One Day I'll Remember This: Diaries 1987-1995 by Helen Garner

$29.99 AUD

Category: Australian

Helen Garner's second volume of diaries charts a tumultuous stage in her life. Beginning in 1987, as she embarks on an affair that she knows will be all-consuming, and ending in 1995 with the publication of The First Stone and the bombshell that followed it, Garner reveals the inner life of a woman in l ove and a great writer at work. With devastating honesty, she grapples with what it means for her sense of self to be so entwined with another--how to survive as an artist in a partnership that is both thrilling and uncompromising. And through it all we see the elevating, and grounding, power of work.   ...Show more

The Time of Our Lives by Robert Dessaix

$26.99 AUD

Category: Australian | Reading Level: Adult

At the height of his powers in this remarkable (and often witty) book, Robert Dessaix addresses these increasingly urgent questions in inimitable prose and comes up with some surprising answers. From Java to Hobart via Berlin, Dessaix invites us to eavesdrop on his intimate, no-nonsense conversations ab out ageing with friends and chance acquaintances. Reflecting on time, religion, painting, dancing and even grandchildren, Dessaix takes us on an enlivening journey across the landscape of growing older. Riffing on writers and thinkers from Plato to Eva Hoffman, he homes in on the crucial importance of a rich inner life. The Time of Our Lives is a wise and timely exploration of not just the challenges but also the many possibilities of old age. ...Show more

Still Life with Teapot: On Zen, Writing and Creativity by Brigid Lowry

$27.99 AUD

Category: Australian

The good thing about being my age is that if you haven't grown up already, you don't have to. What do you do when you start talking to yourself on the bus? If you're the writer Brigid Lowry, you change tack and write a book about what it means to be an ageing woman in the 21st century In Still Life wi th Teapot Lowry offers advice, observations, hope and reality checks in equal measure. She drops us straight into the writer's world - into the nuts and bolts of writing practice and into the art of life and ways to write about it. Still Life with Teapot is an essential brew for people who love to make lists, for people who love to write and for people who love to read about writing. ...Show more

A Question of Colour - My Journey to Belonging by Patricia Lees; Adam C. Lees (As told to)

$22.99 AUD

Category: Australian

'These two children have been in our Home in Townsville for more than two years, and in view of their very dark colouring, have not been assimilated into the white race. Every effort has been made to place them in a foster home without success because of their colour.' Queensland State Children's Depart ment correspondence, 21 June 1960. The removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families remains a dark chapter in Australia's history. Pattie Lees was just ten-years-old when she and her four siblings were separated from their mother on the grounds of neglect and placed into State care. Believing she was being shipped and exiled to Africa, Pattie was ultimately fated to spend the rest of her childhood on the island once dubbed 'Australia's Alcatraz' –Palm Island Aboriginal Settlement, off the coast of Queensland. A Question of Colour; my journey to belonging provides a first-hand account of Pattie's experiences as a 'fair-skinned Aboriginal' during Australia's assimilationist policy era and recounts her survival following a decade of sexual, physical and emotional abuse as a Ward of the State. A Question of Colour is a deeply moving and powerful testimony to the resilience of a young girl, her identity and her journey to belong. ...Show more

Truths From an Unreliable Witness by Fiona O'Loughlin

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian

A fiercely honest and wryly funny memoir from one of Australia's most loved comedians shows us that no matter how far down you get, there is always a way back. Fiona O'Loughlin was raised in the generation of children who were to be seen, but not heard ... unless there were guests in the house. Then she 'd watch everyone, telling stories, making each other laugh. This was where she discovered the rhythm of stories and the lubrication that alcohol leant the telling. Years later, as a mum of five, Fiona would become one of Australia's most-loved comedians, performing gigs in New York, Montreal, Singapore, London, Toronto and Edinburgh. Fiona looked like she was living her dream - but she was hiding a secret in open sight, using alcoholism as material for her comedy and using comedy as an excuse for her alcoholism. Truths from an Unreliable Witness is a fiercely honest and wryly funny memoir of melancholy, love, marriage, the loss of love and marriage, homelessness, of hotel rooms strewn with empty mini-bar bottles of vodka, of waking from a two-week coma, of putrid drug dens and using a jungle to confront yourself. It is about hitting rock bottom and then realising you are only halfway down. Ultimately, it's about hanging on to your last straw of sanity and finding laughter in the darkest of times. You may want to sit down for this...   ...Show more

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

$34.99 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

Kate Kelly: The True Story of Ned Kelly's Little Sister by Rebecca Wilson

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian

Kate Kelly has always been overshadowed by her famous brother Ned, but the talented young woman was a popular public figure in her own right. This moving biography tells her astonishing story in full for the first time.Kate Kelly, the daring sister of legendary bushranger Ned Kelly, was mysteriously fou nd dead in a lagoon outside the town of Forbes in 1898. At the inquest, Kate's husband Bricky Foster claimed that she was addicted to drink and frequently spoke of suicide. However, a friend and neighbour testified that she had only known Kate to drink since the recent birth of her baby and that she never spoke of suicide. Was it suicide, accident or murder, and why had she changed her name to Ada? Kate's exploits as a decoy and runner for the Kelly gang are well known, as is her presence at the gruesome Glenrowan siege, and the street protests that failed to save Ned's life. In the years after Ned's execution, she appeared at public gatherings around Australia. Huge crowds came to see her talk and ride, and she helped to popularise the Ned Kelly story, becoming a celebrity in her own right. Then she disappeared from the public eye. Rebecca Wilson is the first to uncover what really happened to Kate Kelly. It will surprise anyone who thought they already knew the story of Australia's most famous outlaw.   ...Show more

Top End Girl by Miranda Tapsell

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian

'Ever since I was thirteen years old, all I wanted to do was perform. It was an unusual dream for a kid from the Northern Territory to have ... what I wanted for my life was a world away from what people knew and loved about the "Top End". Even though I've moved south to become an actor, the Territory h as never left me. It's the place I go to when I want to feel whole again.' From Kakadu to Cannes, Miranda Tapsell is one of Australia's favourite actors. A proud Larrikia woman, she built a stellar career on stage, and shot to fame in The Sapphires and then in Love Child and Doctor, Doctor. Growing up, Miranda often looked for faces like hers on our screens. There weren't many. And too often there was a negative narrative around Indigenous lives, and Aboriginal women especially. Now an award-winning actor, she decided to change things herself. Combining her love of romantic comedies with her love of Darwin, the Tiwi Islands and the Top End, Miranda wrote, produced and starred in the box office hit Top End Wedding. But who the hell co-writes, produces and acts in a film about a wedding in the same year they're having their own? Miranda Tapsell does! In this engaging and thought-provoking memoir, Top End Girl, Miranda shares the path she took to create a moving film about re-connection to family and culture at the same time as she was planning her own wedding. And, like all good story-tellers, she holds a mirror up to the society we live in to show the prejudice that too often surfaces. Miranda knows that the key to change is to understand and through the power of storytelling she is changing attitudes and expectations to unite us all.   ...Show more

Stay greasy baby by Stevie Belowsky

$29.99 AUD

Category: Australian

A Boy Miner

$22.00 AUD

Category: Australian

Two Cultures, One Story by Robert Isaacs

$24.99 AUD

Category: Australian

'I stood at the school gates with nothing but the clothes on my back. I had no money, no family, no home — nothing to show for the past 16 years except my cheap cardboard suitcase and a reasonable grasp of reading, writing and arithmetic … I didn't know what I was going to do next, but I knew that whate ver it would be, it would be on my own terms.' — Prologue, Two Cultures, One StoryDr Robert Francis Isaacs AM, OAM, PhD (Hon) has spent his life bridging the divide between white and black Australia. Taken from his mother as a baby, Robert was raised in institutions not knowing he had a family and not knowing he was Aboriginal.Enduring severe hardship, discipline and abuse at the hands of the Christian Brothers, Robert went out into the world at the age of 16 determined to make a life for himself and a family of his own.A chance encounter with a member of his extended family would help shape the rest of his life. Determined to both embrace his culture and build on his faith and education, Robert immersed himself in the world of Aboriginal health and housing, proving to be a straight-talking, deft political negotiator who can achieve real outcomes for Aboriginal people. Over the decades, Robert brings his considerable interpersonal skills to bear in the areas of alcohol and drug abuse, employment, relations with the police, the justice system and education.Told with grace and strength, this memoir shares the inside story of a respected Elder and his drive to break down cultural barriers and improve the lives of his people. ...Show more

An Ordinary Life by Luke Pomery

$19.99 AUD

Category: Australian

When the author was just 9 years old, he and his mother took an epic bus journey to his new home — a 450,000 acre sheep station outside of Meekatharra, just south of the Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia. It was here where the achingly hard work of helping to  run a sheep station began until he wa s sent to boarding school in Geraldton when was 12. At 17, Luke was all about bongs, cheap alcohols and living on the fringes — until he decided to go home to South Australia.   ...Show more