Loving Country: A Guide to Sacred Australia by Bruce Pascoe; Vicky Shukuroglou

$45.00 AUD

Category: Travel Guides

Loving Country is a book that inspires ultimate respect for Mother Earth and the role of her custodians. While readers are encouraged to discover the sacred country of Australia in an open-minded and sensitive manner, the intention of this book is to foster communication and understanding between all pe oples and country, to bring about a range of environmental and social changes. Co-authors Bruce Pascoe and Vicky Shukuroglou hope to empower communities to tell their own stories, and for people to honour them and the country from which they have grown. Beautifully designed, all of the writing and photography in Loving Country has been created in consultation with communities. From the ingenious fish traps at Brewarrina and the rivers that feed the Great Barrier Reef, to the love stories of Wiluna and the whale story of Margaret River, there is so much to celebrate and admire about the oldest continuing culture in the world. For those who want to do more than a whistle-stop tour of Australia, this book offers some keys to unlock and reveal the heart of this loving country. ...Show more

Return to Uluru by Mark McKenna

$35.00 AUD

Category: Australian

A killing. A hidden history. A story that goes to the heart of the nation. When Mark McKenna set out to write a history of the centre of Australia, he had no idea what he would discover. One event in 1934 - the shooting at Uluru of Aboriginal man Yokunnuna by white policeman Bill McKinnon, and subseque nt Commonwealth inquiry - stood out as a mirror of racial politics in the Northern Territory at the time. But then, through speaking with the families of both killer and victim, McKenna unearthed new evidence that transformed the historical record and the meaning of the event for today. As he explains, 'Every thread of the story connected to the present in surprising ways.' In a sequence of powerful revelations, McKenna explores what truth-telling and reconciliation look like in practice. Return to Uluru brings a cold case to life. It speaks directly to the Black Lives Matter movement, but is completely Australian. Recalling Chloe Hooper's The Tall Man, it is superbly written, moving, and full of astonishing, unexpected twists. Ultimately it is a story of recognition and return, which goes to the very heart of the country. At the centre of it all is Uluru, the sacred site where paths fatefully converged. 'Mark McKenna has exposed the wounded heart of Australia. Never has a history of our country so assumed the power of sacred myth. Return to Uluru is a spellbinding story of death and resurrection that is Australian to its core.' --James Boyce 'Mark McKenna sets the highest standard for truth-telling of the kind that Australians so urgently need if they are to live in this country with honour. I feel sure that this book will become an Australian classic, not the first of its kind, but certainly the most powerful narrative I have read of frontier injustice and its resonance in our lives today.' --Marcia Langton ...Show more

Truth Telling: History, Sovereignty and the Uluru Statement by Henry Reynolds

$35.00 AUD

Category: Australian

If we are to take seriously the need for telling the truth about our history, we must start at first principles. What if the sovereignty of the First Nations was recognised by European international law in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? What if the audacious British annexation of a whole conti nent was not seen as acceptable at the time and the colonial office in Britain understood that 'peaceful settlement' was a fiction? If the 1901 parliament did not have control of the whole continent, particularly the North, by what right could the new nation claim it? The historical record shows that the argument of the Uluru Statement from the Heart is stronger than many people imagine and the centuries-long legal position about British claims to the land far less imposing than it appears. In Truth-Telling, influential historian Henry Reynolds pulls the rug from legal and historical assumptions, with his usual sharp eye and rigour, in a book that's about the present as much as the past. His work shows exactly why our national war memorial must acknowledge the frontier wars, why we must change the date of our national day, and why treaties are important. Most of all, it makes urgently clear that the Uluru Statement is no rhetorical flourish but carries the weight of history and law and gives us a map for the future.   ...Show more

Killing Sydney - The Fight for a City's Soul by Elizabeth Farrelly

$35.00 AUD

Category: Australian

I've lived in Sydney some thirty years. But I feel that the city I love is under genuine threat. Motorways, Mirrorglass, McMansions: this knock-down-rebuild mentality is everywhere. I get hundreds of emails, all the time, from people who are infuriated, or despairing, over what is happening to Sydney. A nd so, for the first time, I found myself making a secret little vow to the city - I will do what I can to protect you. For architect and writer Elizabeth Farrelly, Sydney was love at first sight. She has called the city home ever since. Moreover, as both city councillor and writer she has influenced and reported the shape of the city for over thirty years. Here, in her signature sharp, erudite and conversational style, she imparts a message that is part-lovesong, part-warning about the home city she adores, covering the history of Sydney's soaring civic buildings and unique public spaces, its present reality of housing crisis and near-continual development - including the human and urban impact of ongoing projects WestConnex, NorthConnex and the F6 Extension, the Powerhouse relocation, the Packer casino, the light rail relocation, the sale of heritage buildings like the Sirius for private apartments, and Darling Harbour - and laying down the gauntlet for its protection as a green, beautiful, affordable and accessible heritage city. ...Show more

People of the River: Lost Worlds of Early Australia by Grace Karskens

$40.00 AUD

Category: Australian

A landmark history of Australia's first successful settler farming area, which was on the Hawkesbury-Nepean River. Award-winning historian Grace Karskens uncovers the everyday lives of ordinary people in the early colony, both Aboriginal and British.  

Black Summer: Stories of Loss, Courage and Community from the 2019-2020 Bushfires by Michael Rowland (Editor)

$35.00 AUD

Category: Australian

Told by ABC journalists who were on the ground and broadcasting during our worst ever fire season, spearheaded by Michael Rowland The bushfires that burnt across Australia from June 2019 to February

Fire Flood and Plague: Australian Writers Respond to This Extraordinary Year by Sophie Cunningham ed.

$30.00 AUD

Category: Australian

Writers, scientists, historians, journalists and commentators consider subjects as broad as culture and the arts, working as a doctor, travel, domestic violence, security, immigration, the death of a loved one, geopolitics, distance and zoom to ensure we never forget the experience of this pile-on of a year. Including original pieces from Lenore Taylor, Nyadol Nuon, Christos Tsiolkas, Melissa Lucashenko, Billy Griffiths, Jess Hill, Kim Scott, Brenda Walker, Jane Rawson, Omar Sakr, Richard McGregor, Jennifer Mills, Gabrielle Chan, John Birmingham, Tim Flannery, Rebecca Giggs, Kate Cole-Adams, George Megalogenis, James Bradley, Alison Croggan, Melanie Cheng, Kirsten Tranter, Tom Griffiths, Joelle Gergis and Delia Falconer.   ...Show more

The Rock: Looking into Australia's 'Heart of Darkness' from the Edge of Its Wild Frontier by Aaron Smith

$30.00 AUD

Category: Australian

Journalist Aaron Smith's new memoir holds up a unique mirror to Australia. What he sees is at once amazing, disturbing and revealing. The Rock explores the failings of our nation's character, its unresolved past and its uncertain future from the vantage point of its most northerly outpost, Thursday Isla nd.Smith was the last editor, fearless journalist and the paperboy of Australia's most northerly newspaper, The Torres News, a small independent regional tabloid that, until it folded in late 2019, was the voice of a predominantly Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal readership for 63 years across some of the most remote and little understood communities in Australia. The Rock is a story of self-discovery where Smith grapples to understand a national identity marred by its racist underbelly, where he is transplanted from his white-boy privileged suburban life to being a racial and cultural minority, and an outsider. Peppered with his experiences, Smith gradually and sensitively becomes embedded in island life while vividly capturing the endless and often farcical parade of personalities and politicians including Scott Morrison and Tony Abbott.Smith pulls no punches while he reflects on the history of Terra Australis incognita, dissecting what is truly Australia, and its gaping cultural and moral divide.'A credit to regional journalism, Aaron carried on the fine tradition of The Torres News holding governments to account and telling stories of everyday life in the Straits, never shying away from controversies, lifting all the rocks and even out foxing Prime Minister Tony Abbott on his visit to Mabo's grave.' Stefan Armbruster, SBS ...Show more

Dead in the Water: A Very Angry Book about Our Greatest Environmental Catastrophe... the Death of the Murray-Darling Basin by Richard Beasley

$30.00 AUD

Category: Australian

Full-throated and provocative, this is a very personal battle cry to save our most precious natural resource.   'I LOVE IT.' Peter FitzSimons'With a deft mixture of outrage, humour and in-depth knowledge, only Beasley could make water policy a page turner.' Craig Reucassel'It's great to shed some more light on the policy creep and mismanagement that is driving environmental degradation of many of the Murray-Darling Basin rivers.' Professor Richard Kingsford, Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists'We want to reset these bio-diversities and the ecologies in our country. We want to see our fish spawning as they once were, our animals coming back down to drink. Fresh quality water out of the Coorong, not this super saline stuff that we're living in today's environment. It's slowly dying. You can smell the impact of what's happening . . .' Grant Rigney, Ngarrindjeri Nation, from his sworn evidence at the Royal Commission into the Murray-Darling Basin.Richard Beasley is fed up. He's fed up with vested interests killing off Australia's most precious water resource. He's fed up with the cowardice and negligence that have allowed Big Agriculture and irrigators to destroy a river system that can sustain both the environment and the communities that depend on it. He's fed up that a noble plan to save Murray-Darling Basin based on the 'best scientific knowledge' has instead been corroded by lies, the denial of climate change, pseudoscience and political expediency.He pulls no punches. He's provocative, he's outrageous, he points the finger without shame. And he will leave you very, very angry. Dead in the Water would be political satire of the highest order . . . if it weren't so tragically true ...Show more

Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe

$23.00 AUD

Category: Australian

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 suggests 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

Truganini: Journey Through Apocalypse by Cassandra Pybus

$33.00 AUD

Category: Australian

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 Briti sh 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

What Ever Happened to Ned Kelly's Head? by Eamon Evans

$30.00 AUD

Category: Australian