Griffith Review 69: The European Exchange by Ashley Hay (Editor); Natasha Cica (Editor)

$27.99 AUD

Category: Australian Stories

Europe has been thrown into sharp relief by the impact of a devastating pandemic. As country after country succumbs to the contemporary plague, deeply buried memories of death and destruction resurface.But Europe has emerged from devastation before, and become stronger and more connected. A year ago Fre nch president Emmanuel Macron declared that Europe must be understood as a project – a vision of the best sort of global community. Although the COVID-19 crisis has profoundly challenged the idea of Europe as interconnected, and as accessible to Australia, the rich exchange between peoples and continents will eventually resume.Griffith Review 69: The European Exchange explores the deep and complex relationships between Europe and Australia and shows how Australians of many backgrounds have contributed to a long-standing dialogue that enriches both continents.In coming months both Europe and Australia will have much to learn from each other as the overwhelming pain of loss from COVID-19 gives way to a new reality in which diverse cultures work together to create a richer and more resilient globe.Contributors include: Christos Tsiolkas, Robyn Archer, Julienne van Loon, Mat Schulz, Sanja Grozdanic, John Armstrong, Gabriella Coslovich, Christian Thompson, Hans van Leeuwen, Eugene Yiu Nam Cheung, Stuart Ward, Susan Varga, George Megalogenis, Anna Haebich, Anthony Macris, Jaya Savige, Tim Bonyhady, Irris Makler, Michael Cooney, David Morris and Natasha Cica.This edition is published in partnership with the Australian National University. ...Show more

Back Roads by Heather Ewart; Karen Michelmore (As told to)

$34.99 AUD

Category: Australian Stories

A road trip around Australia, discovering towns and communities outside the mainstream - and the colourful inhabitants whose grit and humour will uplift and inspire you. Discover the resilient and inspiring people who live outside big Australian cities - and indeed off the beaten track altogether. Defi ned by their strength and humility, these are characters whose grit and good humour will uplift and inspire. Based on the successful series hosted by Heather Ewart, Back Roads dives deeper to learn more about these wonderful communities and deliver fresh and compelling stories. 'They're proud communities like my hometown, full of surprises, fight and spirit', says Heather. Take, for example, Joan Sinclair, 83, horse & cattlewoman and outback legend, who featured in the first episode of series 3. The video of this feisty woman went viral on Facebook and has clocked up 1.3 million views. The show featured a wealth of characters and places, and the book will take you further into their lives. From strong women like Joan Sinclair, Heather Jones of the company Heavy Haulage Girls, and Dianne Reeves, transgender former dairy farmer, shearer and truck driver, to historic places - such as Pine Creek, built on the sweat of Chinese workers, and Maralinga, the only place in the world where you can stand on the site of an atomic bomb test - Back Roads will transport you from your city doorstep and show you what lies beyond in this land of surprise and determination. ...Show more

Fair Dinkum ! Aussie Slang by H. G. Nelson

$19.99 AUD

Category: Australian Stories | Reading Level: very good

Australian slang unites the true blue and the dinky-di and separates the cheeky little possums from the happy little Vegemites. When we use slang, we're connecting with the diggers in the villages of France ordering a vin blanc ('plonk') and the Indigenous Dharug-speakers of Sydney locating one another with a familiar cry ('within cooee'). In this attractive and educational new pictorial guide, readers will be ably led through the world of Aussie slang by the great H.G. 'battered sav' Nelson. ...Show more

Full Bore by William McInnes

$29.99 AUD

$32.99 (9% off)

Category: Australian Stories

A chance encounter in an auction house is the jumping-off point for William's inimitable take on our sport-obsessed nation, Australian popular culture and the artefacts and memorabilia that both make us cringe with recognition and laugh with warm affection. His trademark humour and anecdotes litter this collection, making it a true delight. ...Show more

Men and their Sheds (HB) by Craig Wetjen

$19.99 AUD

$45.00 (55% off)

Category: Australian Stories

Intricate and illuminating, the photographs in this book showcase the very private relationship between a man and his shed - a place to shelter not just from the rain but also from the ups and downs of daily life. The shed is as much a mental release as it is a physical one.Photographer Craig Wetjen tra velled thousands of kilometres to find his subjects and discovered that as well as being places for tinkering and repurposing, and occasionally housing priceless vintage car or pinball machine collections, some of the sheds are museum pieces in their own right.A photographer for 30 years, Craig Wetjen battled his own physical and mental health issues as he travelled the Australian countryside photographing and documenting men and their sheds.A series of gallery exhibitions has accompanied the books journey.A TV series Manspace featuring the sheds in this book hosted by Shane Jacobson and aired on GO.Craig Wetjen is an Ambassador for Beyond Blue, and one of his portraits features Jeff Kennett in his own shed - Jeff also wrote the Foreword.A percentage of all the royalties will go to Mens Shed Association. ...Show more

Rivers: The Lifeblood of Australia by Ian Hoskins

$49.99 AUD

Category: Australian Stories

Rivers have long run in the blood of Australians. Givers of life and subjects of anguish, Australian rivers have shaped the nation from the moment the first Australians arrived tens of thousands of years ago. Offering the vital ingredient for life, they are also guardians of culture, a means of transpor tation, sites for play and leisure, and sources of power—deeply entrenched in almost every aspect of human life and an irreplaceable part of the global ecosystem. Australia's vast inland seas of some 50 million years ago have disappeared, leaving a continent that is mostly desert. Of the waters and wetlands that remain, most of which are connected to rivers, 65 are listed as Ramsar Wetlands of International Importance. They are also of incredible — sometimes painful — local importance, as reminders of the dispossession suffered by those first peoples and their descendants and evidence of the devastation wrought by drought and dying waterways. The damming of Western Australia's Ord River during the 1960s and 1970s captured monsoonal rains within a catchment of over 55,000 square kilometres, creating the largest artificial lake on mainland Australia while destroying sites of cultural significance to the Miriwoong people and changing the ecosystem irrevocably. Barely ten years after the completion of the Ord project, the success of the Save the Franklin campaign in Tasmania is a testament to evolving understanding of the precious nature of waterways. Yet even this triumph was fraught: environmentalists' argument for preservation of Tasmania's 'wilderness' contained the implication that the land was without people, despite Indigenous habitation for at least 30,000 years. In this broad-ranging survey of some of Australia's most well-known, loved, engineered and fought over rivers, from Melbourne's Yarra to the Alligator rivers of Kakadu, award-winning author Ian Hoskins presents a history of our complex connections to water. A thoughtful foreword by former prime-ministerial speechwriter Don Watson laments the price rivers have paid for human industry and calls for greater connection with the waterways we rely on for our existence. In 2015, Watson's The Bush — part memoir, part travelogue, part history — was named the NSW Premier's Literary Awards book of the year and the Australian Independent Booksellers indie book of the year.   ...Show more

Australia's Funniest Yarns by Graham Seal

$29.99 AUD

Category: Australian Stories

Australians traditionally like their humour irreverent, crude and with very sharp teeth. Remember the one about the strange whining sound heard at airports as planes from Britain landed? This was the whingeing of Pommy migrants dissatisfied with what they found in Australia. Or how about the Citizenshi p Test for Aspiring Australians which begins with this question about an essential life skill: 'How many slabs can you fit in the back of a Falcon ute while also allowing room for your cattle dog?' The bush is the source of traditional Aussie humour. Pioneering, settlement and battling fire, flood and drought have produced yarns of tough cocky farmers, shearers, bush workers, swaggies and dreadful cooks. Much of this humour relates to the resilience and fortitude necessary to endure the realities of rural life. Australians took this sensibility with them to war and to work in the cities, and the tradition continues today. Whatever the circumstances, Australians have always found something to laugh about, laugh at or laugh off. ...Show more

Best Australian Drinking Stories by Jim Haynes

$29.99 AUD

Category: Australian Stories

The story of Australia's almost-250-year love affair with alcohol told with yarns, verse, anecdotes and surprising historical narratives "It seemed like a good idea...at the time." --the lament of many a morning after Rum, beer, scotch, wine, beer and more beer. For nearly 250 years Australian history has been punctuated with stories of booze and boozing. From Cook's voyages and the First Fleet to the Rum Rebellion, the mutiny of the 99th Regiment, the soldiers' riot of 1916, six o'clock closing and beyond, we've been a nation that likes a drink. With the eye of the master storyteller that he is, Jim Haynes has collected the best yarns, verses, stories and anecdotes of our boozy history. He uncovers the good and the bad of our national character and its relationship with grog. He celebrates the social gift of alcohol and riotous moments of mateship and camaraderie, but he also offers salutary tales of its consequences - the hangovers, the suffering, the recriminations and the grave occasions subverted by drink. Amusing, wry, tragic and surprising, Best Australian Drinking Stories asks you to grab a glass of your favorite beverage, get comfy and enjoy this fascinating collection of stories about Australia's love affair with booze. ...Show more

Bush Doctors by Annabelle Brayley

$34.99 AUD

Category: Australian Stories

Imagine yourself critically injured or seriously ill in the middle of nowhere. You'd be hoping like hell there was a doctor nearby to take charge; someone resourceful, who'd think quickly and stay calm under pressure; someone who could, if necessary, take charge from a distance. You'd want to be in the safe and sure hands of one of these amazing bush doctors. They might work in some of the most spectacular locations in Australia - from the splendid isolation of the Kimberley and the wide open spaces of outback Queensland to the freezing icecaps of Antarctica - but their profession demands long hours, extensive medical knowledge and, sometimes, courage beyond their experience. Meet some of the extraordinary medicos who save lives everyday beyond the great divide including Jenny Wilson, the locum with itchy feet who roams Australia and beyond to help people; Rolf Gomes, who built a 'heart truck' to take life-saving medical advice to the inland; and Molly Shorthouse who cares for people's mental health. And, always, there's the Royal Flying Doctorsa From the bestselling author of Nurses of the Outback, Bush Doctors is a powerful and captivating tribute to all rural and remote doctors - unsung Australian heroes who truly do care. ...Show more

Dear Santa by Samuel Johnson

$14.95 AUD

$22.99 (34% off)

Category: Australian Stories

Brother, actor, Victorian of the Year and determined cancer vanquisher Samuel Johnson OAM has gathered together a collection of letters to Santa from some of Australia's most notorious and best-loved grown-ups. Surprising, entertaining, wicked and witty, this little book of letters is the perfect gift for your favourite human. If you could ask Santa for absolutely anything, what would you ask for? Samuel Johnson OAM, Australia's favourite skylarker, brother and determined cancer vanquisher, has asked his friends and supporters (who just happen to be some of Australia's best writers, comics, actors, artists, musicians and personalities) to share their letters to Santa. Some letters are naughty. Some letters are nice. Some echo a favourite childhood memory. Some beg forgiveness. Some are angry. Some just want something sweet. Some want to change their own world, others want to change the whole world. Contributors include Helen Garner, Adam Hills, Deborah Mailman, Rove McManus, Leigh Sales, Grant Denyer, John Williamson, Myf Warhurst, John Paul Young, Mia Freedman, Shaun Micallef, Missy Higgins, and many more. This little book of letters is wicked, witty and warm-hearted. It will make you laugh, think and feel and is the perfect Christmas gift for those who speak human. ...Show more

Displaced - A Rural Life by John Kinsella

$29.99 AUD

Category: Australian Stories

John Kinsella's memoir of his rural life takes us deep into the heart of what it means to belong and unbelong. The joys and travails of childhood, adult addictions, missteps and changing directions are acutely captured in poignant and poetic detail. While centred on Jam Tree Gully in rural Western Austr alia the memoir also moves between Ohio, Schull and Cambridge, mixing regionalism with an international sense of responsibility. What will strike the reader are the detailed observations of daily life, the engagement with topography and flora and fauna that embody the author's conviction that 'all is in everything and that every leaf of grass is vital'. In his most intimate prose work to date, Kinsella never shies from writing about the violence and intolerance of those scared of difference, and the ways in which his ethics have sometimes been met with disdain or outright hostility. But with nuance and humour he also celebrates rural community and its willingness to lend a hand. At once tender, urgent and intelligent, Displaced is ultimately a call to personal action. 'We all have choices to make.' It argues through it vivid accounts of small acts of living for the values of pacifism, veganism, environmentalism and justice for First Nations peoples - the principles we just might need to heal our world.Praise for John Kinsella's writing 'Kinsella's work is magnificent, raw; the words coming together in form and shape to evoke the essence of the moment in time he is creating.' Blue Wolf Reviews 'Kinsella can see into the heart of the country, and the evidence of these taut, complex stories is that what he sees there is both ferocious and unresolved.' The Australian ...Show more

Drinking in the Rivers by colin whelan

$49.99 AUD

Category: Australian Stories

Since time immemorial rivers have been the arteries of Australia's red heart and the river defined not just the landscape but also the people. Colin Whelan travelled to many memorable pubs along the Murray and its branch, the Edward. So many of these hotels are both rich in their own character and filed with other characters. They are a testament to the core values of the bush and to the continuing role pubs have in their communities. The stories of these pubs are inevitably intertwined with the river and with their yesterdays. Savouring the pubs, enjoying them and soaking them in, necessarily involves swimming deeply in their histories and refreshing in their waters. These are their stories, the unforgettable characters of Australia and it's waterways. ...Show more