Rabbit-Proof Fence: The True Story of One of the Greatest Escapes of All Time


Doris Pilkington - 1996
    Following an Australian government edict in 1931, black aboriginal children and children of mixed marriages were gathered up by whites and taken to settlements to be assimilated. In Rabbit-Proof Fence, award-winning author Doris Pilkington traces the captivating story of her mother, Molly, one of three young girls uprooted from her community in Southwestern Australia and taken to the Moore River Native Settlement. At the settlement, Milly and her relatives Gracie and Daisy were forbidden to speak their native language, forced to abandon their aboriginal heritage, and taught to be culturally white. After regular stays in solitary confinement, the three girls scared and homesick planned and executed a daring escape from the grim camp, with its harsh life of padlocks, barred windows, and hard cold beds.The girls headed for the nearby rabbit-proof fence that stretched over 1,000 miles through the desert toward their home. Their journey lasted over a month, and they survived on everything from emus to feral cats, while narrowly avoiding the police, professional trackers, and hostile white settlers. Their story is a truly moving tale of defiance and resilience.About the author: Doris Pilkington is also the author of Caprice: A Stockman's Daughter. Rabbit-Proof Fence, her second book, is now a major motion picture from Miramax Films, directed by Phillip Noyce and starring Kenneth Branagh.

Australia Day


Stan Grant - 2019
    On January 26, no Australian can really look away.'Since publishing his critically acclaimed, Walkley Award-winning, bestselling memoir Talking to My Country in early 2016, Stan Grant has been crossing the country, talking to huge crowds everywhere about how racism is at the heart of our history and the Australian dream. But Stan knows this is not where the story ends.In this book, Australia Day, his long-awaited follow up to Talking to My Country, Stan talks about our country, about who we are as a nation, about the indigenous struggle for belonging and identity in Australia, and what it means to be Australian. A sad, wise, beautiful, reflective and troubled book, Australia Day asks the questions that have to be asked, that no else seems to be asking. Who are we? What is our country? How do we move forward from here?

Aboriginal Australians


Richard Broome - 1982
    Fully updated, this new edition explains the land rights struggle since Mabo, the Hindmarsh Island case, and debates over the stolen generation.

Siren


Rachel Matthews - 2017
    By daybreak, her world has shifted. Max Carlisle, a troubled AFL star, can't stop what comes next. And Ruby, a single woman from the apartment block, is left with questions when she sees Jordi leave.In this remarkable novel, Rachel Matthews captures the characters of Jordi and her family, the players, and the often loveable inhabitants of a big city with a deceptive lightness of touch that seduces the reader. Siren reveals the often unnoticed life of a city while simultaneously drawing us deep into a dark and troubling world. What happens has an unexpected effect on all those who are both directly and indirectly involved.The result is a powerful and haunting novel about cultural stereotypes and expectations, love, loneliness, family and our struggle to connect. In so many ways, Matthews subtly sounds the siren on sexual violence and its prevalence in our culture.

Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia


Billy Griffiths - 2018
    Equipped with a historian’s inquiring mind, he embarks on a journey through time, seeking to understand the extraordinary deep history of the Australian continent.Deep Time Dreaming is the passionate product of that journey. In this original, important book, Griffiths investigates a twin revolution: the reassertion of Aboriginal identity in the second half of the twentieth century, and the simultaneous uncovering of the traces of ancient Australia by pioneering archaeologists.Deep Time Dreaming is about a slow shift in national consciousness. It explores what it means to live in a place of great antiquity, with its complex questions of ownership and identity. It brings to life the deep time dreaming that has changed the way many Australians relate to their continent and its enduring, dynamic human history.When John Mulvaney began his fieldwork in January 1956, it was widely believed that the first Australians had arrived on this continent only a few thousand years earlier. In the decades since, Australian history has been pushed back into the dizzying expanse of deep time. The human presence here has been revealed to be more ancient than that of Europe, and the Australian landscape, far from being terra nullius, is now recognised to be cultural as much as natural, imprinted with stories and law and shaped by the hands and firesticks of thousands of generations of Indigenous men and women. The New World has become the Old …

After Summer


Nick Earls - 1996
    School is over for Alex Delaney, and he’s waiting for his university acceptance, only seventeen days away. The waiting is killing him. He’s not expecting much from summer. Bodysurfing, TV, but mainly waiting.So he’s not ready for the girl who cuts past him on a wave. Not at all prepared for her perfect balance on the board, the elegant muscles of her shoulders and back. Just a girl. Compelling green eyes, golden skin, something graceful and elusive about her. Summer is about to change.

Dr Wooreddy's Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World


Mudrooroo - 1983
    Since it had come from the sea, it was an evil omen.Soon after, many people died mysteriously, others disappeared without a trace, and once-friendly families became bitter enemies. The islanders muttered, 'It's the times', but Wooreddy alone knew more: the world was coming to an end.In Mudrooroo's unforgettable novel, considered by many to be his masterpiece, the author evokes with fullest irony the bewilderment and frailty of the last native Tasmanians, as they come face to face with the clumsy but inexorable power of their white destroyers.

The Summer of '82


Dave O'Neil - 2016
    The Summer of ’82 is the hilarious and heartfelt story of a boy becoming a man in suburban Australia.Dave O’Neil is one of our most loved comedians. He has been performing stand-up for over twenty-five years, has been part of some of Australia’s most successful FM radio teams, and is a regular on our TV screens, where he holds the honour of having the most guest appearances on ABC’s iconic Spicks and Specks (over fifty!). He is also a successful writer, columnist and actor. The Summer of ’82 is his fifth book.

Notes from Underground & Scenes from the New World


Eric Bogosian - 1993
    Back-in-print early work by the author of subUrbia and Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll.

Underneath the Southern Cross


Michael Hussey - 2013
    This is THE cricket biography of 2013. Michael Hussey's huge popularity does not rest solely on his incredible playing record. Popularly known as Mr Cricket, he made his Test debut against the West Indies in Brisbane in November 2005, and has scored 6,183 Test runs over 78 Tests in his career. But to his fans, it is the way he plays the game rather than simply the sum of his achievements that marks him out as one of the best-loved cricketers of his generation. He is a middle-order maestro with a batting average of 51.52, but he has always played cricket with an integrity and sense of values that is the epitome of what cricket stands for. His autobiography takes you behind the scenes to his world of cricket. From his lengthy struggle to break into the Australian side, through to his masterly achievements in the Australian team, in ODI and Indian Premier League - this book follows his extraordinary cricket career., with plenty of surprisingly frank admissions & behind the scenes dramas.

The Call of the High Country


Tony Parsons - 1999
    As a young married couple, Andrew and Anne work together to make the very best of their property, High Peaks, but at what cost to their happiness? In time, the property will pass to their son, David. Handsome and hardworking, David is determined to become the best sheepdog handler in the land. Nothing is going to stand in his way-not even the beautiful Catriona Campbell, daughter of the wealthy graziers next door. The Call Of The High Country is an inspiring and heartwarming saga of a family battling through hard times, of a love that defies all odds, and of dreams that won't be broken.

The Wave


L.E. Luttrell - 2020
    When they meet in Phuket in December 2004 and share their troubles, the future begins to look more promising. Lucy devises a plan to help Kelly escape from her controlling and violent partner. But a tsunami sweeps through the resort causing tragedy and chaos.After recovering from her injuries, Lucy, whose husband died in the tsunami, travels to Llandudno in Wales to visit her in-laws. Thirteen years later, still in Llandudno and having established a successful business there, an unexpected visitor turns up on Lucy’s doorstep who turns her whole world upside down. She then has to consider how far she will go to protect all she holds dear.The Wave is a psychological thriller set in: Phuket, Thailand; Melbourne, Australia and Llandudno, Wales.

Underbelly: True Crime Stories


John Silvester - 1997
    This book delves into the crimes that police have to deal with day after day. Murderers, hitmen, kidnappers, and drug dealers all feature in this collection of true crime stories. Take the drug dealer who walked out of a restaurant bragging that he's killed a man—unaware that his fellow diner was an undercover policeman. Or the young mother, whose death was written off as suicide, but which subsequent investigation proved to be something much more sinister.

Songlines: the Power and Promise


Margo Neale - 2020
    It offers what Margo Neale calls ‘the third archive’. Aboriginal people use songlines to store their knowledge, while Western cultures use writing and technology. Aboriginal people now use a third archive – a combination of the two.The authors believe that the third archive offers a promise of a better way for everyone to store, maintain and share knowledge while gaining a much deeper relationship with it.

The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith


Thomas Keneally - 1972
    Thomas Keneally was born in Sydney Australia in 1935. He studied to be a Catholic priest but abandoned his vocation to take up teaching and writing. He is the author of numerous works of fiction and non-fiction including "Schindlers Ark" which won the Booker Prize in 1982 and was made into a successful film.