Finally, convicted murderess Louisa Collins can tell her own story. But will she confess?To lose one husband may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like murder.Louisa Collins was hung in New South Wales in 1889. She was tried four times for the alleged murders of her two husbands. In three of those trials the juries could not agree that she was guilty. At her fourth trial the testimony of Louisa's young daughter, May, contributed to Louisa's conviction. Intimately reimagined from Louisa's perspective, with a story that just might fit the historical facts, this clever and compelling novel visits Louisa in her prison cell as she reflects on her life and the death and loss that have dictated her fate. Will she confess? Or was an innocent woman brutally hanged?
A brilliant short story collection by awarded novelist and former Vogel winner Bernard Cohen.Parked in by furious rich people, mid-divorce, a man misses his lunchtime gambling session. All the girls named Ella form a diagonal across the teacher's new classroom. Diseased cattle burn in fields around the country – it is a cameraman's role to frame the images for TV. A swagman jumps into a billabong, or was he pushed?Bernard Cohen's stories are filled with incisive perspectives, captivating wit and dark, sharp humour.
A wild roller-coaster ride through the ups and downs of motherhood and mental illness. At 26, Nikki found herself knocking on her best friend's door with a suitcase, a jar of coins and two little boys – all she had in the world. Madness, Mayhem and Motherhood is her funny, sad and brutally candid account of her life through poverty, homelessness, child-rearing, friendships, lust, love and loss.Whether she was cleaning the houses of millionaires to put food on the table, falling hard for The Wiggles, drowning in cask wine, living in a tent or dealing with predatory landlords, Nikki refused to go under and tethered her survival to her love for her children, which pulled her through the darkest days. In Madness, Mayhem and Motherhood, the struggles are raw but the laughs are loud and the love is palpable. Being a poor, mad mother has its challenges but Nikki McWatters humanises the face of poverty, while arm-wrestling her mental illness into submission and packing school lunches like a boss. Madness, Mayhem and Motherhood is a powerful, touching and wildly entertaining story of maternal endurance.
A pioneering study of early trade and beach communities in the Pacific Islands and first published in 1977, this book provides historians with an ambitious survey of early European?olynesian contact, an analysis of how early trade developed along with the beachcomber community, and a detailed reconstruction of development of the early Pacific port towns. Set mainly in the first half of the 19th century, continuing in some cases for a few decades more, the book covers five ports: Kororareka (now Russell, in New Zealand), Levuka (Fiji), Apia (Samoa), Papeete (Tahiti) and Honolulu (Hawai'i). The role of beachcombers, the earliest European inhabitants, as well as the later consuls or commercial agents, and the development of plantation economies is explored. The book is a tour de force, the first detailed comparative academic study of these early precolonial trading towns and their race relations. It argues that the predominantly egalitarian towns where Islanders, beachcombers, traders, and missionaries mixed were largely harmonious, but this was undermined by later arrivals and larger populations.
During the freezing English winter of 1962, seventeen-year-old Radford is sent to Goodwin Manor, a home for boys who have been ‘found by trouble’.Drawn immediately to the charismatic West, Radford soon discovers that each one of them has something to hide. Life at the Manor offers a refuge of sorts, but unexpected arrivals threaten the world the boys have built. Will their friendship be enough when trouble finds them again?At once both beautiful and brutal, The Everlasting Sunday is a haunting debut novel about growing up, growing wild and what it takes to survive.
When Josepha Dietrich was 21, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Years later, after her mother’s death, the disease reared up in Josie’s own cells. She was 35, and her high-needs son was not yet one.As the daughter of a woman who had sought out alternatives to conventional medicine, Josie used her own knowledge and her mother’s experience to find solutions for herself. Later, with what she’d learnt, she also helped her son rise out of his autistic state.Capturing Josie’s energy and force-of-nature personality, In Danger tells of her journey through breast cancer, exploring disease and the human condition, and shedding light on life’s darker aspects. At its heart, this moving memoir delves deep into how it feels when everything you love is in danger.
She''s big.She''s smart.She''s mean.She''s the bully on the bus.She picks on me and I don''t like it.But I don''t know how to make her stop.The bully on the bus taunts seven-year-old Leroy, then silences him with threats of worse to come. To distract him, his teacher introduces him to the adventures in The Big Bad Book of Fairytales. Hidden throughout are the clues that Leroy needs to overcome the bullying taunts once and for all.
Former Greens leader Christine Milne tells her story through 18 objects, interweaving the personal and political to recount a truly inspirational life.
The first published collection of poetry by literary legend Thea Astley
If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, how do you plan for the best death possible?
This is more than a book about soccer - it is the story of Australia's national identity.
An innovative, imaginative work of biography, examining Bertha and Henry Lawson's marriage through a modern lens.
Nothing is as it seems in this twisted fairytale of moral ambiguity and corrupted innocence. Just as the tropical beauty of The Frangipani Gardens conceals its inherent menace, watercolour painter Doll lives a prim, respectable existence belying her wildest fantasies. But when her young niece and nephew come to stay, Doll’s true self threatens to be exposed.Barbara Hanrahan was a prolific Australian visual artist and author, publishing fifteen books in under two decades. The Frangipani Gardens, first released in 1980, was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year, her second shortlisting for the award in as many years. Her bestselling semi-autobiographical novel The Scent of Eucalyptus remains in print.
In Scoundrel Days Brentley Frazer tells the story of his youth – wild, disillusioned, impassioned and desolate. Born into a Christian cult in outback Queensland, Frazer escapes through literature and poetry, drugs and violence, sex and alcohol; and his ensuing rejection of religion, authority and the 'way things are' leads to adventures, desperation and, just possibly, redemption.Beautifully written and urgently told, Scoundrel Days is a visceral, compelling assault on the senses. An at times brutal story articulated with a poet’s sensibility, it portrays a walker of edges exploring the dark side while searching for the love essential to build a soul.
On 10 January 2011, after weeks of heavy rain and as floodwaters began to overwhelm much of south-east Queensland, a ‘wall of water’ hit Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley.The Torrent tells the extraordinary stories of survival and loss that emerged from that terrible day. Official figures state that twenty-four people died. Many escaped death only because they were rescued by members of the community or through sheer good fortune.Based on exclusive interviews with survivors, rescuers and with the families and friends of victims of the disaster, The Torrent is a unique and powerful account of human courage in the face of the devastating forces of nature.In this expanded and updated new edition, Gearing re-interviews the survivors to discover how they are getting on, recounts the traumatic findings of the Grantham inquiry, and captures the enduring and resilient spirit of the communities affected.
In this captivating memoir, Linda Neil shares stories of travel, taking us from the glitz of Shanghai to wintry London, from the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar to inner-city Sydney. Writing songs and playing music as she traverses the globe, Linda finds her life enriched in ways she never could have imagined. As she forges unexpected connections with people, places and even her past, she discovers that everyone everywhere has their own story to tell.
Me, Antman & Fleabag is packed to the roof with wicked black humour, eccentric aunties, six-fingered redheads, and martyrs to the cause of sheep well-being – all carried along with a dose of Slim Dusty for good measure. Gayle Kennedy has a gift for telling tales and making them sparkle with warmth and pathos in equal measure.Me, Antman & Fleabag is a funny and incisive look at contemporary Indigenous Australian life and the family and friends that make it up. So hold on to your boongalungs; this’ll be a crackin ride.
What is going on in the often troubled town of Alice Springs?On the streets of Alice Springs, in town camps, drinking camps and out on the highway, in gatherings awash with alcohol, men kill one another in seemingly senseless acts of aggression and revenge. Men kill their wives, families feud, women join the fighting and, in the wings, children watch and learn. From the ordered environment of the courtroom, Trouble lays out in detail some of this deep disorder in the town''s recent history.Drawing on her decades as a journalist in Central Australia, as well as experience of its everyday life, Kieran Finnane recognises a story beyond the horror and tragedy of the events, the guilt or innocence of perpetrators, to witness a town and region being painfully remade. In this groundbreaking book, we hear the voices from Australia''s troubled heart and gain a unique insight into the challenges and potential of this hard and beautiful place.
Jack & Mollie (& Her) is an exuberant, original and wildly inventive verse novel, which tells the story of 'J' through the eyes of her two dogs, Jack and Mollie. The dogs are adopted by J at a time when she is downcast, and their presence in her life proves vivifying and redemptive. In between the dogs' adventures, they provide observant commentary on her life.
Ava Langdon is often not herself. Having fled her early life in New Zealand and endured the loss of her children, she now lives as a recluse in the Blue Mountains. Regarded by locals as a colourful eccentric, she dresses in men's clothes and fearlessly pursues her artistic path. All that matters to Ava is her writing. Words offer beauty and a sense of possibility when so much else has been lost. But can they offer her redemption in her last days? Poetic, poignant, and at times bitingly funny, The Last Days of Ava Langdon takes us into the mind of a true maverick.
With a foreword by Quentin Bryce, AD, CVO 'This island, this solitude, this rainy day, this stack of blank paper, I shall transform you, by these sorceries I have learned, into the stuff of friendship.' Barbara Blackman has been a muse and an iconic Australian arts identity throughout her long life. This collection of essays, All My Januaries, is both insightful and memorable. Ranging from her Brisbane childhood to her marriage to renowned artist Charles Blackman, her time in London and Paris, and her life beyond, these essays capture her love of language and her acerbic wit. Blind since her twenties, Barbara Blackman has been an artist's model, broadcaster, poet, librettist and essayist. All My Januaries celebrates this remarkable journey as she reflects on food, travel, friendships, family and the many unexpected pleasures of life.
The role of Aboriginal servicemen and women has only recently been brought to the forefront of conversation about Australia's war history. This important book makes a key contribution to recording the role played by Indigenous Australians in our recent military history. Written by two respected historians and based on a substantial number of interviews with Indigenous war veterans who have hitherto been without a voice, it combines the best of social and military history in one book. This will be the first book to focus on this previously neglected part of Australian social history.
Born on a remote island in Papua New Guinea to a migrant Chinese father and indigenous mother, Julius Chan overcame poverty, discrimination, and family tragedy to become one of Papua New Guinea's longest-serving and most influential politicians. His 50-year career, including two terms as Prime Minister, encompasses a crucial period of Papua New Guinea's history, particularly its coming of age from an Australian colony to a leading democratic nation in the South Pacific. Chan has played a significant role during these decades of political, economic and social change. Playing the Game offers unique insights into one of the world's most ancient and complex tribal cultures. It also explores the vexed issues of increasing corruption, government failure, and the unprecedented exploitation of its precious natural resources. In the first memoir by a Papua New Guinean leader in forty years, Sir Julius Chan explores his decision in 1997 to hire a private military force, Sandline International, to quell the ongoing civil crisis in Bougainville. This controversial deal sparked worldwide outrage, cost Sir Julius the prime ministership and led to ten years in the political wilderness. He was re-elected as Governor of New Ireland in 2007, aged 68, a seat he has held ever since. Playing the Game is an authentic and compelling account of Chan's private and political life, and offers a rare insight into how the modern nation of Papua New Guinea came to be, the vision and values it was founded on, and the extraordinary challenges it faces in the 21st century.
An exquisite, compelling story of courage, destiny and the search for homeLithuania, 1913. Haunted by memories of the pogroms, Jacob Frank leaves his village in the hope of a better life, and boards a ship bound for New York. Twenty-five years later, his daughter Bertha sets sail for South Africa to marry a man she has never met, unaware of the tumult that lies ahead. In time, her granddaughter Shelley, following those very steps in reverse, flees the violence of apartheid to live in America, before at last finding home in Australia. These immigrant voyages, repeated from one generation to the next, form the heart of this richly layered memoir. Drawing on her grandmother''s diary and letters, Shelley Davidow tells her family''s stories in vivid detail, recounting their experiences of love and loss alongside her own. As she learns about the past, Shelley discovers that her aspirations and fears, her dreams and nightmares, echo those of her forebears as ancestral whisperings in the blood. Spanning four continents and one hundred years, this extraordinary book explores the heartache and emotional legacies of those who leave their homelands forever.
A vital Aboriginal perspective on colonial storytelling Indigenous lawyer and writer Larissa Behrendt has long been fascinated by the story of Eliza Fraser, who was purportedly captured by the local Butchulla people after she was shipwrecked on their island in 1836. In this deeply personal book, Behrendt uses Eliza's tale as a starting point to interrogate how Aboriginal people - and indigenous people of other countries - have been portrayed in their colonizers' stories. Citing works as diverse as Robinson Crusoe and Coonardoo, she explores the tropes in these accounts, such as the supposed promiscuity of Aboriginal women, the Europeans' fixation on cannibalism, and the myth of the noble savage. Ultimately, Behrendt shows how these stories not only reflect the values of their storytellers but also reinforce those values - which in Australia led to the dispossession of Aboriginal people and the laws enforced against them.
An important addition to UQP''s internationally acclaimed Peace & Conflict Studies seriesWest Papua is a secret story. On the western half of the island of New Guinea, hidden from the world, in a place occupied by the Indonesian military since 1963, continues a remarkable nonviolent struggle for national liberation. In Merdeka and the Morning Star, academic Jason MacLeod gives an insider''s view of the trajectory and dynamics of civil resistance in West Papua. Here, the indigenous population has staged protests, boycotts, strikes and other nonviolent actions against repressive rule.This is the first in-depth account of civilian-led insurrection in West Papua, a movement that has transitioned from guerrilla warfare to persistent nonviolent resistance. MacLeod analyses several case studies, including tax resistance that pre-dates Gandhi''s Salt March by two decades, worker strikes at the world''s largest gold and copper mine, daring attempts to escape Indonesian rule by dugout canoe, and the collection of a petition in which signing meant to risk being shot dead.Merdeka and the Morning Star is a must-read for all those interested in Indonesia, the Pacific, self-determination struggles and nonviolent ways out of occupation.
Born from a secret liaison between a British mother and an Icelandic father, Kári Gíslason was the subject of a promise: a promise elicited by his father not to reveal his identity in order to spare his wife and five other children. At the age of 27, Kári decides to break the pact between his parents by contacting his father's family; what follows makes for a riveting journey over landscapes, time, and memory. From the shark net at Sydney's Balmoral and an unsettled life in the English countryside to the harsh yellow summer of Brisbane and the freezing cold winters of Iceland, the author traces his mother's steps into the arms of a secret lover. At the culmination of this poignant, painful, and joyous story, Kári's determination to defy his father's wishes results in his uniting with his relatives.
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