Best of
Australia

1955

Requiem for a Wren


Nevil Shute - 1955
    title The Breaking Wave) is one of Nevil Shute's most poignant and psychologically suspenseful novels, set in the years just after World War II.Sidelined by a wartime injury, fighter pilot Alan Duncan reluctantly returns to his parents' remote sheep station in Australia to take the place of his brother Bill, who died a hero in the war. But his homecoming is marred by the suicide of his parents' parlormaid, of whom they were very fond. Alan soon realizes that the dead young woman is not the person she pretended to be. Upon discovering that she had served in the Royal Navy and participated along with his brother in the secret build-up to the Normandy invasion, Alan sets out to piece together the tragic events and the lonely burden of guilt that unravelled one woman's life. In the process of finding the answer to the mystery, he realizes how much he had in common with this woman he never knew and how a war can go on killing people long after it's all over.

The Shiralee


D'Arcy Niland - 1955
    He takes the child on the road with him to spite his wife, but months pass and still no word comes to ask for the little girl back. Strangers to each other at first, father and daughter drift aimlessly through the dusty towns of Australia, sleeping rough and relying on odd jobs for food and money. Buster's resilience and trust slowly erode Macauley's resentment, and when he's finally able to get rid of her, he realises he can't let his shiralee go. In evocative prose that vividly conjures images of rural Australia, The Shiralee reveal an understanding of the paradoxical nature of the burdens we carry, creates a moving portrait of fatherhood, told with gruff humour and a gentle pathos.

The Tree of Man


Patrick White - 1955
    Once the land is cleared and a rudimentary house built, he brings his wife Amy to the wilderness. Together they face lives of joy and sorrow as they struggle against the environment.

I Can Jump Puddles


Alan Marshall - 1955
    His world was the Australian countryside early last century: rough-riders, bushmen, farmers and tellers of tall stories - a world held precious by the young Alan.

Keep Him My Country


Mary Durack - 1955
    Intending to spend two years at Trafalgar Station, he stays fifteen, his soul captured by the harsh but haunting country of Kimberley. Try as he might, he can't seem to escape its clutches, even though it killed his father and threatens also to bring him down. He is held there by the dependence of the people, black and white, and the memory of a tragic love affair that still haunts him...

The Last Cannibals


Jens Bjerre - 1955
    This remarkable book is the first ever written by the famous young Danish explorer, Jens Bjerre. It is alive with his own enthusiasm for the little known places and peoples of the world, from the aborigines of Australia to the cannibals of New Guinea. Bjerre lived among these peoples, exploring their innermost beliefs, observing their strange sex lives, photographing a variety of fantastic ceremonies and rites. His first visit was to an aborigine reserve in the desert of central Australia. There he became a member of the tribe, moving with them on their nomadic wanderings, sharing in a kind of life that has not varied for thousands of years from the complicated system of tribal marriage to the gruesome ritual of circumcision. Then a helicopter jump from one Stone Age to another, to New Guinea, where hundreds of thousands of people have never heard of white men and it will be many a year before the last cannibal has finished his favorite meal. Here Bjerre divided his time between the Kukukuku, a warlike tribe, the Morombo and more civilized Kumans, and the island paradise of Manam. Bjerre was quickly at home with the Kukukuku cannibals, finding in them an attractive, spontaneous sense of humor. (His explanation of their cannibalism is completely practical.) Among the Kumans, he made a special study of the courting habits, in which the women carefully select and propose to their intended mates. And his visit to Manam was an idyll. Mr. Bjerre writes with such fresh vigor that it is easy to lose sight of the fact that The Last Cannibals is both an original anthropological study and the best kind of travel book: accurate, provocative, highly readable, and magnificently illustrated.

Australia 55: A Journal of the M.C.C. Tour


Alan Ross - 1955
    

Australian Bush Ballads


Nancy Keesing - 1955
    In addition, there is verse by 'Breaker' Morant, Joseph 'Tom Collins' Furphy, C. J. Dennis, 'Dryblower' Murphy, 'Mulga Mick' O'Reilly and many, many more.