Radio Girl: The Story of the Extraordinary Mrs Mac, Pioneering Engineer and Wartime Legend by David Dufty

$28.50 AUD

Category: Australian History

All around Australia, former WRANs and navy men regard the woman they know as Mrs Mac with a level of reverence usually reserved for saints. Yet today no-one has any idea of who she was and how she rescued Australia's communication systems in World War II.

Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture by Bruce Pascoe

$21.99 AUD

Category: Indigenous Australians

Dark Emu argues for a reconsideration of the 'hunter-gatherer' tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians and attempts to rebut the colonial myths that have worked to justify dispossession. Accomplished author Bruce Pascoe provides compelling evidence from the diaries of early explorers that sugg ests that systems of food production and land management have been blatantly understated in modern retellings of early Aboriginal history, and that a new look at Australia's past is required. ...Show more

Fire Country: How Indigenous Fire Management Could Save Australia by Victor Steffensen

$28.50 AUD

Category: Indigenous Australians

Delving deep into the Australian landscape and its alarming state of devastation, Fire Country is a powerful account from Indigenous land management expert Victor Steffensen on how the revival of Indigenous fire practices, including what's called 'cool burns', could restore our country.   Fire Coun try offers practical solutions for better 'reading country' and knowing when is the right time to undertake cool burns, considering current climate conditions and each landscape's specific ecosystem. From the age of 18, Victor has spent time on country learning traditional cultural and ecological knowledge from Elders. Having been developed over many generations of his people living on the land, this knowledge shows clearly that Australia actually needs fire - with burning done in a controlled manner - for land care and healing.   Victor's writing is unassuming and honest, written in a manner that reflects the nature of yarning. And while much of the knowledge shared in his book is still unknown to western science, there is much evidence that, if adopted, it will benefit all Australians.   ...Show more

Pathfinders by Michael Bennett

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

There are few Aboriginal icons in White Australia history.From the explorer to the pioneer, the swagman to the drover's wife, with a few bushrangers for good measure, Europeans play all the leading roles. A rare exception is the redoubtable tracker. With skills passed down over millennia, trackers could trace the movements of people across vast swathes of country. Celebrated as saviours of lost children and disoriented adults, and finders of missing livestock, they were also cursed by robbers on the run.Trackers live in the collective memory as one of the few examples of Aboriginal people's skills being sought after in colonial society. In New South Wales alone, more than a thousand Aboriginal men and a smaller number of women toiled for authorities across the state after 1862. This book tells the often unlikely stories of trackers including Billy Bogan, Jimmy Governor, Tommy Gordon, Frank Williams and Alec Riley.Through his work on native title claims, historian Michael Bennett realised that the role of trackers - and how they moved between two worlds - has been largely unacknowledged. His important book reveals that their work grew out of traditional society and was sustained by the vast family networks that endure to this day. Pathfinders brings the skilled and diverse work of trackers not only to the forefront of law enforcement history but to the general shared histories of black and white Australia. ...Show more

Tell Me Why: The Story of My Life and My Music (HB) by Archie Roach

$39.99 AUD

Category: Australian Biography | Reading Level: 3 Biography

INDIE AWARD WINNER 2020A powerful memoir of a true Australian legend: stolen child, musical and lyrical genius, and leader. No one has lived as many lives as Archie Roach - stolen child, seeker, teenage alcoholic, lover, father, musical and lyrical genius, and leader - but it took him almost a lifetime to find out who he really was. Roach was only a few years old when he was forcibly removed from his family. Brought up by a series of foster parents until his early teens, his world imploded when he received a letter that spoke of a life he had no memory of. In this intimate, moving and often shocking memoir, Roach's story is an extraordinary odyssey through love and heartbreak, family and community, survival and renewal - and the healing power of music. Overcoming enormous odds to find his story and his people, Roach voices the joy, pain and hope he found on his path through song to become the legendary singer-songwriter and storyteller that he is today - beloved by fans worldwide. Tell Me Why is a stunning account of resilience and the strength of spirit - and of a great love story. ...Show more

Lismore: From Lios Mor to Tuckurimba by Maurice Ryan

$15.00 AUD

Category: Australiana

This new history looks to incorporate insights from changes in the Lismore community, as well as presenting an overall history of Lismore.

The Jawsome Coast(s) Ed. 2

$35.00 AUD

Category: Australiana

Then and Now

$10.00 AUD

Category: Australiana

A Stroll Around the Block - Exploring Lismore's CBD Heritage

$25.00 AUD

Category: Australiana

On a Barbarous Coast by Craig Cormick; Harold Ludwick

$28.50 AUD

Category: Australiana

On a Barbarous Coast is an alternative retelling of Captain James Cook's story co-written by Craig Cormick and Harold Ludwick in the tradition of imagined histories. We were becoming the wild things we most feared, but could not see it at the time.On a night of raging winds and rain, Captain Cook's&nbs p;Endeavour lies splintered on a coral reef off the coast of far north Australia. A small disparate band of survivors, fracturing already, huddle on the shore of this strange land - their pitiful salvage scant protection from the dangers of the unknown creatures and natives that live here. Watching these mysterious white beings, the Guugu Yimidhirr people cannot decide if they are ancestor spirits to be welcomed - or hostile spirits to be speared. One headstrong young boy, Garrgiil, determines to do more than watch and to be the one to find out what exactly they are. Fierce, intriguing and thoughtful, On a Barbarous Coast is the story of a past and future that might have been.'Australia's "origin" story brilliantly re-imagined, in which Indigenous Australians rightfully assume their central place.' Susan Johnson, author of The Broken Book ...Show more

Remembering Bob by Sue Pieters-Hawke (Editor); Louise Swinn (Editor)

$24.99 AUD

Category: Australiana | Reading Level: 3 Biography

Bob Hawke's death in May 2019 sparked national mourning across the country as we remembered just how important Bob had been in the shaping of modern Australia. In an age when political personas have become increasingly formulaic and predictable, Bob was a man of glorious contradictions. He was a Rhodes Scholar who also had a deep affinity and understanding for mainstream Australia. He was a passionate ACTU officer and president who also knew how to work with big business. He loved his sport, a drink and a bet, yet was also deeply intellectual in his approach to policy. In an age when our respect for politicians has never been lower, we respected Bob. The huge public outpouring of grief after his death showed that we loved him too. This book, instigated and edited by Bob's eldest daughter, Sue Pieters-Hawke, is a collection of stories and memories about Bob by his family, friends, colleagues, old political foes, and ordinary Australians whose paths crossed that of their everyman Prime Minister. Each of them brings a vivid and personal view of this extraordinary man, that taken together offer a true reflection of the person he was, and what he meant to us all.   ...Show more

Truganini: Journey through the Apocalypse by Cassandra Pybus

$31.50 AUD

Category: Indigenous Australians

The haunting story of the extraordinary Aboriginal woman behind the myth of 'the last Tasmanian Aborigine'. 'A compelling story, beautifully told' - JULIA BAIRD, author and broadcaster 'At last, a book to give Truganini the proper attention she deserves.' - GAYE SCULTHORPE, Curator of Oceania, The Bri tish Museum Cassandra Pybus's ancestors told a story of an old Aboriginal woman who would wander across their farm on Bruny Island, in south-east Tasmania, in the 1850s and 1860s. As a child, Cassandra didn't know this woman was Truganini, and that Truganini was walking over the country of her clan, the Nuenonne. For nearly seven decades, Truganini lived through a psychological and cultural shift more extreme than we can imagine. But her life was much more than a regrettable tragedy. Now Cassandra has examined the original eyewitness accounts to write Truganini's extraordinary story in full. Hardly more than a child, Truganini managed to survive the devastation of the 1820s, when the clans of south-eastern Tasmania were all but extinguished. She spent five years on a journey around Tasmania, across rugged highlands and through barely penetrable forests, with George Augustus Robinson, the self-styled missionary who was collecting the survivors to send them into exile on Flinders Island. She has become an international icon for a monumental tragedy - the so-called extinction of the original people of Tasmania. Truganini's story is inspiring and haunting - a journey through the apocalypse. 'For the first time a biographer who treats her with the insight and empathy she deserves. The result is a book of unquestionable national importance.' - PROFESSOR HENRY REYNOLDS, University of Tasmania ...Show more