This is the first book I've bought in the Traveler's Companion series, and was a good find. I used it on a road trip along Australia's east coast, Sydney to Cairns, and the book convinced us to continue to Port Douglas and beyond - the highlight of the trip. It's particularly good on restaurant reviews, and includes a lot of smaller hotels that the other books we had ignored. A lot of great pix too, and good info on activiteis like diving and whitewater rafting. It was the most useful of the four guides we had by a long shot, but also the heaviest - could have been printed on lighter paper!

I was planning a month-long trip to Australia and I didn't want to go the strictly backpacker's route, but nor did I want to miss out entirely on the sense of adventure that comes from roughing it, at least somewhat. I wanted to experience both the comfort that comes with an organized well-planned holiday and the spontaneous adventure that comes from rushing headlong into things. This wonderful book provides all the information a visitor to Australia could possibly want in order to experience both comfort and adventure. Yes, when I'm in Sydney I want to know about the exciting nightlife and great restaurants available, but when I'm in the outback and I want to learn how to throw a boomerang (and catch it too!),or visit remote tribes in the Northern Territories, I want to be able to switch gears without having to refer to a different guidebook. But I found "Traveler's Australia Companion" useful even before I left the states. It has Web-related information covering everything from hotels to Aborigine guided bush-treks (a must-do), to both boat and car rentals. Once you are actually on the ground, its collection of maps of cities and states are big and detailed (vital in a sparsely populated country) and absolutely essential. Well-written pieces on Australian history, both Aborigine and European, combined with wonderful pictures, bring this fascinating country to life. If you're a first time visitor to Australia, or returning as I plan to, take this beautifully illustrated and practical book with you.

Because they offer a fantastic diversity of flavors and represent great value in today's glutted wine market, the best wines of Australia and New Zealand are in high demand world-wide. Mr. Halliday is today THE authority on these wines, one of the most reliable wine critics out there, and this book further establishes his reputation with the most up-to-date information available. Here he has selected the best wineries, organized alphabetically, with statistics and tasting notes following. He is unabashedly biased towards these wines, but his notes are exceptionally well written without sounding stuffy or flowery. If you're into Australian wines, this book will be an INVALUABLE resource and will point you towards some really memorable and iconoclastic wines. If there's a flaw, I'd say it could be better indexed, allowing you to more easily compare, say, Australian shirazes or wineries of New South Wales. But if you're an adventurous wine drinker, you're certain to make some excellent discoveries with this book.

I am of Australian origin and was recently in Australia, among other things, looking for Aussie wines to start my own cellar. His book was well written, and, unlike most other wine critics, does not rate his own wines as a mark of his integrity. We found many good, medium priced wines and reccomend this book for anyone interested in Australian wines.

I read this book when I first started on the Pagan path. Being an Australian, it was a welcomed read to all the American/Northern Hemishpere books. It approached a wide range of subjects and gave me an insight into Paganism and Wicca in Australia.

I recommend this book to not just Southern Hemisphere (or Australian) Pagans but Pagans in the Northern Hemisphere as well. Lynne Hume (wrong spelling Amazon!) did well.

I never give any book 5 stars as IMHO no book is 'perfect' there are always faults.. so I gave this book 4 stars. Basically, the good I got out of this book outweighed the bad.

This book was a great read, very informative. Not a spellbook, but instead a good look at who, what, why and when. Which is always helpful.

This is another of the personal narratives for which Sunflower University Press is noted. They consistently have come up with well written works, which like those from Kansas State, shed light on little known and interesting experiences of support units. Others who toiled behind the veil of high security never got any press coverage at the time, especially those involved in SIGINT and traffic analysis as was the author.
The intercept unit he served was located in Darwin on the north coast of Australia, thousands of miles from the big cities and the settled areas of the southeastern continent. First, they had to get to Darwin. Because their equipment was so bulky they could not be flown to Darwin, so they had to go overland, a journey equivalent to going from Houston to Salt Lake City via Denver and most by motor truck. Because the Australian states had all been seperate colonies until the turn of the century (1900) the railway guages changed at the state borders and all freight had to be transloaded for the journey from the south to Queensland, then west along a single road to the north south road running north from Alice Springs in the center of the country.Well, all of this is terrain equivalent to the Mohave Desert, flat, dusty, and brushy.
Once they got to Darwin, and set up their apparatus, then the real work began, manning the receivers 24 hours a day and writing down the plain language transmissions or the coded messages. All of this was then sent on to an intelligence processing unit.
An awful lot of boring work goes into SIGINT, it is not all solving puzzles as one might gather from most of the narratives about Bletchley Park and Enigma but just plain tedious collation and distilling of random seeming data to fill in the Order of Battle and the tactical movements of the enemy.
Even so, it was not all work and the author covers civil relations and off duty pastimes as well.

Ray Wyatt's book was an inspiration to read. It was an easy book to read and was very wholesome and "American". It is a history of America's midwest before Pearl Harbor and a word picture of Australia's Outback. It describes some of the action in the 64 some air raids in Darwin, Australia Northern Territory during the early part of WWII. I liked reading it and found it was an excellent resource for WWII in Australia.

Ginny Tiernan

This book is about all the players ever to play in the Rugby League 1st Grade premiership. It gives a little review on quite a few of the big players and has all the statistics for every player.

I like it and I follow the Newcastle Knights. My fav. is Andrew Johns. Can't get a much better book than this!

Ordinarily, I say it is difficult to single out one book as significantly above others when I've read a steady stream of good ones, but THE SONGLINES belongs in a rarefied class. It has immediately moved into the pantheon of my all time favorites.

THE SONGLINES is a trip to central Australia, to Aboriginal country. In the 1980s, Chatwin found it to be a hardscrabble territory under an unforgiving sun, where the remote, sparse population mostly gets along in corrugated metal shelters. The sociological, political and economic condition of the Aborigines compares to that of the American Indian. Most of the white European locals don't quite seem to know how or why they have been plunked down in this weird, other planet. Hooking up with a savvier group of anthropologists and social workers, Chatwin looks for the songlines of an Aboriginal mythology, sacred paths spun out across the inscrutable terrain, each marked by a song that carries identity and connection to the prime movers at the beginning of time.

Along the way, Chatwin includes portraits of the people he meets, historical notes and readings of anthropology, evolutionary theory, and philosophy. In this far away land, he finds the stimulus that helps him organize a lifetime of readings and memories that come together in a meditation on the human need to travel and to make and share meaning. Looking at the contemporary scene and people, he can see back to the very emergence of humans.

Chatwin casts a spell you do not want to be broken. I suggest that if you do not know much about him, resist that strong impulse to start reading biographical notes and commentary on the book until after you have finished the book. None of what's out there will deny you its excellence; it just might poke a confusing hole in the reality it has created. The book is an exhilaratingly profound experience in the accessible guise of a pleasant, insightful travelogue. Ask why its author considered it fiction after you've read it.

Bruce Chatwin, a self-identified western "nomad", spends some time in Australia, learning about the Aboriginal "songlines." Chatwin is in the personal process of proving his life's thesis which is something along the lines of "Man was meant to be nomadic", or "it is biologically necessary for man to move". As part of the process, he spends some real time in the outback, travelling with the most bizarre humans to places in the Aboriginal land and the Aboriginal mind. The stories are dramatic, funny, and sometimes heartwrenching since they often run across the many reasons that a once beautiful and fascinating culture has become the alcoholic and violent bane of their neighbors' existences. As he relates what he is learning about how these people pass along their lives, their histories, and their environment in the geographically and historically accurate songs, we are shown a world of much greater self-awareness than most westerners can comprehend. The last third of the book is a collection of research and materials Chatwin collected in support of this thesis. Some of this information is a powerful incentive for mankind to get on the move and recognize that our history and our biology suggest this is the only way to live.

Bruce, an English guy, heads into the Australian outback to check out aborigines, as part of his life-long interest in nomadic cultures. Part of the book is travel writing - the wacko Australian situations and characters he meets are fully described - part the history/psychology/philosophy of nomadic living and human aggression, and part a poetic description of Aboriginal culture.

The link between a human sedentary existance and human aggression has long been described; Bruce presents sedentary living as an unnatural state, and the nomadic lifestyle as cleaner, more beautiful and better. It's very convincing while you're reading it, and certainly deeply interesting. It's certainly a refreshing counterpoint to thinking about all those land-related wars and situations (Israel, for example), to all the nastiness of European colonization in America, Africa, and Australia, and it has a certain intuitive appeal - land belongs to everyone!

I'm not certain how accurate Bruce's description of Aboriginal culture is, but I don't think it really matters. This is not a carefully constructed sociological or anthropological analysis, but rather a lyrical, and fairly romantic, description of nomadic life and a way of thinking. Most importantly, I think, the message is: the ways the Aboriginies think and relate to the land are powerful and beautiful and so different to what we're used to that it's very difficult for Westerners to appreciate them immediately.

I strongly recommend this book, because it outlines a way of thinking about the human condition that is nice, and that lingers in your mind for a long time.

We thought Playing Beatie Bow was a really great book. It was compulsory for us to study it this year. Our English class listened to the story on tape and then watched the video. We think Ruth Park has really done well and the descriptive words are really great as well. It is almost like she lived the story herself.

I have loved this book since I first read it when it came out, and I was 19. I laughed, cried, and loved along with Abby, whose character I understood so well. When I finally got to visit the Rocks on a trip to Australia, I delighted in seeking out the places mentioned in the book, but alas, no Mitchell Tower, and it was all so clean! It is a pity that as a set text, school kids are forced to read Playing Beatie Bow, as it takes away the magic of discovering the book for themselves. It will always be one of my favourite books, right up there with Jane Austen, and I recommend it to women of every age who ever felt like a misfit, fell in love too young, or dreamt of being born 100 years ago.

Playing Beatie Bow is a book which recognises the inherent childish qualities of 14 year olds, and how time and experiences can turn teenage girls into wonderful adults. It looks at life through many eyes, and at the changes which society has made - both for better and for worse - in the past 150 years. Reading this book has been an annual event for me for 14 years, and I am only 25. I can thoroughly recommend a book which will have you smelling and hearing "The Rocks" in Sydney well before the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House were even physically possible!

Peter Carey has created one of the most original, charismatic narrative voices in the character of Ned Kelly. Ned is both rough and charming, both quaintly colloquial and in many ways larger than his humble roots. In an epic letter to his unborn daughter, he recounts his life story, wanting to pass along the truth to a child whom he will never meet.

The story that he tells begins in early childhood, when his mother, widowed and in financial dispair, apprentices Ned to an infamous outlaw. His narrative details his numerous encounters with the law and the formation of his notorious gang of criminals. And of course, since it is a first-person narrative, Ned comes across as a remarkably sympathetic character and ultimately a hero who stood firm in the face of ruthless persecution from the Australian authorities. Apart from being an engaging portrait of a fascinating character, Carey's novel is a vivid account of life in rugged 19th century Australia, infused with plenty of local flavor to give the novel a sense of authenticity.

Though the narrative voice, in its uneducated, free-flowing style, is difficult at first, the reader will quickly become accustomed to it and soon will appreciate how much it adds to the novel. This is a fine literary performance and a deserving selection for the Booker Prize.

Peter Carey has written an alternative "autobiography" of the famous Australian bushranger Ned Kelly. Ned Kelly writes the history of his life for his daughter, whom he has never seen. He tries to explain his deeds and tell her what really happened.

Even though I am not familiar with the official history of the Kelly gang, I can imagine that this is indeed an alternative history. The language is that of a not very well educated but intelligent man, using the language he would have spoken. This latter means that the book is not for the faint-hearted or the puritans, even though most abusive words are written in the way you find in the title of the review. In this way Ned Kelly tries to prevent his daughter from getting exposed to swearing.

We come to see Ned Kelly as a straight and honest man, who after a difficult youth never really got the chance to live a normal life. The stories about the way his mother tries to survive in the harsh environment of the Australian outback and about his falling in love are truly touching. A well-written, interesting novel giving very good insight into the harsh live of the common man in 19th century Australia.

This is a "western" which gallops to life, and the reader feels the grit, smells the dust, and agonizes with desperate characters as they are tossed every which way, not by their own deliberate decisions so much as by the unpredictability of their Australian frontier existence.

Ned Kelly, the Jesse James of Australia, becomes human here, not a monstrous blackguard so much as a man who is forced to make impossible choices. In this tale, which purports to be the hand-written autobiography he wants to leave for his baby daughter, we follow his childhood in poverty, his reluctant "apprenticeship" to the villainous Harry Powers, his cruel imprisonment by corrupt authorities, and his attempts to stay out of trouble upon his release. The judicial system's attack on his mother, however, becomes the catalyst for Ned's life in crime, a life which the reader understands could have been completely different, had authorities simply shown more compassion.

Carey is masterful in using small details to show contrasts and to make the big picture come alive. A new pair of soft boots achieves almost mystical significance--the ecstasy of their acquisition contrasting with the strength achieved through their sacrifice. "Fresh bread and jam...barley and mutton soup," served to Ned in jail, provide poignant contrast to the poorer, leaner fare on the farm. And a red silk dress becomes a symbol for corruption in one context and love in another.

This is a vigorous, exuberant, and uncompromising vision of wilderness life and death. It is the sensitive portrayal of a young man forced to make impossible decisions to save and protect his family. And it is a passionate love story told with a warmth and sympathy that is all the more poignant for its contrast with the murder and death which accompany it. Satisfying and rewarding on all levels.

The first Colleen McCullough book I read was "The First Man in Rome" and I absolutely fell in love with it. I read each subsequent "Masters of Rome" book trying to recapture that love but none of them quite hit the spot. Finally, my perseverance has been rewarded. The only reason I gave "Morgan's Run" four stars is that I'm reluctant to give any book five. I love a book that's packed with detail and Ms. McCullough obviously does an exhaustive amount of research. Richard Morgan was just a good person that you couldn't help but cheer on. Perhaps he is a little too enlightened and kind-hearted to be true but it's a novel, why not. I once more eagerly await Ms. McCullough's next book.

Colleen McCullough is Australian, and established herself as a writer with The Thorn Birds, a novel of Australia. In the last few years she has been writing stories of ancient Rome, but in Morgan's Run returns to her native Australia. This novel is about the initial colonization of Australia with the Botany Bay penal colony and its offshoot on Norfolk Island, a thousand miles away. The story begins in Bristol, England, as the American Revolution is starting. Richard Morgan is middle class, unassuming, and devoted to his wife and son-unusually so for the time. Prospering until after the American war is lost, Morgan Job-like loses his fortune and family, and runs afoul of aristocratic shenanigans, ending up a convicted felon sentenced to be transported. But with the American colonies gone, England has no place to send her gaol-filling convicts. Barely discovered, much less explored, Australia is picked as the ideal dumping ground. After all, it is two oceans away, and the problem will definitely be out of sight. And by sending only convicts and their keepers, there is not likely to be another of those pesky revolutions. McCullogh captures the soul of long-suffering, long-enduring Richard Morgan as he copes with horrific prison conditions, convict labor, a transport ship little better than a slaver (which it was before being contracted as a convict transport), and a totally disorganized and corrupt expedition. A reader cannot but help to understand why the newly independent Americans insisted on the Bill of Rights as part of its written Constitution. Inept bureaucrats and corruption have been harder to overcome. This is not an action-adventure. It is a well-told tale of a man with deep inner strength, a man who perseveres through adversity. A Job. In her afterword, McCullough promises more about Richard Morgan and his family. Perhaps we will not have to wait too long.

Having read all but two of her books, I am still an avid Colleen McCullough fan, after having just completed her latest, "Morgan's Run." I have never been disappointed in anything she has written, for this author has a rare gift for both seeing into the depths of the human soul, understanding all the sociological, anthropological, medical and legal aspects of the history she so fastidiously studies to present us with these flawless books. The Masters of Rome series is the most insightful and thorough work I have read on that era in human history, and I was a bit resentful when the final volume was set aside to write this book first. However, now that she promises it will be two volumes to complete that series, I am happier again. With this book I had the same feeling that I always experience with her writing: "It can't stop here...I want more of the ongoing story as only she can tell it!" So her closing promise that we would learn more of Richard Morgan and Norfolk Island really gladdened my heart. Perhaps the majority of us knew little of the terrible experiment that created the penal colony of Australia, and nothing of this tiny island, and we can now appreciate more fully the strength of those castaways who created such flourishing new colonies. Thank you, Colleen McCullough, for some of the best reading I have ever enjoyed. Keep them coming!

When Marina is sent to boarding school, she learns that the students are required to keep journals. Gradually, Marina starts to confide in her journal. Since Marina doesn't talk, writing is her only form of communication, until a nice girl in her dorm begins to talk to her, unlike the others. Marina and this girl become friends, even without words. Throughout the book, the story of who and where Marina's father is becomes more clear. Also, why she doesn't speak. I thought that this book was great, and I could not stop reading it! John Marsden does a wonderful job of gradually unfolding the mystery of Marina, as he does in some of his previous books. All in all, this book is excellent and I strongly reccomend it to all!

A fascinating journal of a teenager's troubling life. Marina's father and mother had a fight resolving in an accident. Now Marina is traumatised, her father was sentensed to jail, she rarely see's her parents and is in a strange new world at Warrington Boarding School. Learning to cope with the changes, new life and surroundings is upsetting and strange, but eventually Marina beging to open up and adjust to the people around her. Read this book-and exciting and heart touching tale of a girl as she learns to cope with life.

So much to tell you tells the story of a girl named Marina who since some tragic event has not been able to talk. She's spent a while in a hospital but even that wouldn't help her. SO in hope that she might find a voice and interact with others her mother sends her to a boarding school. In this school she recieves a journal she has to write in for school. As she starts pouring out her emotions, and even reaching out to students, she starts to admit what really happen. Will she ever have the chance to speak again? Read the book and find out.

I really enjoyed this book. It tells the emotional story of one girls stuggle to get over her past and growing up. Though it's short it's definatly a powerful read. If you like stories such as "Don't you Dare read this Mrs. Dumphery" or other diary stories I reccomend this book to you. It's really a great read.