They are a fifth-generation Australian family of Irish Catholic descent who are struggling to reach the first rung of the social ladder. The Maloneys are a family you won't forget: a strong mother, a father broken by war, three boys and two girls, one of whom has an illegitimate daughter. Each of their lives is changed forever by the four fires – passion, religion, warfare and fire itself.Four Fire is unashamedly a story of the power of love and the triumph of the human spirit against the odds.

    Brief by his standards, but essentially heroic. Shakespeare might have seen it as a tragedy with splendid bit-parts for buffoons and brigands and lots of graveyard scenes. Those thigh bones you occasionally see rearing out of the yellow earth of Gully ravine, snapped open so that they look like pumice, belong to a generation of young men who on this peninsula first lost their innocence and then their lives, and maybe something else as well...'Gallipoli remains one of the most poignant battlefronts of the First World War and L. A. Carlyon's monumental account of that campaign has been rightfully acclaimed and a massive bestseller in Australia. Brilliantly told, supremely readable and deeply moving, Gallipoli brings this epic tragedy to life and stands as both a landmark chapter in the history of the war and a salutary reminder of all that is fine and all that is foolish in the human condition.

    Combining the best elements of The Perfect Storm (W.W. Norton, 1997) and Barbarians at the Gate (HarperCollins, 1990), "The Proving Ground" is a gripping narrative that follows the fates of three yachts, including Sayonara, owned by Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle. From the chilling explanation of how an Olympic sailor came to be catapulted from a yacht and why its crew could do nothing to save him, to the dramatic journeys of two leaky life-rafts, "The Proving Ground" is an exhilarating read.

    Curly. "It is worth doing nothing and it is worth having a rest", advises the sagacious Mr. Curly. "In spite of all the difficulty it may cause, you MUST rest Vasco - otherwise you will become RESTLESS!" Mr Curly and Vasco Pyjama are very different in nature but have been great friends for a long time. The wise and grounded Mr Curly leads a contented life birdwatching and tending his vines on the shores of Lake Lacuna, near Curly Flat, while the adventurous, inquisitive and sometimes fragile and despondent Vasco circumnavigates his world from the comfort of his amphibious club armchair, accompanied by his ever faithful direction finding duck (who always points toward new joys). We first met Vasco Pyjama and shared in his adventures and epiphanies way back in the Second Leunig. It seems the restless Vasco is driven almost to exhaustion in his search for truth and self discovery - such is the nature of all great explorations no matter what their geographic scale. Periodically he returns to Curly Flat to join his mentor Mr Curly and picnic by the shores of Lake Lacuna, but throughout his journey the friends share their adventures, wisdom and thoughts through handwritten letters, some of which have appeared in print over the years. In this, Leunig's 18th book, we are privy to a further 29 of these letters from a bundle which simply appeared, in mysterious circumstances, tied up with a thin blue ribbon. The letters are faithfully reproduced and accompanied by beautiful illustrations, some of which will be familiar to regular readers and many of which have never been seen before.

    The fall of Malaya and Singapore and the bombing of Darwin—what looked like the invasion of Australia—ebb and crash over a man’s long search to find a home and a woman’s determination to keep hers, connected by old memories and new betrayals. It is a thriller and a romance, a story of earth and water, air and metal—an unforgettable ride through the most precarious time in our region's recent history. Garry Disher writes: ‘Past the Headlands came from the same World War 2 research as The Stencil Man. I was struck by the power of two documents. The first was a letter written by a woman alone on a cattle station near Broome in 1942, at the time the Japanese were overrunning Malaya and Singapore and bombing areas of northern Australia. One day she found herself giving shelter to Dutch colonial officers and their families, who were fleeing Sumatra and Java ahead of the Japanese advance (many people like them lost their lives when Japanese planes shot up their waiting seaplanes in Broome Harbour in March, 1942). This woman stuck in my head (the isolation, the danger, the efforts to communicate, her bravery, etc). The second document was a war diary written by an Australian army surgeon who escaped Singapore ahead of the Japanese and was stuck in Sumatra, trying to get out. Here he treated many of the civilians (and Australian Army deserters) fleeing from Singapore. He was captured by the Japanese, but survived the war. But his last few diary entries detail how he and a mate were waiting for a plane or a ship to take them out, then one day he wrote, “Davis [his mate] left last night without telling me”. So much for mateship. I spent years trying to find my way into their stories. At one stage I spent a year writing 40,000 words before realising it wouldn’t work. I put it aside, then realised one subplot didn’t belong, so extracted it and turned it into a separate novel The Divine Wind, which has sold 100,000 copies around the world, won a major award and been published as both a young adult and a general market novel. But cutting it out like that freed me up to write about the woman and the man betrayed by his mate, in Past the Headlands.’

    But this year the ominous storm clouds only serve to remind them of trouble brewing - an Aborgine guerilla fighter in the district with some of his men is causing havoc indiscriminately and placing both Zack Hamilton and William Oatley in great danger. As the days drag on, the Aborigines' struggle for survival involves them all in a vicious waiting game until men with revenge in their hearts have to face the truth about themselves.

    These torchlight adventures have since inspired a generation of scientists, and his research is still considered useful today. In The Secret Life of Wombats, James Woodford pursues Nicholson's story and embarks on his own journey to uncover the true nature of our most intriguing marsupial."Woodford has done the research, he has read widely, spoken with the major wombat pundits and with the lay observers. He has travelled to gain direct experience of all species...I know more about wombats than I did, and retain some stark images which I hope never to lose." - Sunday Age.

    . . . After years of schooling in England, Jesmond Corbett finds little has changed on her family’s estate along the sea-battered coast of Tasmania. Betrothed since childhood to a wealthy neighbor, Jessie comes home determined to conform to the expectations of her family and the society in which they live. But nothing in Jessie’s life has prepared her for the mysterious stranger who works in the stables, a man with searing eyes who haunts her dreams and awakens passions she never knew existed.Irishman Lucas Gallagher arrived on the island in chains, a convict sentenced to a lifetime of slave labor for the English gentry. For four years he has lived a dead man’s existence, using every spare moment to plan his escape. But when he meets Jessie, she touches his cold, angry heart. And although their love has no future, he finds himself unable to deny the longings of his battered soul– longings that threaten to destroy what may be his last chance to reach for freedom. . . .

    This complete collection of verse shows the bush balladeer at his very best with favorites such as "A Bush Christening," "The Man from Ironbark," "Clancy of the Overflow," and the immortal "The Man from Snowy River."A.B. Banjo Paterson was born in Australia in 1864 and wrote poetry and fiction from 1900 until his death in 1941.

    The first real book to be published on growing food in tropical climates.

    As a businessman he has successfully built up a multi-million dollar merchandising business. And as coach of Australia's national Rugby Union side, the Wallabies, he has led his team to World Cup and Bledisloe Cup victories, as well as winning the Tri-Nations championship. And he's done it using his own unusual techniques.Forget the red-faced bellowing cliche of a coach in action. Macqueen's style is so relaxed his players nicknamed him Cones - as in, he must have been out the back having some before the match to stay this cool. This is a bloke who gave each of his great, hulking players a single red rose when they reached the finals of the World Cup, as a way of reminding them to take time out from worrying about what would happen next to enjoy what they'd already achieved.Those who work with him or are coached by him cannot speak highly enough of Macqueen's abilities to lead, motivate and direct people to success. And now he shares that philosophy, via this book, and shows how anyone can apply it to business or other areas of life in order to succeed.

    Set in Sydney, 1937, this is the fictional diary of a young Aboriginal girl, a member of the Stolen Generation.She is given the diary by the Sister in charge of Bomaderry Aboriginal Children's Home and through its pages she describes her life - from her arrival there, aged five, through her struggle to understand why she was taken from her real mother, to her adoption at ten years of age by a white Catholic family in St.Ives.Mary Talence, birth name Amy Charles, is increasingly confused - and then ashamed - as she is taught that white skinned is good, black skinned is bad. She longs to understand why this is so but finds that logical questions - almost any questions - provoke anger and accusations of ingratitude from her white family. Her music - her beautiful voice and her ability to make up songs - is her greatest source of comfort.This is an honest, thought-provoking book that acknowledges the terrible wrong done to aboriginal children taken from their families whilst also recognising the combination of ignorance, genuinely good intentions and political convenience that brought about this dreadful policy. Very appropriate for integration with HSIE and highly recommended for general reading as a clear introduction to the reality of the Stolen Generations to primary students.

    Sam Hooper was one such emigrant, but he had to leave his love behind—Emily—because her vicar father didn't consider him good enough for her. But Emily was not to be thwarted and when her father dies after a stroke and she learns she will be thrown out of the vicarage, she decides to go to Australia and hunt down Sam. Accompanied by Margaret and her two sons looking for their man, Charlie, they arrive at Kadina. Margaret discovers Charlie has fallen into bad ways and Emily hears Sam is married to a girl he met on his ship out. Emily throws herself into good works—saving prostitutes and starts to win them over just as she learns Sam isn't married and has done quite well for himself in gold prospecting.

    'And so is bloody spinifex.'Dune is a Four-letter Word tells the story of Griselda and Reg Sprigg's pioneering desert adventures - not only in the Simpson Desert but all over the vast Australian outback. Griselda's story is also the story of Arkaroola Sanctuary, how she, with her husband, Reg, turned a drought-stricken sheep station into the magnificent flora and fauna reserve and tourist mecca it is today.

    Five to ten paces takes me over the track, and now I scan the creek ahead trying to peer through the underbrush, to detect signs of enemy presence. Jesus, it's quiet; unnaturally quiet...another obviously more urgent hiss is sent out to attract my attention. Looking back over my shoulder I see the enemy soldier immediately; he is on the track looking directly at me...apparently oblivious to my presence. Has he seen me? screams through my brain. No!... Suddenly, the bastard takes off like a startled jackrabbit. Couldn't hold it together any longer, I think, as I try to get a shot in-but it's hopeless, no point in firing...in any case the remainder of the patrol is now thundering towards me.With his remarkably observant eye, Terry O'Farrell's personal account of his career as an SAS soldier vividly captures not only the military actions of his time in Vietnam, but the human aspects of soldiering-from surviving the intense selection process and training, to dealing with the ever-present fear of combat.Terry relives the long tense stretches on patrol in the jungle, ears ever alert to the sounds of the surrounding terrain and being caught by surprise and sudden contact with the enemy. He also entertains his readers with colourful tales of his experiences off the battlefield-the larrakin pranks during training, visits to Mama San and her girls, and the friendship and mutual trust that forms between soldiers.An absorbing, frank and humorous reflection, Behind Enemy Lines is a first-hand insight into the mind of a young SAS soldier.'Captures the true day to day existence of an Infantry solider...I had tears rolling down my face at some of the shenanigans...to being brought back to the nasty reality that was the war we all knew. The humour when setting up either a fellow soldier or an instructor and suffering the consequences or feeling Oh so smug when you got away with it makes for great reading.' - Bill McLaughlin

    

    As gang fought gang, the streets echoed with the sound of violence and ran with blood. Razor chronicles in compelling detail the nether world ruled by fabled vice queens Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh, and financed by the spoils of illegal drugs and alcohol, prostitution, gambling and extortion. Gangsters such as Guido Calletti, Big Jim Devine and Frank 'the Little Gunman' Green killed, robbed and slashed with impunity. Facing them were the police - some corrupt, some honest, and a few as tough and feared as the razor gangs they fought. Razor is the fascinating true story of the people who lived and died in this world of violence and vice. Razor brings a city's dark past back to life, and ensures that you will never look at inner Sydney in quite the same way again.

    This book provides concise and accurate details of the appearance, diagnostic features, distribution, habitat, and key behavioral characteristics of all mammals known to have occurred in Australia or its waters since the time of European settlement. Each double-page spread provides all the information needed to identify an animal, a full-color illustration of the entire animal, a smaller diagram of diagnostic features, a distribution map, and species description and measurements, including details of how to differentiate between similar species. Identification keys are provided for groups that are difficult to identify to species level, including keys to the genera of small marsupials, rodents, and bats, and all marine mammals likely to be washed on to an Australian beach: whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals, and the Dugong.

    Detective Sergeant Scott Backer is called in to find them. He manages to catch Doug (17) the eldest boy, but when the teenager refuses to co-operate, the detective is reluctant to reveal the real reason he has tracked the family down...

    

    Each night the big round moon looks down and smiles. But one night a piece of the moon is missing. 2001 CBCA Notable Book: Early Childhood Shortlisted 2001 Kids Own Australian Literature Award (KOALA)

    Hester created a substantial body of work, primarily brush and ink drawings, distinguished by the concentrated focus of her vision on the human face to convey intensely felt emotion.Hester's work was closely bound up with her remarkable life story and personality--her intensity and vitality as a young artist during the war years when she was married to Albert Tucker, her struggle with Hodgkins disease, and her passionate and fulfilling relationship with Gray Smith from the late 1940s until her intimely death at the age of 40. Deborah Hart traces Hester's artistic development from her student drawings, to her powerful shell-shocked faces of the mid-40s that drew upon film footage of the Nazi concentraion camps, and the personal images of lovers and children in the 1950s.

    Gadi Mirrabooka, which means below the Southern Cross, introduces wonderful tales from the Dreamtime, the mystical period of Aboriginal beginning. Through these stories you can learn about customs and values, animal psychology, hunting and gathering skills, cultural norms, moral behavior, the spiritual belief system, survival skills, and food resources. A distinctive and absolutely compelling story collection, this book is an immensely valuable treasure for educators, parents, children, and adult readers. Grades K-A

    This endearing animal adventure features wonderful pop-ups and captivating characters behind every flap.

    But like Curtin, he was admired across political boundaries. As prime minister from 1945-49, he established many of the policies that became an accepted part of Australian life: mass immigration, full employment, the Snowy Mountains Scheme, to name just a few. In contrast to our age of privatisation and economic rationalism, Chifley stood for a strong state sector able to moderate the excesses of capitalism. However, Chifley's personal life had melancholic resonances. In his early childhood he was sent from his parents' house to live a primitive rural life with his grandfather. His marriage was childless, to his bitter regret, and he was involved for much of it with another woman in whose company he was destined to die. Chifley is a gripping and essential political biography from David Day, author of John Curtin: A Life and winner of the 2000 Queensland Premier's Prize for History. ∗ Winner Queensland Premier's Prize for History 2000

    Amidst despair, hope prevails as old values reassert themselves against overwhelming odds. Earth establishes Pascoe at the peak of contemporary Australian fiction.

    They came from displaced persons camps in Germany, death camps in Poland, labour camps in Hungary, gulags in Siberia and stony Aegean islands. There were those who had been hunted by the Nazis and those who had welcomed them; those who had followed the Communists and those who had fled them. Diane Armstrong set sail on the Derna with her parents when she was nine years old. Like a detective searching for clues, she has located over a hundred of the passengers. Through their recollections and memorabilia, as well as archival documents, she has recreated the voyage and traced what became of their hopes and dreams. The result is the unique portrayal of a migrant ship and its passengers.

    They had a yearning to farm. They wanted to eat slow food. Although completely inexperiences, they learned through trial and error how to milk a cow, plant crops, repair their almost derelict house, and grow enough food to feem themselves. The eight children are now adults and David, a Miles Franklin award-winning author, still chops wood, makes bread and cheese, and keeps bees, while Gerda uses fresh food as therapy in her work as a counsellor in a maximum security prison. This is the story of a year in their life, with a recipe for each week using what's ripe in their garden. It is also the story of a particular approach to life, in which the growing, preparation and eating of food plays a central part.

    In four years, Maconochie transformed what was one of the most brutal convict settlements in history into a controlled, stable, and productive environment that achieved such success that upon release his prisoners came to be called Maconochie's Gentlemen. Here Norval Morris, one of our most renowned criminologists, offers a highly inventive and engaging account of this early pioneer in penal reform, enhancing Maconochie's life story with a trenchant policy twist. Maconochie's life and efforts on Norfolk Island, Morris shows, provide a model with profound relevance to the running of correctional institutions today. Using a unique combination of fictionalized history and critical commentary, Morris gives this work a powerful policy impact lacking in most standard academic accounts. In an era of mass incarceration that rivals that of the settlement of Australia, Morris injects the question of humane treatment back into the debate over prison reform. Maconochie and his Marks system played an influential role in the development of prisons; but for the last thirty years prison reform has been dominated by punitive and retributive sentiments, the conventional wisdom holding that we need 'supermax' prisons to control the 'worst of the worst' in solitary and harsh conditions. Norval Morris argues to the contrary, holding up the example of Alexander Maconochie as a clear-cut alternative to the living hell of prison systems today.

    

    The second edition includes much new testimony from professionals who have worked inside Australia’s immigration detention system and who now feel compelled to speak out about their experiences.

    As general editor at Angus and Robertson from the late thirties to the early seventies, she nurtured the talents of a host of well-known writers, including Thea Astley, Miles Franklin, Xavier Herbert, Ruth Park, Hal Porter and Patricia Wrightson. Her position as a judge of several major prizes, including the prestigious Miles Franklin Award, reinforced her pivotal role in Australia’s literary culture – a role that saw her by turns respected, feared, courted and berated. Jacqueline Kent’s compulsively readable, erudite and witty biography portrays a woman whose passion for living was as great as her passion for Australian literature.

    

    Describes the remarkable world of birds and their multitude of behaviours.

    They had much in common: both were naval officers whose conventional careers were becalmed, and both led government-sponsored expeditions. But one was French and the other was British - and their countries were at war. Although they behaved with scientific objectivity towards each other when their paths crossed, the enmity of their two countries was to lead them into disaster, by coincidence both coming to grief in the French colony of Mauritius. Seeking help after a dramatic shipwreck, Flinders was refused the status of a non-belligerent and was held as a prisoner for six years until the British captured the island in 1810; but even then his ill-treatment caught up with him, and he died the day after the publication of his charts and the account of his voyage. If anything, Baudin fared even worse at the hands of his own countrymen, and he died in disgrace, leaving his enemies to publish a biased and malicious narrative of his work.

    It contains images of over 220 Australian lights as they were at the end of the twentieth century in 500 brilliant photographs. Combined with concise, informative captions, 12 detailed location maps, a history of lighthouses, a chronological list of over 400 Australian lights and a section on lighthouse museums, the book provides something for everyone who has an interest in lighthouses.

    Ms Alexander turned stories of about 300 women into a narrative history.

    They are easy and less costly to maintain than chemical pools. Chlorine and other common pool chemicals that are hazardous to human health are not used. Natural pools are safe places for children to play and birds to drink, and are a dramatic example of ecological design, combining the natural and man-made worlds while creating beauty. These pools offer enjoyment not only in the warm months, but during winter, when they can be used for ice skating. Often the focal point of a garden, a natural swimming pool blends into the environment, flowing into the surroundings with plants and rocks. It reflects the changing seasons and enhances the environment naturally. This book is a necessary resource for people who consider a natural swimming pool. It shows how the natural system works to provide environmental, health, and safety benefits. Drawings, diagrams, and charts help explain their planning, design, biology, materials, construction, planting, and maintenance. Over 300 beautiful color photographs of natural pools will inspire your own water garden, where you can swim in harmony with nature.

    The new edition adds 16 pages of historical photos.

    From McPhee Gribble came many new writers, including Helen Garner, Tim Winton, Drusilla Modjeska, new perspectives on Australian life and history, new stories - and fleetingly, the hope that an Australian company could become a fully fledged player in the international publishing industry.

    Plants have been used for medicinal purposes since earliest recorded history and Australia's varied flora provided Aboriginal people with medicines. With the arrival of Europeans much of this knowledge was overtaken by modern drugs and techniques but today there is a revival of interest in traditional medicines. Australian Medicinal Plants covers the Aboriginal use of native plants and explains how the first settlers learned from the Aborigines their medicinal values. There is information on nearly 500 individual plants, how they were used, what their known pharmacological constituents are, where to find them and how to prepare remedies. The species are helpfully arranged in chapters according to their use, for instance, for fevers, painkillers, antiseptics and digestive disorders.

    Throughout history, gold has been the stuff of legends, fortunes, conflict and change. The discovery of gold in Australia 150 years ago precipitated enormous developments in the newly settled land. The population and economy boomed in spontaneous cities. The effects on both the environment and indigenous Aboriginal peoples have been profound and lasting.