander Hare: a trader and slave-owner in the East and a friend of Thomas Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore, but Hare's chief claim to fame is as the creator of a harem of women from throughout Asia.
With authenticity that sometimes surprises the reader, Idriess introduces us to Aboriginals from Northern Australia, Papuan head- hunters, and Islanders around the Great Barrier Reef, all still in the colonial phase of European contact.
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.
A fresh take on the story behind the wreck of the Schomberg, off the coast of Peterborough, Victoria in 1855. The author uses previously undiscovered sources to provide an alternative discussion to the conventional narrative of Captain Forbes.