Australian Women Pilots: Amazing True Stories of Women in the Air by Kathy Mexted

$34.99 AUD

Category: AUSTRALIANA

There's a lot of aeroplanes and aviators down in that water. Thank God I'm not one of them.From pioneering and outback flights to delivering Spitfires or tackling the jungles of New Guinea, Australian Women Pilots tells of ten Australians with extraordinary stories.Women have been flying since the early days of aviation but, with a few notable exceptions, they have rarely been visible or well known. Kathy Mexted shares the feats of trailblazers like Nancy Bird Walton, Deborah Wardley, who was told by Ansett that women couldn't be pilots, and Gaby Kennard, the first Australian woman to fly solo around the world. Others are perhaps less known, but as pilots involved with the Royal Flying Doctor Service, Britain's Air Transport Auxiliary, the RAAF, aerial agriculture or long-range ferrying, their stories are just as extraordinary.Packed with drama, adventure and sometimes heartbreak, this riveting book is a salute to those women who refused to keep their feet on the ground.'Pass this book onto a young woman, who has a dream, and inspire her to take action in whatever direction she chooses…who knows where she can end up.' — Matt Hall, Red Bull Air Race World Champion 'Like most of these pilots, I was often away from home, working mostly with men, and figuring out how I fitted into it all. In my 30-year music career, I've had many girls approach me to tell me that they picked up a bass after seeing me play. I hope that by reading this book, young women will see what they can be.' — Janet English, Bass Guitarist of Spiderbait ...Show more

A Diamond in the Dust by Frauke Bolten-Boshammer; Sue Smethurst

$32.99 AUD

Category: AUSTRALIANA | Reading Level: 3 Biography

The powerful true story of how one woman turned outback dust into a diamond empire Within minutes of landing in Kununurra, Frauke Bolten had made up her mind to get on a plane back home to Germany. It was 1981 and the dusty frontier town was no place for a woman. However, Frauke stayed, determined to h elp her husband carve out a new life farming. Tragedy struck just three years later when Friedrich took his own life and she was left to raise their family alone. Twenty-six years after she sold her first necklace off the back porch, Kimberley Fine Diamonds in Kununurra is now home to one of the world's largest collections of Argyle pink diamonds, with a client list that includes Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. Frauke is credited for not only pioneering an industry, but for putting the tiny outback town and its precious diamonds on the map. A Diamond in the Dust is a tale of love and loss, hardship and heartache, but ultimately the inspiring story of how a young girl from Germany overcame tragedy to pioneer a diamond empire in one of the most unforgiving terrains on earth. ...Show more

Outback Governesses by Paula Heelan

$9.99 AUD

$29.99 (66% off)

Category: AUSTRALIANA

Outback Governesses is collection of eye-opening stories about fourteen governesses who drop in, Mary Poppins-like, to educate children in Australia's remotest rural areas and in return receive a bush education of their own... The governesses are often young women from urban backgrounds, and they become part of the family they work for as well as the local community, and share the trials and tribulations of station life. They fall in and out of love, learn to ride horses and motorbikes, explore spectacular parts of Australia, help with station work, cook and eat with the family, attend rodeos, campdrafts, country races, and the local shows, and other bush events. There are medical emergencies, seasonal floods, bushfire and drought that all affect station life and the school routine. And then there are the unwelcome visitors to liven things up - snakes, bats, mosquitoes, centipedes, flies, feral pigs, red back spiders and the massive insect explosions following rain. There is always something happening and you can never be sure what the day will bring. Living and working in isolated areas can mean battling poor access to technology, teaching children who speak English as a second language and learning how to engage and motivate children who might be the only student in the classroom. Days can swing from triumphant, hilarious and joyful, to downright difficult - but it's clear from the tales in this collection, the rewards of teaching outback far outweigh the disadvantages - there is nothing like a bush education. ...Show more

Waltzing Matilda: Australia's Accidental Anthem by W Benjamin Lindner

$32.99 AUD

Category: AUSTRALIANA

The Naked Farmer by Ben Brooksby

$29.99 AUD

Category: AUSTRALIANA

Ben Brooksby is a fifth-generation farmer from St Helens Plains in Western Victoria. When he was younger, he struggled with anxiety and other mental health issues, as so many others in rural communities do. A simple social media post helped him to turn things around. After he shared a photo to Instagram showing himself naked in a truck full of lentils, he received a huge response, with other farmers wanting to share their own photos - and their stories. As the Naked Farmer movement grew, Ben met people from all around the country who wanted to get naked for mental health. As they got their kits off, they also opened up about their struggles. Proceeds will go to the Royal Flying Doctor Service Mental Health Unit. ...Show more

Into the Loneliness: The unholy alliance of Ernestine Hill and Daisy Bates by Eleanor Hogan

$34.99 AUD

Category: AUSTRALIANA

An original and riveting biography of two of the most singular women Australia has ever seen.Daisy Bates and Ernestine Hill were bestselling writers who told of life in the vast Australian interior. Daisy Bates, dressed in Victorian garb, malnourished and half-blind, camped with Aboriginal people in Wes tern Australia and on the Nullarbor for decades, surrounded by her books, notes and artefacts. A self-taught ethnologist, desperate to be accepted by established male anthropologists, she sought to document the language and customs of the people who visited her camps. In 1935, Ernestine Hill, journalist and author of The Great Australian Loneliness, coaxed Bates to Adelaide to collaborate on a newspaper series. Their collaboration resulted in the 1938 international bestseller, The Passing of the Aborigines. This book informed popular opinion about Aboriginal people for decades, though Bates's failure to acknowledge Hill as her co-author strained their friendship.Traversing great distances in a campervan, Eleanor Hogan reflects on the lives and work of these indefatigable women. From a contemporary perspective, their work seems quaint and sentimental, their outlook and preoccupations dated, paternalistic and even racist. Yet Bates and Hill took a genuine interest in Aboriginal people and their cultures long before they were considered worthy of the Australian mainstream's attention. With sensitivity and insight, Hogan wonders what their legacies as fearless female outliers might be.'I responded to this book with every cell in my body, neuron in my brain and beat of my heart. A stunning achievement of epic storytelling, historical enquiry and elegant analysis. Eleanor Hogan has resurrected Hill and Bates as Australian icons, women as complex, compelling and deeply flawed as the nation itself.' — Clare Wright 'A meticulous unveiling of the enigmatic Daisy Bates and her writing companion Ernestine Hill. Tracking her subjects across the Nullabor, Hogan strips away layer after layer of dissimulation as she unpicks their writing partnership.' — Bill Garner'Into the Loneliness is a fascinating biographical study of two significant and intriguing women who were in many ways ahead of their time, yet reflective of it in their artistic endeavours. Using a sophisticated structure and interconnected narratives, this impressive biography reconceptualises the shifting, complex, relationships between Daisy Bates, Ernestine Hill and Indigenous Australians.' — Jenny Hocking'Into the Loneliness presents a relationship between two remarkable but flawed women, one with profound, ongoing consequences for Indigenous people. It's a book about sexism, about writing, and the nature of friendship. It's a study of white Australian attitudes that persist to this day. And it's an astonishing true story that leaps off the page.' — Jeff Sparrow ...Show more

GEOLOGY & LANDFORMS OF THE SOUTH-WEST by COPP, I.A.

$6.99 AUD

Category: AUSTRALIANA

MARGARET RIVER STORIES by GUY JENNINGS

$59.99 AUD

Category: AUSTRALIANA

The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History by Meredith Lake

$32.99 AUD

Category: AUSTRALIANA

The revelatory story of the Bible in Australia, from the convict era to the Mabo land rights campaign, Nick Cave, the Bra Boys, and beyond. Thought to be everything from the word of God to a resented imposition, the Bible has been debated, painted, rejected, translated, read, gossiped about, preached, a nd tattooed. At a time when public discussion of religion is deeply polarised, Meredith Lake reveals the Bible's dynamic influence in Australia and offers an innovative new perspective on Christianity and its changing role in our society. In the hands of writers, artists, wowsers, Bible-bashers, immigrants, suffragists, evangelists, unionists, Indigenous activists, and many more. A must-read for sceptics, the curious, the lapsed, the devout, the believer, and non-believer. ...Show more

Still in the Bush by Len Beadell

$22.99 AUD

Category: AUSTRALIANA

Laden with trig poles, theodolites - and porridge - Beadell and his team built roads, laid out town sites and undertook an enormous survey programme in order to prepare a test launching area in one of the most isolated parts of the world. The problems ranged from taking astrofixes in a cloudy sky and be coming surrounded by a sea of red mud, to patching a bald spot on a pet joey. All were solved by using those two most necessary ingredients of life in the bush - ingenuity and imagination. Len Beadell's descriptions of the countryside, the adventures the team experienced, and the Australian bush characters they encountered are by turns illuminating and hilarious. His high-spirited account of the work that had to be done 'before they called it Woomera' makes vivid and entertaining reading. ...Show more

Biggest Estate on Earth by Bill Gammage

$39.99 AUD

Category: AUSTRALIANA

Across Australia, early Europeans commented again and again that the land looked like a park. With extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands and abundant wildlife, it evoked a country estate in England. Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific fashion than we have ever realised. For over a decade, Gammage has examined written and visual records of the Australian landscape. He has uncovered an extraordinarily complex system of land management using fire and the life cycles of native plants to ensure plentiful wildlife and plant foods throughout the year. We know Aboriginal people spent far less time and effort than Europeans in securing food and shelter, and now we know how they did it. With details of land-management strategies from around Australia, The Biggest Estate on Earth rewrites the history of this continent, with huge implications for us today. Once Aboriginal people were no longer able to tend their country, it became overgrown and vulnerable to the hugely damaging bushfires we now experience. And what we think of as virgin bush in a national park is nothing of the kind. ...Show more

Yarns from the Aussie Outback by Graham Rogers

$25.00 AUD

Category: AUSTRALIANA