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A biographical account of extraordinary events in the career of Leo W. Stach, an expatriate geologist, during war and peace in the Western Pacific region, based on official documents as well as personal written records, together with his recollections, as narrated to the author, Kerry B. Collison, during a series of recorded interviews from December 1996 to June 1997.

Vikki Petraitis took to writing true crime because, unlike crime fiction, it was so raw and it told the story of real people, real grief, real loss, real horror.

A school teacher by day, Vikki had no idea that writing one book about one unsolved murder would give her a second career that has run alongside her chosen profession for 25 years.

She has researched, investigated and written about real Australian crimes, from the well-known to the obscure; and interviewed countless police, crime scene professionals, victims, survivors and families. She did ride-alongs with members of Victoria Police so she could learn about their most memorable cases, and found herself right there with them when a serial killer's third victim was found. Vikki spent time with the dog squad learning how the four-legged police officers are trained to work with their two-legged partners. And she's become biographer to two well-known former cops, and to one of the many victims of institutional child abuse. Her career as a true crime writer has resulted in 13 books and counting, with subjects and titles as diverse as The Frankston Serial Killer, Crime Scene Investigations, Forensics, Cops, Once a Copper: Brian 'the Skull' Murphy, and the one that started it all - The Phillip Island Murder.

Inside the Law is Vikki's life in crime; a collection of her favourite, personally influential, most memorable stories with a fresh narrative thread of the why, when and how she came to write them.

Ion “Jack” Idriess (1889 – 1979) is recognised as one of Australia’s great storytellers, having published over 50 books including the Outback tales of Lasseter’s Last Ride, Flynn of the Inland, and The Cattle King alongside major histories of Broken Hill, Broome and Cooktown.

 

This book is his last interview in 1975, prompted by the then-young Tim Bowden, for a possible ABC Radio program that did not eventuate due to Idriess's fading voice. Within this book Idriess talks of his early years in Broken Hill, he tells of his earliest writing for the Bulletin, on living and photographing Aboriginal tribes in the Kimberlys and Cape York; on the writing of his books like Madman’s Island and My Mate Dick; his life with the pearlers of Broome and Thursday Island; on the joys of prospecting, living in the Wild, and on Lasseter and his diary.

 

Full of colourful characters and true stories, Ion Idriess allows us into his unbridled enthusiasm for Australian and Aboriginal history.

This immaculately and painstakingly researched book, through its biographies of Oxley, Evans, Fraser and Harris explains the impulses that drove these men to explore and map the colony, to collect, identify and categorise its flora. But it succeeds in doing more than that because it also elucidates the motivations that drove them to become colonial entrepreneurs, farmers and businessmen, who in the pursuit of individual wealth advanced colonial prosperity. This important book makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of Australia's European origins. - Emeritus Professor Richard Waterhouse

We are all on a journey. In life we are given a humble start and travel then individually. 'Journey of a Lifetime, Volume One' recounts the bumpy beginnings of my own journey, that of an ordinary citizen: World War II, refuge, childhood in after-war-Germany, exploring first: Europe, Asia Minor, North-Africa, where I met other people in their own environment and learnt also from them.

Everything finds a place in a "Journey of a lifetime": controversy, challenges, education, efforts, hobbies, work, travels, romance, disappointments and successes.

Courage with a positive outlook overcomes many hurdles in this autobiography.

'Journey of a Lifetime, Volume Two' is the second chapter in the author's life, offering reflections of his life with a family of eight. The reader is taken across four continents until Martin and his family finally settle contentedly in Australia.

A baby is born in Warsaw in 1939. Stalin has signed a pact of nonaggression with Hitler, marking the beginnings of the Second World War. As the city is attacked, Ola, a young nurse, escapes with her husband-to-be and their newborn baby to a small town in Soviet territory just across the border. Two years later, when the German forces attack the Soviets, she is separated from her partner and again has to flee. With immense courage and resourcefulness, Ola keeps herself alive, along with her baby Halina and the twenty injured soldiers she has to care for.

For years following the deaths of her parents, Halina Rubin avoided looking inside two dusty boxes filled with letters, papers, photographs and notebooks. Finally, spurred on by her young daughter Annette, Halina unpacked these boxes and began discovering the details of her family's traumatic history. Through reading old papers and travelling to those long-forgotten places, Journeys with my Mother was born - a remarkably intimate memoir that would otherwise have been lost forever.

'Rubin, a writer of distinguished gifts, recreates the past with incredible immediacy and vividness.' - Lee Kofman

'Not merely an enthralling tale but told very, very beautifully.' - Jack Wodak

Joy Nason was born into an English working class family during World War Two and raised in the fundamentalist Christian cult of the Exclusive Brethren. Growing up in this strict and demanding world, her family migrated to Australia in the 1950s. In her early 20s, Joy made the courageous decision to flee her family, knowing that she would be cut off from that moment on. Slowly but surely Joy made her way in the world, with kind employers who encouraged her to gain skills, and friends who helped her with socialising, travel and a new-found enjoyment of life. Through many jobs and disappointing liaisons, to finally becoming a mother of a baby boy, Joy picks herself up after each failure and faces the world with determination and a positive attitude. Joy finally entered the world of education - denied her by her sect - and attained teaching degrees, through which she became Senior Head Teacher at New South Wales TAFE.

With 'Joy and Sorrow', Joy made the decision to go public with her life and experiences, partly to give inspiration to others trapped in similar situations, but also to add to the body of evidence exposing the hypocrisy of the Exclusive Brethren. This secretive sect, now re-branded the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, will stop at nothing to maintain their Charitable status - and keep their tax-free millions.

Everyone knows Mrs Danvers as a byword for menace in Hitchcock's Rebecca and as a poster girl for lesbians in the movies. But only dedicated fans know her brilliant creator.

 

This book tells Judith Anderson's life story for the first time. It recovers her career as one of the great stars of stage and television and an important character actress in film. Born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1897, brought up by a determined single mother, she parlayed her rich, velvety voice and ability to give reality to strong emotional roles into stardom on Broadway in the 1920s. Not a conventional beauty, she was alluring, with her beautiful body, perfect dress sense, and striking, volatile personality. After playing glamorous roles, she was recognised as a Leading Lady of the American Stage under the direction of Guthrie McClintic in Hamlet and co-starring with Laurence Olivier and Maurice Evans in Macbeth. Her reputation as a great actress was confirmed by her landmark performance in 1947 in the ancient Greek Medea, adapted for her by her friend, poet Robinson Jeffers. In a long career, she appeared in Medea again in 1982 at the age of 85, playing the Nurse to fellow-Australian Zoe Caldwell's Medea.

 

Ambitious and driven, Anderson toured extensively, made numerous highly praised appearances on television, and, after her unforgettable role as Mrs Danvers, was a sought-after character actress in film, playing her last role as Vulcan High Priestess in Star Trek III at the age of 87. She won many awards and was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1960 and Companion of the Order of Australia just before her death in 1992. She had a stormy private life and two short marriages, which, she remarked, were 'much too long.'

Everyone knows Mrs Danvers as a byword for menace in Hitchcock's Rebecca and as a poster girl for lesbians in the movies. But only dedicated fans know her brilliant creator.

 

This book tells Judith Anderson's life story for the first time. It recovers her career as one of the great stars of stage and television and an important character actress in film. Born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1897, brought up by a determined single mother, she parlayed her rich, velvety voice and ability to give reality to strong emotional roles into stardom on Broadway in the 1920s. Not a conventional beauty, she was alluring, with her beautiful body, perfect dress sense, and striking, volatile personality. After playing glamorous roles, she was recognised as a Leading Lady of the American Stage under the direction of Guthrie McClintic in Hamlet and co-starring with Laurence Olivier and Maurice Evans in Macbeth. Her reputation as a great actress was confirmed by her landmark performance in 1947 in the ancient Greek Medea, adapted for her by her friend, poet Robinson Jeffers. In a long career, she appeared in Medea again in 1982 at the age of 85, playing the Nurse to fellow-Australian Zoe Caldwell's Medea.

 

Ambitious and driven, Anderson toured extensively, made numerous highly praised appearances on television, and, after her unforgettable role as Mrs Danvers, was a sought-after character actress in film, playing her last role as Vulcan High Priestess in Star Trek III at the age of 87. She won many awards and was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1960 and Companion of the Order of Australia just before her death in 1992. She had a stormy private life and two short marriages, which, she remarked, were 'much too long.'

The life of Phonse Tobin was anything but ordinary. Born in 1905, he followed on behind soldiers as they marched to the wharves to depart for WW1. He earned pocket money by trapping rats and collecting the South Melbourne Council's rat bounty, and almost 'haunted' the Collins Street movie and live theatres.

 

After leaving school in 1919 he worked as a storeman, salesman, soldier and fireman. In 1934 Phonse and his brothers Leo, Tom and Kevin started what has become Australia's most successful family-owned funeral service company.

 

A natural entertainer, Phonse possessed a fine singing voice and produced many amateur theatrical productions in the 1930s. He was a good all-round sportsman and a successful professional footrunner. He was a long-serving member of the North Melbourne Football Club committee and was the club’s president from 1955 to 1957. He was a life member of both the NMFC and the VFL (now AFL).

 

Phonse married Vera Crough in 1935. They had four children and their direct descendants number 38.

 

Phonse was one of those rare characters who could meet, communicate and be at ease with people of all classes and walks of life - from prize fighters to prime ministers, from 'mug' punters to wealthy publicans or bookmakers, from Knights of the Southern Cross to knights of the realm, from everyday parish priests to 'princes' of the church, and from grave diggers to governors.

 

Like everyone else, he had his failings. But these failings – such as they were – were more than offset by his strength of character, generous spirit, creative flair, kindness to people in need, and his love for and undying support of his family.

More than 35 years after one of Australia's most baffling and brazen child abductions, journalist John Allin returned to Adelaide to talk with Greg and Christine Gordon.

In this compelling and deeply personal story, Allin tells how a simple but precious gift kept their daughter Kirste's disappearance high in his mind for so many years.

Welcome to Crime Shots - short, sharp, true crime stories from Australia's past and present.

American-born Gus Pierce arrived in Australia in 1860 and promptly deserted, swimming ashore at Port Phillip. He worked as a photographer for Batchelders and painted scenery for the Lyceum theatre before hunting for snakes with Joe Shires - the inventor of a snake-bite cure. He compiled a strip map of the Murray River from Albury to Goolwa, by navigating it in a canoe with an Aboriginal dancer and a tracker in 1863, eventually skippering several steamboats along the Murray between 1868 and 1876.

In 1869 in Echuca he began painting historical panoramas and toured scenes, with musical accompaniment to Wagga Wagga, and a further series showing at his Hill End Tent Theatre in 1872 in a musical recue with William Gill, who went on to write the first Broadway musical. His Mirror of Australia panoramas were toured to Geelong and Castlemaine - where he added the male impersonator, Ellen Tremayne in 1881. Impresario, navigator, photographer and artist of Austral scenes - here is his confounded life with his own illustrations.

(from The Spectator, May 1936)

In his introduction to Lasseter's Last Ride (Cape, 7s. 6d.) Field-Marshal Sir William Birdwood writes : "The annals of Central Australian exploration are tragic and heroic, but it is long indeed since I read a more moving story of endurance and heroism in the face of terrific odds than the epic which Mr. Ion Idriess has woven out of the last few months of the life of L. H. B. Lasseter."

The reader will agree with this, and wonder why he has not heard of Mr. Idriess before. He is well known in Australia, but this is his first book to be published in England. It will not be his last, if the present one meets with the success it deserves. Having himself been a prospector, the story he has constructed out of the fragments of documentary evidence - a few reports, the barely legible diary and letters found buried near Lasseter's last camps - is probably very close to what actually happened. Harry Lasseter had once discovered a rich gold reef in unexplored west Central Australia. Owing to a faulty watch, the bearings he took were useless. An expedition was fitted out to locate it. From the first, misfortune dogged the steps of the party. Food ran short and they returned to the base-camp - all except Lasseter, who went on alone. When his two camels bolted he was left waterless in the desert. Blinded by sand and tortured by dysentry, he found the reef, but died shortly afterwards, deserted by a tribe of aborigines with whom he had tried to make friends. Mr. Idriess tells this story in a simple, virile style which is, in its intense economy, comparable to Hemingway at his best.

This autobiography by Leanne Benjamin with Sarah Crompton reveals the extraordinary life and career of one of the world’s most important ballet dancers of the past 50 years.
Leanne was born and raised in the central Queensland town of Rockhampton in a tightly knit hard-working Catholic family. At the age of 3 she attended her first ballet class and at 16 she was accepted into the Royal Ballet School in London and at 18 danced her first leading role on the Royal Opera House stage in the school’s performance of Giselle that catapulted her to a stellar career.
The book takes you behind the scenes to find a real understanding of the pleasure and the pain, the demands and the intense commitment it requires to become a ballet dancer.
It’s a book for ballet-lovers which will explain from Benjamin’s personal point of view, how ballet has changed and is changing.
It’s a book of history: she was first taught by the people who created ballet in its modern form and now she works with the dancers of today, handing on all she has known and learnt.
But it’s also a book for people who are just interested in the psychology of achievement, how you go from being a child in small town Rockhampton in the centre of Australia to being a power on the world’s biggest stages — and how an individual copes with the ups and downs of that kind of career.
It’s a story full of big names and big personalities — Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, Kenneth MacMillan, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Darcey Bussell, Carlos Acosta to name a few. President Clinton, Michelle Obama, Diana Princess of Wales and David Beckham all make an appearance.
But it is also a book of small moments of insight: what makes a performance special, how you recover from injury, illness and childbirth; how you combine athletic and artistic prowess with motherhood, how a different partner can alter everything, what it’s like to fall over in front of thousands of people and what it’s like to triumph. Above all, it seeks to explain, in warm and human terms, why women get the reputation for being difficult in a world where being a good girl is too much prized. And what they can do about it.