Jim Haynes upturns some of the long-held myths of Australian history with surprising results. With all the skills of the master storyteller that he is, Jim Haynes exposes some of the great myths of Australian history. Did you know that Portuguese and Spanish explorers probably found the east coast of Australia before Captain Cook, and that the Rum Rebellion was not caused by rum? And what about Banjo Paterson writing Waltzing Matilda? As for Ned Kelly being a brave freedom-fighting rebel, in truth he was a thief, a thug and a murderer. The Ashes have nothing to do with cricket, the Ghan is not named after Afghan cameleers and Hargraves lied about discovering gold in New South Wales. Surprising, confounding, revealing and fun, Jim Haynes takes us on another great journey through Australian history and folklore.
An incredible collection of true crime characters from Australia's master storyteller. The bold, the bad, and the slightly mad... Criminality, some say, is part of Australia's national identity, and in Great Australian Rascals, Rogues and Ratbags Jim Haynes profiles fifteen larger-than-life Aussie rogues - some of our greatest ne'er-do-wells from colonial times to the modern era. These stories uncover the truth and expose the myths about characters ranging from the most despicable examples of humanity, to those whose courage has to be admired and whose so-called 'crimes' were unjustly punished. This fascinating collection features felons who have sprung from Australia's underbelly since 1788, such as the infamous Kate Leigh of the razor gangs; the convict Mary Bryant, who in 1791 escaped from the Sydney penal settlement and somehow made it back to England; James Hardy Vaux, who was sent to Australia no less than three times; Henry James O'Farrell, the madman who attempted to murder Prince Alfred in Sydney in 1868; and John Leak, who was repeatedly charged with insolence, disobedience and being absent without leave in World War I - and awarded the Victoria Cross. Told with Jim's inimitable combination of history and humour, Great Australian Rascals, Rogues and Ratbags is packed with murders, mystery and miscreants: true stories of true criminals from Australia's past. 'entertaining . . . highly readable . . . you will find some genuinely amazing new facts and insights.' ArtsHub
A new extended collection from Jim Haynes about the true essence of Australia—our yarns and stories, from every walk of life 'Aussies love a good story and entertainer Jim Haynes has been telling them for decades.' - Courier-Mail The Big Book of Australian Yarns is master storyteller Jim Haynes' comprehensive collection of factual and fascinating stories and humour. The yarns range from the poignant to the hilarious, from the ridiculously Australian to the unexplained and spooky. There are heroic and inspiring characters, as well as larrikins and crooks, and everyday humorous events told with a refreshing understatement that vividly evokes a vanishing Australia. There are tall stories from the bush, yarns from our colourful colonial past and more modern times, railway stories, sporting legends and many other things you never knew about our amazing history and the people who made it — men and women whose astonishing lives and achievements created the Aussie spirit. The result of decades of research into popular culture and history from all parts of the country, unearthing little-known facts and tales long-buried, The Big Book of Australian Yarns will have you smiling for days and spinning yarns to all your mates. 'It's fair to say that Jim certainly knows how to pull together a collection of ripping good yarns.' - Australian Rural & Regional News
David Hunt tramples the tall poppies of the past in charting Australia's transformation from aspiration to nation - an epic tale of charlatans and costermongers, of bush bards and bushier beards, of workers and women who weren't going to take it anymore. Girt Nation introduces Alfred Deakin, the Liberal necromancer whose dead advisors made Australia a better place to live, and Banjo Paterson, the jihadist who called on God and the Prophet to drive the Australian infidels from the Sudan 'like sand before the gale'. And meet Catherine Helen Spence, the feminist polymath who envisaged a utopian future of free contraceptives, easy divorce and immigration restrictions to prevent the 'Chinese coming to destroy all we have struggled for!' Thrill as Jandamarra leads the Bunuba against Western Australia, and Valentine Keating leads the Crutchy Push, an all-amputee street gang, against the conventionally limbed. Gasp as Essendon Football Club trainer Carl von Ledebur injects his charges with crushed dog and goat testicles. Weep as Scott Morrison's communist great-great-aunt Mary Gilmore holds a hose in New Australia. And marvel at how Labor, a political party that spent a quarter of a century infighting over how to spell its own name, ever rose to power. 'Makes you wish David Hunt had been your history teacher. Laugh-out-loud funny and you'll actually learn something.' —Mark Humphries 'An entertaining and instructive historical romp through the formative period of Australian nation-making with a colourful cast of rhymesters, revolutionaries, rebels, racists, reprobates and rabbits.' —Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, The Australian National University 'Once again, David Hunt uses his sharpened wit to chisel away at misconceptions from Australian history leaving us with the cold, hard truth of how our nation came to be.' —Osher Günsberg 'Australian history told intelligently, but with more humour than ever before ... Girt Nation is fabulous storytelling, putting meat on the bones of the national story.' —The Weekend Australian
'Australian history is...so curious and strange, that it...does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies... It is full of surprises, and adventures, and incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all true, they all happened.' - Mark Twain Australia is the birthplace and setting of some of the wildest, craziest and least-likely-to-succeed cons and rorts in history. From the cleverest double-crosses to the most unlikely and maddest schemes, master storyteller Jim Haynes reminds us that we've never been shy of pulling a trick or two. So how did a clever bushman who 'couldn't lie straight in bed' steal a thousand head of cattle and get away with it even though he was caught 'red handed'? And what about the disappearing work of art that suddenly dissolved only to reappear at an auction years later? Or how about the butcher from Wagga who passed himself off as a French-born English duke to inherit a small fortune. And then there was the small matter of a horse, a tin of paint and a million dollar double-cross that became known as the Fine Cotton Affair. In only the way he can, Jim Haynes has collected a veritable 'Gullible's Tales' of unexpected and surprising true stories that may seem hard to believe!
Fact or myth? Harold Bell Lasseter and his claim of finding a vast gold-bearing reef in Central Australia has continually been surrounded in mystery. Yet his ill-fated death in the Australian outback, where the land is unforgiving to the careless and the foolhardy, is relatively undisputed. Despite Lasseter taking secrets to a lonely desert grave in 1931, the story of the elusive gold reef has become a holy grail for explorers from near and far. One such explorer is Vietnam veteran Bill Decarli, who has spent the best part of forty years unravelling one of Australia’s greatest mysteries. On his maiden voyage to the outback in 1991, instead of heading towards Western Australia like other diehard explorers, Bill reversed his map and headed east towards Queensland. It was there that he struck upon the infamous gold reef, one that Lasseter had never laid eyes on, yet some how had been made aware of its existence. Based on significant new insights, and with a further nine trips to the reef, the key to putting all the pieces together, for Bill, was a man who barely left any trace of his own existence — until now. A story of adventurous hearts, honesty and resolve, in this new twist, Bill unearths how Lasseter’s claim was another man’s story, the exact location of the reef and how the reef stands to have a bright future.
Australia's most amazing characters of the convict age. 'Aussies love a good story and entertainer Jim Haynes has been telling them for decades' —Courier-Mail In Heroes, Rebels and Radicals of Convict Australia, our master storyteller Jim Haynes has collected a fascinating cast of characters who embody the resourcefulness, bravery, defiance, successes and tragedies of the convict era, the men and women who forged the nation we would one day become. There's Joseph Banks, the true founder of the colony; Surgeon John White, the saviour of the First Fleet; Pemulwuy, the Bidjigal freedom fighter; Mary Reiby, the horse thief who made good; Sapy Lovell, the Eora gypsy convict; John Donohue, the wild colonial boy; Lady Jane Franklin, the true leader of Van Diemen's Land – and many more! Why did transportation occur, why did it end, and what was it like living in Australia from 1788 to 1870? Skilfully researched and told in Jim's warm and witty style, Heroes, Rebels and Radicals of Convict Australia answers these questions and brings to life well-known and unknown figures from Australia's history as a penal settlement. This is the true story of the colonisation of Australia. 'In a year when we could all use a different perspective Jim Haynes came to the rescue with his latest sojourn into history . . . a cast of colourful characters.' —Spectator
A unique collection of poignant, horrific, sad and sometimes dryly humorous stories and tales about wartime experiences of Australian's on the front lines, in the air and on the sea. 'The bravest thing God ever made,' said a British officer of the insubordinate Aussies at Gallipoli. And before the Normandy invasion, Field Marshal Montgomery's chief of staff remarked, 'I only wish we had the Australian 9th Division with us this morning'. But there is more to the Australian experience of war than heroic endeavour and bravery. Jim Haynes has rediscovered stories that are as harrowing as they are uplifting, as strange as they are brutal and as heart-breaking as they are humorous. From Federation to the Vietnam War, from our first VC winner to our hundredth, this sweeping overview of Australia's military adventures both overseas and at home is a guide to understanding how this nation's role in the twentieth century's major conflicts unfolded as each war ebbed and flowed. These stories have formed Australia's collective memory of war. Some battles and campaigns are household names, although their historical significance may have been lost. Others are barely remembered now but are part of our history and deserve to be retold. These are the accounts, recollections and legends that explain Australia's wartime reputation. They demonstrate the extraordinary courage, resilience, stoic humour, personal heroism and sacrifice that created the mythology of the Aussie 'digger' - the soldiers, sailors, nurses and flyers who did things their own way and earned the undying respect of both their allies and their enemies.
Australia has a rich history of ghost sightings and spooky tales, from the time of European settlement until today - and they are all here in GREAT AUSTRALIAN GHOST STORIES. From gore-spattered convicts and elegant women out of our colonial past to the mysterious ghost lights of the outback and angry poltergeists that wreak havoc on modern homes, Australia seems to be teeming with the restless spirits of our ancestors. You'll meet a wide cross section of them in this far-reaching collection of stories drawn from all the Australian states and covering two centuries of our nation's history. Some ghosts are vengeful, some aloof, others mysterious, sad, kind, wistful or amusing, but all share one quality - they're scary - and their stories are hair-raising. You'll join a terrified young couple on a Ferris wheel when a spectre appears inside their cage, you'll learn about Australia's most famous ghost and visit Australia's most notorious haunted house where icy hands gripped the throats of unsuspecting visitors. You'll meet a ghost made famous by Henry Lawson, discover what 'the haunted dunny' means to the people of a village in the Barossa Valley and share in the terror of a medical student when a cadaver comes back from the dead and takes up residence in the student's laptop. So, dear reader, if you have the courage, make sure the doors and windows are locked, settle in your favourite chair, keep a blanket handy (for when your blood runs cold) and join Richard Davis on this remarkable journey behind the veil that separates the mortal from the eternal - right here in our own back yard.
In this side-splitting sequel to his best-selling history, David Hunt takes us to the Australian frontier. This was the Wild South, home to hardy pioneers, gun-slinging bushrangers, directionally challenged explorers, nervous indigenous people, Caroline Chisholm and sheep. Lots of sheep. First there was Girt. Now comes . . . True Girt True Girt introduces Thomas Davey, the hard-drinking Tasmanian governor who invented the Blow My Skull cocktail, and Captain Moonlite, Australia's most famous LGBTI bushranger. Meet William Nicholson, the Melbourne hipster who gave Australia the steam-powered coffee roaster and the world the secret ballot. And say hello to Harry, the first camel used in Australian exploration, who shot dead his owner, the explorer John Horrocks. Learn how Truganini's death inspired the Martian invasion of Earth. Discover the role of Hall and Oates in the Myall Creek Massacre. And be reminded why you should never ever smoke with the Wild Colonial Boy and Mad Dan Morgan. If Manning Clark and Bill Bryson were left on a desert island with only one pen, they would write True Girt. 'An engaging, witty and utterly irreverent take on Australian history.' —Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie Project 'Astounding, gruesome and frequently hilarious, True Girt is riveting from beginning to end.' —Nick Earls
