Baywatching with Hasselhof. Travolta impressions to Travolta as his mate is rubbed the wrong way. Dying in B grade films in the Venezuelan jungle. Passionate affairs in Rome with his leading lady and self directing movies in Slovakia. They haven't garnered Oscars but Australian actor Peter Phelps can deliver a very humorous and insightful collection of yarns from a unique perspective. Hilarious.

This is the story of Tom Phelps and the 'other Kokoda Track'. Seventy-five years later, Tom's grandson, award-winning actor and writer Peter Phelps, is sharing this inspiring tale of resilience and survival.March 1942: The world is at war. Too old to fight and with jobs scarce at home, Tom Phelps found work as a carpenter in the goldfields of the New Guinea Highlands. No one expected the Japanese to attack in the Pacific. But they did.Tom a...

This is the story of Tom Phelps and the 'other Kokoda Track'. Seventy-five years later, Tom's grandson, award-winning actor and writer Peter Phelps, is sharing this inspiring tale of resilience and survival.March 1942: The world is at war. Too old to fight and with jobs scarce at home, Tom Phelps found work as a carpenter in the goldfields of the New Guinea Highlands. No one expected the Japanese to attack in the Pacific. But they did.Tom a...

He was a murderer, swindler, bigamist and suspect in the Jack the Ripper killings.Frederick Deeming was also the most hated man in the world.Claiming to be haunted by the ghost of his dead mother, Deeming had spent years roaming the planet under various aliases, preying on the innocent, the gullible and the desperate.But the discovery by Australian police in 1892 of the body of one of his wives in a shallow concrete grave triggered one of the greatest manhunts in histo...

Australia's greatest escape stories from two world warsAustralia’s Greatest Escapes is a collection of stories about the most hazardous aspect of the prisoner of war experience – escape. Here is all the adventure, suspense and courage of ordinary Australians who defied their captors; men who tunnelled to freedom, crawled through stinking drains, or clawed a passage beneath barbed wire in a desperate attempt to flee captivity.They were willing to ri...

The epic story of the Boer War and Harry 'Breaker' Morant: drover, horseman, bush poet - murderer or hero?Most Australians have heard of the Boer War and of Harry 'Breaker' Morant, a figure who rivals Ned Kelly as an archetypal Australian folk hero. But Morant was a complicated man. Born in England and immigrating to Queensland in 1883, he established a reputation as a rider, polo player and poet who submitted ballads to The Bulletin and counted Banjo Pate...

The secret and dangerous operations of Australia's Pacific War Catalina crews told for the first time.In March 1945 Reg Cleworth, a navigator on PBY Catalina seaplanes flying out of Darwin, went missing in action. No details were ever given about the incident that took his life, nor the reason his plane went down. For Reg's younger brother, Robert, the news came as a fulfilling prophecy. The last time they saw each other, Reg confided in Robert, 'I don't think I'm ...

When the Second World War broke out in September 1939, the British asked Australia for help. With some misgivings, the Australian government sent five destroyers to beef up the British Royal Navy in the Mediterranean.HMAS Vendetta, Vampire, Voyager, Stuart and Waterhen were old ships, small with worn-out engines. Their crews used to joke they were held together by string and chewing gum; when the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels ...

He escaped from Singapore's Changi prisoner of war camp to become one of Australia's great World War II guerrilla fighters.'The way I look at it is this...When you're behind the line and get yourself into trouble, you've got to get your bloody self out irrespective of anybody else. That's why I like it.'Scottish-born but a Queenslander to the bone, Jock McLaren was a true Australian hero. As a prisoner he escaped twice, first from Changi and later from the ...

The extraordinary life of the Gallipoli veteran and WWI Flying Corp gunner who founded Qantas and gave Australia its wingsBy the critically acclaimed author of bestselling biographies of John Monash, Banjo Paterson, Joseph Banks, Lachlan Macquarie and Henry Lawson, this is a fascinating, lively and thoroughly researched portrait of a modest, resolute family man with a steady hand during turbulence, a man who guided Australia's national airline from its humb...

On 31st October 1917, as the day's light faded, the Australian Light Horse charged against their enemy. Eight hundred men and horses galloped four miles across open country, towards the artillery, rifles and machine guns of the Turks occupying the seemingly unassailable town of Beersheba. What happened in the next hour changed the course of history.This brave battle and the extraordinary adventures that led to it are brought vividly to life by Australia's greatest storyteller, Pete...

Established after World War I by the Royal Australian Navy, the Coast Watchers were a loose organisation of several hundred European settlers, missionaries, patrol officers and planters living in British and Australian Pacific Island territories whose job it was to observe and report on the enemy. They were mostly all unpaid volunteers whose job it was simply to observe and report on foreign shipping and aeroplane movements.It was never envisaged that the Coast Watchers would do an...