On 28 June 1915, young James Martin sailed from Melbourne aboard the troopship Berrima – bound, ultimately, for Gallipoli. He was just fourteen years old.Soldier Boy is Jim's extraordinary true story, the story of a young and enthusiastic school boy who became Australia's youngest known Anzac.Four months after leaving his home country he would be numbered among the dead, just one of so many soldier boys who travelled halfway around the world for the chance of adven...

Billy Young was a boy of 15 when he joined the AIF in 1941. He was an orphan – hungry, broke, with nowhere to sleep – and the army offered him a feed, a blanket and five shillings a day in his pocket.The trouble was, the army sent him off to Malaya where he became a POW when Singapore fell to the Japanese. From Changi, 'Billy the Kid' went on to spend the rest of his teenage years in some of the most barbaric Japanese prisons: the notorious labour camp at Sandakan (from which he es...

‘It’s a good story, Samuel. You’re a piece of living history.’Oxford 1863: Young Samuel Speed sets a barley stack alight in the hope it will earn him a bed in prison for the night. He wants nothing more than a morsel of food in his belly and a warm place to sleep off the streets. What he receives is a sentence of seven years’ servitude, to be served half a world away in the penal colony of Fremantle, Western Australia.When Samuel boards the transport ship Belgr...

A small boy, an orphan of the First World War, wanders into the Australian airmen's mess in Germany, on Christmas Day in 1918. A strange boy, with an uncertain past and an extraordinary future, he became a mascot for the air squadron and was affectionately named 'Young Digger'. And in one of the most unusual incidents ever to emerge from the battlefields of Europe after the Great War, this solitary boy was smuggled back to Australia by air mechanic Tim Tovell, a man who cared for the boy s...

'What are they saying?' Isaac asked Taiata.'They are calling us tupua*. . . goblins and demons.'*'And what else?''They say they will come back and kill us all.'When young Isaac Manley sailed on the Endeavour from England in 1768, no one on board knew if a mysterious southern continent existed in the vast Pacific Ocean. It would be a voyage full of uncertainties and terrors.During the course of the three-year ...

‘Our discoveries have been great, but the risks and misfortunes many.’John Franklin always wanted to be a sailor. As a volunteer in the Royal Navy at age fourteen, he found himself in the Battle of Copenhagen, but nothing could prepare him for the adventure of a lifetime, when he set off in 1801 with his cousin Matthew Flinders on HMS Investigator as it sought to chart the first circumnavigation of Australia.Taking on responsibility for the chronometers, u...

Hill House Manor is a world famous haunted house in Gainesville TX. Little is known of it's humble beginnings. We know that what is now over 3000 sq. ft.started as a one room house on the edge of the frontier. We know for a fact that a second one room house was moved to join with the first house creating a two room house. From there we don't have a lot of facts.The Early Years is an attempt to fill in the gaps. These are the things I imagine happened. Why the two houses were joined togethe...

The dark clouds returned and gathered about the boy. His eyes grew distant, and he began to tremble. He heard not only shells exploding, but the cries of dying men . . . He was stumbling over churned earth, looking into the face of an officer, bloodied red as the poppies, ripped apart in the Flanders mud . . .A small boy, an orphan of the First World War, wanders into the Australian airmen's mess in Germany, on Christmas Day in 1918. A strange boy, with an uncertain past a...

In Darwin in 1942, Gunner’s barking alerted an entire army base of impending air raids, well before the enemy planes appeared on radar. Following an ambush, Sarbi the explosive detection dog was held captive by the Taliban for over a year, before heading home a hero. And when 135000 horses left Australia for the First World War, why was General Bridges’ charger Sandy the only one to return home?Drawing from first-hand sources and interviews with those who were there, Anthony Hill b...

'His heart was in the land and he thought of nothing else.'At the close of the First World War, and after surviving a gas attack on the Western Front, Captain Walter Eddison moved his family from war-ravaged Britain to start a new life in Australia. The Eddisons were offered 'land fit for heroes' under the Australian government's soldier-settlement scheme, but the grim realities of life in the remote bush were not easy for a family used to the green pastures of England.Walter...

The enthralling story of Captain Cook's voyage to Australia, as seen through the eager eyes of a cabin boy.When young Isaac Manley sailed on the Endeavour from England in 1768, no one on board knew if a mysterious southern continent existed in the vast Pacific Ocean. It would be a voyage full of uncertainties and terrors.During the course of the three-year journey, Isaac’s eyes are opened to all the brutal realities of life at sea – floggings, storms, pres...

MINIMALISMMinimalism is a way of simplifying your life. It means eliminating what you do not use or need. It provides you the time and space to figure out what is important to you so you can start living intentionally-whatever that means for you. Whether you want to focus on your health, have more time for family, hobbies, learning a new skill, or you simply want to declutter your home, minimalism frees you from excess, so you have more time and energy to focus on what's importan...