AustLit

'Richard Brooks was a man of self interest and entrepreneurial verve . Privateer, smuggler, convict sea captain, rum trader turned respectable magistrate and colonial squire. His life was a microcosm of early colonial Australia.

'He was a shipowner, merchant ship captain and financier. He kept the colony supplied with spirits thus greasing the wheels of commerce. He imported cattle from South Africa and India. As the largest cattle owner in the country he was at the frontier of exploration and Aboriginal dispossession.

'He survived numerous scandals, including accusations of inhumanity, fraud, smuggling, receiving, cattle theft, assault, claim-jumping and infidelity. But his strength of personality and ‘habit of command’ meant people warmed to him. Governors Bligh and Macquarie sought his advice.

'His story provides a glimpse into the social, political and domestic life of that famed group of landowning settlers of the first twenty years of the colony – large convict estates, regency mansions, dynastic marriages and extensive pastoral and squatting empires.

'Meticulously researched it gives the reader a real feel for the life of early colonial Sydney.' (Publication summary)

'The story of Vietnam veteran Allan ‘Aldy’ Aldenhoven, born in Darwin, his mother was of “The Stolen Generation” and his father a descendant of German settlers. Grew up in Adelaide, and was conscripted to fight in the Vietnam War. He was with the 7 RAR where his fighting spirit was legendary.'

'Upon his return Aldy became a professional boxer, a star in TV “Ringside” and the Australian Welterweight Boxing Champion. He was a friend of Aussie rock and music stars Bon Scott, Ruusell Morris, Jim Keays, Broderick Smith and Evan Jones. He was a larrikin, loving his fame and notoriety.'

'The treatment meted out to Vietnam veterans angered him and he struggled with his war demons and the psychological scars they inflicted. He became involved in a world of drug dealers, gangsters and crooked cops.'

'He was part of Adelaide’s underworld and was involved in the kidnapping of a heroin dealer in a plan hatched by rogue South Australian police. Shortly after he died under mysterious circumstances. He was 30.'

'A short, eventful life, with bursts of glory and a squalid ending, one of the many Vietnam veterans who found civilian life, the denigration of their service, and their memories hard to manage.' (Source: On-line)

'Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelago nation comprising as many as 17,000 islands spread over the same distance as Los Angeles to New York, or Perth to Sydney. Indonesia is also the most culturally diverse nation on the planet and its national motto had to be ‘Unity in Diversity’ as these islands are an extraordinary mélange of races, religions, languages and cultures.

'Ian Burnet sets out on a journey across the archipelago to discover the rich cultural diversity of Indonesia. He describes how the early Malay people came to these islands and the influence of the Indian religions of Hinduism and Buddhism on the islands of Sumatra, Java and Bali. He discovers the heritage of the Indians, Chinese and Arabs who came here to trade in spices and sandalwood, he follows the rise of Islam and the traces of the first Europeans to enter Asia - the early Portuguese traders and priests.

'Travelling by bus, plane, train, ferry, boat, car and motorcycle from Java to Timor, he hops from island to island across the Indonesian archipelago and the smoking volcanoes that form its spine. Ian Burnet combines his love of adventure and travel with his knowledge of history to take us with him on a personal journey through geographic space and historical time, which will delight all armchair travellers.' (Publication summary)

'Blood Revenge examines the first time that white men were held to account in a criminal court of New South Wales for killing Australian Aborigines. It happened in 1799, just 11 years after the New South Wales colony began. This book answers the disturbing question: Why were five men found guilty of killing two Aborigines—yet they were never punished? The story lays bare the nature of black-white relations at the colony’s Hawkesbury River frontier settlement. Governor John Hunter tried to carry out his orders and stop the wanton killing of Aborigines. Inevitably, there was a divide between policy and practice.' (Source: Publishers blurb)

'John Meredith (1920-2001) was for decades the leading warrior in the fight to preserve and celebrate Australia’s unique folk heritage. Between 1953 and 1994 he recorded from ordinary Australians thousands of songs, tunes, recitations, folk medicines, superstitions, sayings and yarns, documenting a rich canon of traditional lore which at the time few believed – and many denied – existed. He was also a key pioneer in folk song performance, establishing in 1952 the original Bushwhackers Band and performing in the landmark Australian musical Reedy River. A political radical throughout the Cold War years, he fought all his life against poverty, cultural toadyism and official indifference.

'Writing or co-authoring many books on Australian tradition and history including the classic Folk Songs of Australia and the Men and Women Who Sang Them, still easily the most important single volume in the field, he achieved official recognition late in life, his original field recordings becoming an acknowledged national treasure. Unlike however the great song collectors in other English-speaking countries he did not have the benefit of a good education let alone formal musical training for he was forced by poverty to leave school at age fourteen at the height of the Great Depression. In 1944, having neither qualifications nor prospects, he mounted his pushbike and left the New South Wales township of Holbrook where he was born and rode into the sunrise, determined to make his fortune. This is his story.' (Publisher's abstract)

'In 1813, Ludwig Leichhardt was born in Trebatsch, in the Prussian Province of Brandenburg. Between 1831 and 1836, Leichhardt studied philosophy, language, and natural sciences at the Universities of Gottingen and Berlin. He moved to England in 1837, where he continued his study of the natural sciences. As an explorer and keen natural scientist, Ludwig Leichhardt moved to Sydney, Australia, in February 1842, intending to explore inland Australia and hopeful of a government appointment in his fields of interest. Leichhardt went to the Hunter River valley, north of Sydney, to study the geology, flora, and fauna of the region, and to observe farming methods. He then set out on his own on a specimen-collecting journey that took him from Newcastle, in New South Wales, to Moreton Bay, in Queensland. Leichhardt was also determined to be the first to cross the Australian continent from east to west. His personality, dauntless courage, cultivated manners, appreciation of nature and of the unfamiliar culture of the Aboriginals, and his love for his adopted country, made him a 'hero of romance' and the 'Prince of Explorers.' This book on Leichhardt's life - drawn from his letters, journals, log books, and personal diaries (about 1,900 pages of previously unpublished text) - also describe his years in Europe. The book contains maps, photographs, and illustrations, including many by the explorer and surveyor John Frederick Mann.' (Publication summary)

'In this book Peter Golding traces the story of Fleming's remarkable life, adding flesh to the skeleton of a succession of careers with a fascinating range of incidents including a brief and cheeky encounter with Rommel in North Africa and a tender love story that began in a college tower.' ( Publisher's blurb)

'William Cox (1764-1837) was an English soldier, an explorer, a road builder, and a pioneering pastoralist in the early period of British settlement in the colony of New South Wales, Australia. In 1814, Cox supervised the construction of a road across Australia's Blue Mountains, and it was a remarkable achievement. His team of 30 convicts made 163 kilometers of road through appalling terrain, and they did so without serious accident or loss of life. This was in part a consequence of Cox's sympathetic treatment of his convict workers. Today, "Cox's Road" is considered a famous bush walk. In subsequent years, William Cox became a leading pastoralist in the colony, helping to carry through the developments which gave Australia its first significant exports. He also championed the rights of ex-convicts, whom he recognized as having created the colony through their labor. He looked forward to a country peopled by free-born British citizens with citizens' rights. By the time of his death, he had become a 'national' figure. In the first book-length biography of William Cox, author Richard Cox (a descendant) gives the details of Cox's life, from early scandal through to success, redeeming the career of one of the pioneers of colonial Australia.' (Publication summary)

'The young Cara Mallett, an orphan from a working class background in rural England, emigrated to the colony of NSW in the late Victorian era. She proved to be pioneer, establishing the first college in NSW to train women teachers. Her adventurous spirit met its match in a lifelong partnership with another émigré, T.W.Edgeworth David, a young mining surveyor. Settling in Sydney when Edgeworth David was appointed as Professor of Geology at Sydney University, the couple raised a family there while actively engaged with many aspects of Sydney’s cultural and political life.' (Source: Publisher's blurb)

'This is the story of David Ruston, a man whose proficiency with flowers is legendary. His lectures and demonstrations on "the art of the old masters" impart memorable, detailed information about master painters and the flowers they used while creating their beautiful masterpieces. One of the world's most respected Rosarians, his expertise is acknowledged worldwide. Ruston created the largest private collection of roses in the Southern Hemisphere - a mecca for gardeners visiting Renmark, South Australia - which is now officially recognized as The National Collection of Roses. Clearly demonstrating how Ruston's life is intertwined with flowers, the book also includes photographs and descriptions of some of the flamboyant and unusual flower arrangements he has made.' (Publication summary)

'"Let's go bush," said Big Nev, and that sparked a journey for two adventurous city kids spellbound by Banjo Paterson's poems about horses and men and the Australian outback.

Col Hood's story lingers affect-ionately on the men who shaped his early life ­— the horse traders who taught him to pick a good horse, the blacksmiths he 'struck' for while he learnt how to shoe them and, above all, the leather worker who became his teacher and mentor and set him on the road to becoming a western saddlemaker of high repute.

The continuing thread through Hood's yarns is his love of horses. Long Tom, Ginger, Doc, Chiquita, Chet and Missy share the stage with people in power in the saga of his life. The horses get top billing.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Pamela Tan (Tan Pingmei) left Australia in 1950 as a young Australian born Chinese woman patriotically attracted to the possibilities of the new China created by the success of the Communist revolution. She stayed for nearly 30 years, experiencing a roller coaster ride through a period of initial promise followed by a series of disasters to the country - disasters that inevitably affected her personally. Still she assessed Mao as 'a great man,' but one who 'had exceeded the limit.' Finally, disillusioned with her life in China, Pamela returned to Australia to start a new life in 1979 and was joined by her Chinese family the following year. She gradually completed her intellectual and spiritual movement away from the socialist ideals that had long sustained her in China to the quite different philosophy of Buddhism. In this honest and informative memoir, Pamela explores her experience, beliefs, confusion, and fear in China, while also providing insight into her young life in Melbourne that contributed to her quest, and her post-China journey once back in Australia. Pamela Tan's engrossing story puts a human face on the tortuous history of Mao's China. The very fact that her story is 'ordinary' provides great testimony to the power of Mao's regime in creating a narrative that could, to a large degree, be sustained even as one disaster after another engulfed the Chinese people. There is much to learn from the parallel stories of an individual we can empathize with, and a system that truly 'exceeded the limit.'' (Publication summary)

'Author Harry Hill was 13 when his father Clem died at age 51 after a hard day of sheep shearing. Clem Hill - born in Brungle, near Tumut, in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains of Australia - had a hard life working as a stockman and a general laborer. The author has reconstructed his father's life, and where information was spare, has carefully researched how such people lived. Harry has illuminated his father's life with material including photographs. He's also supplemented the book with letters home from the World War I battlefront where Clem served in the 36th Battalion, AIF. Clem Hill's life was one of hard work under harsh conditions, tempered by his skill as a bushman. He was My Father is a picture of life in rural Australia before, during, and after World War I and the Depression.' (Publication summary)