Author Archive | admin

 John Gilfoyle

With a few exceptions, this book contains previously unpublished stories and yarns about real people, as well as stories from many of the characters encountered by the authors over the years.

John Gilfoyle started out in 1960 as a jackaroo then worked as a Stock and Station Agent with Elders in places such as Cannon Hill, Charleville, Hughenden, Richmond, Quilpie, Townsville, Brisbane and Roma.

In later years he was a cattle assessor, property auctioneer and market reporter for Roma Saleyards till 2008 when he and his wife, Lurelle, retired to Brisbane. In 2005, he started writing about his experiences in his first five books – true stories about real people – and all with a touch of bush humour!

In 2011, in collaboration with larrikin mate John “Robbo” Robbins, the two Johns published the sixth book in the series, “You’d Better Bloody Believe It!” and this one was done for charity.

Website: http://www.johngilfoyle.com/

 Yassmin Abdel-Magied

Frank, fearless, funny, articulate and inspiring, Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a dynamo, a young Muslim dynamo offering a bracing breath of fresh air – and hope.

At 21, Yassmin found herself working on a remote Australian oil and gas rig; she was the only woman and certainly the only Sudanese-Egyptian-Australian background Muslim woman. With her hijab quickly christened a ‘tea cosy’ there could not be a more unlikely place on earth for a young Muslim woman to want to be. This is the story of how she got there, where she is going, and how she wants the world to change.

Born in the Sudan, Yassmin and her parents moved to Brisbane when she was two, and she has been tackling barriers ever since. At 16 she founded Youth Without Borders, an organisation focused on helping young people to work for positive change in their communities. In 2007 she was named Young Australian Muslim of the Year and in 2010 Young Queenslander of the Year. In 2011 Yassmin graduated with a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering and in 2012 she was named Young Leader of the Year in the Australian Financial Review and Westpac’s inaugural 100 Women of Influence Awards as well as an InStyle cultural leader and a Marie Claire woman of the future.

Yassmin has now been awarded Youth of the Year in the Australian Muslim Achievement Awards.

 Sarah Marquis

From National Geographic’s Explorer of 2014, featured in The New York Times Magazine, Wild By Nature is the harrowing and nearly unbelievable story of Sarah Marquis’ solo 10,000-mile hike across the remote Gobi desert from Siberia to Thailand, then transported by boat to complete her hike at her favorite tree in Australia.

Relying on hunting and her own wits, Sarah Marquis made it across six countries where she survived mafia, drug dealers, thieves on horseback who harassed her tent every night for weeks, temperatures from sub zero to scorching, life-threatening wildlife, a dengue fever delirium in the Laos jungle, tropic ringworm in northern Thailand, dehydration, and a life-threatening abscess.

Through an incredible journey Wild By Nature explores what it is to adventure as a woman in the most dangerous of circumstance, what it is to be truly alone in the wild and why someone would challenge themselves with an expedition others would call crazy. Originally a bestseller in France selling over 60,000 copies, Wild By Nature will appeal to fans of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild.

 Stan Grant

An extraordinarily powerful and personal meditation on race, culture and national identity.

In July 2015, as the debate over Adam Goodes being booed at AFL games raged and got ever more heated and ugly, Stan Grant wrote a short but powerful piece for The Guardian that went viral, not only in Australia but right around the world, shared over 100,000 times on social media. His was a personal, passionate and powerful response to racism in Australian and the sorrow, shame, anger and hardship of being an indigenous man. ‘We are the detritus of the brutality of the Australian frontier’, he wrote, ‘We remained a reminder of what was lost, what was taken, what was destroyed to scaffold the building of this nation’s prosperity.’

Stan Grant was lucky enough to find an escape route, making his way through education to become one of our leading journalists. He also spent many years outside Australia, working in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa, a time that liberated him and gave him a unique perspective on Australia. This is his very personal meditation on what it means to be Australian, what it means to be indigenous, and what racism really means in this country.

TALKING TO MY COUNTRY is that rare and special book that talks to every Australian about their country – what it is, and what it could be. It is not just about race, or about indigenous people but all of us, our shared identity. Direct, honest and forthright, Stan is talking to us all. He might not have all the answers but he wants us to keep on asking the question: how can we be better?

 Bruce Simpson

The 1848 disappearance of Leichhardt and his party in the outback is one of the most enduring mysteries in Australia’s history. When, nearly 100 years later, four stockmen drove a herd of cattle across a remote property in Queensland and came across some strange early colonial artefacts, it seemed as if some of the questions surrounding Leichhardt’s disappearance might be answered.

Author Bruce Simpson was one of those men who made the initial discovery. In this wonderful book, he tells how he and some of his droving mates went back to try to find again what they believed to be real evidence of Leichhardt’s passing, and offers his own explanation, borne of his deep understanding of the bush, for what happened to that ill-fated expedition.

Brigid Keenan

Brigid Keenan was a glamorous and successful young London fashion journalist. But falling in love with a diplomat saw her leave behind the gilt chairs of the Paris salons for a large chicken shed in the forests of Nepal.

Thirty years later (at the farewell party for the Papal Nuncio in Kazakhstan), Brigid found herself wondering whether her decision had been the right one. This is her marvelous account of life as a “trailing spouse”—an endlessly engaging tale of diplomatic protocol, difficult teenagers, homesickness, frustrated career aspirations, witch doctors, and giant jumping spiders.

 Paula Heelan

Like Beth McCrae’s bestselling Outback Midwife, these real-life stories come from Australian midwives working in the outback, where they share their experiences of that most commonplace but miraculous event, the birth of a child.

Sweet, funny and sometimes sad, these stories share what it is to be an Australian midwife in remote areas where resources are limited. A moving and celebratory collection of tales that brings you close to the drama and wonder of birth.

Each of the thirteen midwives in this book work in extreme locations with few resources, but armed with only courage and skill, they regularly save lives and birth babies in difficult circumstances —on an airstrip, a cattle station, a dinghy (knee-deep in water with a wary eye out for the local croc), a troop-carrier or in the face of a cyclone. These stories are a tribute to both the skill of the midwives and the courage of the mothers.  For these women, midwifery is not just a job – it’s a committed and passionate way of life.