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Baby Benjamin's impressions
By Susan Oxenham. 2015
Teen stages: how to guide their journey to adulthood
By Ken Mellor, Elizabeth Mellor. 2004
Shock, horror - teenagers actually want to be controlled and have "involved" parents! What parents need to know about the…
six different stages of development - and why each stage requires different responses.Manly girls
By Elisabeth Wynhausen. 1989
Elizabeth Wynhausen was four when her family came from Holland intent on fitting in. In this memoir she propels herself…
from one comic debacle to another, pausing to comment on the customs of the natives.Balcony over Jerusalem: a Middle East memoir
By John Lyons, Sylvie Clezio. 2017
A gripping memoir of life in Jerusalem from one of Australia's most experienced Middle East correspondents. Leading Australian journalist John…
Lyons will take readers on a fascinating personal journey through the wonders and dangers of the Middle East. From the sheer excitement of arriving in Jerusalem with his wife and eight-year-old son, to the fall of dictators and his gripping account of what it feels like to be taken by Egyptian soldiers, blindfolded and interrogated, this is a memoir of the Middle East like no other. Drawing on a 20-year interest in the Middle East, Lyons has had extraordinary access - he's interviewed everyone from Israel's former Prime Ministers Shimon Peres and Ehud Olmert to key figures from Hezbollah and Hamas. He's witnessed the brutal Iranian Revolutionary Guard up close and was one of the last foreign journalists in Iran during the violent crackdown against the 'Green Revolution'. He's confronted Hamas officials about why they fire rockets into Israel and Israeli soldiers about why they fire tear gas at Palestinian school children. Lyons also looks at 50 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank - the mechanics of how this works and the effect it now has on both Israelis and Palestinians. Lyons explains the Middle East through every day life and experiences - his son's school, his wife's friends and his own dealings with a range of people over six years.Understory: a life with trees
By Inga Simpson. 2017
Each chapter of this absorbing memoir explores a particular species of tree, layering description, anecdote, and natural history to tell…
the story of a scrap of forest in the Sunshine Coast hinterland - how the author came to be there and the ways it has shaped her life. In many ways, it's the story of a treechange, of escaping suburban Brisbane for a cottage on ten acres in search of a quiet life. Of establishing a writers retreat shortly before the Global Financial Crisis, and losing just about everything. It is also the story of what the author found there: the literature of nature and her own path as a writer. Some of the nature writing that has been part of this journey is woven through the narrative arc. The Language of Trees is about connection to place as a white settler descendent, and trying to reconcile where the author grew up with where the author is now. It is her story of learning to be at home among trees, and the search for a language appropriate to describe that experience. That journey leads Inga to nature writing, to an environmental consciousness, to regenerating this place and, ultimately, to learning Gubbi Gubbi and Wiradjuri.Manning Clark: a life
By Brian Matthews. 2008
Manning Clark was one of the most influential Australian intellectuals of the last half century. His political pronouncements were often…
highly provocative and his sweeping judgements, dire denunciations and oracular prophecies infuriated conservatives and made him a controversial figure. His most enduring legacy, however, was his magisterial six-volume History of Australia. In it he reshaped the now familiar story of our nation's modern evolution; from the First Fleet's arrival, the convicts, the rum rebellion, gold, the sheep's back, Federation, and the glorious defeat at Gallipoli, up to the nation emerging from the Great Depression and on the threshold of a new world war. But behind this ambitious work was a man as flawed as the historical figures he was presenting. He was wracked with self-doubt, and dogged by fears of failure and personal weakness, he craved forgiveness for the betrayals that stalked and threatened his marriage to Dymphna, and wrestled with an elusive Christ in whom he longed to have a secure faith. Behind the signature broad hat and the stern unsmiling visage was a tortured man. That is the complex, enigmatic and thoroughly enthralling Clark who emerges in this remarkable biography.Arabesques: a tale of double lives
By Robert Dessaix. 2009
One Sunday afternoon in a secluded valley in Normandy, France, Robert Dessaix chanced upon the castle where the famous French…
writer Andre Gide spent his childhood. Recalling the excitement Robert felt when he first read Gide as a teenager, he set off to recapture what it was that once drew him so strongly to this enigmatic figure.On a magic carpet ride from Lisbon to the edge of the Sahara, from Paris to the south of France and Algiers, Robert takes us to the places where the Nobel Prize-winning author, in ways still scandalous to modern sensibilities, lived out his unconventional ideas about love, marriage, sexuality and religion. Features meditations and conversations with fellow-travellers on such diverse subjects as why we travel, growing old, illicit passions, and the essence of Protestantism.A fortunate life
By A. B Facey. 1985
Bert Facey saw himself as an ordinary man, but his remarkable story reveals a winner against impossible odds, who lived…
with simple honesty, compassion and courage. Bert's childhood ended at the age of eight years of age, when the parentless boy was sent to work on the rough West Australian frontier. As an adult, he struggled as an itinerant rural worker, survived the gore of Gallipoli, the loss of his farm during the Depression, the death of his son in world War II and that of his beloved wife after sixty devoted years - yet felt that his life was fortunate.Unfettered and alive: a memoir
By Anne Summers. 2018
The inspiring autobiography of one of Australia's most influential women, from journalist to policy maker to change agent at large.…
'I was born into a world that expected very little of women like me. We were meant to tread lightly on the earth, influencing events through our husbands and children, if at all. We were meant to fade into invisibility as we aged. I defied all of these expectations and so have millions of women like me.' This is the compelling story of Anne Summers' extraordinary life. Her story has her travelling around the world as she moves from job to job, in newspapers and magazines, advising prime ministers, leading feminist debates, writing memorable and influential books. Anne has not been afraid to walk away from success and to satisfy her constant restlessness by charging down new and risky paths. Whatever position she has held, she has expanded what's possible and helped us see things differently-often at high personal cost. Anne shares revealing stories about the famous and powerful people she has worked with or reported on and is refreshingly frank about her own anxieties and mistakes. She shares a heart-breaking story of family violence and tells of her ultimate reconciliation with the father who had rejected her. Unfettered and Alive is a provocative and inspiring memoir from someone who broke through so many boundaries to show what women can do.True north: the story of Mary and Elizabeth Durack
By Brenda Niall. 2012
Growing up in suburban Perth in the 1920s, the two Durack girls were fascinated by tales of the pioneering past…
of their father and grandfather overlanding from Queensland in the 1880s and setting up four vast cattle stations in the remote north. A year spent together on the stations in their early twenties ignited in the sisters a lifelong love of the Kimberley, along with a growing unease about the situation of the Aboriginal people employed there. Through war, love affairs, children and eventual old age, the Duracks continued to write and paint - their closely intertwined creative lives always shaped by the enduring power of the Kimberley region. With unprecedented access to hundreds of private family letters, unpublished memoirs, diaries and family papers, Brenda Niall gets to the heart of a uniquely Australian story that spans the twentieth century.Walk a crooked mile: a father's journey in the footsteps of his son
By Greg Jones. 2000
Gold Medallist, world champion and world record holder : Lachlan Jones, OAM, is an exceptional athlete. What makes his success…
even more remarkable is that he has limited vision and cerebral palsy. 'Walk a crooked mile' is the story of Lachlan's rise to the top of international wheelchair racing, told from his father's perspective. It is a journey that begins with the annual Rip to River fun run on Victoria's south coast - when a determined Lachlan walked his first crooked mile in the company of his father. The journey continues through bouts of illness, financial obstacles, and physical and social barriers until its culmination in Gold at the 1996 Atlanta Paralympics.After Romulus
By Raimond Gaita. 2011
In 1998, Raimond Gaita's Romulus, My Father was first published - the story of his father who came to Australia…
from Europe with his young wife Christine and their four-year-old son after the end of the Second World War. In the isolated landscape of country Victoria, Christine succumbed to mental illness, and a series of tragedies befell the family. Described as 'a profound meditation on love and death, madness and truth, judgment and compassion', Romulus, My Father became an instant classic. Now, thirteen years later, and four years after the release of the film, Raimond Gaita has put together this collection in which he reflects on the writing of the book, the making of the film, his relationship to the desolate beauty of the central Victorian landscape, the philosophies that underpinned his father's relationship to the world and, most movingly, the presence and absence of his mother and his unassuaged longing for her.An urge to laugh
By Ross Campbell. 1981
This wonderfully warm Cold War memoir is full of unforgettable characters and events. It follows the formative years of the…
author from the home front to original sin and first love. It also charts his adventures with the amazing and inventive Jim Egoroff.The butterfly and the stone: a son, a father, God's love on a prodigal journey
By Dan N Mayhew. 2011
Hope is a butterfly. Fear is a stone. As the father waits for his son to come home. For anyone…
who has been or has loved a prodigal child, here is a voice in the night that says you are not alone. 'The Butterfly and the Stone' is a story of fear and hope on a journey that leads from the safety of home to Iraq, and home again to face a fiercer enemy: post-traumatic stress and addiction. Woven throughout is God's love...found in a most unexpected place...What, no baby?: why women are losing the freedom to mother, and how they can get it back
By Leslie Cannold. 2005
What, No Baby? takes us on a journey into the lives of contemporary women whose plans to have it all…
- marriage, motherhood and work - have been derailed by reluctant men, insatiably demanding jobs and ever-climbing expectations of what it takes to be a "good" mother. Leslie Cannold argues that this is the twenty-first century's 'problem without a name' and that the unprecedented obstacles modern women face in achieving the life most of them want are tragically real. Women want to mother as much as they ever did. What has changed is their willingness to sacrifice everything they've built - everything they are - to do so.The end of equality: work, babies and women's choices in 21st century Australia
By Anne Summers. 2003
Among the most contentious issues Australia faces at the beginning of the 21st century is one that many thought had…
been dealt with in the '70s: the condition of Australian women. Debate still rages over their position in the workplace, their alleged failure to 'breed' sufficiently, their lack of true economic equality, and their inability to penetrate in any real numbers the proverbial glass ceilings in corporate and public life. What happened to the so-called feminist revolution? Why do most women feel exhausted and trapped? Is there real choice in women's lives today?How to get there: a memoir
By Maggie MacKellar. 2014
After Maggie Mackellar’s acclaimed When It Rains, her second memoir traces with her characteristic candour and perception her move to…
Tasmania, for love, and the struggles and joys of settling there. In 2011 Maggie Mackellar moved from her family’s farm in Central West New South Wales to the east coast of Tasmania with her children and assorted menagerie to live with a farmer. ’In the book she explores learning to love again after living through grief, and the complexities of doing this in a community with which she is unfamiliar, with two young children. She reflects on love after grief, juggling being a mother and negotiating a burgeoning relationship, the rhythms of country life, displacement and the writing life. This is a book for anyone who has imagined taking a risk, for anyone who has moved to a new place and struggled with feelings of homesickness and displacement. It is a story about making a life in a remarkable setting - the east coast of Tasmania, on a sheep farm in a stone house built by convicts in 1828.Only happiness here: in search of Elizabeth von Arnim
By Gabrielle Carey. 2020
Gabrielle Carey narrates a riveting journey through the life and work of one of last century's most successful - and…
almost forgotten - women novelists, Elizabeth von Arnim. 'When I discovered Elizabeth von Arnim, I found, for the first time, a writer who wrote about being happy.'Elizabeth von Arnim is one of the early twentieth century's most famous - and almost forgotten - authors. She was ahead of her time in her understanding of women and their often thwarted pursuit of happiness. Born in Sydney in the mid-1800s, she went on to write many internationally bestselling novels, marry a Prussian Count and then an English Lord, develop close friendships with H.G. Wells and E.M. Forster, and raise five children. Intrigued by von Arnim's extraordinary life, Gabrielle Carey sets off on a literary and philosophical journey to learn about this bold and witty author. More than a biography, Only Happiness Here is also a personal investigation into our perennial obsession with finding joy.Outback Penguin: Richard Lane's Barwell diaries
By Elizabeth Lane, Geoffrey Blainey, Richard Lane, Fiona Kells, Stuart S Kells, Louise Paton. 2021
Richard Lane was one of three brothers who founded Penguin Books in 1935. But like all great stories, his life…
didn't start there. After sailing to Adelaide in 1922, Richard began work as a boy migrant – a farm apprentice living in rural South Australia as part of the 'Barwell Boys' scheme. In Australia, he deepened his appreciation for literature, and understood how important it was to make good writing widely accessible. Richard's diaries – the honest and moving words of a teenager, so very far away from home, capture vividly his life and loves; the characters he met; the land he worked; the families he depended on; and his coming of age in a new land. A remarkable social record and one of the best first-hand accounts of the child migrant experience, the diaries also capture the ideas and the entrepreneurship that led to the founding of the twentieth century's most famous publishing house. Richard Lane's diaries are an important document for the history of rural Australia and global publishing.