Love, War and Crocodiles is an account of the many adventures and loves of Arvids Blumentals, aka Crocodile Harry, one of the most unusual migrants to arrive in Australia after WW2. Harry was a Latvian patriot who went to war at 17, lost his homeland, and became a crocodile hunter, gravity surveyor, opal miner, writer and womaniser. He called himself a baron and married an opera-singing German lady he'd never met. He appeared in a high-profile inquest, entertained Tina Turner and ...

Long ago, in 1918, a small traditional bakery was built in the inner city suburb of Waterloo, Sydney. This was well before the tower blocks, the ice addicts, the trendy new apartments and the fashionable restaurants in Danks St.The last owners of Elma bakery were a Latvian migrant family who baked primarily rye bread (black, and sweet and sour) from old Latvian and Estonian sourdough recipes. The bread was highly prized and sent all over Australia, and the recipes were a closely gu...

On a midsummer's night in 1941, a family is illegally arrested, by order of Stalin, in cosmopolitan Rīga, Latvia, and deported in cattle wagons to the frozen wilderness of Siberia.Sixty years later, the son, Laimonis aka Lucky, now an actor, visits Sydney and recounts the events to his long-lost sister, Māra, and her household. Māra, an architect, missed out on arrest and suffers survivor guilt. Her son, Andy, is a depressive musician and her daughter, Zinta, a wayward activist, th...