The Royal Flying Doctor Service is a revered legend of the development of Australia as a caring nation. However, few Australians are aware of the man who founded it—John Flynn—usually known as Flynn of the Inland. Flynn, who died in 1951, is regarded by historians as one of Australia’s greatest sons. In addition to creating the Flying Doctor, he pioneered the Pedal Radio, founded the School of the Air, and built bush hospitals all over the continent on behalf of the Australian Inland Mission. It is a story that every Australian should read, and its powerful drama has been captured by veteran author Everald Compton. Flynn has been his role model in life ever since he first learned about him at a bush Sunday School in 1936. His fervent prayer is that many who read “The Man on the Twenty Dollar Notes” will choose to follow in Flynn’s footsteps as the future pioneers of Australia as the finest nation on earth.
The extraordinary story of a classic Australian Pioneer - told by Australia's 'Boswell of the Bush', Ion L. Idriess. Almost single-handedly John Flynn of the Australian Inland Mission brought to the outback the Flying Doctor Service and the Bush Hospitals. His magnificent vision, formed as he travelled on the back of a camel across the vast space of Australia's outback, took a lifetime of courageous commitment to bring to reality. 'It is impossible to read this book and remain untouched by the greatness of John Flynn's inspiration.' - Morning Post, London Ion L. Idriess celebrated Australia's exuberant history in over 50 books, written in an easy conversational style that has made him lastingly popular. In stories such as 'Flynn of the Inland', 'Back O' Cairns' and 'Lasseter's Last Ride', Idriess brings to life the wild beauty of the outback and the many colourful characters who people it.
An elegant, original and very well written book, luminous with meaning, full of superb cameos and suggestive arguments ... the central figures are both charismatic, articulate and iconic: they are central to any estimation of twentieth-century Australian cultural and environmental history.-Dr Tom Griffiths, Australian National University This is a path-breaking work ... the environmental aspect of the work is powerful, and there are some wonderful ideas about what is 'civilised' and what is 'wilderness'. Brigid Hains has reinvigorated the tradition of 'frontier studies'. -Dr Jane Carruthers, University of South Africa The frontier mythology of the early twentieth century laid the groundwork for the wilderness cult of contemporary Australian life. It became etched in the Australian imagination through the image of folk heroes such as Douglas Mawson and John Flynn, promising national renewal through virile heroism and an encounter with 'wild' nature. Most frontier histories in Australia have focused on race relations; this is among the first to focus on the frontier as an ecological phenomenon. It draws on rich primary sources, many of which have never been published, including Antarctic diaries, and the letters and journalism of John Flynn. In this superb account Brigid Hains offers: -a new interpretation of two Australian folk heroes and their iconic status in Australian culture -a fresh approach to frontier history that focuses on the landscape rather than on racial conflict, and -an explanation of the origins of wilderness conservation in Australia. Mawson's Antarctic exploration and Flynn's Australian Inland Mission both drew on imperial and trans-Pacific influences, such as imperial adventure literature, the cult of polar exploration, the rural life movement, population theory and eugenics. The Ice and the Inland compares these two Australian folk heroes and analyses the reasons for their popularity. It raises a number of topical issues, including the role of Australia in the international management of Antarctica; Flynn's treatment of Aboriginal people; the reasons for conservation of Australia's wild places, from the arid Centre to the frozen wastes of Antarctica; and relationships between the country and the bush, and between the metropolis and the frontier.
Originally published by The Australian Inland Mission; Sydney 1916. [Browne, Prior & Co.: Melbourne]. ARCHIVAL REPRINT: Limited Edition, illustrated, vellum acabado.
While studying to be a minister, John Flynn longed to apply his training to help people in practical ways. Soon he discovered that his mission field was inside his own countrythe vast and dangerous outback, or Never Never, where life-and-death struggles were a constant reality. A man bursting with ideas and energy, John strove endlessly to support isolated bushmen through innovations in radio and flight. Serving as superintendent of the Australian Inland Mission and moderator general of the Presbyterian Church of Australia, he established desperately needed medical facilities and helped found the Flying Doctor Service. This national hero's lifelong efforts continue to touch lives across Australia (1880-1951).
This book examines the emotional engagements of both Indigenous and Non-Indigenous people with Indigenous history. The contributors are a mix of Indigenous and Non-Indigenous scholars, who in different ways examine how the past lives on in the present, as myth, memory, and history. Each chapter throws fresh light on an aspect of history-making by or about Indigenous people, such as the extent of massacres on the frontier, the myth of Aboriginal male idleness, the controversy over Flynn of the Inland, the meaning of the Referendum of 1967, and the policyand practice of Indigenous child removal.
Station Eleven meets Never Let Me Go in this “suspenseful, introspective debut” (Kirkus Reviews) set in an unsettling near future where the dead can be uploaded to machines and kept in service by the living. In the wake of a highly contagious virus, California is under quarantine. Sequestered in high rise towers, the living can’t go out, but the dead can come in—and they come in all forms, from sad rolling cans to manufactured bodies that can pass for human. Wealthy participants in the “companionship” program choose to upload their consciousness before dying, so they can stay in the custody of their families. The less fortunate are rented out to strangers upon their death, but all companions become the intellectual property of Metis Corporation, creating a new class of people—a command-driven product-class without legal rights or true free will. Sixteen-year-old Lilac is one of the less fortunate, leased to a family of strangers. But when she realizes she’s able to defy commands, she throws off the shackles of servitude and runs away, searching for the woman who killed her. Lilac’s act of rebellion sets off a chain of events that sweeps from San Francisco to Siberia to the very tip of South America in this “compelling, gripping, whip-smart piece of speculative fiction” (Jennie Melamed, author of Gather the Daughters) that you won’t want to end.
Ecology and Empire forged a historical partnership of great power -- and one which, particularly in the last 500 years, radically changed human and natural history across the globe. This book scrutinizes European expansion from the perspectives of the so-called colonized peripheries, the settler societies. It begins with Australia as a prism through which to consider the relations between settlers and their lands, but moves well beyond this to a range of lands of empire. It uses their distinctive ecologies and histories to shed new light on both the imperial and the settler environmental experience. Ecology and Empire also explores the way in which the science of ecology itself was an artifact of empire, drawing together the fields of imperial history and the history of science.
One hundred years after the charge of the 4th Light Horse Brigade at Beersheba in October 1917... 'The Desert Column is based on the diaries that he kept through out the war. Published in 1932, it is one of Idriess' earliest works. Harry Chauvel noted in the foreword that it was the only book of the campaign that to his knowledge was "viewed entirely from the private soldier's point of view"... Idriess served as a sniper with the 5th Australian Light Horse. Enlisting in 1914, he began his diary "as we crowded the decks off Gallipoli" and he continued writing until returning to Australia... The diaries cover his experience of some of the war's major events from life in the trenches at Gallipoli to the battles at Romani and Beersheba. One of Idriess' strengths as a writer is his ability to place the reader at the scene of the action... The diaries reveal a keenness of observation and a descriptive and pacey style that Idriess would develop further in The Desert Column.' - The Australian War Memorial
