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Pioneers of the Inland 1860s-1930s
Between 1870 and 1920 as many as 2000 cameleers and 20,000 camels arrived in Australia from Afghanistan and northern India. Australia’s Muslim Cameleers: Pioneers of the inland 1860s-1930s is a rich pictorial history of these men, their way of life and the vital role they played in pioneering transport and communication routes across outback Australia’s vast expanses. Many of the images and artefacts in this fascinating account are published here for the first time, and the book contains a biographical listing of more than 1200 cameleers.
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Australia’s Spanish Knight is the remarkable story of Richard Bryant who was born in England in 1911 and died in Australia in 2003.
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From roasts to rissoles, salads to savouries and dampers to desserts, Australian Bush Cooking will help bring a tempting new twist to your camp cooking whether it’s over an open fire, on a gas cooker or in your caravan or camper’s kitchen.
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The Royal Flying Doctor Service is a unique icon of Australian culture. Since its beginnings with the Reverend John Flynn in 1928, the RFDS has helped build our nation. The Flying Doctors, and the remote stations and communities that they serve, have become enduring symbols of what it means to be Australian.
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Philip R Rush, one of Australia’s top-selling poets, in this, his thirteenth book of poetry, has once again drawn on his vast experience and dry wit to bring the everyday world about us to life. Having spent much of his last fifty years in various rural communities, Rush has a special affinity with the bush,…
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Poetry at its best, the book Australian Verse for the Young, written by Bindi-Bindi and beautifully illustrated by Gympie artist Lynne Wilson
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Best Walks of the Flinders Ranges includes 30 walks in this much-loved region, well-known as a walker’s paradise. Each walk specifies the distance, the total ascent and descent (if appropriate), the grade and the estimated duration and is accompanied by an accurate full-colour map. Snippets about the Flinders’ history and wildlife add colour and interest to the walking experience. Families will enjoy information regarding child-friendly walks, and how to explore the bush safely with children of all ages. Over 150 full-colour photos complement the text, and provide the reader with a clear sense of the features on each walk. This guide will help walkers discover many of the classic walks in the region, as well as some wild and adventurous tracks that few know exist.
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Successive British and Australian governments denied their understanding of the dangers of ionising radiation in the 1950s. But the government scientists employed to monitor the tests were given protective clothing. The servicemen were left unprotected, given radiation-measuring devices and exposed to a simulated theatre of nuclear war. They trusted their government and the appointed Safety Committee, only to be left with a tragic legacy for their children and grandchildren.
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To find out, Evan McHugh packed up his Sydney home, bought a four-wheel drive and headed off with his wife for a year in the back of beyond. Here, he tells us of the large adventures – midnight desert rescues, aerial mustering on vast cattle stations, relentless heat and massive floods – but also the small details of life in one of Australia’s most isolated towns – like driving 700 kilometres to go shopping. As the month fly by, Evan learns about an ancient culture, sees dunes carpeted in millions of tiny wildflowers, and meets the members of an outback community facing extraordinary challenges with quiet determination and buckets of good humour.
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Blast the Bush is the second of Len Beadell’s best selling series of books where the story of the people who worked on the British Atomic Testing Project is told.
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Bob Magor grew up in the area around Myponga a small town south of Adelaide. Upon leaving school he worked the family sheep property and in between buy times worked in shearing sheds, firstly as a rousie and then a shearer. As the farm grew he built a dairy and spent 17 years as a dairy farmer in conjunction with the sheep. A personality clash with the cows made him decide to lease out the dairy and concentrate on his writing and this books is a result of that effort.
Always a keen studier of his fellow man, he takes delight in relating situations which only a farmer can get himself into (and hopefully out of), and has a warped sense of humour which allow shim to see mirth in even the most mundane situation.
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The story of Santos
Blue Flames, Black Gold is a story of persistence, It’s the intrepid wildcatters who ventured into Australia’s dead heart and took a punt on a drilling an oil well in virgin territory. It’s the Adelaide businessman who dared to dream, and those on the sidelines who watched and scoffed. It’s two school chums who started an exploration company amidst the oil fervour of 1954 – a company that, 60 years later, would be the biggest in the state.
The history of Santos covers the excitement of exploration and discovery in the 1950’s and 60’s, the boardroom tussles and political wrangles in the 1970’s and 80’s, and the rise of new horizons and techolical developments in the new millennium. It tells the tale of industrial township tha forms in the remote Australian outback; of Alan Bond’s controversial stock market deal which led to the South Australian government capping shareholdings for 28 years; the construction of the 1,100 kilometre Moomba-to-Sydney pipeline bringing natural gas to Sydney for the first time; and the birth of the Coal Seam Gas industry.
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“Nowhere else in the world, except outback Australia, would these boat journeys be possible, and noone else in Australia except Rex Ellis would operate them. When it comes to outback travel, the safari guide makes an art form out of making the seemingly impossible, possible. Not content with running exciting four-wheel safaris to every corner of the outback, and cris-crossing the deserts with his camel expeditions, his desert boat safaris often defy description. … These are his favourite safaris …
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The 1940s saw the “Golden Era” of steam for the South Australian Railway with 210 broad gauge locomotive on their books. A further 32 steam locomotives were built or acquired from 1943 to 1953. The first two diesel shunting locomotives were introduced in 1949 and this was when steam was to start to decline.
This is a soft covered book with 284 pages.
Black Tom Birch was the most feared and hated man in Van Diemen’s Land. For four years he kept the colony in a state of terror. He was responsible for the deaths of dozens of settlers. He burnt their buildings and destroyed their livestock and crops. Newspapers raged against him. One demanded he be lynched on capture.
Yet although three times in British custody, he was never tried or punished. Instead, he defected, and history tells us that for the rest of his life he helped the British round up his own people for incarceration on a Bass Strait island. But history is wrong.
Now, for the first time, the epic truth is told about this charismatic Aboriginal patriot and his unending fight against invasion. It is a heroic story – and a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.
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In the 1920’s, Kakadu in Australia’s Top End was the domain of the buffalo-shooter. These frontiersmen came to the north seeking adventure and fortune beyond the borders of white settlement, in a land that wild, hostile and still governed by its traditional Aboriginal owners – the Gagudju. Originally published in 1934. Carl Warburton’s Buffaloes is…
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