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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.

Jacques Horringa worked as a freelance journalist in the Netherlands before coming to Australia. Since arriving in Australia, Jacques had a four year period working on cattle stations and in the shearing industry in Queensland. His experience of the Australian Outback is reflected in some of his books.

 

This novel, Saskia, is a murder-mystery involving duplicity and intrigue. Alan Henderson loves his wife. He has short-lived affairs. He meets Saskia, a call-girl. Saskia asks him to move in with her Then he realizes how far and deep this affair has gone. The situation gets out of hand, ending in tragedy. Can Alan and his long-suffering wife find happiness again?

 

Jacques is a member of the Australian Society of Authors.

Never shy of voicing an opinion, artist Margaret Preston launched into print on a variety of subjects, from flower arranging and furnishing a bedroom, to Aboriginal art and design, Pokerwork and Wood-blocking. Selected from the pages of Australia's journals by Elizabeth Butel, this collection addresses Preston's recurring preoccupations - "modern" art, an Australian national art and the craft of art-making. "The natural enemy of the dull" - Preston's style is infused with paradox, retaining its freshness through her very direct, uncompromising attack and illustrated with examples of her woodcuts.

Martin Sharp was an integral part of international Pop Art in the 1960s, magnified through his covers for OZ magazine in Sydney and London, his covers for Cream, and posters of Dylan, Hendrix and Donovan. His efforts at making The Yellow House and Luna Park cultural precincts were aided by his screen prints and exhibitions to flaunt the work of others, especially the singer Tiny Tim.

In this first of two volumes, Lowell Tarling offers us a way into the enigmatic and reclusive artist, through interviews with Sharp and all of his trusted friends, including artists Tim Lewis, Peter Kingston, Garry Shead, photographers Greg Weight, Jonny Lewis and William Yang, film-maker Phillippe Mora, actor Lex Marinos, musicians Mic Conway, Jeannie Lewis, Tiny Tim; Richard Neville and Jim Anderson from London Oz.

'Lowell Tarling was a close friend of Martin Sharp and other Yellow House artists for over forty years and has been recording interviews and discussions with Martin and the rest of us all that time. This is an extraordinary archive of primary source material of those heady and life changing times.' - Roger Foley-Fogg (Ellis D Fogg)

'Martin Sharp, through this wonderful collage of interviews, reminds us all, that ETERNITY is just around corner.' - Jonny Lewis

Martin Sharp was an integral part of international Pop Art in the 1960s, magnified through his covers for OZ magazine in Sydney and London, his covers for Cream, and posters of Dylan, Hendrix and Donovan. His efforts at making The Yellow House and Luna Park cultural precincts, were aided by his screen prints and exhibitions to flaunt the work of others, especially the singer Tiny Tim. In this second of two volumes, Lowell Tarling offers us a way into the enigmatic and reclusive artist, through his extensive interviews with Sharp and all of his trusted friends, touching on the many dramas of life at Sharp's home studio, Wirian; his productions and search for meaning with regard to the Luna Park Fire; his spiritual search and death in 2013.

'I think what Lowell has done here is admirable, removing himself from the narrative. This book will be of interest to a wider audience who don't even know who Martin is. I predict this book will become a genuine hit.' - Peter Kingston.

Lowell Tarling recorded Martin Sharp's life, and his effect on his friends, over twenty years. Now two volumes in one, in advance of the film of these books - GHOST TRAIN...

 

Sharp: The Road to Abraxas - Part One, 1942-1979

Sharper: Bringing It All Back Home - Part Two, 1980-2013

 

'Like the Ancient Mariner, it's also a ghastly tale. I could understand the events at Luna Park a bit. I was trying to understand them and then suddenly there was this poetic language working to say: this is a crucificion, Golgotha, death by fire. And then it starts to fit into Apocalyptic vision. It was Abraxas if you like - the dark face and the light face. To look upon Abraxas is blindness. To know it is sickness. To worship it is death. To fear it is wisdom. To assist it not is redemption. I don't know what it means. I've never been able to work it out. You get a Pop Art Parallel. It was the Year of the Child, the place of Golgotha, the Place of the Skull, and the Ghost Train. You then get these events that are caused by plotting, not caring for kids, carelessness, living a human life - the way of the world.' - Martin Sharp, 4 March 1984

Idriess was a trooper with the Light Horse at Gallipoli, all the way to Beersheba, and his diary was published as The Desert Column. Drawing on his military experience, this is one of six manuals written for soldiers and civilians in 1942, when invasion by the Japanese seemed imminent.

 

Written in his characteristic, colloquial, man-to-man style, Mr Idriess here reveals the secrets of the dead shot. What to do and what not to do are impressed upon the budding rifleman. He brings out clearly the importance of apparently trifling points.

 

No more opportune book could have been published. Australia for the first time in its history has been bombed. Invasion looms on our northern frontier. The imperative need now is for rifles, more rifles, yet more rifles - and riflemen.

Ion Idriess was a spotter for the famous Australian sniper, Billy Sing, and this book draws on his own experiences in the Gallipoli trenches during World War One. Sing had a reputation as an excellent marksman, lurking in the dark and silently sneaking up on the enemy. One day he was shot by a Turkish soldier. The bullet travelled down the barrel of his telescope, wounding both hands then went through his mouth, out his cheek and into his shoulder. He recovered from the injury, but was never really the same...

 

Idriess was a trooper with the Light Horse at Gallipoli, all the way to Beersheba, and his diary was published as The Desert Column. Drawing on his military experience, this is one of six manuals written for soldiers and civilians in 1942, when invasion by the Japanese seemed imminent.

The squawking parrot knows it all, the secret keeper of this land, of wine and river, war and love, and dreams men brought to river bank; alas they tried to build them. Part family saga, part love story, told over three generations by an undeliable parrot, "a most marvellous tale."

It's 1964 and Sandra turns 19. She is studying at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and playing piano with fellow student Billy at a jazz club. She wonders if she's still in love with Nick but he is far away, having left university to help his father on the family property during the drought.

A letter comes from best friend Emilia that shatters their bond, and Sandra's long-promised 'Song for Emilia' becomes a storm of hatred and love for her oldest friend.

The best of Brien Cole's work is the story of Morning Parrot Trees. And it is superb. The concreteness and fantasy of Fisher's search for the parrot flower are perfectly poised. This is imaginative writing of a high order. The technique is to take the reader inside the action and never let go. His skill lies in knowing what matters. Perhaps his most impressive characteristic is that he does know what matters and resists wasting words on unnecessary explanations. The best of these stories are mulled over and mature, every detail if lovingly placed. - Rodney Hall, Sydney Morning Herald

 

Brien Cole has the rare ability in a prose writer of handling flamboyant metaphors with credible panache, and rhythm avoiding the ponderous... We experience the casual interchange between fantasy and reality that distinguishes the best of Peter Carey's work - the insinuating reasonableness of the fable rather than simply gawking at the bizarre. Brien Cole's characters are impossible to place socially - blue collar fringe dwellers, bourgeois drop-outs... They communicate only haphazardly with their fellows, yet feel betrayed by nature. A fascinating collection both of characters and of stories. The most original I have encountered for some time. - Bill Turner, Imprints

This is a book based upon the author's own experiences of synchronistic events and dreams over seventy years, from which he carved out his own path, philosophy, self-reliance and responsibility. This led him to understand life's infinite possibilities and abundance - should we take the time to contemplate one's inner journey with gratitude and compassion for all sentient beings, with redemption even for what appears to be the most vile one can imagine... By taking stock of daily events, one realises he or she is in the right lane travelling in the right direction on life's highway. The transit stops being just inner peace and happiness, the destination beyond our wildest imagination.

When two elderly bachelors were poisoned with cyanide, a strange woman was on the scene each time - but now she has disappeared, leaving no trace. Tracking her down in a town of twenty-eight thousand people is a job to tax even Detective Inspector Bonaparte's powers. He will need the unorthodox assistance of burglar Jimmy the Screwsman and a lightning-sketch artist, as well as all the deductive and tracking skills at his command, as he trails a killer no-one has seen...

Why was King Henry, an aboriginal from Western Australia, killed in New South Wales? What was the feud that led to murder after nineteen long years had passed? Who was the woman who saw the murder and kept silent?

 

This first story of Inspector Bonaparte takes him to the Darling River bush country where he encounters those problems he understands so well - mixed blood and divided loyalties.

 

Rampageous fisticuffs, rough scenery and rougher, dust-covered sheepmen and wanderers, dignified aboriginals, and so much interest and local colour. - Books and Bookmen

Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte is on leave, staying with an old friend near Adelaide. Ben Wickham, a meteorologist whose uncannily accurate weather forecasts had helped farmers all over Australia, lived nearby. Ben died after a three-week drinking binge and a doctor certified death as due to delirium tremens - but Bony's host insists that whatever Ben died of it wasn't alcohol...

 

This is an unusual crime story for Upfield, but, revealing the vast range of his interests, it is one of the better ones ... Constable Alice McGorr returns and is at her strongest and most profane best ... she is extraordinary, and should be appreciated as one of his major creations. - from The Spirit of Australia by Ray Browne.

 

Bony - a unique figure among top-flight detectives - BBC