George was born in Scotland in 1942. His father was away at the war and his mother was staying with her mother at Angraflat near Kelso. It was an old hospital, unused since the infroduction of penicillin and the family lived in the lodge near the gate.
American-born Gus Pierce arrived in Australia and 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 ......
The final 26 tales collected by the author of the best-selling Australian Legendary Tales (1896) and More Australian Legendary Tales (1898), both in ETT Imprint's list. Illustrated by Nora Heysen, this was only published once in 1930, and is now in Imprint Classics.
The true story of Horrie the Wog-Dog who was adopted by the Australian Signal Platoon of the Machine Gun Battalion, in spite of all rules against keeping pets, and how Horrie not only won his stripes as a valuable addition to the group but had the further distinction of being smuggled into Australia on their return. The Wog-Dog was sneaked into ......
Late in 1930, a cricket team from the West Indies visited Australia for the first time. It arrived at precisely the time when Australia’s modern iconography was being forged: Don Bradman was in the ascendant, Phar Lap dominated the racetrack, Nellie Melba returned home, Charles Kingsford Smith.
The first book written on the natural history of life on the Nullabor Plain, was written by station-master A. G. Bolam and first published in 1923. The author recollects his times with Aboriginal trackers and workers in and around Ooldeah, as the great railway progressed from South Australia across to Western Australia, and in doing so looks at ......
In this book, Ion Idriess reflects on his life prospecting in far North Queensland from 1912 to 1914, and coincided with his earliest writing as “Gouger” for the Bulletin. In Back of Cairns, Jack gives the reader a picture of what life was like when the peninsula jungle was falling under the settler’s axe.
The Desert Column is based on the diaries that Idriess kept throughout the war. Published in 1932, it is one of Idriess' earliest works. Harry Chauvel noted in the foreword that it was the only book of the campaign that to his knowledge was "viewed entirely from the private soldier's point of view..." Idriess served as a sniper with the 5th ......
The Sentimental Bloke tells the story of Bill, a member of a larrikin push (or gang) in Melbourne's Little Lonsdale red-light district, who encounters Doreen, a young woman "of some social aspiration", in a local market. Narrated by Bill, the poems chronicle their courtship and marriage, detailing his transformation from a violence-prone gang ......
