AustLit
History
Sponsored by Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW) Vic. Inc.
Notes
-
Sponsored by Sid Harta Publishing. An award for a non-fiction work, including biography and autobiography, of sustained quality and distinction with an Australian theme.
Latest Winners / Recipients
-
Year: 2011
winner y Into the Unknown : The Tormented Life and Expeditions of Ludwig Leichhardt Sydney : Pan Macmillan Australia , 2012 Z1866450 2012 single work biography'Ludwig Leichhardt is Australia's most intriguing explorer. Born and educated in Prussia in the early 19th century, Leichhardt was a polymath, a man fascinated by the natural world and possessed by a longed for adventure and exploration. Australia was then almost completely unexplored apart from the colonies clustered on its coastline-the interior a vast and mysterious blank. It was a continent and a time ripe for amateur naturalists and explorers, and Leichhardt took up the challenge.
'His expeditions were to begin in triumph, then dwindle into acrimony, despair and misery before finally ending in disappearance and death and giving rise to one of the enduring mysteries of the Australian history.' (From the publisher's website.)