Joe Thompson was born in the small mining town of Minmi, north of Newcastle in 1889. This book follows his life there as a Pupil Teacher, to the Balmain area, where he played soccer for both Balmain and New South Wales, to a role as an instructor with the fledgling Royal Australian Navy.
The Mango Tree is an evocative journey into a long-lost Australian childhood, and won the Miles Franklin award in 1974. It is a novel about a young man growing up in a country town in the early years of the 20th century which, like a faded letter from a forgotten lover, evokes bitter-sweet memories of the dream-days of youth in a world long past.
'...distant hooves beat time with the name. Nick Nick Nicholas Nick, they cantered. A melody began that danced along on the magical words...' It's 1960 in an Australian country town - a time well before smartphones and social media. Fourteen-year-old Sandra, a shy but ambitious piano student, is on a journey of discovery. She's secretly in love ......
An Inspector Bonaparte Mystery # 12 featuring Bony, the first Aboriginal detective. In the Grampian Mountains, two girl hitch-hikers have disappeared without trace, and the policeman sent to investigate has been murdered. Bonaparte visits the lonely hotel where the girls were last seen, and meets up with the suave proprietor, his strangely ......
Three murders, three perfect murders... near the rabbit-proof fence in desolate Western Australia. Perfect - except the process was exactly as described in Arthur Upfield’s crime novel The Sands of Windee (1931).
An intriguing case for Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte begins on a calm October day in an Australian seaside town. Three men set out to sea for a days fishing... and do not return. Despite intensive searches, no trace of the men or their boat is found until, weeks later, a passing trawler hauls in a gruesome catch - the head of one of ......
Pioneering ecologist and humanist N. N. Miklouho-Maclay went to the island of New Guinea, the first white man to do so, to prove that the people of all races are equally human. He stayed with the Papuans, and his diaries are testimony to a native culture untouched by the outside world.
The nude body of a man is discovered entombed in the walls of Split Point Lighthouse on the south-east coast of Australia. Inspector Bonaparte wonders why a coffin is moved at night, who was the girl struggling with Dick Lake on the cliff tops, and what caused the Bully Buccaneers to deal in death. An ordinary policeman could afford to fail, but ......
When Dick and “jack Idriess went aboard the Nancy Bell at Cooktown – they thought they were signing on for a trochus-fishing expedition, would earn some money, and go back to gold prospecting. Cross-eyed Joe, a wily Filipino skipper was after something more valuable than trochus. With the appearance of the Japanese manned black lugger the boys ......
