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Prince of Penzance
The Extraordinary 2015 Melbourne Cup
Kristen Manning
9781925556070
2016-11-30
A$9.99
Melbourne Books

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24 horses lined up for the running of the 155th Melbourne Cup. At 100-1 Prince Of Penzance was the equal outsider, backed mainly by those hoping for a fairy-tale. A popular female jockey aboard when no woman had ever won the race before. A country bloke who had risen through the ranks from humble beginnings as a farrier in Stawell to become one of Australia's most successful and prolific trainers. 24 enthusiastic owners who had been following their horse all around Victoria from Stawell to Donald to Flemington. A New Zealand bred horse with a bargain price tag... Up against expensively bred stayers from Japan and Europe, horses owned by Sheikhs and millionaires. 100-1 shots are usually greeted back to scale with muted applause but there was a mighty roar for Prince Of Penzance... An extraordinary Melbourne Cup winner.
A book about the background to the memorable 2015 Melbourne Cup... from the perspective of those behind the triumph and how they experienced the race that stopped two nations!


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Raft

Howard Goldenberg
9781877006104
2011-03-01
A$9.99
Hybrid Publishers

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Every year for over a decade Goldenberg, a white middle-aged doctor, has spent numerous periods working as a relieving doctor for Aboriginal communities in remote places.
On these visits he has observed and recorded Aboriginal Australians lives without resorting to simplification or glib solutions. Among his true stories we meet psychotic Elijah who believes he is Satan's boss and cannot die; a dehydrated baby whose mother gambles away money for food; an old lady who receives a gashed head while fending off a thief stealing her money - her husband. In the midst of tragedy, suffering and moral ambiguity, these stories also tell of cultural richness and common humanity.
Goldenberg writes: 'Aboriginal Australians are not at peace. They are variously unwell, underfed, overfed, afflicted excessively by our lifestyle diseases, confused by our drugs and drink, endowed with income but not with work, living in sickening poverty in paradisiacal places; and distracted from their serious cultural business by the trappings of our serious cultural emptiness.'


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Ratbag, Soldier, Saint
The Real Story of Sergeant Issy Smith VC
Lian Knight
9781925736847
2022-03-01
A$9.99
Hybrid Publishers

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Lian Knight has recreated the amazing life of her grandfather, a war hero. What has been published about him is extraordinary – 2000 newspaper articles, many printed more than a century ago. Yet almost nothing written about him is consistent. The press varied his name, his age, his place of birth, where he lived and what he did. There were whispers that he emerged from poverty, delivering fish before dawn in London’s East End in the markets and laneways of Jack the Ripper’s local haunts, before joining the army at just thirteen. Averse to authority, he was a military superior’s nightmare. He served in South Africa and India before migrating to Australia.
When World War I broke out, he was despatched to the Western Front where, gassed, bombed and working against remarkable odds, he saved the lives of many and was awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest award for valour. He became legendary, gaining medals and escaping death on numerous occasions. After the war he married and finally returned to Australia. He was famous in England and Australia for his bravery and kindness to his fellow man. Later as a movie star, a politician, a boxer, a celebrated Australian identity and a good Samaritan, his notoriety seemed to know no bounds. Which of these stories were real? A mixture of truth and fantasy has continued to be reported ... until now.
 
‘From page 1 of Ratbag, Soldier, Saint, I entered the magnificent maze of the life of Issy Smith, wonderfully led through that life by Issy’s granddaughter, Lian Knight.’ – General Sir Peter Cosgrove
‘This book brilliantly recounts the unusual life of Sergeant Issy Smith VC, a Jewish war hero of WWI, revealing the many challenges he and his family faced in Australia and England during the war and in the post-war years. A captivating read!’ – MAJGEN (Ret’d), Emeritus Professor Jeffrey V Rosenfeld


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Reciprocity
A Celebration on the Life of Jean-Paul Delamotte
Marie Ramsland
9781923024274
2023-10-01
A$9.99
ETT Imprint

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Jean-Paul Delamotte A.M. (1931-2019) was a French writer and film producer who visited Australia in 1974, and promptly engaged with translating and promoting Australian culture through its films and books. This book celebrating his life, is a mosaic of memories that cover his zeal for a reciprocity between France and Australia, the creation of the Association Culturelle Franco-Australienne with his wife Monique in Paris, and their total immersion and engagement in aiding visiting Australian writers, filmmakers, artists, musicians, academics and students.
He claimed: 'Love of one's country coupled with love of one's chosen and adopted culture is a seductive and rewarding course to follow' (Reciprocity, 20).
From his early days as a lecturer in the French Department the University of Newcastle he tapped into the strength of Australia's new film-makers, translating Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock and utilising his links in France to get the film to French audiences. An early friendship with Frank Moorhouse enabled Frank to live and work in France to complete his Grand Days trilogy and find French publishers through Jean-Paul's translation. When Gough Whitlam was appointed Ambassador to UNESCO in Paris, the Whitlams found a firm friendship with the Delamottes, and backed the evolution of A.C.F.A. As Gough exclaimed:
"Comrade, let us ... create a "little window" in Paris for Australia ... as you both have.."


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Reds Under the Bed
ASIO and an Unusual Bunch of Suspects
Michael Komesaroff
9781925283433
2018-06-01
A$9.99
Hybrid Publishers

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Who were the Reds under the bed? Why did ASIO snoop on several members of this migrant family struggling to set up a new life in Australia?
ASIO maintained a vast library of files on half a million citizens, most of whom were never a threat to Australia's security. Through meticulous research, Michael Komesaroff has been able to sift through a multitude of records which were kept on his family, and discover why. This is not only an account of one family's activities, but more broadly, a history of the widespread fear of the presence and influence of communist sympathisers in Australia in the twentieth century.
'A well researched and absorbing record of a respected family, highlighting its pursuit by ASIO. A great read.' - Bernard Rechter, former director of the Monash University Centre for Jewish Civilisation
'Michael Komesaroff's painstakingly researched but entertainingly written book dives deeply into two intriguing worlds - that of his Lithuanian/Ukranian Jewish migrant family, and that of the intelligence bureaucracy that conducted substantial surveillance on a generation of family members. Its focus illuminates - more clearly than many encyclopaedic accounts of the secret world - the dangers of mistaking dissent for disloyalty.' - Rowan Callick, author of 'Party Time: Who Runs China, and How'


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Reef Madness
Digging Up the Dirt on an Australian Myth
Ernest Hunter
9781922698285
2022-06-01
A$11.99
ETT Imprint

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It's a tale that doesn't seem like it would be a winner; an improbable proposition of a ten-mile reef of gold in the middle of the continent, a cabal of scheming investors, a farrago of poor planning and preposterous publicity, the fiasco of the prematurely celebrated triumph of technology over unforgiving terrain, a dead prospector - and no gold. The Central Australian Gold Exploration Company had it all, and Lasseter's Last Ride was in the stores before the final chapter of the real-life debacle had closed. It was a runaway success.
 
Angus and Robertson sold three million copies of Ion Idriess' sixty-some books before he died in 1979. But in 1931, as he was working on what would be Lasseter's Last Ride, he was looking for an angle. In filling the gaps between the few facts with detailed descriptions of lands and people he had never seen, he found it - and promoted it - in Magic and Mystery. Idriess' fictional account of the last months of the life of Harold Bell Lasseter gave birth to a legend that has repeated in dozens of books, films, poems, podcasts, websites and exhibitions, is memorialised in the names of a highway and a casino, and has spawned searches and scams that continue nearly a century later. Idriess was probably surprised at its success and chose not to tamper with a winning formula when inconvenient material soon emerged. To do that he had to control the evidence and continued to insist on his narrative's unimpeachable adherence to fact. Reef Madness exposes how Idriess confected his first successful book and why the story of a failed prospector became a quintessentially Australian myth.


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Refugee to Resident

Ibtihal Samarayi
9781742981314
2012-03-01
A$9.99
Hybrid Publishers

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An educated girl from a prosperous family in Iraq finds her world turned upside down by circumstances arising from the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein.
With her young husband she flees first to Iran, then Turkey, experiencing the humiliation, discomfort and powerlessness of being a refugee. She gives birth to a baby boy, lives in a tiny hut with no electricity or running water, tries to protect her baby from hungry rats and attempts again and again to get approval from the UN to migrate.
After years of hardship and persistence, Ibtihal and her small family arrive in Australia, where her youthful ambition leads her to study and later teach art as therapy for trauma.
The book includes photos of the author's story and art work.


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Reluctant Hero

John Hickman
9780987094537
2012-09-01
A$3.99
John Hickman

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John tells the true story about his dad, Bill's involvement in the Second World War. Bill grows up in the slums of Notting Hill, London and leaves school at fourteen. Despite his insecurities, while still in his late teens, he becomes a pilot of Lancaster bombers. He wants to belong to the 'establishment' but rebels against the powers-that-be when he realises they think he is expendable. Loss of life and planes is horrendous and to Bill's mind largely unnecessary. His attitude towards death in combat changes after he meets and marries John's mother to be, Alice.
After the raid over Dresden in February 1945, he becomes angry at the cover-ups, corruption and myriad of lies. Authorities dispute claims that British planes carried out machine-gun attacks on the civilian population but Bill knows otherwise! Against all odds he survives the war but is dreadfully scarred emotionally. After serving his country he is penalised, dismissed without a commission or job. Even told he is unfit to fly!
'...Prediction is difficult, especially about the future, but had I known then, what I know now, I would never have taken part in World War Two.'


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Remembering Things Past

Vikki Petraitis
9780987553829
2014-11-01
A$3.99
Clan Destine Press

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In the early 1950s, Rod Braybon's father died, leaving his mother with eight children she couldn't care for.
As a ward of the state, Rod ended up at the notorious Bayswater Boys' Home, run by the Salvation Army, near Melbourne.
Rod endured years of ill-treatment at the hands of the Salvation Army, then spent a life-time repressing the memories that haunted him.
Finally, after seeing an article in a newspaper, Rod decided to speak out.
His story created a nation-wide sensation and won a prestigious award for the journalist who broke it.
That Rod was willing to speak out to try and ease the suffering of others like him, is incredible.
That he survived at all, is nothing short of a miracle.
This short story is expanded in Vikki's full-length book Salvation.
Welcome to Crime Shots - short, sharp, true crime stories from Australia's past and present.


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Rescuing Tara

Robin Bowles
9780987553942
2014-11-01
A$3.99
Clan Destine Press

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It took an extraordinary effort by police task forces in Australia and America to take down an international child pornography ring.
But Rescuing Tara is so much more than bringing some truly reprehensible men - one of whom was "Tara's" own father - to justice.
Rescuing Tara is the story of how dedicated police officers on opposite sides of the world used the paedophile ring's own playroom - cyberspace itself - along with good old-fashioned investigative work in their search for a young girl whose real name they didn't know; whose location was a mystery; and whose fate was unknown.
Welcome to Crime Shots - short, sharp, true crime stories from Australia's past and present.


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Returned Soldier
My Battles: Timor, Iraq, Afghanistan, Depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
James Prascevic
9781922129505
2014-07-01
A$9.99
Melbourne Books

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This is James' story of life as an infantryman and the unglamorous aftermath of war, when he takes on a different challenge.
James was a plumber in Victoria, when he decided to enlist as an infantryman in the Australian Defence Force. With 1 RAR he served in Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan, where he was confronted with the horrifying effects of Improvised Explosive Devices. James provides an honest, gripping first-hand account of the front lines of combat, and of the training that got him there.
Upon his return from Afghanistan, he completed the Commando Selection and Training Course and most of the Reinforcement Cycle for the Special Forces, but broke his leg in a parachuting incident.
That was when the 'black dog' bit, causing him to be medically discharged from the ADF after almost ten years of service. He was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), major depression, anxiety and alcohol dependence. At first he was silent about it, until he lost his wife, his career and nearly his life. As a result of this, he did fundraising for the Black Dog Institute, set up the website Different Challenge, and crossed Bass Strait in a 'tinnie' to raise awareness of mental illness and its often devastating effects.


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Roots
How Melbourne Became the Live Musical Capital of the World
Craig Horne
9781925556933
2019-11-11
A$9.99
Melbourne Books

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A Melbourne sound that is at once both rakish and debonair.
 
So what specifically is it about Melbourne that, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, it’s able to support around 465 live music venues as compared to 453 in New York, 385 in Tokyo and 245 in London despite its population being a fraction of those major world cities? Despite the flaky weather, the footy and Netflix, Melbournians are committed to going out at night and in great numbers in heat or hail to listen to live music and to find those bands and singers they’ve heard on Spotify or discovered on Soundcloud.


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Rosa
Memories with Licence
Ros Collins
9781925736250
2019-08-29
A$9.99
Hybrid Publishers

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This entertaining, quirky yet profound quasi-memoir is full of delightful stories about a determined and loving young English girl who marries a larrikin boy from Bondi. He tells her:
'You'll like it, Rosa, St Kilda's by the beach, we can go swimming. And we can go on picnics, take the Lambretta to visit the Dandenongs.'
Rosa assumed the Dandenongs were 'Mr and Mrs', another of these weird Australian names, didn't sound like a Jewish family ...
As British as Earl Grey tea, Rosa has spent most of her life in Melbourne. Her children and grandchildren are all Australian-born, as was Alan, her writer husband. But Rosa is hesitant about an unconditional commitment to Vegemite, mateship and the ANZAC legend; she remains a perennial migrant, often amused by her memories, here presented with a deliberate overlay of lies and licence.
Her family's history is nearer to Dickens than the shtetls of Eastern Europe; Rosa herself recalls Dunkirk and the Blitz. Beyond the conservatism of 1950s London that she escaped, Rosa flings open the windows and doors to invite the reader into her Anglo-Australian-Jewish family. She refrains from delving into deep psychological examinations of what it means to be an only child, an only grandchild, a reluctant Jewish teenager, and muse to a man whose terrible childhood scarred him for life; the 'clues' are all there for the curious reader to discover.


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Royal Marriages
Diana, Camilla, Kate & Meghan and princesses who did not live happily ever after
Susanna de Vries
9781925283648
2018-10-01
A$9.99
Pirgos Press

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Description:

Those who enjoyed the TV series The Crown will enjoy this entertaining and well-researched book which fills in the background to centuries of arranged royal marriages and the arcane rules that governed them. For centuries marriages of princes could only take place to virginal Protestant princesses. Most were unhappy, royal wives were seen as baby factories (as Princess Diana observed). What mattered was the virginity of the bride so that she did not go to the altar bearing another man's child who would inherit The Crown, the symbol of hereditary monarchy.
 
Most kings and princes took mistresses - or, in the cases of King Edward II and James I, male lovers - while siring sons by their wives to continue the royal line of Tudors, Stuarts, and Hanoverians who when fighting the Germans changed their name to Windsor.
 
Queen Elizabeth II, as head of the Anglican Church, had the difficult task of denying her sister, Princess Margaret, the right to marry the divorced war hero she loved. Prince Charles having seen his uncle abdicate because he could not marry an American divorcee, knew proposing to Camilla who lacked a title was impossible. His tragic mismatch to the virginal teenage Lady Diana Spencer ended in Camillagate and other scandals. After Diana's tragic death, after ignoring Camilla who was living with Charles the Queen allowed her heir to marry the woman he loved as crowning a king with a mistress would have been impossible.
 
The Queen's grandsons were also allowed to marry for love. Kate Middleton, wife of Prince William has adapted brilliantly to royal duties combined with motherhood and the public believe she will make an admirable queen. Prince Harry's love match to a divorced bi-racial American actress would have had his royal ancestors turning in their graves, but stylish hard working Meghan Markle has proved herself so popular in her role as Duchess of Sussex beside her husband the Queen has commended her.


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Royal Mistresses of the House of Hanover-Windsor
Secrets, Scandals and Betrayals
Susanna de Vries
9781742982694
2013-01-16
A$9.99
Pirgos Press

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The genuine love match between Prince William and Kate Middleton has rekindled enthusiasm for the British monarchy. In the past, young princes reluctantly entered into arranged marriages and took mistresses. Perdita Robinson, a famous actress, was enticed from the stage with promises of money to live with the fickle Prince of Wales, who turned her and her child onto the street. Perdita fought back, won a financial settlement and became a pioneer of women's writing.
 
Edward VII's most fascinating mistresses were aristocrats' wives like the multi-talented unconventional Lady Jennie Churchill, mother of Winston, and the headstrong heiress, Daisy, Countess of Warwick, mother of one of Edward's love children. Beautiful Alice Keppel became the love of Edward's life and was the great-grandmother of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, yet another royal mistress.
 
Edward's grandson, Edward VIII suffered an attack of mumps that left him physically and mentally immature. He implored Mrs Freda Dudley Ward to elope but she refused. Another mistress, Lady Thelma Furness, star of Hollywood's silent screen, introduced Edward to the domineering Wallis Simpson who insisted the impotent king seek psychiatric help. In order that Wallis could look like a queen the Duke of Windsor lavished her with jewels and forgave her infidelities in this most intriguing of all royal stories.

 

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