At eight, still too small to mount her horse unaided, she was galloping miles, alone, across Coorain, her parents' thirty thousand windswept, drought-haunted acres in the Australian outback, doing a "man's job" of helping herd the sheep because World War II had taken away the able-bodied men. She loved (and makes us see and feel) the vast unpeopled landscape, beautiful and hostile, whose uncertain weathers tormented the sheep ranchers with conflicting promises of riches and inescapable disaster. She adored (and makes us know) her large-visioned father and her strong, radiant mother, who had gone willingly with him into a pioneering life of loneliness and bone-breaking toil, who seemed miraculously to succeed in creating a warmly sheltering home in the harsh outback, and who, upon her husband's sudden death when Jill was ten, began to slide—bereft of the partnership of work and love that had so utterly fulfilled her—into depression and dependency.We see Jill, staggered by the loss of her father, catapulted to what seemed another planet—the suburban Sydney of the 1950s and its crowded, noisy, cliquish school life. Then the heady excitement of the University, but with it a yet more demanding course of lessons—Jill embracing new ideas, new possibilities, while at the same time trying to be mother to her mother and resenting it, escaping into drink, pulling herself back, striking a balance. We see her slowly gaining strength, coming into her own emotionally and intellectually and beginning the joyous love affair that gave wings to her newfound self.Worlds away from Coorain, in America, Jill Conway became a historian and the first woman president of Smith College. Her story of Coorain and the road from Coorain startles by its passion and evocative power, by its understanding of the ways in which a total, deep-rooted commitment to place—or to a dream—can at once liberate and imprison. It is a story of childhood as both Eden and anguish, and of growing up as a journey toward the difficult life of the free.

    It is a follow-up book to "Hercule Poirot's Casebook".

    The story of the tour of Australia by the politicized rock band, Midnight Oil, a tour of remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory accompanied by the desert-bred Warumpi Band.

    The Battle:For twenty-six days during May and June 1968 the 1st Australian Task Force fought a series of actions around Fire Support Bases Coral and Balmoral, northeastof Saigon.The Scenario:An overnight switch in war tactics, from patrolling and ambushing to close combat action, where, for the first time in a long while, tanks and artillery support came into their own.The Men:A trained fighting force with more than their share of bravery, whose skills and sacrifice stopped the North Vietnamese in their tracks.Lex McAulay's brilliant account of reconstruction is one of the most important books on the Australian soldiers' involvement in the Vietnam War.

    Across the desert, across America on a Harley Davidson, or walking through the bush of ghosts at night. In these articles that make up Travelling Light, the bestselling author of Tracks takes us into the wilds of many countries - as well as countries of the mind.

    The Special Air Service (SAS) operated deep behind enemy lines, conducting surveillance at close range, poised to spring into action at a moment's notice. This Australian military classic tells the story of the formation of the military known to the Viet Cong as “phantoms of the jungle,” its secret role in Borneo during confrontation with Indonesia, and its operations in Vietnam. After its involvement in Vietnam, the SAS formed a crack counter-terrorist force that saw action in Somalia, Kuwait, and East Timor and in the security of the 2000 Olympic Games.

    In a single illustrated edition, the History of English Literature is enhanced by the revelation that a number of the world's greatest poets were in fact Australians."The names will be familiar: Herrick, Black, Burns, Leigh Hunt, Keats, Fifteen Bobsworth Longfellow, Ted Lear, william McGonigall, Emmy-Lou Dickinson, W.B. Yeats. Jems Choice, R.A.C.V. Milne, Kahlihliji Bran, Pinko Brooke, Marianne More, T.S. Eliot, b.b. hummings, Ogden Gnash, Sir Don Betjeman, Stewie Smith, W.H. Auding, Dylan Thompson, Sylvia Blath, and others. Original works have been located and biographical details recorded. The jigsaw is complete."Australia's rich poetic heritage is now available to the world in one elegant volume."

    The SAS operated deep behind enemy lines, conducting surveillance at close range, poised to spring into violent action at need. It was with good reason the Viet Cong came to call them Ma Rung - 'phantoms of the jungle'.

    The collection is an angry call for justice and the restoration of the land and the Dreaming. The Aboriginal lives glimpsed give white Australians a hint of the deep possibilities of belonging in this land.-- from the cover blurb.

    Beagle, the sailing ship that Charles Darwin made famous. Thus began the oceanic career of the last Royal Navy surveyor and a great Australian seaman whose stories are recounted in this biography. Through his travels, Stokes circumnavigated Australia twice, discovered the Fitzroy, Albert, and Flinders rivers, and charted a graveyard of sailing ships known as Bass Strait. Stokes's adventures are told by an experienced seaman who captures a sailor's awe and outrage at the breathtaking foolishness of this earnest voyager.

    

    Michael Pusey undertakes a detailed analysis of top bureaucrats in Canberra who have been responsible for this recasting of national policy. He concludes that economist rationalist view dominate each of the key ministries, and have altered the traditional balance between the economy, the state and society. The book also discusses the social significance of economic rationalisation and public sector reform from a theoretical perspective, contributing to contemporary understanding of modernisation, public morality and citizenship in the new global order.