AustLit

'Our Mob, God’s Story is an art book with a difference, with more than 115 works in an exciting variety of styles and stories by over 65 established and emerging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists. These artists are well-known and unknown, from communities, towns and cities across Australia, from Tasmania to the Tiwi Islands, from Ceduna to Cairns, from Perth to Wongthaggi, sharing their faith in over one hundred paintings inspired by Bible verses and stories, many well-loved, others not so well known, from Creation to the Crucifixion.

'This publication has been funded by a generous donor and all proceeds will go towards publication of Scripture in mother tongues of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups. With a foreword by distinguished Aboriginal artist and educator Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr Baumann, Our Mob, God’s Story is an important contribution to Australian art. Celebrating the bicentenary of Bible Society in Australia, it is a powerful and beautiful witness to God’s love for the traditional custodians of this ancient continent which we now call Australia, and to the talent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists.

'This beautiful hard-covered book would be a wonderful addition to any book collection. It comes with a dust jacket and slip case, making it perfect for gift-giving. ' (Publication summary)

'On Anzac Day in Australia, people of all ages and nationalities gather at war memorials for the dawn service and line city streets for the march. On this national day of mourning and commemoration, they honour the men and women who returned from war and the sons, fathers, grandfathers and good mates who did not. ' (Publication summary)

'The powerful story of Yvonne Edwards, artist and community leader, who lived on or near the Maralinga lands, and the cost of the fall-out for herself and her family from the nuclear tests in the 1950s.

''Grandfather and Grandmother telling lots of stories. They had to live at Yalata. Their home was bombed. That was their home where the bomb went off. They thought it was mamu tjuta, evil spirits, coming. Everyone was frightened, thinking about people back in the bush. Didn't know what bomb was. Later told it was poison. Parents and grandparents really wanted to go home, used to talk all the time to get their land back.'

'Yvonne Edwards was just six years old when the first bombs of the nuclear tests at Maralinga were detonated in 1956. The tests continued until 1963 and their consequences profoundly affected her family and community.

'This powerful book, by award-winning author Christobel Mattingley, honours Yvonne Edwards' legacy as a highly respected artist and community elder.' (Publication summary)

'It is the 1640s and Claesgen lives in Batavia with her stepmother, Jannetje, waiting weeks, and sometimes months, for her father, Abel Tasman, to come back from his sea voyages. When he returns, Tasman delights his young daughter with tales of treacherous oceans and relentless wild weather, hazards of unseen coral reefs and endless days of empty ocean, encounters - both friendly and hostile - with indigenous peoples, murder and theft, and the threat of smugglers and pirates.

Inspired by a 1637 painting of the Tasman family by Jacob Cuyp and meticulously researched, 'My Father's Islands' is a fictional story told through the voice of Claesgen. Tasman's young daughter's curiosity about her father's life takes the reader on his voyage on the unchartered seas of the Pacific Ocean, in the search for unknown lands and new sources of riches for the powerful trading company, the Dutch East India Company.

Either a gift for young readers or an invaluable resource for the classroom, 'My Father's Islands' opens up to children a significant, but little known, part of Australia's history - the European discovery of parts of the Unknown South Land by the heroic explorer and navigator, Abel Janszoon Tasman.' (Source: Publisher's blurb)

'Ebenezer Edward Gostelow (1866-1944) spent much of his 50-year-long teaching career in country schools across New South Wales. A keen naturalist, he would brighten his blackboards with captivating chalk drawings of birds and flowers. Although not a trained artist, he began to paint as many wildflowers as he could find in the different places where he was teaching. Many of his watercolours depict, in minute detail, buds, flowers, leaves and seeds, arranged in exquisite compositions.

'After retirement, Gostelow gave himself the new challenge of depicting all the recorded species of Australian birds. In For the Love of Nature, a short biography of Gostelow by award-winning author Christobel Mattingley is followed by beautiful full-colour plates of his bird and flower watercolours, drawn from the National Library of Australia's collection of some 860 of Gostelow's works.' (From the publisher's website.)

'There in the shimmering green water lay four big oval shapes like a giant's carving dishes. They were patterned in brownish green and had five handles. Suddenly the handles stirred and the giant's carving dishes began to move!

'Chellie was very small when she first saw the beautiful green turtles with the scientific name so close to her own. Every year she would watch them swim in the sea and make their long journeys up the beach to lay their eggs. But one day, Chellie makes a grim and horrible discovery, a discovery that turns her life upside down and forces her to act.' (Publisher's blurb)

''Bomb doors open!'

'It was the call that haunted airmen's dreams.

'This is the story of an ordinary young Australian whose ambition to fly took him halfway round the globe during World War II - and the fateful mission when his plane was hit three times.' (Publication summary)
 

A collection of poetry about life, nature and faith.