Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe

$22.99 AUD

Category: Australian

Dark Emu argues for a reconsideration of the 'hunter-gatherer' tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians and attempts to rebut the colonial myths that have worked to justify dispossession. Accomplished author Bruce Pascoe provides compelling evidence from the diaries of early explorers that suggests that systems of food production and land management have been blatantly understated in modern retellings of early Aboriginal history, and that a new look at Australia's past is required. ...Show more

The Anzacs of Maroondah

$30.00 AUD

Category: Australian

Flames of Extinction: The race to save Australia’s threatened wildlife by John Pickrell

$29.99 AUD

Category: Australian

Over Australia's 2019–20 Black Summer bushfire season, scientists estimate that more than three billion native animals were killed or displaced. Many species — koalas, the regent honeyeater, glossy black cockatoo, the platypus — are inching towards extinction at the hands of mega-blazes and the changing climate behind them. In Flames of Extinction, award-winning science writer John Pickrell investigates the effects of the 2019–2020 bushfires on Australian wildlife and ecosystems. Journeying across the firegrounds, Pickrell explores the stories of creatures that escaped the flames, the wildlife workers who rescued them, and the conservationists, land managers, Aboriginal rangers, ecologists and firefighters on the front line of the climate catastrophe. He also reveals the radical new conservation methods being trialled to save as many species as possible from the very precipice of extinction. ...Show more

The Golden Harvest A History of Wedderburn

$35.00 AUD

Category: Australian

James Cook: The story behind the man who mapped the world by Peter FitzSimons

$34.99 AUD

Category: Australian

HE STORY BEHIND THE MAN WHO MAPPED THE WORLD The name Captain James Cook is one of the most recognisable in Australian history - an almost mythic figure who is often discussed, celebrated, reviled and debated. But who was the real James Cook? This Yorkshire farm boy would go on to become the foremost ma riner, navigator and cartographer of his era, and to personally map a third of the globe. His great voyages of discovery were incredible feats of seamanship and navigation. Leading a crew of men into uncharted territories, Cook would face the best and worst of humanity as he took himself and his crew to the edge of the known world - and beyond. With his masterful storytelling talent, Peter FitzSimons brings James Cook to life. Focusing on his most iconic expedition, the voyage of the Endeavour, where Cook first set foot on Australian and New Zealand soil, FitzSimons contrasts Cook against another figure who looms large in Australasian history: Joseph Banks, the aristocratic botanist. As they left England, Banks, a rich, famous playboy, was everything that Cook was not. The voyage tested Cook's character and would help define his legacy. Now, 240 years after James Cook's death, FitzSimons reveals what kind of man James was at heart. His strengths, his weaknesses, his passions and pursuits, failures and successes.   ...Show more

Dead in the Water: A Very Angry Book about Our Greatest Environmental Catastrophe... the Death of the Murray-Darling Basin by Richard Beasley

$29.99 AUD

Category: Australian

Full-throated and provocative, this is a very personal battle cry to save our most precious natural resource.   'I LOVE IT.' Peter FitzSimons'With a deft mixture of outrage, humour and in-depth knowledge, only Beasley could make water policy a page turner.' Craig Reucassel'It's great to shed some more l ight on the policy creep and mismanagement that is driving environmental degradation of many of the Murray-Darling Basin rivers.' Professor Richard Kingsford, Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists'We want to reset these bio-diversities and the ecologies in our country. We want to see our fish spawning as they once were, our animals coming back down to drink. Fresh quality water out of the Coorong, not this super saline stuff that we're living in today's environment. It's slowly dying. You can smell the impact of what's happening . . .' Grant Rigney, Ngarrindjeri Nation, from his sworn evidence at the Royal Commission into the Murray-Darling Basin.Richard Beasley is fed up. He's fed up with vested interests killing off Australia's most precious water resource. He's fed up with the cowardice and negligence that have allowed Big Agriculture and irrigators to destroy a river system that can sustain both the environment and the communities that depend on it. He's fed up that a noble plan to save Murray-Darling Basin based on the 'best scientific knowledge' has instead been corroded by lies, the denial of climate change, pseudoscience and political expediency.He pulls no punches. He's provocative, he's outrageous, he points the finger without shame. And he will leave you very, very angry. Dead in the Water would be political satire of the highest order . . . if it weren't so tragically true ...Show more

Radicals: Remembering the Sixties by Meredith Burgmann, Nadia Wheatley

$39.99 AUD

Category: Australian

The Sixties -- an era of protest,free love, civil disobedience, duffel coats, flower power, giant afros and desert boots, all recorded on grainy black and white footage -- marked a turning point for change. A time when radicals found their voices and used them. While the initial trigger for protest was opposition to the Vietnam War, this anger quickly escalated to include Aboriginal Land Rights, Women's Liberation, Gay Liberation, Apartheid, and 'workers' control'. In Radicals some of the people doing the changing - including Meredith Burgmann, Nadia Wheatley, David Marr, Geoffrey Robertson and Gary Foley - reflect on how the decade changed them and society forever. 'Just like the Sixties, this book is a mesmerising kaleidoscope of unforgettable characters doing brave things.' -- Anne Summers 'An exciting time of change that shaped Australia and the world.' -- Linda Burney 'Aah, the memories. What a buzz!' -- Patricia Amphlett (Little Patty) ...Show more

Defiant Voices: How Australia’s Female Convicts Challenged Authority 1788–1853 by Babette Smith

$44.99 AUD

$49.99 (10% off)

Category: Australian

Between 1788 and 1868, approximately 25,000 women were transported to Australia. For nearly 200 years, there has been a chorus of outrage at their vulgarity, their depravity and their promiscuity. Babette Smith takes the reader beyond this traditional casting of convict women, looking for evidence of th eir humanity and individuality. Certainly some were desperate, overwhelmed by a relentless chain of criminal convictions, drunkenness and despair. But others were heroic, defiant. Smith offers fresh insights: the women's use of sound and voice to harass officials, for example; the extent of their deliberate resistance against authority. This resistance, she argues, has contributed significantly to broader Australian culture. The women's stories begin when their fates are decided by the British Crown. We are introduced to women who stole, set fires, rioted, committed insurance fraud, murdered; mothers of six and 12-year-old girls; women who refused to show deference to the Court, instead giving mock curtsies, 'jumping and capering about'.'A sailor', wrote ship's surgeon Peter Cunningham, was 'more an object of pity than wrath. To see twenty wicked fingers beckoning to him, and twenty wicked eyes winking at him, at one and the same time, no wonder his virtue should sometimes experience a fall!'. Among the hysterical accounts of bad behaviour aboard female convict ships written by concerned reverends, surgeons and others are scenes that show female camaraderie, fun and intrepid spirit. Washing clothes became 'a grand water party'; caught in a storm, women came up on deck to help their fellow convicts haul water; women sang and danced before bed, putting on concerts for each other, 'dressed out in their gayest plumage'. This camaraderie continued in Australia. In Tasmania's overcrowded Cascades factory, the superintendent complained about women 'corrupting each other' in nightly conversation laced with 'obscenity'. Another interpretation is that women sought the comfort of sharing their woes with one another, telling 'war stories' of life on assignment and generally enjoying each other's company in language that was everyday for them.Defiant Voices tells the story of the Crown trying and failing to make its prisoners subservient to a harsh penal system. Convict women challenged the authorities by living in perpetual disobedience, which was often flagrant, sometimes sexual and always loud. They were not all 'the most abandoned prostitutes', but their sexual mores were certainly different from the observers who labelled them. From factory rioters to individuals like Ann Wilson, whose response-'That will not hurt me'-provoked a magistrate to pile punishment after punishment onto her, the women of Defiant Voices fought like tigers and drove men to breaking point with their collective voices, the lewd songs and 'disorderly shouting' resounding from the page. ...Show more

The Future of Us: Demography Gets a Makeover by Liz Allen

$29.99 AUD

Category: Australian

Demography is far more important than destiny. By tracing connections between a population’s past and present, demographers can foresee its future. The true wonder of demography, though, is not its ability to predict the future but to shape it. With energy and passion, demographer Liz Allen sets out the potential paths to make Australia better. Bold, fearless and revealing,The Future of Us does more than help you find your inner statistician. Looking beyond births, deaths and marriages, Allen takes apart inequality, migration, tax and home ownership. She also dissects how the word ‘population’ became so charged, daring to ask what Australia might look like in 20 years if we had zero immigration. The Future of Us gives demography a makeover and sets out future possibilities for a better us … just like a Choose Your Own Adventure, but for the nation. ‘Liz Allen’s romp around Australia’s demography is highly readable, and makes a compelling case for the benefits of immigration and the need for a comprehensive population policy.’  — Michelle Grattan ‘Put on that superpower cape. Liz Allen’s heartfelt study of how Australians live, die and migrate takes you from now to tomorrow and makes a plea for rethinking how we talk about migration and a renewed Australia. Forget the hate and hyperbole and replace it with hope.’ — Jenna Price ...Show more

Sorry and Beyond: Healing the Stolen Generations by Brian Butler, John Bond

$39.95 AUD

Category: Australian

Brian Butler’s grandmother was taken from her family in 1910. She was 12 years old. Twenty years later her daughter, Brian’s mother, was taken.Thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, like Brian Butler’s, have been coping with the trauma of child removal for more than a century. Sorr y and Beyond describes the growth of the grassroots movement that exposed the truth about Australia’s shameful removal policies and worked towards justice.Born in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, the movement was joined by nearly a million non-Indigenous Australians in the 1998 Sorry Day and Journey of Healing campaigns, which paved the way for the Federal Parliament’s unanimous apology in 2008.As the Journey of Healing campaign has shown, community initiatives have played a vital part in overcoming the immense damage done.The journey isn’t over. Sorry and Beyond is a call to continue the work of healing this national trauma. Brian Butler’s grandmother was taken from her family in 1910. She was 12 years old. Twenty years later her daughter, Brian’s mother, was taken.Thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, like Brian Butler’s, have been coping with the trauma of child removal for more than a century. Sorry and Beyond describes the growth of the grassroots movement that exposed the truth about Australia’s shameful removal policies and worked towards justice.Born in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, the movement was joined by nearly a million non-Indigenous Australians in the 1998 Sorry Day and Journey of Healing campaigns, which paved the way for the Federal Parliament’s unanimous apology in 2008.As the Journey of Healing campaign has shown, community initiatives have played a vital part in overcoming the immense damage done.The journey isn’t over. Sorry and Beyond is a call to continue the work of healing this national trauma.   ...Show more

Flash Jim: The Astonishing Story of the Convict Fraudster who Wrote Australia's First Dictionary by Kel Richards

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian

The astonishing story of James Hardy Vaux, writer of Australia's first dictionary and first true-crime memoir If you wear 'togs', tell a 'yarn', call someone 'sly', or refuse to 'snitch' on a friend then you are talking like a convict.These words, and hundreds of others, once left colonial magistrates b affled and police confused. So comprehensible to us today, the flash language of criminals and convicts had marine officer Watkin Tench complaining about the need for an interpreter in the colonial court.Luckily, by 1811, that man was at hand. James Hardy Vaux - conman, pickpocket, absconder and thief, born into comfortable circumstances in England - was so drawn to a life of crime he was transported to Australia ... not once, but three times!Vaux's talents, glibness and audacity were extraordinary, and perceiving an opportunity to ingratiate himself with authorities during his second sentence, he set about writing a dictionary of the criminal slang of the colony, which was recognised for its uniqueness and taken back to England to be published.Kel Richards tells Vaux's story brilliantly, with the help of Vaux's own extraordinarily candid memoir of misdeeds - one of the first true-crime memoirs ever published. Kel's book combines two of his favourite subjects: the inventiveness, humour and origins of Australian English, and our history of fabulous, disreputable characters.With echoes of The Surgeon of Crowthorne as well as Oliver Twist, Flash Jim is a ripping read - especially for those who appreciate the power of words and the convict contribution to our idiom.PRAISE'One of the strongest bonds binding the people of Australia together is the Australian language. We speak a dialect of English richer and more colourful than most. When we call someone a "hoon" or invite a friend to a "barbie" we know immediately what we're talking about - but we have to translate for overseas visitors. This powerful cultural bond was, as Kel explains, built on four foundations. And the most colourful of those four was convict slang. The role that it played, and still plays, in the Australian language, and the story of the man who first recorded it is - as we used to say - a "ripping yarn". It makes a page turning story' - Alan Jones, broadcaster and columnist   ...Show more

Smuggled: A history of illegal journeys to Australia by Ruth Balint, Julie Kalman

$34.99 AUD

Category: Australian

‘The sea was rough, waves a few metres, falling on top of us. We were just waiting and hoping and praying that we were going to make it.’ – Taozen, proud Australian, proud HazaraSmuggled offers a previously unseen glimpse into the dangerous and shadowy world of people smuggling. It shares harrowing true stories of those fleeing persecution to seek asylum and reshapes our idea of those – sometimes family, sometimes mafia – who help them find it.People smugglers have such currency in Australian politics yet they remain unknowable figures in our migration history. But beyond the rhetoric lies a rich past that reaches far from the maritime borders of our island continent – to Jews escaping the Holocaust, Eastern Europeans slipping through the Iron Curtain, ‘boat people’ fleeing the Vietnam War, and refugees escaping unthinkable violence in the Middle East and Africa.Based on revealing personal interviews, Smuggled provides a compelling insight into a defining yet unexplored part of Australian history. ‘The sea was rough, waves a few metres, falling on top of us. We were just waiting and hoping and praying that we were going to make it.’ – Taozen, proud Australian, proud HazaraSmuggled offers a previously unseen glimpse into the dangerous and shadowy world of people smuggling. It shares harrowing true stories of those fleeing persecution to seek asylum and reshapes our idea of those – sometimes family, sometimes mafia – who help them find it.People smugglers have such currency in Australian politics yet they remain unknowable figures in our migration history. But beyond the rhetoric lies a rich past that reaches far from the maritime borders of our island continent – to Jews escaping the Holocaust, Eastern Europeans slipping through the Iron Curtain, ‘boat people’ fleeing the Vietnam War, and refugees escaping unthinkable violence in the Middle East and Africa.Based on revealing personal interviews, Smuggled provides a compelling insight into a defining yet unexplored part of Australian history.   ...Show more