Tim Fischer and Peter Rees tell the tales of some real outback heroes, their communities and their success in bouncing back from hardship to success. Full of canny thinking, hard work and a refusal to give up, these inspiring stories come from every corner of Australia.
More than 10,000 Australians served with Bomber Command, a highly trained band of elite flyers who undertook some of the most dangerous operations of World War II. They flew raid after raid over France and Germany knowing that the odds were against them. Stretched to breaking point, nearly 3500 died in the air. Their bravery in extreme circumstances has barely been recognised. Peter Rees traces the extraordinary achievements of these young aviators. He tells their hair-raising stories of battle action and life on the ground. And he recounts how, when they returned to Australia, they were greeted as Jap dodgers and accused of 'hiding in England while we were doing it tough'. Exciting, compelling and full of life, Lancaster Men is a powerful tribute to these forgotten Australian heroes of World War II.
'Peter Rees has done what no one else has managed: read the vast Bean archive and get inside the head of the most influential figure in Australia's military history. Rees's superb book shows how Bean bore witness to Australia's Great War.' - Professor Peter Stanley 'Part sophisticated military history, part story for a nation, Peter Rees provides a warm and deeply moving portrait of Charles Bean, one of the greatest Australians of the twentieth century.' - Michael McKernan Charles Bean was Australia's greatest and most famous war correspondent. He is the journalist who told Australia about the horrors of Gallipoli and the Western Front. He is the historian who did so much to create the Anzac legend and shape the emerging Australian identity in the years after Federation. He is the patriot who was central to the establishment of one of this country's most important cultural institutions, the Australian War Memorial. Yet we know so little about him as a man. Bearing Witness rectifies that omission in our national biography. This is the first complete portrait of Charles Bean. It is the story of a boy from Bathurst and his search for truth: in the bush, on the battlefield and in the writing of the official history of Australia's involvement in World War I. But beyond this, it is a powerful and detailed exploration of his life, his accomplishments and a marriage that sustained and enriched him. Insightful, unexpected and compelling, Bearing Witness gives rich personality to a remarkable life.
The harrowing, dramatic and profoundly moving story of the Australian and New Zealand nurses who served in the Great War. Now a major six-part television series. By the end of the Great War, forty-five Australian and New Zealand nurses had died on overseas service and over two hundred had been decorated. These were the women who left for war looking for adventure and romance but were soon confronted with challenges for which their civilian lives could never have prepared them. Their strength and dignity were remarkable. Using diaries and letters, Peter Rees takes us into the hospital camps and the wards, and the tent surgeries on the edge of some of the most horrific battlefronts of human history. But he also allows the friendships and loves of these courageous and compassionate women to shine through and enrich our experience. Profoundly moving, Anzac Girls is a story of extraordinary courage and humanity shown by a group of women whose contribution to the Anzac legend has barely been recognised in our history. Peter Rees has changed that understanding forever.
Who was the most innovative general of WW1? For Tim Fischer, the answer has to be Australias Maestro John Monash, a man who, for all the recognition he received in his lifetime and after, has arguably not been given his proper due. The Honourable Tim Fischer AC is the former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia.
About 1,300 Australians died in the desert campaigns of World War I, while another 3,500 died in North Africa and the Middle East during World War II. Thousands more carried the wounds of war for the rest of their lives. Countless families were left behind to mourn the dead and comfort the injured. A ripple effect of grief passed down the generations. This is the story of Australia's desert wars as never before told. Using letters, diaries, interviews, and unpublished memoirs, "Desert Boys" provides an intensely personal and gripping insight into the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of two generations of Australian soldiers. In many cases these were fathers and sons going to successive wars with all the tragedy, adventure, and hardship that brought. "Desert Boys" is a powerful and absorbing story of bravery and hope, of endurance and determination, of mateship and adversity a very long way from home.
A collection of nostalgic and humorous columns published by The Land in 1960-61 and written by James Arthur Mahoney under the pen name of Tarboy. Illustrated with a rich treasure trove of classical rural photos found in the archives of the The Land.