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Deep in the Australian outback, in a town called Birdsville, Onslo the blue Volkswagen Beetle dreams of adventures in the beautiful Simpson Desert. But, unlike the big four-wheel-drives who pass through Birdsville, he is too small to conquer the big sand dunes. However, with the encouragement of his best friend Geoffrey, the brave beetle embarks on his very own desert adventure.
Soft-cover
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The history and memory of South Australia’s frontier wars
Robert Foster, Amanda Nettelbeck
When South Australia was founded in 1836, the British government was pursuing a new approach to the treatment of Aboriginal people, hoping to avoid the violence that marked earlier Australian settlement. The colony’s founding Proclamation declared that as British subjects, Aboriginal people would be as much ‘under the safeguard of the law as the Colonists themselves, and equally entitled to the privileges of British subjects’. But could colonial governments provide the protection that was promised?
Out of the Silence explores the nature and extent of violence on South Australia’s frontiers in light of the foundational promise to provide Aboriginal people with the protection of the law, and the resonances of that history in social memory. What do we find when we compare the history of the frontier with the patterns of how it is remembered and forgotten? And what might this reveal about our understanding of the nation’s history and its legacies in the present?
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In the 1970’s, safari operator Rex Ellis also recognised the advantages camels have over the four-wheel-drives of today – allowing self-sufficient parties to get off the beaten tracks and traverse some of the most remote areas on earth. Indeed, some of Rex’s safaris have taken him to places where no European Australians have ever been.
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This classic book is a must-have for every Outback traveller.
Learn how to cook all the old favourites from Coopers-style whole baked fish to Nullarbor Ginger Roll and Strezelecki Damper – all in the camp oven.
Born and raised in the outback, Jack Absalom is a well-known artist, bushman, raconteur and television personality. Many of these popular recipes are from Jack’s uncle, Reg Absalom, who spent many years cooking on outback stations.
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The men and women you’ll meet in this fascinating book in all shapes in sizes, from convicts and engineers to cattleduffers and anthropologists. These remarkable Australians share an extraordinary ability to survive the rigours of the bush.
In Outback Heroes, Evan McHugh brings together his favourite ripping yarns from the Australian frontier. He beings with escaped convict William Buckley, who emerged, who emerged from the forest after thirty-two years in the wild
These and other true stories of courage and ingenuity remind us how the Australian character was forged – through encounters with the bush, desert and outback.
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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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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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