Hard to find edition.

    Day after day he camps at Devil's Head and takes his surfboard over the outer reef, hoping the sharp rocks will claim him and save him from his nightmares. From the shop on the beach, Brenda -- scarred by her brief marriage to an air-force pilot -- watches his crazy dance of death. A starving and homeless Aboriginal boy trying to find enough food to survive after his parents' death becomes an intermediary between the two misfits consumed by their own demons. One day the two are forced out of their introspection when tragedy intervenes.

    Set against the backdrop of a Greek island, Clean Straw for Nothing follows the story of successful war correspondent and retired journalist David Meredith as he abandons his career for a life in exile with his beautiful wife Cressida. Johnston focuses on the developing relationship between David and Cressida, exploring the complex and reflective character of David as he questions the nature of success, sexual tensions, expatriation and ill-health. The questions are almost entirely unanswerable and the freedom David craves nearly impossible. In the final episode of the trilogy, David Meredith travels back to Australia, rediscovering his deep affection for his native land after having been so long in Greece. Coming to terms with his new home's deep faults and failings, as well as virtues, it is here that he reviews his life, his pursuit of success and his unfortunate failures. Still without a conclusion to his philosophical concerns, David comes to accept that the meaning of life is the journey we take and is not a price to be given at the end.

    

    Yet he is no figure from a morality play; he is vital, humorous, courageous and completely shocking, as unadorned truth and candour always must be. Across his path comes the young , lonely Joey, his very opposite, tender, vacillatory, carnal and priggish by turns, needing a hero and insisting upon finding one.This story of friendship and archaic disaster is played out against a remote landscape during a flare-up of nationalistic rage and hysteria.The mellow meditative style conceals a steely framework of tense and suspenseful story. With a Kazantzakis-like simplicity and inevitability D'Arcy Niland leads the reader towards the crashing last chapter.This is D'Arcy Niland's last novel, finished only a short time before he died, and this book contains the full story as it was written.No ISBN.

    Revised with over 100 new entries, the ever-popular old-time plants are still here, as well as the exotic and often strikingly beautiful flowers from all over the world. This accessible and easy-to-use guide is a must for any generation of gardener, young or old, novice or expert.