Bright Swallow, a young girl labelled as of 'bad origins' in Mao's Cultural Revolution, becomes motherless at fifteen in 1972. Determined to live a full life like her mother had known, she seizes every chance, creates choices where there appear to be none and finally has the world open up to her. The memoir distinguishes itself from other accounts of this period in being a story of hope. It celebrates resilience, the power of lite ...
Martin Flanagan, journalist at the Age, has often written of the great Wonders of Australian Sport, his love of the AFL, of the importance of Aboriginal players in the highest echelons of Australian sport. A few years ago he threw himself at the mysterious and distressed figure of Tom Wills – our early Colonial cricket celebrity, who put together the Aboriginal Cricket Team set for Great Britain in 1868 – and helped write the original Code for A ...
Joe Thompson was born in the small mining town of Minmi, north of Newcastle in 1889. This book follows his life there as a Pupil Teacher, to the Balmain area, where he played soccer for both Balmain and New South Wales, to a role as an instructor with the fledgling Royal Australian Navy. His marriage to Marjorie Roberts took them to Mudgee, where he continued teaching and began a family in 1921. Written by Joe's eldest son, Geoffrey Thompso ...
In 1940, a seventeen year old girl Carys Harding Browne comes of age in Adelaide, Australia. At this time young clever men meet together at St, Mark's University College to share their love of poetry. By December 1940, St. Marks is leased to the Royal Australian Airforce as an embarkation depot. The Second World War is in earnest. This story is about young people growing up and falling in love against the backdrop of war where dances, frien ...
The extraordinary story of a classic Australian Pioneer – told by Australia's 'Boswell of the Bush', Ion L. Idriess.<br /> <br />Almost single-handedly John Flynn of the Australian Inland Mission brought to the outback the Flying Doctor Service and the Bush Hospitals. His magnificent vision, formed as he travelled on the back of a camel across the vast space of Australia's outback, took a lifetime of courageous co ...
This is the story of a journey to Southern California, home of the American Dream, in search of fame and fortune.<br /> <br />An Australian couple of mixed German-Chinese origin with their six-year old son Maximilian leave their settled life in Sydney to move to California. The boy's Mandarin name is Xiaolong, meaning Little Dragon, and the dream of his mother is that he will one day become the number one golf player in the worl ...
Martin Sharp was an integral part of international Pop Art in the 1960s, magnified through his covers for OZ magazine in Sydney and London, his covers for Cream, and posters of Dylan, Hendrix and Donovan. His efforts at making The Yellow House and Luna Park cultural precincts, were aided by his screen prints and exhibitions to flaunt the work of others, especially the singer Tiny Tim. In this second of two volumes, Lowell Tarling offers us a way ...
Alister Kershaw was a member of the lively crew of poets, painters, musicians and marginal madcaps who made up Melbourne's artistic avant-garde in the Thirties and Forties. In this book he recalls some of the people he knew in those distant heydays.<br /> <br />Here are Albert Tucker and James Gleeson, who were savaged by Kershaw in a notorious satirical poem but who later became good friends of his. The youthful Max Harris is d ...
There was only one Phar Lap: There is only one 'Oppy' – Courier Mail, 1932.<br /> <br />Hubert 'Oppy' Opperman was a sporting icon, a cycling phenomenon whose epic feats of endurance captivated the world. For over two decades, he dominated almost every race he entered and shattered record after record in Australia and Great Britain. In 1928, he led the first Australasian team to ever contest the Tour de Franc ...