Australia Books

Aviculture in Australia. The title says it all. This is a fantastic book for both the beginner and the experienced enthusiast. I heartily recommend a read. It covers housing, feeding, pest and desease as well as individual bird descriptions. Plus much much more. I guarentee that if you pick it up, it will be a while til you put it down again!

Wilkie's book is a stunning read. He explains clearly why he felt it was necessary to resign from his post at ONA and speak out about the misleading information being spread by the Australian, US and UK governments prior to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. If you want to educate yourself about what is leading to the Islamic terrorism the West is currently experience, read this book.

This book is not only visually stunning but is great for those who are looking for, among other things, the top hotels, restuarants, and spas in Bali. Unlike other guide books, this one presents only the most important aspects of the island and its amenities so that you can decide whether to go, when to go, and where to go. If you are looking for a guide to the most luxurious Bali experience, this book seems to be the best!

There is a shelf-load of books extant about the exploits of the coastwatchers, the Allied (mostly Australian) men who, along with their Melanesian allies, hid out in the jungles of the Solomon Islands and reported on Japanese convoy and aircraft movements during World War II. But this book is one of the most important of them -- not only because, first published in 1946, it was pretty much the first -- but because its author, Commander Eric A. Felt, R.A.N., was the man in overall charge of the coastwatcher operation. So while this title may lack some of the first-person narrative power, the coastwatchers' stories in their own words, of books like Walter Lord's "Lonely Vigil," it's still hard to beat for its strategic insights and true measure of the coastwatchers' operations and importance.

A man who from civilian life was familiar with the Solomons and their residents, Feldt is generous with praise for the civilians and natives involved with the coastwatcher operation. He is also a skilled writer and storyteller. The coastwatchers played a critical, if now largely forgotten (if it was ever really even known) role in the fight for control of the South Pacific. Nearly 60 years after it was first published, Cdr. Feldt's book is still an exciting and revealing contribution to their memory.

Margot Grant's Bamboo and Barbed Wire: Eight Years as a Volunteer in a Refugee Camp recounts the author's experiences on the Thai-Cambodian border between 1985 and 1993. Ms. Grant (mother of photojournalist Tim Grant) was a 56 year-old Australian swimming instructor who had recently completed a degree in health education and wanted to do something interesting. In 1985 she volunteered to go to Thailand with the Thai NGO Catholic Office for Emergency Relief and Refugees (COERR). What started out as a short-term volunteer assignment turned into a second career as she braved the dangers of an active war zone to help Khmer and Vietnamese refugees. Ms. Grant went far beyond the normal parameters of refugee camp work, helping reunite separated families, smuggling goods and people into and out of the camps, and making several illegal visits into Cambodia itself before the Vietnamese finally pulled out and she was able to enter legally. During her years on the border she worked with orphans, street children, convicts in prison, widows, lepers, the handicapped, and even set up a school for lifeguards, saving the lives of many children who swam in reservoirs surrounding the camp. Her story culminates with her involvement in the 1993 Dhammayietra Walk for Peace and Reconciliation, during which she and her son walked into a full-scale battle and were taken hostage by Khmer Rouge soldiers.

Margot Grant tells her story with humor and an acute appreciation of the tragic dilemma that the refugees faced as they languished in the border camps for years: many were rejected arbitrarily for resettlement and had to subsist on handouts under extremely dangerous and uncomfortable conditions, knowing that returning to Cambodia was likely to be just as arduous. Her profound compassion for the Khmer people and her constant search for ways that she could improve their lives make this story much more than a relief worker's memoir, but a lesson on how to make the world a better place using whatever resources are at hand.

Those who are interested in this time and place in history will also enjoy We Shared The Peeled Orange: The Letters of "Papa Louis" from the Thai-Cambodian Border Refugee Camps 1981-1993.

This was the first book I had read that really opened my eyes to the public manipulation a government was capable of. Cawthorne pulls facts together from very credible sources and uses them to weave cohesive arguments that are difficult to refute. This book should be more widely read, and portions of it should be used in Civics classes across the United States to teach our youth to be more objective about political motivations.
If any fault can be found with the book, it's the amount of detail it provides. Though, given the prevailing public "knowledge" of American POW's, it serves the author well to support his statements from many angles.

The Bamboo Flute was a very interesting book about a boy called Paul, who's family was poor. He meets a man called Eric the Red who tells and shows him how to make a flute out of bamboo.

I was looking for information on tracing one of my Irish ancestors and found this book most helpful.Not only did I find who I was looking for it also put our family in touch with other descendants.A great book for genealogy research.Can't wait for the updated version.

This guy has two feet firmly planted on the twenty-something-year-old ground. He makes a point of starting with a dose of reality: money is only the stuff that gets you where you want to be, so work that out before you spend. He's ideas are no-fuss, practical and quite obvious good sense once you hear his explanations.
He is completely in tune with pop culture and doesn't try to get you money for when you are too old to enjoy it - it's about being smart now so that you can enjoy it soon...and I trust his advice to last me my lifetime.
The best book an Aussie young-adult can read - the first time I've interested enough to make good decisions that have already reaped rewards.
:)

There is a cattle station - Barra Creek - in the wild Gulf country of North West Queensland of Australia on a tributary of the crocodile-infested Norman River.

Sally Mitchel impulsively takes a job as a governess at Barra Creek. Hundreds of miles from any town and no contact except the mail plane, The Flying Doctor and the School of the Air. The children have to use every day as there is no school except by radio and home tutoring by the governess.

Her boss is overpowering John Monroe and his strict and proper wife Lorna. John Monroe late at night often wanders down to the aboriginal stockmans camp to join them for drinks around a camp fire. The white women are told to never come near at night time, as its not safe.

Sally sleeps on the verandah in the unbearable heat with the three young boys. The boys put a snake in her shoes, play awful pranks on her to scare her away in the beginning.It used to work scaring off all the other governesses. But Sally is determined to stay she has nowhere else to go.

The challenges of her three charges, wild stockmen, the heat and the wet, a great passion, cattle musters all fade compared to a great loss and a gruesome death.

An Outback Family Saga you won't be able to stop thinking about when you are finished. This story would make a wonderful movie.