I just finished "Caitlin's Country" and I REALLY liked it! It was nicely paced and kept me wanting to know what was next so I couldn't put it down! What a pleasant surprise from a new author! Although as an adult, I could have used more detail, I think it's very well paced for a teen or young adult reader. I'd think it would be especially appealling to teenage girls who have recently been forced to move or to live with a different parent. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this book to any teen.

As a side benefit, some of the English/Australian terminology explained in it helped me as a Texan to understand some of the terminology used in the "Harry Potter" books that I've read. Quite an unexpected benefit!

From all the books I've picked out of a bookshelf either on random or after having had them recomender to me, this is one of the best. This book was so inspiring. It outlined in a simple way the life and trials of blessed Mary MacKillop, and this Norwegian fell in love at once. If you want to learn more about this wonderful Aussie rolemodel, this is a great book to start with.

It's rather hard to summarize the content of this collection as a whole, since most stories are written from the perspectives of character very different from one another (i.e. social background, personality, or simply the circumstance one's situated in). Readers who look for variety in content and themes would enjoy as they go along and explore - be ready to be unsettled. I personally prefer the portrayals of seemingly insignificant individuals - the slides of a life and the vision of the world - quite subtly done, in an almost absurd but triumphant manner. Each of the story also has a fairly different form, which makes this collection a good example for students of creative writing. The writing itself, needless to say, is precise and sometimes poetic. A good choice for those who look for surprises in short fiction.

Part 1 of the Yandilli trilogy, (which is about to have part 4 released!) Captivity Captive is a fictional solution to a true story: the unsolved Gatton murders that occurred in Queensland, Australia, in 1898. Using facts from the case, relocating the events a little further south, Hall uses the real names of victims and family to tell the tale of two sisters and a brother who were found shot and bludgeoned to death in a paddock in 1898.

The novel opens at the death bed of Barney Barnett, a man who was engaged to the youngest victim, Ellen, who attempts a fictitious confession more than 58 years after the murders, in order to gain notoriety. His lies are seen through by the Inspector who has come to hear him, and by the remaining survivors of the Malone family - Patrick, our narrator, and the now paralysed Jeremiah, and mentally handicapped Willie.

From there we are drawn back into the depths of Patrick's memory, and he tells a history of his family -- here Hall veers away from murder-mystery genre territory here by sketching unique, distinctive characters -- in all its violence, ignorance and brutality, before inevitably leading us back to where we want to be -- what really happened on Boxing Day, 1898 that led to the gruesome deaths of Michael Malone - aged 29, Norah Malone, aged 27, and Ellen Malone, aged 18. The truth is shocking, the violence disturbing, and the sexual tensions of the novel gripping and unsavoury.

My only beef with Captivity Captive is that too often, Rodney Hall leaves the reader guessing about exact events. He seems to like us to guess about exactly what the victims and the perpetrator(s) of the crime got up to on Christmas Day, and then on that fateful next day.

A very captivating and harrowing novel about the dark sides of the lives, memories and personalities of the people who carved farms out of the ancient Australian forest, and a superlative psychological examination.

This is a splendid history of the women who, in the 1830s, were convicted of various petty (and some not so petty) offenses and shipped off to the convict colonies of early Australia. Many American booksellers still stock "The Fatal Shore," but in many ways this is a more compelling story, not just because of its observations on early Victorian morality but also because of the fascinating, if tragic, story of its central character, Susannah Watson. Great adventure, great history.

The "Quay" Level 23 2 Phillip Street Sydney NSW 2000.

I thoroughly enjoyed "Carlino Polia Esq." Australian Gentleman, which is a delightful romp through Australian history. My wife and I along with our four children, are business migrants to Australia. Of all the books and magazines given to us by the Australian government in the program, Carlino Polia Esq. shed more light and resolved more questions about Australia. Two of our children, aged 22 and 19, had difficulty putting your book down. They both read to the early hours of the morning enthralled by your yarn and the actual events. When we visit America after emigrating to Australia, we are often besieged with questions about Australia. It is Amazing how little Americans know about Australia in spite of the experiences of world war II. Carlino Polia Esq. relates experiences of the early auto industry not at all unlike that of my family in Cleveland, Ohio which had 22 automobile companies headquartered there prior to World War I. As an attorney who has acquired property in over 30 states in the United States, these sections on Australian property transfer were very enlightening. Over and over again you very subtly bring home to our children that education combined with experience and ethics will likely be rewarded with a quality of life. Again, my ancestors in America cherished the same values as Carlino Polia. I strongly urge you to find an American book distributor. There is a strong likelihood once Carlino Polia is reviewed, it will be well received and movie/TV rights will be sought from you. I could see Carlino Polia Esq. in a TV series, especially in commemoration of Sydney 2000. Just yesterday The Australian newspaper had an opinion column stating "Shrimp on the barbie" and "Crocodile Dundee" image of Australia has overridden the millions of dollars of government ads trying to re-image Australia as a global competitor in complex industries. Maybe tracing Australia's roots through Carlino Polia Esq. is a better antidote to the Mad Maxes and Bushwacker string of movies and books that seem to define Australia to America and other parts of the world. Carlino's involvement with the young artists, taking his paintings to a soirée, a good golfer, then his appearance in white tie and tails with a top hat, tells of Sydney with a sophisticated cultural society from the early 1900s; not much different to that in New York London or Paris at that time.

Wishing you the best for your book and in finding a distributor in America.

John Wagner. B.A.(Econ), L.L.B. The "Quay" Level 23 2 Phillip Street Sydney NSW 2000.

This is an absolutely fascinating book. It tells how the men of Ilahita, a village in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea, consciously and deliberately destroyed their secret men's cult (the Tambaran) by revealing its secret artifacts to the women. The book describes in a detailed but incredibly readable way how a prophecy contained at the end the Ilahita creation myth (involving the local lake and a Cassowary Woman) foretold the destruction of the cult, enmeshing the men and women of Ilahita on a downward spiral that even involves the anthropologist author in the second coming of the Cassowary Woman's "youngest son". It also describes the resulting damage to the village's gender dynamics, its cultural destruction at the hands of the Revival Christianity (now run by the women in a similar way to the method used by the men in the old Tambaran system), and the village's final loss of local power and land. Quite a tragic story, and one which has relevance to our own society's gender dynamics.

This book is undoubtedly the best collection of children's rhymes in the English language. If your aim is to stgart where the child already is, this is the book for you. For a music teacher of children, there are limitless possible applications in teaching rhythmic notation. For the classroom teacher, there are limitless possible applciations in teaching about rhyme and meter.

If you're interested in the history of public parks, 19th century landscape design, the social history of public spaces, or Australian cities, this should be in your collection.

The public gardens that (nearly) surround Melbourne's CBD form a collection of landscapes that would be unimaginable in most cities. Like Adelaide, some cities have more extensive greenbelts but few have such large areas that can, fairly, be described as 'gardens'. In fewer still were these developed from the start as public places.

CIVILISING THE CITY traces the history of these gardens in two main sections. The first describes collective influences - designers and other individuals as well as local political, cultural and social trends. The second, based around a fabulous collection of historical photos, provides a history of each garden starting in the first decade after the Victorian gold rush (1851), continuing through Melbourne's boom years of the 1880s and the era of Federation (1901) when it was the capital of Australia, and the inter-wars period.

Pleasant and popular though these gardens are, and although they feature a few inspired spaces, you wouldn't look to any of them as masterpieces of landscape architecture. However, when you consider them as contemporaries of Olmsted's Central Park in NYC - a sort of alternative parallel universe of landscapes - it makes a fascinating study in how subtleties of culture, climate and individuals are reflected in design.

Whitehead has produced a readable and engaging narrative that is also an authoritative and informative history based on primary sources. Although it featured on the best seller list for several weeks in The Age (Melbourne), the book is out of print.

If you're interested in other aspects of Australian garden or landscape history, Whitehead also edited PLANTING THE NATION, a similarly readable collection of essays on landscapes around the period of Australian Federation published by the Australian Garden History Society (2001). The recent encyclopedic OXFORD COMPANION TO AUSTRALIAN GARDENS is also worth a look.

obviously a highly intelegent author with a grasp of the pulse of classic tractors in australia.this will be one of many books written by mr johnston on my bookshelf.