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LEN BEADELL OAM was often called the last of the true Australian explorers. As a surveyor and road builder he worked all over the outback from Arnhem Land to the Gibson Desert. He was also a much-loved author who brought outback Australians onto the page in all their vivid originality.
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Outback Midwife is the story of Beth McRae’s forty years as a midwife have been packed full of unforgettable moments, from the terrifying experience of witnessing her first birth as a naïve student nurse – in the days when the words ‘birth plan’ were unheard of and what women wanted was a long way from being part of any plan – to working in one of the most isolated corners of Australia.
Beth’s career of catching babies takes her from the bush to the city and back again as she discovers her true calling, bonding with people from all walks of life at one of the most important moments in their lives.
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In Outback Pioneers, Evan McHugh gathers the enthralling stories of the men and women who opened up the Australian outback and in the process discovered the beauty and terror of this extraordinary country.
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The outback of Australia is not a region but simply the whole of Australia outside the mostly coast-hugging settled areas. The outback is unpredictable and varied where you can see a flock of Major Mitchell cockatoos or a Gould’s goanna and an array of wildflowers. The Sturt desert pea, featured on the cover is a worthy flower to hold pride of place as South Australia’s floral emblem. This book has excellent historical information as well as tips and information on driving in this majestic landscape.
Soft-cover
This book was published in 2002 the advertising in this book is not accurate but the information and history can still be used for reference.
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Come on a journey through the lives and times of outback Australians. Those who have notably shaped the cultural, political and artistic landscape of this place we call home.
From Burke and Wills’ disastrous expedition across the continent to Eddie Mobo’s historic land rights claim; from John Bradley Murdoch’s chilling murders to horrific croc attacks in far North Queensland; from thestudios Pro Hart and Sidney Nolan to singing careers of Archi Roach and Ruby Hunter.
Best-selling non-fiction author Ian Ferguson has compiled a comprehensive and enlivening collection of stories about Australian social history and those who have contributed meaningfully to the quality of Australian life.
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In 1800, while the coast of Australia had finally be charted, the vast interior of the continent, and routes across its deserts and mountains from north to south and east to west lay all undiscovered. By 1874, its lands had been all but won. Derek Parker’s new an exciting book gathers together the stories of those intrepid explorers who, often against great odds, on journeys of months or even years, beat starvation, inadequate information and mapping, disease and loss, to forge routes which would enable the country’s development. From early explorers, whoo were generally escaped convicts, to the son of a Lincolnshire surgeon who coined the name ‘Australia’, from explorers Major Mitchell, who slaughtered aborigines, to Sir George Grey, who learnt their language, recorded their culture and came to love and understand them; and from the greatest overland expedition in Australian history in 1844 to continued failed attempts to find a mythical ‘inland sea’,
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One sultry October morning in Darwin, hemp-wearing army wife Amy Silva grips a trembling fist around two pink lines on a plastic stick.
Struggling to come to terms with her rampant fertility, disillusioned with a haughty obstetrician and infuriated by an inordinate amount of peeing, Amy finds solace in a decision to homebirth. After all, it worked for the cavewomen, right?
But as a tropical cyclone threatens to whip down the main street, Amy finds herself facing more than biology.
An intimate tale of searching for peace, this is one woman’s struggle to turn the ordinary into something extraordinary.
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Travel through the Pichi Richi Pass, a scenic section of the original Ghan Railway, between Quorn and Port Augusta, in South Australia’s beautiful Flinders Ranges, Enjoy rock walls, embankments and variet bridges, in a steam locomotive or historic diesel.
Pete Dobre
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For many of the Royal Marines sent to Port Essington, life was a living hell of malaria, scurvy, termites, shipwrecks, cyclones, boredom, isolation and death. For one man, it was the ‘most useless, ill-managed hold in Her Majesty’s dominions’ which deserved ‘all the abuse that has ever been heaped upon it’.
But it wasn’t always so: in the beginning, French visitors shared their best Bordeaux wines and partied at Government House; small boats raced in regattas across the harbour; men played cricket; and the gardens grew the best pineapples in the southern hemisphere.
Led by the stoic Captain John McArthur for 11 years, this is the story of the rise and fall of a peaceful little British village in the most distant part of the empire, and of how the chief occupation of the survivors became grave diggint.
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Arno Nietz, a young teacher fresh from training was appointed to be the Head teacher of Farina, in far north South Australia in 1918
Soft-cover
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An Operational and sometimes social history of the last years of the Quorn to Hawker section of the great northern railway From 1957 to 1970.
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Ryle Winn is the master of the cock and bull tale, and this is a collection of the funniest yarns he’s ever heard. There’s something for everyone-life-of-the-party jokes, rib-tickling pub stories and fair dinkum yarns, which are worth the wait for the punch line. All of them remind us that we’re a motley mob who view the world from down under.
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Puttapa embraced the sites of the township Beltana and of the headquarters of the much larger Beltana Station established by Thomas Elder after the purchase of Puttapa from Haimes in 1862 and, a few years later, of the Mount Deception Run (95 square miles) immediately west of Puttapa. These additional leases of areas on the western plain between the ranges and Lake Torrens were merged to form one station embracing 500 square miles. Thus after seven years Puttapa lost its separate identity.
Puttapa (an Aboriginal word of uncertain meaning ) like many of the Aboriginal names retained for stations, has been spelt in various ways. After nearly half a century of serving simply as a part of Beltation Station, Puttapa was detached to take on again its separate identity. As related in this account, several owners held Puttapa from 1911 until the end of 1936 when it was bought by Len Ragless and his wife Dorothy who with children Richard and Margaret made Puttapa their home
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Queensland Desperadoes is a very readable collection of yarns about Queensland’s wild and adventurous past.
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After the success of the first ‘Red in the Centre’ journey for radio, Monte Dwyer was commissioned by Channel 7’s Sunrise programme to go bush and re-create his spontaneous storytelling style for television. But t everything went as planned. This book follows Monte’s evolution from struggling techphobe to self-assured multimedia something-or-other, as he travelled the land in search of the stories seldom told. ‘Through the Crooked Lens’ is a celebration of life beyond suburbia, a quirky snapshot of remote Australia taken by a man with an eye for detail and an acute sense of fun.
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