Book picks similar to
Cleared Out: First Contact in the Western Desert by Sue Davenport


books-for-teaching
indigenous
indigenous-australia
non-white-authors

Iceland


Dominic Hoey - 2017
    We drifted through neighbourhoods in small packs, clinging to each other, all but alone. Our parents had given up. Packed their photos and furniture and moved to the forest to live simpler lives. But we stayed because there was nowhere else to go. We sold everything for rent — time, dignity, self-respect. Beneath the shiny new paint jobs and streets paved with debt lay our home."Stuck in a dead-end office job, Zlata hopes for a record deal so she can escape Auckland city. Then at party she meets Hamish, a graffiti artist and part-time drug dealer. Each has their own ideas about the other’s life, and surrounded by a makeshift family of friends and ex-lovers, their dreams of music, art and travel take shape.But as quickly as things come together, they can be torn apart — unravelling relationships and lives.

Walking Towards Thunder: The true story of a whistleblowing cop who took on corruption and the Church


Peter Fox - 2019
    A police officer with 36 years' service in the Hunter region, he rose to national prominence in 2012 for his major role in speaking out for the victims of abuse within the church. He had been at the coalface fighting these heinous crimes for decades. He had worked with the victims and supported their families. He knew an enquiry was long overdue. His decision to become a whistle blower helped trigger Prime Minister Julia Gillard's historic decision to establish a far-reaching Royal Commission into the sexual abuse of children in institutions.He had no idea what speaking up would unleash. Peter's dedication and focus cost him his career, his health and also affected his wife's health. He and his family were threatened. Former friends shunned him. But the victims and the families that he supported consider him their champion. To them he is a hero.Walking Towards Thunder details the cumulative horrors our police face every day, it reveals the cover ups and the way sexual predators were moved around. It shows the backlash he faced and the lengths those in power will go to avoid facing the truth. Confronting and inspiring, this is an unforgettable story.

Wild Lands


Nicole Alexander - 2015
    Literally cutting a swathe through the bush with their bare hands, they lay claim to territory beyond government jurisdiction - and the reach of the law. As she accepts a position on one such farm, seventeen-year-old Kate Carter is unaware she is entering a land of outlaws, adventurers and murderous natives.Because the first people of this new world will no longer accept the white man's advance, and retaliatory attacks on both sides have made it a frontier on the brink of war.Into Kate's path comes Bronzewing, a young white man schooled by a settler family yet raised within an Aboriginal tribe. Caught between two worlds, Bronzewing strives to protect his adopted people and their vanishing civilisation.But as he and Kate will discover, 'beyond the outer limits' is a beautiful yet terrifying place, where it's impossible to know who is friend and who is enemy . . .'Alexander writers [with] a deep love of the land' The Courier-Mail

Canticle Creek


Adrian Hyland - 2021
    One long hot summer. A town that will never be the same.When Adam Lawson’s wrecked car is found a kilometre from Daisy Baker’s body, the whole town assumes it’s an open and shut case. But Jesse Redpath isn’t from Canticle Creek. Where she comes from, the truth often hides in plain sight, but only if you know where to look. When Jesse starts to ask awkward questions, she uncovers a town full of contradictions and a cast of characters with dark pasts, secrets to hide and even more to lose. As the temperature soars, and the ground bakes, the wilderness surrounding Canticle Creek becomes a powderkeg waiting to explode.All it needs is one spark.

Forever Cherished


Juliette Duncan
    Her older sister arranges for her to spend time at 'Misty Morn', but Leah is suspicious of her sister's motives."Forever Cherished" is a stand-alone novel, but is better read as a follow-on from "The True Love Series" books. If you haven't read them yet, Book 1 is free, and the Box Set is a bargain at 50% off the full price of buying each book separately.

Educating Alice: How a City Girl Found Love and a New Life in the Outback - Then Nearly Lost It All


Alice Greenup - 2013
    First comes the mates, then the ute, then his hat, dogs, horses and last of all the girlfriend. Get that right and you might just stick around. Try to jump the queue and you′re history." The lips smiled at me, but his eyes meant business.′Well then, I′ll just have to be his mate.′′Girls can′t be mates, Alice.′′We′ll see.′A footloose city backpacker who couldn′t tell a bull from a cow was hardly the ideal candidate to answer an ad for a governess on a Mackay cattle station. But Alice Greenup was game for anything, until she was bowled over by a handsome young jackeroo with a devastating smile. It was the start of a whole new way of life as Alice gave up her city-chick persona to embrace the bush and all that came with it: horses, cattle, the obsession with rain - and the correct way to wear a hat.After overcoming more than a few obstacles, the unlikely couple eventually married, moving to Rick′s family farm near Kingaroy. Determined to make their own future, they gambled their dreams on a vast property called ′Jumma′. It was a huge risk but with a lot of love, blood, sweat and tears, they were on their way.But one morning they almost lost it all. When Alice′s horse bucked her out of the saddle in remote bushland, she was gravely injured. Rick was forced to leave her lying alone, drifting in and out of consciousness, to gallop home for help. Flown by emergency helicopter to Brisbane, Alice had serious liver and brain damage. What followed would test their love to the limit.

The Last Will and Testament of Henry Hoffman


John Tesarsch - 2015
    Afterwards, hisdaughter Eleanor discovers a will, in which he has left his entireestate to a woman she has never heard of before. Hiding it fromher siblings, she sets out to solve this mystery, and to unearth theconfronting truth about her reclusive father’s past.But Henry isn’t the only Hoffman with secrets. In the months thatfollow, his children learn things about each other they could neverpreviously have imagined.The Last Will and Testament of Henry Hoffman is a gripping andmany-layered story of love and loss, conflict and survival. Itexplores subjects that affect us all: guilt and redemption, theinescapability of the past, and how trauma resonates acrossgenerations.

Arthur Phillip: Sailor, Mercenary, Governor, Spy


Michael Pembroke - 2013
    It is a tale of ambition, of wealthy widows and marriage mistakes; of money and trade, espionage and mercenaries, hardship and illness. Beyond the facts of discovery and exploration, this book reveals the extraordinary idealism and the influence of the Enlightenment on the founding of Australia.Michael Pembroke provides a compelling portrait of Arthur Phillip. He carefully weaves together the little-known facts and projects us into life in Georgian England – a time when newly discovered territories were the road to untold wealth.‘At long last, a finely written biography of the astonishing egalitarian who became Australia’s founding father. There are gripping descriptions of his amazing sea voyages and moving accounts of the humanity he brought to the government of a penal colony that only he thought would ever become a nation. The book shows the moral vision of a man who gave history its best example of the possibility of the Reformation of the human spirit.’-Geoffrey Robertson QC‘A gripping life of a quite extraordinary man: the most important enlightenment life story that we’ve never had properly told before.’-Andrew Marr, BBC broadcaster and television host‘The colour and dash of Arthur Phillip’s extraordinary life, lived in amazing times in every corner of the world, is told just brilliantly in Michael Pembroke’s utterly absorbing book, destined to become a classic of Imperial literature.’-Simon Winchester, bestselling author and journalistMichael Pembroke is a writer, judge and naturalist. He spent much of his childhood travelling to many of the maritime ports of the colonial era. His first school was at Sandhurst in England in the grounds of a military academy and his last on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour. He completed his education at Cambridge and now lives and writes in Sydney and at the hamlet of Mount Wilson in the Blue Mountains. In 2009 he wrote Trees of History & Romance, a paean to nature and poetry. He is a direct descendant of Nathanial Lucas and Olivia Gascoigne, who arrived in Botany Bay in January 1788.

Born Into This


Adam Thompson - 2021
    To this mix Adam Thompson manages to bring humour, pathos and occasionally a sly twist as his characters confront racism, untimely funerals, classroom politics and, overhanging all like a discomforting, burgeoning awareness for both white and black Australia, the inexorable damage and disappearance of the remnant natural world.

1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia


James Boyce - 2011
    in three years more land and more people were conquered than in the preceding fifty.In 1835 James Boyce brings this pivotal moment to life. He traces the power plays in Hobart, Sydney and London, and describes the key personalities of Melbourne's early days. He conjures up the Australian frontier its complexity, its rawness And The way its legacy is still with us today. and he asks the poignant question largely ignored for 175 years; could it have been different?With his first book, Van Diemen's Land Boyce introduced an utterly fresh approach To The nation's history. 'In re-imagining Australia's past,' Richard Flanagan wrote, 'it invents a new future.' 1835 continues this untold story.

Hack in a Flak Jacket


Peter Stefanovic - 2016
    Sure, they have a purpose, and if one ever stopped a bullet or piece of shrapnel from spearing into my vital organs, I would kiss it, hang it up, and frame it. But that hasn't happened, yet.'For almost ten years Peter Stefanovic was Channel Nine's foreign correspondent in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. During that time he witnessed more than his fair share of death and destruction, and carried the burden of those images - all while putting his own personal safety very much in the firing line.From flak jackets to tuxedos. From celebrity funerals, to war zones and natural disasters. This is a thrilling account of a life lived on camera, delivering the news wherever it happens, whatever the risk.

The New Glucose Revolution Guide to Living Well with PCOS: Lose Weight, Boost Fertility and Gain Control Over Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome with the Glycemic Index


Jennie Brand-Miller - 2004
    No two women have the same symptoms, making it a difficult condition to diagnose. In addition, many women don't know they have it until they try to become pregnant. This breakthrough book contains the latest research that reveals how eating a healthy diet in conjunction with a basic exercise plan is a win-win situation for women with PCOS. The book includes a complete, up-to-date table of GI and glycemic load values for more than eight hundred foods and beverages, provides a clear, concise diet and lifestyle plan, and thirty recipes.

The Lost Boys


Sam de Brito - 2008
    He and his friends while away their days smoking dope, trying to root chicks and surfing at Maroubra. Ned's life is only just beginning – tomorrow, some time.Ned is 35. He and his mates drift through the days snorting cocaine, trying to root chicks, clinging to the pub and surfing at Bondi. For Ned, this is it – tomorrow never came.What happens when life passes you by? When the drugs no longer work and the promise of the future has become the wreckage of the past? What happens when a generation of men lose their way?Confrontingly honest, blackly funny, The Lost Boys is a compelling look at the dark side of being a 21st century man from a powerful new voice in fiction.

The Timeless Land


Eleanor Dark - 1941
    These were times of hardship, cruelty and danger. They were also the times of conflict between the Aborigines and the white settlers.

Where the Fruit Falls


Karen Wyld - 2020
    Hush. Be still for just a moment. Hear its thundering waves crashing on unseen shores.Spanning four generations, with a focus on the 1960s and 70s, an era of rapid social change and burgeoning Aboriginal rights, Where the Fruit Falls is a re-imagining of the epic Australian novel.Brigid Devlin, a young Aboriginal woman, and her twin daughters navigate a troubled nation of First Peoples, settlers and refugees – all determined to shape a future on stolen land. Leaving the sanctuary of her family’s apple orchard, Brigid sets off with no destination and a willy wagtail for company. As she moves through an ever changing landscape, Brigid unravels family secrets to recover what she’d lost – by facing the past, she finally accepts herself. Her twin daughters continue her journey with their own search for self-acceptance, truth and justice."This evocative family saga celebrates the strength and resilience of First Nations women, while touching on deeply traumatic aspects of Australian history. Threads of magic realism shimmer throughout the story, offering a deeper understanding of reality and challenging the reader to imagine a kinder, more just, more human world." Sally Morgan, Author of My Place."In poetic and evocative storytelling, this writing celebrates the agency of Indigenous women to traverse ever-present landscapes of colonisation and intergenerational trauma. Country has an omniscient presence in their story lines, guiding the women across vivid desert and coastal landscapes. Where the Fruit Falls recognises both the open wounds of living histories of colonisation and the healing power of belonging to Country." 2020 Dorothy Hewett Award judges.