AustLit

'On a starless night Little Brother leaves the safety of the campfire and is captured by the fearsome bunyip. Big Sister will need everything she has learnt about the bush and her Country to rescue Little Brother and escape the bunyip.

'Part Sky Country creation story, part exciting adventure tale, The Bunyip and the Stars is the first in a series of five picture books featuring stories from Australia inspired by the National Museum of Australia's new immersive play space for children - the Tim and Gina Fairfax Discovery Centre.' (Publication summary)

'What the Colonists Never Knew paints a vivid picture of what it was like to grow up Aboriginal in Sydney, alongside the colonists, from 1788 to the present.

'Dennis, the grandson of Clarice Malinda Lougher, the last practising matriarch of the Gai-mariagal clan, was immersed in cultural knowledge and lore from an early age. Through his eyes we see a Sydney of totemic landscapes resonating with ceremonial sites and ancestral activity, song-lines and walking tracks, habitat caves and middens, and share memories of what has been lost.

'At Narrabeen camp in the 1950s we meet Uncle Willie de Serve, a man who wore the scarifications of his ritual life and mentored the young Dennis. 'His face was alive with a thousand stories.'

'Dennis also introduces us to Nanna Watson, who lived in a little humpy at Car-rang gel (North Head). 'On a hot summer's afternoon, she would hitch her dress up round her knees and wriggle around in the sand to get a couple of ugaries (pipis), chew one up and spit it into the water and put the other one on the line, and before you knew it she'd have a big whiting or a bream.'

'Through the stories so generously told we may reflect on what it means to be a stolen child and one of the 'silent generations', and to fight to safeguard culture and identity. We can sense the responsibility of being the senior Gai-mariagal and the last of the storytellers, and the urgency to document and share the knowledge bestowed on him by generations of his family.' (Publication summary)

'Horace is a very big horse with an even bigger heart. Every day he pulls the baker’s cart and helps Old William, Big Bill and Young Billy take bread, buns and other doughy delights to all the people in the town. But when a terrible flu makes everyone sick, who is going to deliver the bread to hungry families? ' (Publication summary)

Art exhibition Yiwarra Kuju: The Canning Stock Route tells the story of the Canning Stock Route's impact on Aboriginal people, and the importance of the Country that surrounds it, through the works of senior and emerging artists and the stories of traditional custodians. (Source: National Museum Australia website)