Wyświetlane tytuły w kategorii Australia i Oceania

Ted is the quintessential bush storyteller, he has rubbed shoulders with some of the best-known and least-known of his countrymen and women, and in Outback Songman, Ted Egan recounts the story of his rich and extraordinary life. Born to a working-class family in Melbourne's Coburg, he has never had a music lesson. Nonetheless, he has composed some of the first original songs about Australian history and ethos, many of which are now classics.

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. The vision that appeared in the shooter’s lamplight was a shock - a man soaking wet, with torn clothing, covered in cuts, bruises and blood. ‘I’ve found that missing aeroplane,’ O’Reilly gasped, ‘and there are two men still alive.’ The men and women you’ll meet in this fascinating audiobook come in all shapes and sizes, from convicts and engineers to cattleduffers and anthropologists.

Lachlan Macquarie is credited with shaping Australia's destiny, transforming a harsh, foreboding penal colony into an agricultural powerhouse and ultimately a prosperous society. He also helped shape Australia's national character. An egalitarian at heart, Macquarie saw boundless potential in Britain's refuse, and under his rule many former convicts went on to become successful administrators, land owners and businesspeople.

Yarns and memories that capture the experience of driving Australia’s outback roads, gathered by the inimitable Bill ‘Swampy’ Marsh. Whether they’re carting produce, stock, fuel or even (unbeknown to them) dead bodies, there’s one thing that can be said about outback truckies - they’re a colourful bunch. Meet the outback truckies who brave interminable distances, searing heat, raging floodwaters and foot-deep bulldust to transport goods and livestock all across this vast land, serving as lifelines not just to those in the bush but to those in cities as well.

Bruce Pascoe has been described as a ‘living national treasure’ and his work as ‘revelatory’. This volume of his best and most celebrated stories and essays, collected here for the first time, ranges across his long career, and explores his enduring fascination with Australia’s landscape, culture, land management and history. Featuring new and previously unpublished fiction alongside his most revered and thought-provoking nonfiction - including extracts from his modern classic Dark Emu - this collection is perfect for Pascoe fans and new listeners alike.

For Dutton Caliber's American War Heroes series, a World War II narrative on the American liberation of Guam in 1944, focusing on the twenty days of intense combat as the Marine Corps took the island back from the Japanese. On July 21, 1944, a US Marine division landed on the beaches of Guam, a...

The Second Battle of Krithia has existed largely in the shadows of the bigger Gallipoli story. It is, however, one of the most poignant and tragic tales of World War I. The fascinating story has been brought to light at last by bestselling military historian Mat McLachlan, author of The Cowra...

Heroes are hard to come by - but there's one man whose legend has stood the test of two centuries, and whose name sits on Australia's highest peak. Tadeusz Kosciuszko: freedom fighter, friend of Thomas Jefferson and champion of liberty on two continents. Bestselling author Anthony Sharwood finds...

When Ned Kelly and his band of young tearaways ambushed and killed three brave policemen in a remote mountain camp in 1878, they sparked the biggest and most expensive manhunt Australia had seen. The desperate search would end when Kelly and his gang, wearing suits of armour, tried to derail a train before waging their final bloody gun battle with police in the small Victorian town of Glenrowan.

An important reckoning with Australia’s unspoken history of slavery. From the author of the bestselling books The Ballad of Abdul Wade and The Bravest Scout at Gallipoli As Australia becomes more willing to confront the violence and trauma of its colonial past, one chapter has remained largely...

The definitive autobiography of one of cricket's greatest batsmen of his generation, and New Zealand's all-time leading run scorer. ‘As brilliant and magnificent as Kane the cricketer was, it’s the human who will forever be greater for me.’ VIRAT KOHLI ‘One of the most technically...

While doing fieldwork on the remote Indonesian island of Flores, anthropologist Gregory Forth came across people talking about half-apelike, half-humanlike creatures that once lived in a cave on the slopes of a nearby volcano. Over the years he continued to record what locals had to say about these mystery hominoids while searching for ways to explain them as imaginary symbols of the wild or other cultural representations. We follow Forth on the trail of this mystery hominoid, and the space they occupy in islanders' culture as both natural creatures and as supernatural beings.

The Gallipoli letter is an 8000-word private report written by journalist Keith Arthur Murdoch, with the help of British war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, after visiting the Gallipoli peninsula in September 1915. It describes the organization and conditions of the Gallipoli campaign. It was sent to Andrew Fisher (then-Prime Minister of Australia) and Henry Herbert Asquith (then-Prime Minister of the UK). Murdoch’s twenty-eight-page letter helped to establish the idea of Gallipoli as a military disaster.

1866. Will Stewart is one of many who have left their old lives behind to seek their fortunes in New Zealand's last great gold rush. The conditions are hostile and the outlook bleak, but he must push on in his uncertain search for the elusive buried treasure. Rose is about to arrive on the shores of South Island when a storm hits and her ship is wrecked. Just when all seems lost she is snatched from the jaws of death by Will, who risks his life to save her. Drawn together by circumstance, they stay together by choice and for a while it seems that their stars have finally aligned.

In midwinter, Matariki rises in the pre-dawn sky, and its observation is celebrated with incantations on hilltops at dawn, balls, exhibitions, dinners and a vast number of events. The Matariki tradition has been re-established, and its regeneration coincides with a growing interest in Māori astronomy. Still, there remain some unanswered questions about how Matariki was traditionally observed. These include: What is Matariki? Why did Māori observe Matariki? How did Māori traditionally celebrate Matariki? When and how should Matariki be celebrated?

On a Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1969, thousands of people defied Auckland city bylaws and came to party in Albert Park. A rock band played on the rotunda. Some people held hands, some danced alone, some sat under trees with guitars, flutes and bongos and made music of their own. They wore kaftans, ponchos and leather-fringed jerkins, floppy hats, headbands, beads and flowers. Poetry and political diatribes were delivered from a podium, improvised from an upturned tea chest.

The horses he names in The Chosen Few include the sprinters, the stayers and the freakish all-round competitors who could do everything. But he also teases out myths and mistakes, pulls focus on racing's history and ponders the tantalising list of 'coodabeen' champions whose careers were cut short. The result is a collection of stories about beauty and bravery, speed and greed.

From peacemakers and strategists to explorers and entrepreneurs, the tūpuna of the North are an inspiration to the people of Te Tai Tokerau. This remarkable book by Melinda Webber and Te Kapua O'Connor introduces a new generation to twenty-four of those tūpuna–Nukutawhiti and Hineāmaru, Hongi Hika and Te Ruki Kawiti, and many more. Through whakapapa and kōrero, waiata and pepeha, we learn about their actions, their places, their values, and their aspirations.

July, 1942. The North African campaign rages. The Allies have been forced to retreat from Gazala, and are being pursued through the sandy wastes by 'The Desert Fox' – Field Marshal Rommel and his Panzerarmee. The target of the enemy is Cairo – if taken, the Axis powers will control the Suez Canal and be within striking distance of the oil fields of the Middle East, tipping the war in Hitler's favour. In their way is the Eighth Army, spearheaded by the battle-hardened troops of the Ninth Australian Division and the Second New Zealand Division.

In 1852 a genteel young English woman of modest means cannily realised that not everyone who made money from the Australian gold-fields struck it rich by actually digging. Pregnant and not yet married, she accompanied her brother to Victoria and spent two months writing a non-fiction manuscript of her time there. After returning to England, she sold the book to a London publisher and her writerly ambitions came to fruition.