Books

Ellen Anderson's Aboriginal Dreaming stories, as recorded by C.W. Peck in the 1920s and 1930s, evidence the rich oral tradition of the Indigenous people of eastern Australia. Dealing with plants and animals, the physical environment, cultural practices...

Bowden tells his life growing up in a very sedate Tasmania, and first entrance into journalism, and the ABC. Very funny, and full of notable people and pratfalls.

In 1923, Philippa Bridges, sister to the Governor of South Australia decided to go "overlanding across the Continent and taking a homeward bound ship from Darwin", intending to travel “unhurriedly in the same fashion as the dwellers themselves did."...

The second publication of Australian Aboriginal myths and legends as collected in the field by Katie Langloh Parker in the 1890s, and first published in 1898. This book holds the first publication by an Aboriginal artist, Tommy McRae, whose drawings form...

Jack Davis: The Maker of History contains essays by several prominent Australians that offer new readings and different perspectives on the work of this poet, storyteller, playwright, politician and humanitarian. Various aspects of Davis's work are...

Crossing the Dead Heart is a classic narrative of modern exploration - and follows the first crossing of the Simpson desert by the author in 1939. From Charlotte Waters Madigan travelled by camel, camping at Andado Bore before heading east through the...

Inthese pages Ion Idriess has brought together stories gathered and lived in his happy battling years in the wild lands of Australia's Far North and the islands beyond. Stories of gold and pearls, of land and cattle, of the search for wealth in dangerous...

Large format book with 100 photographs showing changing life in small communities around the Barrington Tops in northern New South Wales. These photographs were taken by Edgar Marceau, whose grandfather Joseph was exiled to Australia from Quebec in 1840...

This memoir by Nurse Jean Finlayson is about her life ministering for those in remote centres of Central Australia, from Oonadatta to Alice Springs during World War One. She was a close friend of the Reverend John Flynn and Reverend Harland of Oonadatta,...

From 1872 to 1939, a significant number of Australian and New Zealand artists were chosen for exhibition at the annual French Salons. The imprimatur of the Salons bestowed prestige, publicity and visibility, and increased an artist’s saleability, both at...

The first publication of the author's selected letters 1933-1937, gives us an insight into the working method and mind of the best-selling author, as he tries to grapple with the making of the Sidney Kidman story - The Cattle King. Man Tracks and several...

The first publication of Australian Aboriginal myths and legends as collected in the field by Katie Langloh Parker in the 1890s, and first published in 1896. This is also the first publication by an Aboriginal artist, at the time not identified, but from...

As John Woinarski, of Charles Darwin Universityhas stated: “The most formative book for me was H.H. Finlayson’s 1935 classic The Red Centre… Finlayson was the last to collect and record many of these mammal species: he witnessed this loss. But in his...

A study of Arthur Upfield and his long-term relationship with Albermarle station, in north-western NSW from the early 1920s, where he found so many characters and plots for his Bony novels, featuring an Aboriginal detective. Upfield's letters to EV...

An autobiography with a difference - its funny. The great ABC journalist, now in his 80s, skates through the absurdity of the oddments of memory, and of his exhilerating times reporting around the world to Australian homes.

A very detailed and intimate description of the life, personal and tribal, of the Central Australian Aboriginals; their characteristics, beliefs and superstitions; their tools and weapons; together with a discussion of the results of their contacts with...

In the summer of 1967-68 Rod Ledingham was on a mapping high on the Antarctic plateau, driving a sledge dog team. He had been flown in by a light aircraft to take over the other dog team, but after their field work had ended, the aircraft crashed on...

The best-selling book on the Australian artist was originally prepared by Penguin to support the 1985 Preston travelling exhibition. Elizabeth Butel lookat the vibrant art and craft of Australia's most popular woman artist through the Art Gallery of New...

Former broadcasting journalist, Kiwi-born author, Hilary Roots went the South Pacific island for a five day holiday in 1975. Destiny sowed an unexpected path, scattering it with joys and sorrows. Her life’s companion, a Swiss-German scuba-diver and...

Anne Rosalind Geddes was born on 15 December 1940 in Ceylon where her father Eric managed a tea plantation. Before she was two-years-old it seemed that the Japanese might invade Ceylon and she and her mother Margaret left Colombo Harbour on board an...

The most influential book of stories that shaped the new Australian women's writing is back. Wrappings was first published in 1974, and as Helen Garner wrote at the time: "I liked Wrappings… The writing is highly charged, painstakingly wroiught, often...

Pioneer Tales of Australias Northern Waters: The treacherous and beautiful Coral Sea is the background for this story of the nineteenth century adventures on perilous voyages into its waters in search of the beche-de-mer and pearl shell; of the savage...

Essington Holt is out for revenge. The Australian millionaire and sometime art forger has been kidnapped, humiliated, mutilated and exchanged for three million dollars and a valuable painting. Now he wants to bring the criminals to justice - privately.

A very detailed and intimate description of the life, personal and tribal, of the Central Australian Aboriginals; their characteristics, beliefs and superstitions; their tools and weapons; together with a discussion of the results of their contacts with...

The third thriller by this Australian artist and novelist featuring Essington Holt, "failed hustler turned millionaire," who is intrigued when an old friend from the Outback contacts him after 30 years claiming to have a Van Gogh

In 1900, 30 Australian artists were working in Etaples, a French fishing village west of Paris. Charles Conder, Rupert Bunny, Isobel Rae and John Peter Russell were among these who lived and worked in France.  

The First Sunrise is a companion volume to The Dreamtime and The Dawn of Time; two books which have been one of the greatest publishing successes of recent years. The concept of those two books - and of The First Sunrise - was developed through an...

A crazy kids book - well for all ages - about a Top Hat that can change styles and wherabouts at anytime, with cookie illustrations by the author.

Lowell Tarling interviewed Tiny Tim many times during his numerous visits to Australia. Weird, whacky, this is a great biography of the Worlds most unusual performr, perhaps most famous for his falsetto hit - Tiptoe through the Tulips.

Sydney’s North Shore was – and still largely is - a very special place.  It is a unique subset of Sydney’s wider Australian community…a separate civilisation almost, with it own habits, beliefs, and peculiar ways.  Sandra Darroch (nee Jobson) was born...

"In Crocodile Land" is principally the story of travels by lugger through northern waters and into slimy creeks where the huge crocodiles abound. The author took part in many hunting expeditions and enlightens us on the various methods adopted for...

But in 1931 he was living on his wits as a journeyman journalist and looking for an angle to finish a book about a hyped-up gold prospecting expedition. He found it in sorcery, which he used to infill the gaps between the few facts and fanciful...

Artist Geoff Harvey has won The Gallipoli Prize twice, and the current edition of The Desert Column by Ion Idriess holds last years winning work. This book is a survey of 50 paintings of his Gallipoli sequence, from Enlisting, through Landing, through...

Arthur Upfield's Aboriginal detective Bony features in 29 novels, and this book holds a "lost" Bony story - angling off Bermagui, along with several rarely seen Upfield pieces on Big Game Fishing in Australian, hunting for Marlin and Swordfish, as well...

From Publishers Weekly:Essington Holt, last seen in To Catch a Forger, is now a wealthy expatriate on the French Riviera who here falls afoul of old and new Eastern European political passions. He and his childhood friend and nemesis, lawyer Gerald...

A ne'er-do-well artist takes on an international forgery conspiracy in this first mystery by an Australian artist and novelist, (Robin Wallace-Crabbe). Essington Holt, down on his luck in Sydney, is summoned to the French Riviera by his wealthy widowed...

“Thompson's city is Sydney, and perhaps the most impressive feature of his writing is the way the physical reality of the city is caught throughout the prose, and the power with which Thompson draws the skin of human relationships over this brutal and...

Alister Kershaw was ABC Radio's Paris Correspondent for many years and wrote classic books on French manners, like The History of the Guillotine and Murder in France. With this book though, he tells of his life in the small hill-town of Maison Salle, and...

When Dick and “jack Idriess went aboard the Nancy Bell at Cooktown – they thought they were signing on for a trochus-fishing expedition, would earn some money, and go back to gold prospecting. Cross-eyed Joe, a wily Filipino skipper was after something...

In 1818, Thomas Wells wrote the first work of general literature published in Australia, describing the life of British highwayman, convicted to Van Diemen’s Land; the bushranger Michael Howe (1787-1818). Howe and his gang plundered the New Norfolk and...

It is Mr Kenneally’s claim that no unpartisan history of the Kelly episode has hitherto been published. In his opinion the Kellys were badly treated and their bushranging crimes were the result of unjust persecution on the part of the police. Reading his...

The Mango Tree is an evocative journey into a long-lost Australian childhood, and won the Miles Franklin award in 1974. It is a novel about a young man growing up in a country town in the early years of the 20th century which, like a faded letter from a...

Back in print after 60 years. Ion Idriess was one of those who set out from Derby with the ending of the Wet. This is the story of his wanderings in 1932-3 and what he heard and saw along the way, at a time when wireless and air and motor transport were...

The Dreamtime myths of the Australian Aborigines are indeed an inseparable part of their life and their landscape. Their beliefs, expressed through those myths, form the very basis of their culture.This book presents a selection of Ainslie Roberts'...

A rollicking ride through the early days of Australian motorsport. Set in 1900 - 1918 in Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane and the Gold Coast, the true story of bitter rivalry between two Brisbane car importers/ dealers: E.G. Eager & Son and Canada Cycle and...

Paul Wenz was born in France in 1869, lived in Australia, and wrote stories dealing mainly with his Australian experiences for the French. He wrote ten books from 'Nanima', his homestead in Forbes, New South Wales, including two collections of short...

Eternity For Sale is Renate Yates’ fourth novel. It is a black comedy and continues her exploration of the many ways people find to manipulate time, situations and events which leave themselves vulnerable to a sharp pen. It is both stylish and intriguing...

A wide-ranging critical survey of the Aboriginal literature, both oral and written, by a leading authority, himself an Aboriginal writer.