A scholarly, critical, irreverent guide to how Australia works (and how to work Australia) written by a PhD dropout, American ex-patriot, sticky-beak (busybody) who writes the truth - and in true Aussie fashion - doesn't care whom he offends.An easy reading reference book for tourists, visiting businesspeople and migrants. It covers doing business in Australia, the legal system, migration, road rules, real estate, politics and elections, the health care system, the military, and ma...

The brilliant and explosive new novel from the author of the award-winning The Museum of Modern Love.WINNER, General Fiction Book of the Year, ABIA AwardsWhy is a massive bridge being built to connect the sleepy island of Bruny with the mainland of Tasmania? And why have terrorists blown it up?When the Bruny bridge is bombed, UN troubleshooter Astrid Coleman agrees to return home to help her brother before an upcoming elect...

'From the helicopter I could see the property's waterholes surrounded by paperback trees, its red-stone cliffs lit by the rising sun. And grass, endless seas of grass. Here was the vision splendid: Nat Buchanan's grass castle. Gurindji country. And my country, Australia.'This is big country, the outback, home to the largest cattle and sheep stations in the world. Yet few of us know what goes on behind the farm gate. What's life really like when next door is 500 kilometres away, and ...

The hilarious new collection of stories and observations from Jeremy Clarkson - setting our off-kilter world to rights with thigh-slapping wit once again.Who is that tractor-driving Gentleman Farmer?Has Jeremy turned into a horny-handed son of the soil?These and other perplexing questions may or may not be answered in the latest volume of Clarkson's utterly unbiased musings on life, the universe and...

Not Just the Wife of the General Manager is a rollicking memoir of one woman’s life on outback cattle stations, and an homage to the many unsung women like her.It was the 1980s and Sally was in her mid 20s when she returned from a backpacking sojourn and hitchhiked to Australia’s far north. But instead of moving back to Canberra as planned, she stayed. After marrying a cattle station manager, Sally lived and worked with him on various stations until she was 50, ing...

Greg Mullins followed his father into fighting bushfires – it was in the blood. He fought major fires around Sydney and the Blue Mountains for decades, and studied bushfires in Europe, Canada and the US. He risked his life in the 1994 Sydney fires and, later, during our catastrophic Black Summer of 2019–20. As a career firefighter, he worked his way up the ranks to become Commissioner of one of the world’s largest fire services, Fire and Rescue NSW, for nearly fourteen years. When it came ...

Australia is different—a vast island-continent with distances so great that the capital of Western Australia is closer to Singapore than it is to Sydney. The landscape embraces magnificent tropical rainforests and deserts the size of several European states; temperate areas that sustain a flourishing wine industry, making Australia the world's fourth largest wine exporter; a sixteen-thousand-mile coastline of breathtaking beaches; and its unique fauna is testament to the country's "down-un...

If you love iambic pentameter, then look away because this book about Australian politics is pure prose, baby!This book is quite possibly the most comprehensive book on Australian politics ever written. That's right, it covers BOTH houses of parliament.We'll take you inside the halls of power. And if we can't actually get inside because of security, we'll do some very fun speculating on what might be in there.One thing we know for sure is that this book is unputdown...

A new life running a high country sheep station in New Zealand. Christine Fernyhough is well known as a leading Auckland philanthropist, having set up Books in Homes and then the Gifted Kids Programme for high achieving children in low decile schools. In 2003 she was a recent widow when she spied an advertisement for the sale of the legendary Castle Hill Station, near Porters Heights in the Canterbury alps. A woman of energy and enterprise, she bought it and so began a ne...

Holden is one of the few brands that has an emotional grip on Australia (Qantas being another). The closure of the Holden factory in Adelaide is not just the end of a business - it's the end of an era, of a story, and of a great Australian dream.When Holden signalled that it would close its Adelaide factory, it struck at the very heart of Australian identity. Holden is our car made on our shores. It's the choice of patriotic rev heads and suburban drivers alike. Ho...

Join the cult authors of Sh*t Towns of Australia on an unforgettably crap journey through Australia's sh*ttest towns.Aussies love a road trip. Packing up the ute and slogging for hours or days to get to some town that's only slightly less sh*t than where you came from is just part of living on the sprawling expanse of mediocrity that is Australia.The Great Aussie Road Trip presents seven epic routes that together take in the most iconic sh...

The Summertime of Our Dreams is an unforgettable celebration of life, a hymn to the land, and a meditation on the memory and dreams of youth.To be invited to walk beside a dying man, a good man, to be asked into his mind as its existence is counted down, to be offered his gaze into the abyss, to know another soul in the honesty of the deathbed. A privilege.Here is a moving and unusual memoir by Michael Pascoe about his relationship with Ji...