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This unforgettable story has become an Australian classic describing how an Australian bush girl saved the lives of 1,000 Polish and Jewish children in a daring escape from the Nazis. This updated edition contains an important eye-witness account of the burning of Smyrna (Izmir) causing a vast number of deaths. The author's father, a young British naval officer, saved hundreds of Greeks from the blaze that destroyed their beautiful city and many of them would be cared for by Joice Loch in a Greek refugee camp and later in the refugee village of Ouranoupolis, now a holiday resort.

Joice Loch was an extraordinary Australian. She had the inspired courage that saved many hundreds of Jews and Poles in World War II, the compassion that made her a self-trained doctor to tens of thousands of refugees, the incredible grit that took her close to death in several theatres of war, and the dedication to truth and justice that shone forth in her own books and a lifetime of astonishing heroism.

Born in a cyclone in 1887 on a Queensland sugar plantation she grew up in grinding poverty in Gippsland and emerged from years of unpaid drudgery by writing a children's book and freelance journalism. In 1918 she married Sydney Loch, author of a banned book on Gallipoli. After a dangerous time in Dublin during the Troubles, they escaped from possible IRA vengeance to work with the Quakers in Poland. There they rescued countless dispossessed people from disease and starvation and risked death themselves.

In 1922 Joice and Sydney went to Greece to aid the 1,500,000 refugees fleeing Turkish persecution. Greece was to become their home. They lived in an ancient tower by the sea in the shadows of Athos, the Holy Mountain, and worked selflessly for decades to save victims of war, famine and disease.

During World War II, Joice Loch was an agent for the Allies in Eastern Europe and pulled off a spectacular escape to snatch over a thousand Jews and Poles from death just before the Nazis invaded Bucharest, escorting them via Constantinople to Palestine.

By the time she died in 1982 she had written ten books, saved many thousands of lives and was one of the world's most decorated women. At her funeral the Greek Orthodox Bishop of Oxford named her 'one of the most significant women of the twentieth century.'

This classic Australian biography is a tribute to one of Australia's most heroic women, who always spoke with great fondness of Queensland as her birthplace. In 2006, a Loch Memorial Museum was opened in the tower by the sea in Ouranoupolis, a tribute to the Lochs and their humanitarian work.

In the 1890s in a bizarre social experiment, a band of over 500 Australians - mostly men and just three single women - sailed to South America to create a communal Utopia, a New Australia, in the jungles of Paraguay. One of them was a red-headed schoolteacher Mary Cameron, a poet and feminist, who left the writer Henry Lawson behind, despairing on the wharf. Politics in the Australian colony were soon tumultuous. Mary, rejected by one man she loved, married another, had a son, and she and her near-illiterate shearer husband Will Gilmore left Paraguay for the vast Patagonian sheep estancias of southern Argentina to earn their passages home.

Anne Whitehead chronicles the full history of the Australian experiment in Paraguay, including an account of the descendants of those who remained, in her award-winning Paradise Mislaid: In Search of the Australian Tribe of Paraguay (1998). In this second work she focuses on Mary's four years at the colony and, in particular, on her two fraught and previously little-known years in Patagonia.

Mary's independent spirit soon offended the strict rules of the estancia ruling class and she was forced to leave her husband for the tough frontier town of Río Gallegos. Speaking little Spanish, she supported her child for almost six months. Dame Mary later became an Australian national icon, campaigned for many causes including Aboriginal rights and she is on the $10 note today.

In a remarkable blend of biography and travel writing, Anne Whitehead follows in Mary's footsteps in South America, searching out places where she lived and traces of her stay, during a period of severe economic depression and political repression in Argentina, just as there was in Mary's experience. She brings to life a testing time in one of the harshest places on earth.

'Patagonia is a rich source of curious incidents and eccentric people, and Whitehead makes the most of these, describing the Welsh towns of Trelew and Puerto Madryn... a robbery pulled off by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; Charles Darwin's forays from the Beagle; W.H. Hudson's delight in the birds of the region, and the search for the giant sloth carried out by Mr Hesketh Prichard of the Daily Express. She mentions Bruce Chatwin, who turned up unannounced at the great estancia of Killik Aike, where the Gilmores had lived for some months, only to be sent away "with a flea in his ear" by its current owners. Mary Gilmore left Killik Aike abruptly too... [Her] letters reflect a courageous, resourceful and strong-willed woman... "Yea! I have lived" was how she began one poem, and reading Anne Whitehead's spry account of her life, it is hard not to agree.' - Times Literary Supplement

'I quickly fell under the spell of Whitehead's intelligent writing... a biography that compassionately embraces the artistic, emotional and political aspect of Mary Gilmore's life' - Age

'This splendid and fascinating book is brilliantly balanced as part memoir, part well-researched recreation of the young Mary Gilmore as inamorata of Henry Lawson, as radical wife, Paraguayan and Patagonian settler, and as abidingly Australian soul.' - Thomas Keneally

'Bluestocking in Patagonia is a very beautiful book. In the first place, Whitehead writes with considerable flair, and with a fine eye for detail. The text is intelligently crafted, switching between Australia and South America, past and present, self and other... Yet Bluestocking in Patagonia is important for other reasons. This book is as much about Whitehead's effort to retrace Gilmore's steps as about Gilmore herself and is, in this respect, a fine blend of history and travel writing: a combination we also find in Whitehead's earlier book on the Paraguayan colonists.' - Frank Bongiorno, Australian Literary Studies

'There should be more books like this.' Geographical, journal of the Royal Geographical Society

'The writing is consistently compelling and frequently beautifully descriptive' - Weekend Australian

Though she was only fourteen years old, like many other Jews in Eastern Europe's Pale of Settlement in 1907, Rebecca Lieberman gathered her few belongings and left for the United States. What follows is a unique and poetic story of history, war, mysticism, music, abuse, survival and transcendence against the backdrop of New York City in the '20s, '30s and '40s.

(Author's Preface)

I should like to state at the beginning of my book that what is stated in it on controversial matters is my own firm opinion, except where in a few cases the views of other people are published and their names given.

I wish to make it clear that though there were, and are, sharp differences of opinion on the subject of Fast-Leg-Theory bowling between myself and some Australians, there was always an atmosphere of complete cordiality between the teams on both sides. Although we differ seriously over my Fast-Leg-Theory bowling I have done my best in the following pages not to disturb that atmosphere.

Until now my side of the matter has not been heard. I have refused many tempting offers to break silence. As a fast bowler and a hitter by nature I have written strongly because I cannot express myself otherwise.

I hope very much indeed that in doing so, though I was one, of the aggrieved parties in Australia, I have given nobody half the offence from which I suffered so often on the last tour.

A belief exists that some of the things I have written about are not yet to be discussed.

Obviously I differ from that view. I do so because I feel that in a matter of such vital interest to cricketers as the possible admission by legislation of such a far-reaching principle as that bowlers may not bowl as they like, no cricketer can keep silent. I believe I have only written here what very many cricketers are saying. But I have written supported by first-hand knowledge.

For the many imperfections of style and language in my first book I beg the indulgence of my reader.

Yours Sincerely,

H. Larwood

Shenanigans at the beach seem a fine idea to Catherine and her friends at the height of an Australian summer, until the discovery of a body in the water kicks sand in their plans.

With the town of Ocean Grove in the grips of a by-election, and the police
investigation lagging (according to Detective Houden) the scene is set for a coastal rollick as Catherine and Co overturn various rocks to uncover a killer.

Add in a troupe of seahorse poachers, some hardened criminals and a ranting eccentric, and you have a holiday cocktail of chaos and chips.

There’s plenty of time for fun though. After all a woman’s entitled to a holiday.

Ready for another hilariously gross adventure? Then read on...

 

For ages now, Sam and Jared had just thought of Agnath as being the 'slimey green booga of the country', the 'butt-crack of the world'... that all changed when they found out about the 'Lost Treasure.'

 

But for Sam and Jared to find the lost treasure, first they will have to do the unthinkable; suck-up to Toffee Thomas... face unspeakable horrors, like the sight of Booga Boris streaking... come face to face with a giant, big, pink, grubby bunny with really bad yellowing 'BO' stains under its furry armpits... and much worse and much more.

 

And just wait for the twist in this one!

When Inspector Bonaparte is called to the drought-stricken outback sheep station he finds that two men have been savagely beaten to death. Clues are scarce in this sun-baked, sand-blown country, but Bony's understanding of the bush and the people who live there - both black and white - leads him inexorably towards the killer…

 

When Upfield gets down to the point of interracial sexual relations, he in effect is writing on one of the topics closest to his heart. Here his picture is unusually poignant. Caught in the iron grip of separation from his kind, of loneliness, of sexual attraction, Eric Downer is a victim of life... - from The Spirit of Australia by Ray Browne.

Tucked away in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales is Cork Valley, inhabited by hard-drinking Irishmen. Here an Excise Officer looking for illicit whiskey 'stills' has been murdered, and it's Bony's job to find the killer. Disguised as a horse-thief, the Aboriginal detective hitch-hikes into the valley to meet a lawless lot…

 

 

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

Three times a killer has struck in Daybreak, a one-pub town in Western Australia. Why should so many people suspect the strange 'bad boy' Tony Carr? Why were the local Aboriginal tribe far away from town at the time of the murders? Inspector Bonaparte finds this small community very tight, till the arrival of a job-seeking bloke by the name of Nat Bonnar…

 

Though lacking in some of the tightness that characterises Upfield's strongest books, this thriller is nevertheless a powerful success. The geography and geology are stark and proper setting, the people are alive and flexing with pain and apprehension... And here, as he so often does, he creates a major heroic character in Melody Sam who is unparalleled and unchallenged. - from The Spirit of Australia by Ray Browne.

 

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

By a lonely roadside in the south-west corner of Western Australia, old-time Karl Mueller is roused from his drink-sodden sleep by approaching footsteps and the sound of whistling. What he sees on waking (or thinks he sees) is enough to make him stiffen with fear, and more than enough to worry the police into calling for Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte.

 

The disturber of Mueller's rest is Marvin Rhudder - once an outstanding theological student, now a convicted rapist and basher, a bloody savage whose recapture will put all of Bony's sleuthing and tracking skills to the test.

 

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

By a lonely roadside in the south-west corner of Western Australia, old-time Karl Mueller is roused from his drink-sodden sleep by approaching footsteps and the sound of whistling. What he sees on waking (or thinks he sees) is enough to make him stiffen with fear, and more than enough to worry the police into calling for Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte.

 

The disturber of Mueller's rest is Marvin Rhudder - once an outstanding theological student, now a convicted rapist and basher, a bloody savage whose recapture will put all of Bony's sleuthing and tracking skills to the test.

 

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

 

Arthur Upfield was Australia's first international crime writer when he first stayed at Bermagui around the time of Zane Grey's visit there in 1936. This book holds a previously unknown Bony story set in Bermagui, The Fish That Danced on its Tail, an unpublished story on Big Game Fishing, and stories on Marlin and Swordfish that Upfield wrote only for the Bermagui Anglers Club. Also included are a chapter from his classic Bony novel, The Mystery of Swordfish Reef, and the only other Bony story - A Wisp of Wool and Disk of Silver and many photographs from the Upfield family archives.

Deep in Australia's outback, a woman has been murdered, her daughter vanished. Ole Fren Yorky, a crazy wanderer, is known to have been in the area, and his footprints have been identified near the body. When he too disappears, even the Aboriginal trackers are baffled. Bony's approach changes everything...

 

It becomes one of Bony's great adventures... He pictures the merits of Aboriginal society. And he uses weather - in this case the threatening rising of the lake - to picture man's heroic stature. The setting, the events, the pace of telling the story, the style of telling it - all combine to make this a tight, effective crime novel. - From The Spirit of Australia by Ray Browne.

Während die Männer unterwegs sind, geschieht in der Mount Eden-Farm in Südaustralien ein abscheuliches Verbrechen. Mrs. Bell, die Haushälterin, wird ermordet, und ihre Tochter, die sieben Jahre alte Linda, ist verschwunden. Als Kriminalinspektor Napoleon Bonaparte, genannt ›Bony‹, an den Tatort kommt, sind schon fünf Wochen vergangen...

Für zwei mysteriöse Mode gibt es offensichtlich kein Motiv.
Inspektor Napoleon Bonaparte, der berühmte Bony, ermittelt in diesem Fall als Tramp verkleidet. Da versetzt ein neuer Mordversuch die Leute von Carie in Angst und Schrecken.
Bony stellt dem Würger eine Falle - mit dem vermeintlichen Mörder als Köder…