AustLit
2016
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y Bear and Chook Emma Quay (illustrator), Sydney : Hodder Headline , 2002 Z956176 2002 single work picture book children's (taught in 3 units) Adventurous Bear and practical Chook make unlikely friends, who together spend a day dreaming and acting out what jobs they think they'd like to have when they grow up. (Libraries Australia record).
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The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie Snugglepot and Cuddlepie Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1940 Z916552 1940 selected work children's fiction children's (taught in 3 units)
— Appears in: Kumurins un Kamolins; Es protu lekt pari pelkem; Vetras zens 1999;'This quintessential collection of May Gibbs’ classic stories was first published in 1940 and has never been out of print since! Featuring the tales of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie (first published in 1918) and its two sequels, Little Ragged Blossom (1920) and Little Obelia (1921). In this new edition, all of May’s original artwork has been sourced and re-scanned and the illustrations look as exquisite as the day May put down her paintbrush all those years ago.' (Source: author's website)
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y Girl Defective Sydney : Pan Macmillan Australia , 2013 Z1926105 2013 single work novel young adult detective mystery (taught in 2 units) 'It's summer in St Kilda. Fifteen-year-old Sky is looking forward to great records and nefarious activities with Nancy, her older, wilder friend. Her brother - Super Agent Gully - is on a mission to unmask the degenerate who bricked the shop window. Bill the Patriarch seems content to drink while the shop slides into bankruptcy. A poster of a mysterious girl and her connection to Luke, the new employee sends Sky on an exploration into the dark heart of the suburb. What begins as a toe-dip into wilder waters will end up changing the frames of Sky's existence. Love is strange. Family Rules. In between there are teenage messes, rock star spawn, violent fangirls and accidents waiting to happen. Sky Martin is Girl Defective: funny, real and dark at the edges.' (Publisher's blurb)
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y Just Crazy! Sydney : Pan , 2000 Z793607 2000 selected work children's fiction humour children's (taught in 3 units)
'"Just Crazy!" Is this the right book for you? Take the crazy test and find out the answer. Answer yes or no: Do you bounce so high on your bed that you hit your head on the ceiling? Do you ever look in the mirror and see a maniac staring back at you? Do you like to read stories about kittens, puppies and ponies getting mashed and pulverised? Do you sometimes get the urge to take your clothes off and cover yourself in mud? Do you often waste your time taking crazy tests like this one? Score by giving one point for each 'yes' answer. If you score 3-5, you are completely crazy. You will love this book. If you score 1-2, you are not completely crazy, but you're not far from it. You will love this book. If you score 0, you are so crazy you don't even realise you're crazy. You will love this book.' (Publication summary)
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y Leaf Stephen Michael King (illustrator), Gosford : Scholastic Australia , 2008 Z1491176 2008 single work picture book children's (taught in 3 units)
"A boy who hates having his hair combed discovers an extraordinary side-effect of messy, matted hair when a seed falls on his head and begins to grow." (Source: Trove)
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y The Lost Thing Shaun Tan (illustrator), Port Melbourne : Lothian , 2000 Z668356 2000 single work picture book children's (taught in 11 units) 'A boy discovers a bizarre looking creature while out collecting bottle tops at the beach. Realising it is lost, he tries to find out who owns it or where it belongs, but is met with indifference from everyone else, who barely notice its presence, each unwilling to entertain this uninvited interruption to their day to day lives. For reasons he does not explain, the boy empathises with the creature, and sets out to find a 'place' for it.'
(Source: The Lost Thing website) -
y The Nargun and the Stars Richmond London : Hutchinson , 1973 Z862349 1973 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 3 units)
Simon Brent is orphaned. Still shocked, he is taken to live with his only relatives, brother and sister Charlie and Edie Waters, who live on a farm. There, Simon meets the Aboriginal spirits who also live on the land. Together Simon, Charlie, Edie, and the spirits save the land from the ancient Nargun. The story is memorable in the portrayal of the Nargun and the spirits, as well as the characters of Charlie and Edie, and the depiction of Simon's change from a shocked and emotionally frozen individual to a normal boy.
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y Njunjul the Sun Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2002 Z947015 2002 single work novel young adult (taught in 2 units) 'A 16-year-old Aboriginal boy leaves his family and home for the big city, and as he struggles to make sense of his experience he realises that he must have the knowledge of his own people and culture in order to know who he is, and to find his direction.' Source: Libraries Australia.
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y Our World : Bardi Jaawi Life at Ardiyooloon One Arm Point Remote Community School (editor), Broome : Magabala Books , 2010 Z1727607 2010 anthology autobiography children's (taught in 3 units) 'Ardiyooloon is home to the Bardi Jaawi people and sits at the end of a red dirt road at the top of the Dampier Peninsula, 200km north of Broome in the north-west of Western Australia. Also known as One Arm Point, the community is surrounded on three sides by the saltwater that plays such an integral part in the people's lives. Our World: Bardi Jaawi Life at Ardiyooloon takes readers inside the lives of the children of a remote Indigenous community. Source: www.magabala.com (Sighted 24/11/2010).
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y The Protected St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2014 7329687 2014 single work novel young adult (taught in 2 units)
'A compulsively readable novel from the acclaimed author of The Sky So Heavy.
'The worst thing that could happen would be for my life to go back to how it was before Katie died.
'Hannah's world has imploded, all thanks to her older sister Katie. Her mum is depressed, her dad's injured and she has to go to compulsory therapy sessions. Hannah should feel terrible but for the first time in ages, she feels a glimmer of hope and isn't afraid anymore. Is it because the elusive Josh is taking an interest in her? Or does it run deeper than that?
'In a family torn apart by guilt, one girl's struggle to come to terms with years of harassment shows how deep previous scars can run.
'The Protected is an honest and searing portrayal of loss and grief that conveys the repercussions of bullying to the modern-day teenager.' (Publication summary)
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y Seven Little Australians London Melbourne : Ward, Lock and Bowden , 1894 Z863667 1894 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 25 units)
'Without doubt Judy was the worst of the seven, probably because she was the cleverest.'
'Her father, Captain Woolcot, found his vivacious, cheeky daughter impossible – but seven children were really too much for him and most of the time they ran wild at their rambling riverside home, Misrule.
'Step inside and meet them all – dreamy Meg, and Pip, daring Judy, naughty Bunty, Nell, Baby and the youngest, 'the General'. Come and share in their lives, their laughter and their tears.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y Window Jeannie Baker (illustrator), London : Julia MacRae Books , 1991 Z834244 1991 single work picture book children's (taught in 5 units) Through a house window the view gradually changes over the passage of time to show how the environment changes, not necessarily for the better.
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y The Mystery of a Hansom Cab Melbourne : Kemp and Boyce , 1886 Z156928 1886 single work novel (taught in 8 units)
'Set in the charming and deadly streets of Melbourne, this vivid and brilliantly plotted murder thriller tells the story of a crime committed by an unknown assassin. With its panoramic depiction of a bustling yet uneasy city, Hansom Cab has a central place in Australian literary history and, more importantly, it remains highly readable. ' (Publication summary)
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y The Penguin Henry Lawson : Short Stories John Barnes (editor), Ringwood : Penguin , 1986 Z282880 1986 selected work short story humour (taught in 8 units)
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y Prelude to Christopher Sydney : P. R. Stephensen , 1934 Z824226 1934 single work novel (taught in 22 units)
'Should a woman bear a child knowing that there are traces of insanity in her family? Linda Hainlin, niece of a famous biologist, was aware of the danger when she married Dr. Nigel Hendon, a practical idealist, whose creed was normality and the rational ordering of the world. This book tells how, years later, while temporarily deprived of her husband's sane companionship, Linda feels the oncoming of those homicidal impulses which presage madness. On this tragic theme, 'Prelude to Christopher' is written with strong literary art as a narrative of four days of crisis. The story goes back in memory to the happiness of Linda's love for Nigel, and forward in her frightened imagination to a future from which the strongest must flinch. Christopher, the unborn child, dominates terrific events in which he has no living part to play. The prelude to his birth is told with emotional power.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
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y The Puncher & Wattmann Anthology of Australian Poetry John Leonard (editor), Glebe : Puncher and Wattmann , 2009 Z1674214 2009 anthology poetry (taught in 16 units)
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y The Twyborn Affair London : Jonathan Cape , 1979 Z448841 1979 single work novel (taught in 14 units)
'Eddie Twyborn is bisexual and beautiful, the son of a Judge and a drunken mother. With his androgynous hero - Eudoxia/Eddie/Eadith Twyborn - and through his search for identity, for self-affirmation and love in its many forms, Patrick White takes us into the ambiguous landscapes, sexual, psychological and spiritual, of the human condition.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y Wild Cat Falling Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1965 Z203627 1965 single work novel (taught in 13 units)
'Wild Cat Falling is the story of an Aboriginal youth, a 'bodgie' of the early sixties who grows up on the ragged outskirts of a country town, falls into petty crime, goes to gaol, and comes out to do battle once more with the society who put him there. Its publication in 1965 marked a unique literary event, for this was the first novel by any writer of Aboriginal blood to be published in Australia. As well, it is a remarkable piece of literature in its own right, expressing the dilemmas and conflicts of the young Aboriginal in modern Australian society with its memorable insight and stylishness.' (Publication summary)
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y Brumby Innes, and Bid Me to Love Katharine Brisbane (editor), Sydney : Currency Methuen Drama , 1974 Z169610 1974 selected work drama (taught in 8 units)
'Written in the 1920s, Brumby Innes confronts the turbulent relations between the sexes and the races in the remote Pilbara region of Western Australia. It is published with another Prichard play from the 1920s, Bid Me To Love which, by contrast, is set among the fashionable rich in the lush hills outside Perth.'
'The two plays are compelling for their dramatic styles and for their insight into the novels which followed: Coonardoo and Intimate Strangers. And both had to wait more than forty years for their first production.' (Source: Reading Australia website)
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y Collected Poems 1942-1985 Pymble : Angus and Robertson , 1994 Z501989 1994 selected work poetry war literature satire (taught in 8 units)
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y The Hanging Garden 1981 (Manuscript version)x402198 Z1852189 1981 single work novel (taught in 4 units)
'Two children are brought to a wild garden on the shores of Sydney Harbour to shelter from the Second World War. The boy's mother has died in the Blitz. The girl is the daughter of a Sydney woman and a Communist executed in a Greek prison. In wartime Australia, these two children form an extraordinary bond as they negotiate the dangers of life as strangers abandoned on the far side of the world. With the tenderness and rigour of an old, wise novelist, Patrick White explores the world of these children, the city of his childhood and the experience of war. The Hanging Garden ends as the news reaches Sydney of victory in Europe, and the children face their inevitable separation.
White put the novel aside at this point and how he planned to finish the work remains a mystery. But at his death in 1990 he left behind a masterpiece in the making, which is published here for the first time.'
Source: Publisher's blurb
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y Kenneth Slessor Selected Poems Sydney : HarperCollins Australia , 2014 7172898 2014 selected work poetry (taught in 4 units)
'Kenneth Slessor (1901-71) is one of Australia's finest poets and this is the definitive collection of 103 poems; all he had ever published. This is the author's selection of his work from 1919 to 1939, first published as One Hundred Poems in 1944 (with the addition of three further poems in 1957). It draws from his acclaimed books, Earth Visitors (1926), Cuckooz Contrey (1932) and Five Bells (1939). Introduced by Dennis Haskell, this selection includes Slessor's own piece about his work, 'Some Notes on the Poems'. From his historical series, 'Five Visions of Captain Cook', to his memorial to the loss of a friend, 'Five Bells', from the tragic landscape of El Alamein, made famous in 'Beach Burial', to the meditation 'Out of Time', Slessor's poetry continues to dazzle contemporary audiences.' (Publication summary)
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y Maurice Guest London : Heinemann , 1908 Z821550 1908 single work novel (taught in 6 units)
'A passionate and controversial novel set in turn-of-the-century Europe
'Henry Handel Richardson’s debut, published in London in 1908, is set in the music scene of Leipzig, a cosmopolitan centre for the arts drawing students from around the world—among them Maurice Guest, a young Englishman, who falls helplessly in love with an Australian woman, Louise Dufrayer. Maurice Guest is the story of this overwhelming passion.
'The novel was deemed too controversial to be published as Richardson intended, and she was forced to cut twenty thousand words from the original manuscript and tone down its language.' (Publication summary)
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y The Sparrow Garden Marianna Lacek (translator), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2004 Z1111071 2004 single work autobiography (taught in 5 units)
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y To the Islands London : MacDonald , 1958 Z320065 1958 single work novel (taught in 5 units)
'To the Islands concerns the ordeal of Stephen Heriot, an elderly, careworn, and disillusioned Anglican missionary who abandons his mission when he mistakenly believes he has accidentally killed one of his Aboriginal charges in a not entirely unprovoked confrontation. Heriot flees into the desert not to escape justice but to embrace its desolate beauty and its elemental purity as the one objective reality and the one certainty left available to him.
Heriot's flight and his embrace of the desert may be seen as his attempt, as a European Australian, to immerse himself in the landscape, to make himself one with the land. At this realistic level, the novel enacts the ontological and existential dilemma that confronts most — if not all — European Australians, the dilemma that Professor Hassall [in his introduction to the 2002 UQP Australian Authors version] defines as the continuing quest for psychic integration, for reconciliation with indigenous Australians, and with the land itself.'
Wells-Green, James. [Untitled Review.] JAS Review of Books 15 (May 2003)
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y Way Home Gregory Rogers (illustrator), Milsons Point : Random House , 1994 Z798083 1994 single work picture book children's (taught in 2 units) A young boy who lives in a hole in a wall in a big city makes a dangerous night trip to bring a stray cat back to his little cell for company.
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y Arms Race : And Other Stories Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2014 7449634 2014 selected work short story (taught in 1 units)
'Data theft, internet memes, advertising, terrorism, indigenous sovereignty, drone warfare, opium addiction, syphilis, the moon landing, mining, oil slicks, climate change, giant octopuses: nothing is spared in this collection. Nic Low's stories go beyond satire, aiming for the dark heart of our collective obsession with technology, power and image.
'Set variously in London, an Indian village, remote Mongolia, the West Australian outback and mountainous New Zealand, these are prescient visions of the future and outlandish reimaginings of the past. Arms Race is an arresting debut from a fierce, playful new voice in Australian writing.' (Publication summary)
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y The Best Australian Essays : A Ten Year Collection Collingwood : Black Inc. , 2011 Z1774371 2011 anthology essay (taught in 3 units) The Handbag studio / Thomas Keneally -- The tall man / Chloe Hooper -- The one day / David Malouf -- A city obsessed / John Birmingham -- Arrayed for the bridal / Helen Garner -- Big Louis / Inga Clendinnen -- On becoming a Mormon for a while and other madnesses / M.J Hyland -- Patrick White: the final chapter / David Marr -- The great generation of Australian policy / Clive James -- Arthur Boyd: a life / Barry Humphries -- The first sense / Robyn Davidson -- Into a liquid ether / Christos Tsolkas -- Unforgiven / Craig Sherborn -- "What're yer lookin' at yer fuckin' dog?": violence and fear on Zizek's post-polictical neighbourhood / Kevin Brophy -- Bradman the liberator / Frank Devine -- Late starter / Jessica Anderson -- From the red country / Alan Frost -- Flames of death / Gary Hughes -- The inferno / Christina Kenneally -- He and his Man: the 2003 Nobel lecture / J.M Coetzee -- The good old books / Peter Porter -- The experience of literary translation / Simon Leys -- Like love in a marriage / Anna Goldsworthy -- The long fall into steel / Brenda Walker -- Ebony: the girl in the room / Anne Mann -- Shoulder-deep in the entrails / Shane Maloney -- White guilt, victimhood and the the quest for a radical centre / Noel Pearson -- Pearson's gamble, Stanners dream / Robert Mann -- Out of control: the tragedy of Tasmania's forests / Richard Flanagan -- September 11 / Gay Alcorn and Mark Riley -- Darwin's big idea / Nicholas Rothwell -- The lady or the tiger? / Tim Flannery -- The grand illusion / Robert Dessaix -- Tourism / Benjamin Law -- Trouble on the night shift / Anna Krien -- Silent country: travels through a recovering landscape / Tim Winton -- Home truths: revisiting Wake in fright / Kate Jennings -- Quod Potero Sedulo / David Foster.
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y Carpentaria Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2006 Z1184902 2006 single work novel (taught in 47 units) Carpentaria's portrait of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance centres on the powerful Phantom family, whose members are the leaders of the Pricklebush people, and their battles with old Joseph Midnight's tearaway Eastend mob on the one hand, and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine on the other. Wright's storytelling is operatic and surreal: a blend of myth and scripture, politics and farce. The novel is populated by extraordinary characters - Elias Smith the outcast saviour, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, leader of the holy Aboriginal pilgrimage, the murderous mayor Stan Bruiser, the ever-vigilant Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist and prodigal son Will Phantom, and above all, Angel Day the queen of the rubbish-dump, and her sea-faring husband Normal Phantom, the fish-embalming king of time - figures that stand like giants in this storm-swept world. (Backcover)
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y El Dorado Sydney : Pan Macmillan Australia , 2007 Z1362160 2007 single work novel crime detective thriller (taught in 10 units)
'There is a serial killer stalking the streets of Melbourne. The victims are killed gently, lovingly, a gold mark traced on their forehead. This killer doesn't hate children. This killer believes in childhood innocence at any cost...El Dorado is the story of a friendship under siege, and the very long shadows that jealousy and betrayal can cast.' - back cover
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y The Writing Book : A Workbook for Fiction Writers Sydney : Allen and Unwin , 1990 Z410184 1990 single work non-fiction (taught in 13 units)
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y Award Winning Australian Writing 2011 Adolfo Aranjuez (editor), Melbourne : Melbourne Books , 2011 Z1815848 2011 anthology poetry short story (taught in 2 units) 'The fourth edition of AWAW sees the Award Winning series expanding, being the first to include poetry. It showcases over forty competitions, including The Adelaide Review / University of Adelaide Creative Writing Program Short Fiction Competition, the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize, the Banjo Paterson Writing Awards, the Australian Book Review Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, the Rolf Boldrewood Literary Awards and the Blake Poetry Prize.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y Birds : Poems Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1962 Z565163 1962 selected work poetry (taught in 3 units)
'The poems in Judith Wright's Birds volume have long been recognised as among the best-loved poems written in Australia. Many people have grown up with the beguiling rhythms of 'Black Cockatoos', or the jauntiness of 'The Wagtail'. Now, in this new edition, commemorating 25 years since the poems were last published as a single collection, these works appear with six additional poems and a personal introduction by the poet's daughter Meredith McKinney, for whom many of the poems were written. The poems are complemented by full-colour illustrations drawn from the National Library's Pictures Collection, featuring the work of artists such as John Lewin, Lionel Lindsay, Lilian Medland, William T. Cooper and Betty Temple Watts. 'Birds' is both a celebration of Judith Wright (1915-2000) as writer and passionate environmentalist, and of the centrality of birds in the poet's imagination. ' (Publication summary)
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y The Dreamers Paddington : Currency Press , 1996 Z450251 1982 single work drama (taught in 18 units)
— Appears in: ドリーマーズ : ノー・シュガー 2006;'With humane irony the Western Australian poet, Jack Davis gives a painful insight into the process of colonisation and the transformation of his people.'
'The Dreamers is the story of a country-town family and old Uncle Worru, who in his dying days, recedes from urban hopelessness to the life and language of the Nyoongah spirit which in him has survived 'civilisation'.' (Currency Press website)
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y The Feel of Steel Sydney : Picador , 2001 Z900745 2001 selected work autobiography prose column essay (taught in 3 units)
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y Loaded Milsons Point : Vintage Australia , 1995 Z565443 1995 single work novel (taught in 40 units)
'Families can detonate. Some families are torn apart forever by one small act, one solitary mistake. In my family it was a series of small explosions; consistent, passionate, pathetic. Cruel words, crude threats... We spurred each other on till we reached a crescendo of pain and we retired exhausted to our rooms, in tears or in fury.
'Ari is nineteen, unemployed and a poofter who doesn't want to be gay. He is looking for something - anything - to take him away from his aimless existence in suburban Melbourne. He doesn't believe in anyone or anything, except the power of music. All he wants to do is dance, take drugs, have sex and change the world.
'For Ari, all the orthodoxies of family, sex, politics and work have collapsed. Caught between the traditional Greek world of his parents and friends and the alluring, destructive world of clubs, chemicals and anonymous sex, all Ari can do is ease his pain in the only ways he knows how.
'Written in stark, uncompromising prose, Loaded is a first novel of great passion and power.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y Wake in Fright London : Michael Joseph , 1961 Z560904 1961 single work novel (taught in 9 units)
Wake in Fright is the harrowing story of a young schoolteacher, John Grant, who leaves his isolated outback school to go on holidays to Sydney (and civilization). Things start to go horribly wrong, however, when stays overnight in a rough outback mining town called Bundanyabba. After a drink fuelled night, in which he loses all his momey, Grant finds himself both broke and stuck in the town with means of escape. He subsequently descends into a cycle of hangovers, fumbling sexual encounters, and increasing self-loathing as he becomes more and more immersed in the grotesque and surreal nightmare that is 'the Yabba.'
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y The Year of Living Dangerously West Melbourne : Nelson , 1978 Z493822 1978 single work novel (taught in 2 units)
'The charismatic god-king Sukarno has brought Indonesia to the edge of chaos - to an abortive revolution that will leave half a million dead. For the Western correspondents here, this gathering apocalypse is their story and their drug, while the sufferings of the Indonesian people are scarcely real: a shadow play. Working at the eye of the storm are television correspondent Guy Hamilton and his eccentric cameraman Billy Kwan. In Kwan's secret fantasy life, both Sukarno and Hamilton are heroes. But his heroes betray him, and Billy is driven to desperate action. As the Indonesian shadow play erupts into terrible reality, a complex personal tragedy of love, obsession and betrayal comes to its climax.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
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y Deadly, Unna? Ringwood : Penguin , 1998 Z517608 1998 single work novel young adult (taught in 20 units)
'"Deadly, unna?" He was always saying that. All the Nungas did, but Dumby more than any of them. Dumby Red and Blacky don't have a lot in common. Dumby's the star of the footy team, he's got a killer smile and the knack with girls, and he's a Nunga. Blacky's a gutless wonder, needs braces, never knows what to say, and he's white. But they're friends... and it could be deadly, unna? This gutsy novel, set in a small coastal town in South Australia is a rites-of-passage story about two boys confronting the depth of racism that exists all around them.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
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2015
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y Bear and Chook Emma Quay (illustrator), Sydney : Hodder Headline , 2002 Z956176 2002 single work picture book children's (taught in 3 units) Adventurous Bear and practical Chook make unlikely friends, who together spend a day dreaming and acting out what jobs they think they'd like to have when they grow up. (Libraries Australia record).
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The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie Snugglepot and Cuddlepie Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1940 Z916552 1940 selected work children's fiction children's (taught in 3 units)
— Appears in: Kumurins un Kamolins; Es protu lekt pari pelkem; Vetras zens 1999;'This quintessential collection of May Gibbs’ classic stories was first published in 1940 and has never been out of print since! Featuring the tales of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie (first published in 1918) and its two sequels, Little Ragged Blossom (1920) and Little Obelia (1921). In this new edition, all of May’s original artwork has been sourced and re-scanned and the illustrations look as exquisite as the day May put down her paintbrush all those years ago.' (Source: author's website)
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y Girl Defective Sydney : Pan Macmillan Australia , 2013 Z1926105 2013 single work novel young adult detective mystery (taught in 2 units) 'It's summer in St Kilda. Fifteen-year-old Sky is looking forward to great records and nefarious activities with Nancy, her older, wilder friend. Her brother - Super Agent Gully - is on a mission to unmask the degenerate who bricked the shop window. Bill the Patriarch seems content to drink while the shop slides into bankruptcy. A poster of a mysterious girl and her connection to Luke, the new employee sends Sky on an exploration into the dark heart of the suburb. What begins as a toe-dip into wilder waters will end up changing the frames of Sky's existence. Love is strange. Family Rules. In between there are teenage messes, rock star spawn, violent fangirls and accidents waiting to happen. Sky Martin is Girl Defective: funny, real and dark at the edges.' (Publisher's blurb)
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y Just Crazy! Sydney : Pan , 2000 Z793607 2000 selected work children's fiction humour children's (taught in 3 units)
'"Just Crazy!" Is this the right book for you? Take the crazy test and find out the answer. Answer yes or no: Do you bounce so high on your bed that you hit your head on the ceiling? Do you ever look in the mirror and see a maniac staring back at you? Do you like to read stories about kittens, puppies and ponies getting mashed and pulverised? Do you sometimes get the urge to take your clothes off and cover yourself in mud? Do you often waste your time taking crazy tests like this one? Score by giving one point for each 'yes' answer. If you score 3-5, you are completely crazy. You will love this book. If you score 1-2, you are not completely crazy, but you're not far from it. You will love this book. If you score 0, you are so crazy you don't even realise you're crazy. You will love this book.' (Publication summary)
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y Laurinda Melbourne : Black Inc. , 2014 7951220 2014 single work novel young adult (taught in 1 units)
'When my dad dropped us off at the front gate, the first things I saw were the rose garden spreading out on either side of the main driveway and the enormous sign in iron cursive letters spelling out LAURINDA. No 'Ladies College' after it, of course; the name was meant to speak for itself.
'Laurinda is an exclusive school for girls. At its secret core is the Cabinet, a trio of girls who wield power over their classmates - and some of their teachers.
'Entering this world of wealth and secrets is Lucy Lam, a scholarship girl with sharp eyes and a shaky sense of self. As she watches the Cabinet at work, and is courted by them, Lucy finds herself in a battle for her identity and integrity.
'Funny, feisty and moving, Laurinda explores Lucy's struggle to stay true to herself as she finds her way in a new world of privilege and opportunity.' (Publication summary)
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y Leaf Stephen Michael King (illustrator), Gosford : Scholastic Australia , 2008 Z1491176 2008 single work picture book children's (taught in 3 units)
"A boy who hates having his hair combed discovers an extraordinary side-effect of messy, matted hair when a seed falls on his head and begins to grow." (Source: Trove)
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y The Lost Thing Shaun Tan (illustrator), Port Melbourne : Lothian , 2000 Z668356 2000 single work picture book children's (taught in 11 units) 'A boy discovers a bizarre looking creature while out collecting bottle tops at the beach. Realising it is lost, he tries to find out who owns it or where it belongs, but is met with indifference from everyone else, who barely notice its presence, each unwilling to entertain this uninvited interruption to their day to day lives. For reasons he does not explain, the boy empathises with the creature, and sets out to find a 'place' for it.'
(Source: The Lost Thing website) -
y The Nargun and the Stars Richmond London : Hutchinson , 1973 Z862349 1973 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 3 units)
Simon Brent is orphaned. Still shocked, he is taken to live with his only relatives, brother and sister Charlie and Edie Waters, who live on a farm. There, Simon meets the Aboriginal spirits who also live on the land. Together Simon, Charlie, Edie, and the spirits save the land from the ancient Nargun. The story is memorable in the portrayal of the Nargun and the spirits, as well as the characters of Charlie and Edie, and the depiction of Simon's change from a shocked and emotionally frozen individual to a normal boy.
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y Njunjul the Sun Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2002 Z947015 2002 single work novel young adult (taught in 2 units) 'A 16-year-old Aboriginal boy leaves his family and home for the big city, and as he struggles to make sense of his experience he realises that he must have the knowledge of his own people and culture in order to know who he is, and to find his direction.' Source: Libraries Australia.
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y Our World : Bardi Jaawi Life at Ardiyooloon One Arm Point Remote Community School (editor), Broome : Magabala Books , 2010 Z1727607 2010 anthology autobiography children's (taught in 3 units) 'Ardiyooloon is home to the Bardi Jaawi people and sits at the end of a red dirt road at the top of the Dampier Peninsula, 200km north of Broome in the north-west of Western Australia. Also known as One Arm Point, the community is surrounded on three sides by the saltwater that plays such an integral part in the people's lives. Our World: Bardi Jaawi Life at Ardiyooloon takes readers inside the lives of the children of a remote Indigenous community. Source: www.magabala.com (Sighted 24/11/2010).
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y Seven Little Australians London Melbourne : Ward, Lock and Bowden , 1894 Z863667 1894 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 25 units)
'Without doubt Judy was the worst of the seven, probably because she was the cleverest.'
'Her father, Captain Woolcot, found his vivacious, cheeky daughter impossible – but seven children were really too much for him and most of the time they ran wild at their rambling riverside home, Misrule.
'Step inside and meet them all – dreamy Meg, and Pip, daring Judy, naughty Bunty, Nell, Baby and the youngest, 'the General'. Come and share in their lives, their laughter and their tears.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y The Silver Brumby London : Hutchinson , 1958 Z175381 1958 single work novel young adult (taught in 1 units) Thowra, the magnificent silver stallion, is king of the brumbies. He must defend his herd from the mighty horse, the Brolga, in the most savage of struggles. He must also save his herd from capture by man.
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y Window Jeannie Baker (illustrator), London : Julia MacRae Books , 1991 Z834244 1991 single work picture book children's (taught in 5 units) Through a house window the view gradually changes over the passage of time to show how the environment changes, not necessarily for the better.
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y The Mystery of a Hansom Cab Melbourne : Kemp and Boyce , 1886 Z156928 1886 single work novel (taught in 8 units)
'Set in the charming and deadly streets of Melbourne, this vivid and brilliantly plotted murder thriller tells the story of a crime committed by an unknown assassin. With its panoramic depiction of a bustling yet uneasy city, Hansom Cab has a central place in Australian literary history and, more importantly, it remains highly readable. ' (Publication summary)
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y The Penguin Henry Lawson : Short Stories John Barnes (editor), Ringwood : Penguin , 1986 Z282880 1986 selected work short story humour (taught in 8 units)
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y Prelude to Christopher Sydney : P. R. Stephensen , 1934 Z824226 1934 single work novel (taught in 22 units)
'Should a woman bear a child knowing that there are traces of insanity in her family? Linda Hainlin, niece of a famous biologist, was aware of the danger when she married Dr. Nigel Hendon, a practical idealist, whose creed was normality and the rational ordering of the world. This book tells how, years later, while temporarily deprived of her husband's sane companionship, Linda feels the oncoming of those homicidal impulses which presage madness. On this tragic theme, 'Prelude to Christopher' is written with strong literary art as a narrative of four days of crisis. The story goes back in memory to the happiness of Linda's love for Nigel, and forward in her frightened imagination to a future from which the strongest must flinch. Christopher, the unborn child, dominates terrific events in which he has no living part to play. The prelude to his birth is told with emotional power.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
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y The Puncher & Wattmann Anthology of Australian Poetry John Leonard (editor), Glebe : Puncher and Wattmann , 2009 Z1674214 2009 anthology poetry (taught in 16 units)
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y The Twyborn Affair London : Jonathan Cape , 1979 Z448841 1979 single work novel (taught in 14 units)
'Eddie Twyborn is bisexual and beautiful, the son of a Judge and a drunken mother. With his androgynous hero - Eudoxia/Eddie/Eadith Twyborn - and through his search for identity, for self-affirmation and love in its many forms, Patrick White takes us into the ambiguous landscapes, sexual, psychological and spiritual, of the human condition.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y Wild Cat Falling Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1965 Z203627 1965 single work novel (taught in 13 units)
'Wild Cat Falling is the story of an Aboriginal youth, a 'bodgie' of the early sixties who grows up on the ragged outskirts of a country town, falls into petty crime, goes to gaol, and comes out to do battle once more with the society who put him there. Its publication in 1965 marked a unique literary event, for this was the first novel by any writer of Aboriginal blood to be published in Australia. As well, it is a remarkable piece of literature in its own right, expressing the dilemmas and conflicts of the young Aboriginal in modern Australian society with its memorable insight and stylishness.' (Publication summary)
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y Collected Poems 1942-1985 Pymble : Angus and Robertson , 1994 Z501989 1994 selected work poetry war literature satire (taught in 8 units)
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y The Hanging Garden 1981 (Manuscript version)x402198 Z1852189 1981 single work novel (taught in 4 units)
'Two children are brought to a wild garden on the shores of Sydney Harbour to shelter from the Second World War. The boy's mother has died in the Blitz. The girl is the daughter of a Sydney woman and a Communist executed in a Greek prison. In wartime Australia, these two children form an extraordinary bond as they negotiate the dangers of life as strangers abandoned on the far side of the world. With the tenderness and rigour of an old, wise novelist, Patrick White explores the world of these children, the city of his childhood and the experience of war. The Hanging Garden ends as the news reaches Sydney of victory in Europe, and the children face their inevitable separation.
White put the novel aside at this point and how he planned to finish the work remains a mystery. But at his death in 1990 he left behind a masterpiece in the making, which is published here for the first time.'
Source: Publisher's blurb
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y Kenneth Slessor Selected Poems Sydney : HarperCollins Australia , 2014 7172898 2014 selected work poetry (taught in 4 units)
'Kenneth Slessor (1901-71) is one of Australia's finest poets and this is the definitive collection of 103 poems; all he had ever published. This is the author's selection of his work from 1919 to 1939, first published as One Hundred Poems in 1944 (with the addition of three further poems in 1957). It draws from his acclaimed books, Earth Visitors (1926), Cuckooz Contrey (1932) and Five Bells (1939). Introduced by Dennis Haskell, this selection includes Slessor's own piece about his work, 'Some Notes on the Poems'. From his historical series, 'Five Visions of Captain Cook', to his memorial to the loss of a friend, 'Five Bells', from the tragic landscape of El Alamein, made famous in 'Beach Burial', to the meditation 'Out of Time', Slessor's poetry continues to dazzle contemporary audiences.' (Publication summary)
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y Prelude to Christopher Sydney : P. R. Stephensen , 1934 Z824226 1934 single work novel (taught in 22 units)
'Should a woman bear a child knowing that there are traces of insanity in her family? Linda Hainlin, niece of a famous biologist, was aware of the danger when she married Dr. Nigel Hendon, a practical idealist, whose creed was normality and the rational ordering of the world. This book tells how, years later, while temporarily deprived of her husband's sane companionship, Linda feels the oncoming of those homicidal impulses which presage madness. On this tragic theme, 'Prelude to Christopher' is written with strong literary art as a narrative of four days of crisis. The story goes back in memory to the happiness of Linda's love for Nigel, and forward in her frightened imagination to a future from which the strongest must flinch. Christopher, the unborn child, dominates terrific events in which he has no living part to play. The prelude to his birth is told with emotional power.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
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y The Sparrow Garden Marianna Lacek (translator), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2004 Z1111071 2004 single work autobiography (taught in 5 units)
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y To the Islands London : MacDonald , 1958 Z320065 1958 single work novel (taught in 5 units)
'To the Islands concerns the ordeal of Stephen Heriot, an elderly, careworn, and disillusioned Anglican missionary who abandons his mission when he mistakenly believes he has accidentally killed one of his Aboriginal charges in a not entirely unprovoked confrontation. Heriot flees into the desert not to escape justice but to embrace its desolate beauty and its elemental purity as the one objective reality and the one certainty left available to him.
Heriot's flight and his embrace of the desert may be seen as his attempt, as a European Australian, to immerse himself in the landscape, to make himself one with the land. At this realistic level, the novel enacts the ontological and existential dilemma that confronts most — if not all — European Australians, the dilemma that Professor Hassall [in his introduction to the 2002 UQP Australian Authors version] defines as the continuing quest for psychic integration, for reconciliation with indigenous Australians, and with the land itself.'
Wells-Green, James. [Untitled Review.] JAS Review of Books 15 (May 2003)
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y Award Winning Australian Writing 2011 Adolfo Aranjuez (editor), Melbourne : Melbourne Books , 2011 Z1815848 2011 anthology poetry short story (taught in 2 units) 'The fourth edition of AWAW sees the Award Winning series expanding, being the first to include poetry. It showcases over forty competitions, including The Adelaide Review / University of Adelaide Creative Writing Program Short Fiction Competition, the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize, the Banjo Paterson Writing Awards, the Australian Book Review Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, the Rolf Boldrewood Literary Awards and the Blake Poetry Prize.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y The Writing Book : A Workbook for Fiction Writers Sydney : Allen and Unwin , 1990 Z410184 1990 single work non-fiction (taught in 13 units)
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y Candy St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 1997 Z253307 1997 single work novel (taught in 4 units) He met Candy during a lush Sydney summer. Gorgeous, sexy, free-spirited Candy. They fell in love fast, lots of laughter and lust, the days melting warmly into each other. He never planned to give her a habit. But she wanted a taste. And wasn't love, after all, about sharing lives? But when the money ran out, the craving remained, and the days ceased their luxurious stretch. But there was still love. Only now, it was a threesome. Heroin had its own demands, its own timetable, and thoughts of nabbing the next fix hurled them into each day. Then, when desperation set in, Candy would stop at nothing to secure a blast, as she and her love became hostage to the nightmarish world of addiction. (Source: Trove)
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y Monkey Grip Melbourne : McPhee Gribble , 1977 Z115661 1977 single work novel (taught in 12 units)
Set in inner suburban 1970s Melbourne, Monkey Grip describes the fluid relationships of a community of friends who are living and loving in new ways. Single parent Nora falls in love with Javo, a heroin addict, and together they try to make sense of their lives and the choices they have made.
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y Birds : Poems Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1962 Z565163 1962 selected work poetry (taught in 3 units)
'The poems in Judith Wright's Birds volume have long been recognised as among the best-loved poems written in Australia. Many people have grown up with the beguiling rhythms of 'Black Cockatoos', or the jauntiness of 'The Wagtail'. Now, in this new edition, commemorating 25 years since the poems were last published as a single collection, these works appear with six additional poems and a personal introduction by the poet's daughter Meredith McKinney, for whom many of the poems were written. The poems are complemented by full-colour illustrations drawn from the National Library's Pictures Collection, featuring the work of artists such as John Lewin, Lionel Lindsay, Lilian Medland, William T. Cooper and Betty Temple Watts. 'Birds' is both a celebration of Judith Wright (1915-2000) as writer and passionate environmentalist, and of the centrality of birds in the poet's imagination. ' (Publication summary)
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y The Dreamers Paddington : Currency Press , 1996 Z450251 1982 single work drama (taught in 18 units)
— Appears in: ドリーマーズ : ノー・シュガー 2006;'With humane irony the Western Australian poet, Jack Davis gives a painful insight into the process of colonisation and the transformation of his people.'
'The Dreamers is the story of a country-town family and old Uncle Worru, who in his dying days, recedes from urban hopelessness to the life and language of the Nyoongah spirit which in him has survived 'civilisation'.' (Currency Press website)
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y The Feel of Steel Sydney : Picador , 2001 Z900745 2001 selected work autobiography prose column essay (taught in 3 units)
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y Loaded Milsons Point : Vintage Australia , 1995 Z565443 1995 single work novel (taught in 40 units)
'Families can detonate. Some families are torn apart forever by one small act, one solitary mistake. In my family it was a series of small explosions; consistent, passionate, pathetic. Cruel words, crude threats... We spurred each other on till we reached a crescendo of pain and we retired exhausted to our rooms, in tears or in fury.
'Ari is nineteen, unemployed and a poofter who doesn't want to be gay. He is looking for something - anything - to take him away from his aimless existence in suburban Melbourne. He doesn't believe in anyone or anything, except the power of music. All he wants to do is dance, take drugs, have sex and change the world.
'For Ari, all the orthodoxies of family, sex, politics and work have collapsed. Caught between the traditional Greek world of his parents and friends and the alluring, destructive world of clubs, chemicals and anonymous sex, all Ari can do is ease his pain in the only ways he knows how.
'Written in stark, uncompromising prose, Loaded is a first novel of great passion and power.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y The Turning Sydney : Picador , 2004 Z1146280 2004 selected work short story (taught in 12 units)
The Turning comprises seventeen overlapping stories of second thoughts and mid-life regret set in the brooding small-town world of coastal Western Australia. Here are turnings of all kinds - changes of heart, nasty surprises, slow awakenings, sudden detours - where people struggle against the terrible weight of the past and challenge the lives they've made for themselves.
These elegiac stories examine the darkness and frailty of ordinary people and celebrate the moments when the light shines through.
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y Deadly, Unna? Ringwood : Penguin , 1998 Z517608 1998 single work novel young adult (taught in 20 units)
'"Deadly, unna?" He was always saying that. All the Nungas did, but Dumby more than any of them. Dumby Red and Blacky don't have a lot in common. Dumby's the star of the footy team, he's got a killer smile and the knack with girls, and he's a Nunga. Blacky's a gutless wonder, needs braces, never knows what to say, and he's white. But they're friends... and it could be deadly, unna? This gutsy novel, set in a small coastal town in South Australia is a rites-of-passage story about two boys confronting the depth of racism that exists all around them.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
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2014
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y Bear and Chook Emma Quay (illustrator), Sydney : Hodder Headline , 2002 Z956176 2002 single work picture book children's (taught in 3 units) Adventurous Bear and practical Chook make unlikely friends, who together spend a day dreaming and acting out what jobs they think they'd like to have when they grow up. (Libraries Australia record).
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The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie Snugglepot and Cuddlepie Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1940 Z916552 1940 selected work children's fiction children's (taught in 3 units)
— Appears in: Kumurins un Kamolins; Es protu lekt pari pelkem; Vetras zens 1999;'This quintessential collection of May Gibbs’ classic stories was first published in 1940 and has never been out of print since! Featuring the tales of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie (first published in 1918) and its two sequels, Little Ragged Blossom (1920) and Little Obelia (1921). In this new edition, all of May’s original artwork has been sourced and re-scanned and the illustrations look as exquisite as the day May put down her paintbrush all those years ago.' (Source: author's website)
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y Deadly, Unna? Ringwood : Penguin , 1998 Z517608 1998 single work novel young adult (taught in 20 units)
'"Deadly, unna?" He was always saying that. All the Nungas did, but Dumby more than any of them. Dumby Red and Blacky don't have a lot in common. Dumby's the star of the footy team, he's got a killer smile and the knack with girls, and he's a Nunga. Blacky's a gutless wonder, needs braces, never knows what to say, and he's white. But they're friends... and it could be deadly, unna? This gutsy novel, set in a small coastal town in South Australia is a rites-of-passage story about two boys confronting the depth of racism that exists all around them.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
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y Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1996 Z126936 1996 single work biography (taught in 26 units)
'The film Rabbit-Proof Fence is based on this true account of Doris Nugi Garimara Pilkington's mother Molly, who as a young girl led her two sisters on an extraordinary 1,600 kilometre walk home. Under Western Australia's invidious removal policy of the 1930s, the girls were taken from their Aboriginal family at Jigalong on the edge of the Little Sandy Desert, and transported halfway across the state to the Native Settlement at Moore River, north of Perth...
The three girls - aged 8, 11 and 14 - managed to escape from the settlement's repressive conditions and brutal treatment. Barefoot without provisions or maps, they set out to find the rabbit-proof fence, knowing it passed near their home in the north. Tracked by native police and search planes, they hid in terror, surviving on bush tucker, desperate to return to the world they knew.
The journey to freedom - longer than many of the legendary walks of [the Australian nation's] explorer heroes... told from family recollections, letters between the authorities and the Aboriginal Protector, and ... newspaper reports of the runaway children.' Source: Publisher's blurb
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y Just Crazy! Sydney : Pan , 2000 Z793607 2000 selected work children's fiction humour children's (taught in 3 units)
'"Just Crazy!" Is this the right book for you? Take the crazy test and find out the answer. Answer yes or no: Do you bounce so high on your bed that you hit your head on the ceiling? Do you ever look in the mirror and see a maniac staring back at you? Do you like to read stories about kittens, puppies and ponies getting mashed and pulverised? Do you sometimes get the urge to take your clothes off and cover yourself in mud? Do you often waste your time taking crazy tests like this one? Score by giving one point for each 'yes' answer. If you score 3-5, you are completely crazy. You will love this book. If you score 1-2, you are not completely crazy, but you're not far from it. You will love this book. If you score 0, you are so crazy you don't even realise you're crazy. You will love this book.' (Publication summary)
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y Leaf Stephen Michael King (illustrator), Gosford : Scholastic Australia , 2008 Z1491176 2008 single work picture book children's (taught in 3 units)
"A boy who hates having his hair combed discovers an extraordinary side-effect of messy, matted hair when a seed falls on his head and begins to grow." (Source: Trove)
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y The Nargun and the Stars Richmond London : Hutchinson , 1973 Z862349 1973 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 3 units)
Simon Brent is orphaned. Still shocked, he is taken to live with his only relatives, brother and sister Charlie and Edie Waters, who live on a farm. There, Simon meets the Aboriginal spirits who also live on the land. Together Simon, Charlie, Edie, and the spirits save the land from the ancient Nargun. The story is memorable in the portrayal of the Nargun and the spirits, as well as the characters of Charlie and Edie, and the depiction of Simon's change from a shocked and emotionally frozen individual to a normal boy.
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y Our World : Bardi Jaawi Life at Ardiyooloon One Arm Point Remote Community School (editor), Broome : Magabala Books , 2010 Z1727607 2010 anthology autobiography children's (taught in 3 units) 'Ardiyooloon is home to the Bardi Jaawi people and sits at the end of a red dirt road at the top of the Dampier Peninsula, 200km north of Broome in the north-west of Western Australia. Also known as One Arm Point, the community is surrounded on three sides by the saltwater that plays such an integral part in the people's lives. Our World: Bardi Jaawi Life at Ardiyooloon takes readers inside the lives of the children of a remote Indigenous community. Source: www.magabala.com (Sighted 24/11/2010).
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y Seven Little Australians London Melbourne : Ward, Lock and Bowden , 1894 Z863667 1894 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 25 units)
'Without doubt Judy was the worst of the seven, probably because she was the cleverest.'
'Her father, Captain Woolcot, found his vivacious, cheeky daughter impossible – but seven children were really too much for him and most of the time they ran wild at their rambling riverside home, Misrule.
'Step inside and meet them all – dreamy Meg, and Pip, daring Judy, naughty Bunty, Nell, Baby and the youngest, 'the General'. Come and share in their lives, their laughter and their tears.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y Sleeping Dogs Ringwood : Viking , 1995 Z238800 1995 single work novel young adult (taught in 8 units) The misanthropic, sadistic father of five children, ages 12 to 25, Griffin Willow runs a trailer park on his dilapidated farm in rural Australia. Isolated from all outside influences, even the neighboring small town, the Willow family has created its own oppressive, sheltered, and decaying world. Despite abuse from their father and a silent, withdrawn mother, all five children live at home and help run the trailer park. Twenty-three-year-old Michelle and her younger brother Jordan have found solace in an incestuous relationship, which they carefully conceal from their parents. When Bow Fox, an itinerant artist, comes to stay at the park, their 15-year-old brother, Oliver, accidently reveals their secret. So begins an agonizing, irreversible progression of violence and betrayal. (Source: Trove)
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y Window Jeannie Baker (illustrator), London : Julia MacRae Books , 1991 Z834244 1991 single work picture book children's (taught in 5 units) Through a house window the view gradually changes over the passage of time to show how the environment changes, not necessarily for the better.
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y The Mystery of a Hansom Cab Melbourne : Kemp and Boyce , 1886 Z156928 1886 single work novel (taught in 8 units)
'Set in the charming and deadly streets of Melbourne, this vivid and brilliantly plotted murder thriller tells the story of a crime committed by an unknown assassin. With its panoramic depiction of a bustling yet uneasy city, Hansom Cab has a central place in Australian literary history and, more importantly, it remains highly readable. ' (Publication summary)
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y The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry John Kinsella (editor), Camberwell : Penguin , 2009 Z1553543 2009 anthology poetry (taught in 16 units)
'This is a comprehensive survey of Australian poetic achievement, ranging from early colonial and indigenous verse to contemporary work, from the major poets to those who deserve to be better recognised.' (Provided by the publisher).
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y The Penguin Henry Lawson : Short Stories John Barnes (editor), Ringwood : Penguin , 1986 Z282880 1986 selected work short story humour (taught in 8 units)
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y Seven Poor Men of Sydney London : Peter Davies , 1934 Z461354 1934 single work novel (taught in 18 units)
'Seven Poor Men of Sydney is a brilliant portrayal of a group of men and women living in Sydney in the 1920s amid conditions of poverty and social turmoil.
Set against the vividly drawn backgrounds of Fisherman's (Watson's) Bay and the innercity slums, the various characters seek to resolve their individual spiritual dilemmas; through politics, religion and philosophy.
Their struggles, their pain and their frustrations are portrayed with consummate skill in this memorable evocation of a city and an era.' (Publication summary)
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y The Twyborn Affair London : Jonathan Cape , 1979 Z448841 1979 single work novel (taught in 14 units)
'Eddie Twyborn is bisexual and beautiful, the son of a Judge and a drunken mother. With his androgynous hero - Eudoxia/Eddie/Eadith Twyborn - and through his search for identity, for self-affirmation and love in its many forms, Patrick White takes us into the ambiguous landscapes, sexual, psychological and spiritual, of the human condition.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y Wild Cat Falling Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1965 Z203627 1965 single work novel (taught in 13 units)
'Wild Cat Falling is the story of an Aboriginal youth, a 'bodgie' of the early sixties who grows up on the ragged outskirts of a country town, falls into petty crime, goes to gaol, and comes out to do battle once more with the society who put him there. Its publication in 1965 marked a unique literary event, for this was the first novel by any writer of Aboriginal blood to be published in Australia. As well, it is a remarkable piece of literature in its own right, expressing the dilemmas and conflicts of the young Aboriginal in modern Australian society with its memorable insight and stylishness.' (Publication summary)
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y The Best Australian Essays : A Ten Year Collection Collingwood : Black Inc. , 2011 Z1774371 2011 anthology essay (taught in 3 units) The Handbag studio / Thomas Keneally -- The tall man / Chloe Hooper -- The one day / David Malouf -- A city obsessed / John Birmingham -- Arrayed for the bridal / Helen Garner -- Big Louis / Inga Clendinnen -- On becoming a Mormon for a while and other madnesses / M.J Hyland -- Patrick White: the final chapter / David Marr -- The great generation of Australian policy / Clive James -- Arthur Boyd: a life / Barry Humphries -- The first sense / Robyn Davidson -- Into a liquid ether / Christos Tsolkas -- Unforgiven / Craig Sherborn -- "What're yer lookin' at yer fuckin' dog?": violence and fear on Zizek's post-polictical neighbourhood / Kevin Brophy -- Bradman the liberator / Frank Devine -- Late starter / Jessica Anderson -- From the red country / Alan Frost -- Flames of death / Gary Hughes -- The inferno / Christina Kenneally -- He and his Man: the 2003 Nobel lecture / J.M Coetzee -- The good old books / Peter Porter -- The experience of literary translation / Simon Leys -- Like love in a marriage / Anna Goldsworthy -- The long fall into steel / Brenda Walker -- Ebony: the girl in the room / Anne Mann -- Shoulder-deep in the entrails / Shane Maloney -- White guilt, victimhood and the the quest for a radical centre / Noel Pearson -- Pearson's gamble, Stanners dream / Robert Mann -- Out of control: the tragedy of Tasmania's forests / Richard Flanagan -- September 11 / Gay Alcorn and Mark Riley -- Darwin's big idea / Nicholas Rothwell -- The lady or the tiger? / Tim Flannery -- The grand illusion / Robert Dessaix -- Tourism / Benjamin Law -- Trouble on the night shift / Anna Krien -- Silent country: travels through a recovering landscape / Tim Winton -- Home truths: revisiting Wake in fright / Kate Jennings -- Quod Potero Sedulo / David Foster.
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y The Best Australian Poems 2013 Lisa Gorton (editor), Collingwood : Black Inc. , 2013 6049548 2013 selected work poetry (taught in 2 units)
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y The Boat Camberwell : Hamish Hamilton , 2008 Z1495449 2008 selected work short story (taught in 42 units)
'In the magnificent opening story, "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice," a young writer is urged by his friends to mine his father's experiences in Vietnam - and what seems at first a satire on turning one's life into literary commerce becomes a transcendent exploration of homeland, and the ties between father and son. "Cartagena" provides a visceral glimpse of life in Colombia as it enters the mind of a fourteen-year-old hit man facing the ultimate test. In "Meeting Elise" an ageing New York painter mourns his body's decline as he prepares to meet his daughter on the eve of her Carnegie Hall debut. And with graceful symmetry, the final, title story returns to Vietnam, to a fishing trawler crowded with refugees where a young woman's bond with a mother and her small son forces both women to a shattering decision.' (From the author's website.)
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y Carpentaria Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2006 Z1184902 2006 single work novel (taught in 47 units) Carpentaria's portrait of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance centres on the powerful Phantom family, whose members are the leaders of the Pricklebush people, and their battles with old Joseph Midnight's tearaway Eastend mob on the one hand, and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine on the other. Wright's storytelling is operatic and surreal: a blend of myth and scripture, politics and farce. The novel is populated by extraordinary characters - Elias Smith the outcast saviour, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, leader of the holy Aboriginal pilgrimage, the murderous mayor Stan Bruiser, the ever-vigilant Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist and prodigal son Will Phantom, and above all, Angel Day the queen of the rubbish-dump, and her sea-faring husband Normal Phantom, the fish-embalming king of time - figures that stand like giants in this storm-swept world. (Backcover)
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y El Dorado Sydney : Pan Macmillan Australia , 2007 Z1362160 2007 single work novel crime detective thriller (taught in 10 units)
'There is a serial killer stalking the streets of Melbourne. The victims are killed gently, lovingly, a gold mark traced on their forehead. This killer doesn't hate children. This killer believes in childhood innocence at any cost...El Dorado is the story of a friendship under siege, and the very long shadows that jealousy and betrayal can cast.' - back cover
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y The Turning Sydney : Picador , 2004 Z1146280 2004 selected work short story (taught in 12 units)
The Turning comprises seventeen overlapping stories of second thoughts and mid-life regret set in the brooding small-town world of coastal Western Australia. Here are turnings of all kinds - changes of heart, nasty surprises, slow awakenings, sudden detours - where people struggle against the terrible weight of the past and challenge the lives they've made for themselves.
These elegiac stories examine the darkness and frailty of ordinary people and celebrate the moments when the light shines through.
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y The Writing Book : A Workbook for Fiction Writers Sydney : Allen and Unwin , 1990 Z410184 1990 single work non-fiction (taught in 13 units)
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y Candy St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 1997 Z253307 1997 single work novel (taught in 4 units) He met Candy during a lush Sydney summer. Gorgeous, sexy, free-spirited Candy. They fell in love fast, lots of laughter and lust, the days melting warmly into each other. He never planned to give her a habit. But she wanted a taste. And wasn't love, after all, about sharing lives? But when the money ran out, the craving remained, and the days ceased their luxurious stretch. But there was still love. Only now, it was a threesome. Heroin had its own demands, its own timetable, and thoughts of nabbing the next fix hurled them into each day. Then, when desperation set in, Candy would stop at nothing to secure a blast, as she and her love became hostage to the nightmarish world of addiction. (Source: Trove)
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y Monkey Grip Melbourne : McPhee Gribble , 1977 Z115661 1977 single work novel (taught in 12 units)
Set in inner suburban 1970s Melbourne, Monkey Grip describes the fluid relationships of a community of friends who are living and loving in new ways. Single parent Nora falls in love with Javo, a heroin addict, and together they try to make sense of their lives and the choices they have made.
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y Birds : Poems Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1962 Z565163 1962 selected work poetry (taught in 3 units)
'The poems in Judith Wright's Birds volume have long been recognised as among the best-loved poems written in Australia. Many people have grown up with the beguiling rhythms of 'Black Cockatoos', or the jauntiness of 'The Wagtail'. Now, in this new edition, commemorating 25 years since the poems were last published as a single collection, these works appear with six additional poems and a personal introduction by the poet's daughter Meredith McKinney, for whom many of the poems were written. The poems are complemented by full-colour illustrations drawn from the National Library's Pictures Collection, featuring the work of artists such as John Lewin, Lionel Lindsay, Lilian Medland, William T. Cooper and Betty Temple Watts. 'Birds' is both a celebration of Judith Wright (1915-2000) as writer and passionate environmentalist, and of the centrality of birds in the poet's imagination. ' (Publication summary)
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y Black Juice Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2004 Z1102783 2004 selected work short story young adult science fiction fantasy horror (taught in 2 units)
'Ten stories that delight, shock, intrigue, amuse and move the reader to tears with their imaginative reach, their dark humour, their subtlety, their humanity and depth of feeling: As part of a public execution, a young boy forlornly helps to sing his sister down. A servant learns about grace and loyalty from a mistress who would rather dance with Gypsies than sit on her throne. A terrifying encounter with a demonic angel gives a young man the strength he needs to break free of his oppressor. On a bleak and dreary afternoon a gleeful shooting spree leads to tragedy for a desperate clown unable to escape his fate.'
'Black Juice offers glimpses into familiar, shadowy worlds that push the boundaries of the spirit and leave the mind haunted with the knowledge that black juice runs through us all.'
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y The Dreamers Paddington : Currency Press , 1996 Z450251 1982 single work drama (taught in 18 units)
— Appears in: ドリーマーズ : ノー・シュガー 2006;'With humane irony the Western Australian poet, Jack Davis gives a painful insight into the process of colonisation and the transformation of his people.'
'The Dreamers is the story of a country-town family and old Uncle Worru, who in his dying days, recedes from urban hopelessness to the life and language of the Nyoongah spirit which in him has survived 'civilisation'.' (Currency Press website)
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y The Feel of Steel Sydney : Picador , 2001 Z900745 2001 selected work autobiography prose column essay (taught in 3 units)
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y Loaded Milsons Point : Vintage Australia , 1995 Z565443 1995 single work novel (taught in 40 units)
'Families can detonate. Some families are torn apart forever by one small act, one solitary mistake. In my family it was a series of small explosions; consistent, passionate, pathetic. Cruel words, crude threats... We spurred each other on till we reached a crescendo of pain and we retired exhausted to our rooms, in tears or in fury.
'Ari is nineteen, unemployed and a poofter who doesn't want to be gay. He is looking for something - anything - to take him away from his aimless existence in suburban Melbourne. He doesn't believe in anyone or anything, except the power of music. All he wants to do is dance, take drugs, have sex and change the world.
'For Ari, all the orthodoxies of family, sex, politics and work have collapsed. Caught between the traditional Greek world of his parents and friends and the alluring, destructive world of clubs, chemicals and anonymous sex, all Ari can do is ease his pain in the only ways he knows how.
'Written in stark, uncompromising prose, Loaded is a first novel of great passion and power.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea London : MacDonald , 1965 Z320676 1965 single work novel (taught in 7 units)
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y The Turning Sydney : Picador , 2004 Z1146280 2004 selected work short story (taught in 12 units)
The Turning comprises seventeen overlapping stories of second thoughts and mid-life regret set in the brooding small-town world of coastal Western Australia. Here are turnings of all kinds - changes of heart, nasty surprises, slow awakenings, sudden detours - where people struggle against the terrible weight of the past and challenge the lives they've made for themselves.
These elegiac stories examine the darkness and frailty of ordinary people and celebrate the moments when the light shines through.
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y Deadly, Unna? Ringwood : Penguin , 1998 Z517608 1998 single work novel young adult (taught in 20 units)
'"Deadly, unna?" He was always saying that. All the Nungas did, but Dumby more than any of them. Dumby Red and Blacky don't have a lot in common. Dumby's the star of the footy team, he's got a killer smile and the knack with girls, and he's a Nunga. Blacky's a gutless wonder, needs braces, never knows what to say, and he's white. But they're friends... and it could be deadly, unna? This gutsy novel, set in a small coastal town in South Australia is a rites-of-passage story about two boys confronting the depth of racism that exists all around them.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
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y The Hanging Garden 1981 (Manuscript version)x402198 Z1852189 1981 single work novel (taught in 4 units)
'Two children are brought to a wild garden on the shores of Sydney Harbour to shelter from the Second World War. The boy's mother has died in the Blitz. The girl is the daughter of a Sydney woman and a Communist executed in a Greek prison. In wartime Australia, these two children form an extraordinary bond as they negotiate the dangers of life as strangers abandoned on the far side of the world. With the tenderness and rigour of an old, wise novelist, Patrick White explores the world of these children, the city of his childhood and the experience of war. The Hanging Garden ends as the news reaches Sydney of victory in Europe, and the children face their inevitable separation.
White put the novel aside at this point and how he planned to finish the work remains a mystery. But at his death in 1990 he left behind a masterpiece in the making, which is published here for the first time.'
Source: Publisher's blurb
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y Tiddas Cammeray : Simon and Schuster Australia , 2014 6821495 2014 single work novel (taught in 1 units)
'A story about what it means to be a friend … Five women, best friends for decades, meet once a month to talk about books … and life, love and the jagged bits in between. Dissecting each other’s lives seems the most natural thing in the world – and honesty, no matter how brutal, is something they treasure. Best friends tell each other everything, don’t they? But each woman harbours a complex secret and one weekend, without warning, everything comes unstuck.' (Source: Publishers website)
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2013
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y Brumby Innes, and Bid Me to Love Katharine Brisbane (editor), Sydney : Currency Methuen Drama , 1974 Z169610 1974 selected work drama (taught in 8 units)
'Written in the 1920s, Brumby Innes confronts the turbulent relations between the sexes and the races in the remote Pilbara region of Western Australia. It is published with another Prichard play from the 1920s, Bid Me To Love which, by contrast, is set among the fashionable rich in the lush hills outside Perth.'
'The two plays are compelling for their dramatic styles and for their insight into the novels which followed: Coonardoo and Intimate Strangers. And both had to wait more than forty years for their first production.' (Source: Reading Australia website)
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The Chapel Perilous 1971 extract musical theatre (taught in 2 units)
— Appears in: Westerly , March no. 1 1971; (p. 33-40) -
y Collected Poems 1942-1985 Pymble : Angus and Robertson , 1994 Z501989 1994 selected work poetry war literature satire (taught in 8 units)
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y His Natural Life For the Term of His Natural Life 1870-1872 Z1032375 1870-1872 single work novel (taught in 15 units)
'Scarcely out of print since the early 1870s, For the Term of His Natural Life has provided successive generations with a vivid account of a brutal phase of colonial life. The main focus of this great convict novel is the complex interaction between those in power and those who suffer, made meaningful because of its hero's struggle against his wrongful imprisonment. Elements of romance, incidents of family life and passages of scenic description both relieve and give emphasis to the tragedy that forms its heart.' (Publication summary : Penguin Books 2009)
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y Poems Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1957 Z531943 1957 selected work poetry (taught in 5 units)
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y Prelude to Christopher Sydney : P. R. Stephensen , 1934 Z824226 1934 single work novel (taught in 22 units)
'Should a woman bear a child knowing that there are traces of insanity in her family? Linda Hainlin, niece of a famous biologist, was aware of the danger when she married Dr. Nigel Hendon, a practical idealist, whose creed was normality and the rational ordering of the world. This book tells how, years later, while temporarily deprived of her husband's sane companionship, Linda feels the oncoming of those homicidal impulses which presage madness. On this tragic theme, 'Prelude to Christopher' is written with strong literary art as a narrative of four days of crisis. The story goes back in memory to the happiness of Linda's love for Nigel, and forward in her frightened imagination to a future from which the strongest must flinch. Christopher, the unborn child, dominates terrific events in which he has no living part to play. The prelude to his birth is told with emotional power.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
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y Seven Poor Men of Sydney London : Peter Davies , 1934 Z461354 1934 single work novel (taught in 18 units)
'Seven Poor Men of Sydney is a brilliant portrayal of a group of men and women living in Sydney in the 1920s amid conditions of poverty and social turmoil.
Set against the vividly drawn backgrounds of Fisherman's (Watson's) Bay and the innercity slums, the various characters seek to resolve their individual spiritual dilemmas; through politics, religion and philosophy.
Their struggles, their pain and their frustrations are portrayed with consummate skill in this memorable evocation of a city and an era.' (Publication summary)
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y The Sparrow Garden Marianna Lacek (translator), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2004 Z1111071 2004 single work autobiography (taught in 5 units)
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y Plays of the 70s [Volume 1] Katharine Brisbane (editor), Sydney : Currency Press , 1998 Z34704 1998 anthology drama (taught in 11 units)
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y The Best Australian Essays : A Ten Year Collection Collingwood : Black Inc. , 2011 Z1774371 2011 anthology essay (taught in 3 units) The Handbag studio / Thomas Keneally -- The tall man / Chloe Hooper -- The one day / David Malouf -- A city obsessed / John Birmingham -- Arrayed for the bridal / Helen Garner -- Big Louis / Inga Clendinnen -- On becoming a Mormon for a while and other madnesses / M.J Hyland -- Patrick White: the final chapter / David Marr -- The great generation of Australian policy / Clive James -- Arthur Boyd: a life / Barry Humphries -- The first sense / Robyn Davidson -- Into a liquid ether / Christos Tsolkas -- Unforgiven / Craig Sherborn -- "What're yer lookin' at yer fuckin' dog?": violence and fear on Zizek's post-polictical neighbourhood / Kevin Brophy -- Bradman the liberator / Frank Devine -- Late starter / Jessica Anderson -- From the red country / Alan Frost -- Flames of death / Gary Hughes -- The inferno / Christina Kenneally -- He and his Man: the 2003 Nobel lecture / J.M Coetzee -- The good old books / Peter Porter -- The experience of literary translation / Simon Leys -- Like love in a marriage / Anna Goldsworthy -- The long fall into steel / Brenda Walker -- Ebony: the girl in the room / Anne Mann -- Shoulder-deep in the entrails / Shane Maloney -- White guilt, victimhood and the the quest for a radical centre / Noel Pearson -- Pearson's gamble, Stanners dream / Robert Mann -- Out of control: the tragedy of Tasmania's forests / Richard Flanagan -- September 11 / Gay Alcorn and Mark Riley -- Darwin's big idea / Nicholas Rothwell -- The lady or the tiger? / Tim Flannery -- The grand illusion / Robert Dessaix -- Tourism / Benjamin Law -- Trouble on the night shift / Anna Krien -- Silent country: travels through a recovering landscape / Tim Winton -- Home truths: revisiting Wake in fright / Kate Jennings -- Quod Potero Sedulo / David Foster.
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y The Best Australian Poems 2011 John Tranter (editor), Collingwood : Black Inc. , 2011 Z1812782 2011 anthology poetry (taught in 1 units) 'In The Best Australian Poems 2011, renowned poet John Tranter selects the finest poems written by Australians over the past year. The vibrant and unforgettable voices of established poets blend seamlessly with the fresh voices of emerging poets in this sublime collection.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y The Boat Camberwell : Hamish Hamilton , 2008 Z1495449 2008 selected work short story (taught in 42 units)
'In the magnificent opening story, "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice," a young writer is urged by his friends to mine his father's experiences in Vietnam - and what seems at first a satire on turning one's life into literary commerce becomes a transcendent exploration of homeland, and the ties between father and son. "Cartagena" provides a visceral glimpse of life in Colombia as it enters the mind of a fourteen-year-old hit man facing the ultimate test. In "Meeting Elise" an ageing New York painter mourns his body's decline as he prepares to meet his daughter on the eve of her Carnegie Hall debut. And with graceful symmetry, the final, title story returns to Vietnam, to a fishing trawler crowded with refugees where a young woman's bond with a mother and her small son forces both women to a shattering decision.' (From the author's website.)
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y Carpentaria Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2006 Z1184902 2006 single work novel (taught in 47 units) Carpentaria's portrait of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance centres on the powerful Phantom family, whose members are the leaders of the Pricklebush people, and their battles with old Joseph Midnight's tearaway Eastend mob on the one hand, and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine on the other. Wright's storytelling is operatic and surreal: a blend of myth and scripture, politics and farce. The novel is populated by extraordinary characters - Elias Smith the outcast saviour, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, leader of the holy Aboriginal pilgrimage, the murderous mayor Stan Bruiser, the ever-vigilant Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist and prodigal son Will Phantom, and above all, Angel Day the queen of the rubbish-dump, and her sea-faring husband Normal Phantom, the fish-embalming king of time - figures that stand like giants in this storm-swept world. (Backcover)
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y El Dorado Sydney : Pan Macmillan Australia , 2007 Z1362160 2007 single work novel crime detective thriller (taught in 10 units)
'There is a serial killer stalking the streets of Melbourne. The victims are killed gently, lovingly, a gold mark traced on their forehead. This killer doesn't hate children. This killer believes in childhood innocence at any cost...El Dorado is the story of a friendship under siege, and the very long shadows that jealousy and betrayal can cast.' - back cover
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form y Samson and Delilah ( dir. Warwick Thornton ) Scarlett Pictures CAAMA Productions , 2009 Z1561915 2009 single work film/TV (taught in 9 units)
'Samson and Delilah tells the story of two Aboriginal teenagers in a remote community. They live in a sparse environment but one that absorbs all manner of cultural influences, where dot painting and country music exist side by side. Samson gets through his days by sniffing, while Delilah is the caregiver for her nana before taking a moment for herself to listen to Latino music. Their journey ranges across many of the most urgent issues concerning Indigenous people in Australia, homelessness, poverty, domestic violence and substance abuse, but it does so with tenderness, dignity, and even humour.'
Source: Adelaide Film Festival website, www.adelaidefilmfestival.org/ Sighted: 23/02/2009
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y The Turning Sydney : Picador , 2004 Z1146280 2004 selected work short story (taught in 12 units)
The Turning comprises seventeen overlapping stories of second thoughts and mid-life regret set in the brooding small-town world of coastal Western Australia. Here are turnings of all kinds - changes of heart, nasty surprises, slow awakenings, sudden detours - where people struggle against the terrible weight of the past and challenge the lives they've made for themselves.
These elegiac stories examine the darkness and frailty of ordinary people and celebrate the moments when the light shines through.
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Creative Writing (LIT221)
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Language and Text (LIT101)
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Life Writing (WRT301)
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y The Memoir Book : A Guide To Life Writing Pymble : HarperCollins Australia , 2007 Z1382169 2007 single work criticism (taught in 4 units)
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y The Spare Room Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2008 Z1457068 2008 single work novel (taught in 10 units) 'Helen lives in Melbourne, and her friend Nicola flies down from Sydney for a three-week visit. She will sleep in Helen's house, in her lovingly prepared spare room. This is no ordinary visit. Nicola has advanced cancer and is seeking alternative treatment from a clinic in Helen's city. From the moment Nicola steps off the plane, gaunt, staggering like a crone, her voice hoarse but still with something grand about her, Helen becomes her nurse, her protector, her guardian angel and her stony judge.' (Publisher's blurb)
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Literature and Film (COM327)
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Theatre in Australia (ACT318)
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Writing for Publication (WRT2010)
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2012
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Australian Literature (LIT214)
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y His Natural Life For the Term of His Natural Life 1870-1872 Z1032375 1870-1872 single work novel (taught in 15 units)
'Scarcely out of print since the early 1870s, For the Term of His Natural Life has provided successive generations with a vivid account of a brutal phase of colonial life. The main focus of this great convict novel is the complex interaction between those in power and those who suffer, made meaningful because of its hero's struggle against his wrongful imprisonment. Elements of romance, incidents of family life and passages of scenic description both relieve and give emphasis to the tragedy that forms its heart.' (Publication summary : Penguin Books 2009)
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y The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry John Kinsella (editor), Camberwell : Penguin , 2009 Z1553543 2009 anthology poetry (taught in 16 units)
'This is a comprehensive survey of Australian poetic achievement, ranging from early colonial and indigenous verse to contemporary work, from the major poets to those who deserve to be better recognised.' (Provided by the publisher).
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y The Penguin Best Australian Short Stories Mary Lord (editor), Ringwood : Penguin , 2000 Z861313 2000 anthology short story (taught in 5 units)
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y The Penguin Henry Lawson : Short Stories John Barnes (editor), Ringwood : Penguin , 1986 Z282880 1986 selected work short story humour (taught in 8 units)
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y Seven Poor Men of Sydney London : Peter Davies , 1934 Z461354 1934 single work novel (taught in 18 units)
'Seven Poor Men of Sydney is a brilliant portrayal of a group of men and women living in Sydney in the 1920s amid conditions of poverty and social turmoil.
Set against the vividly drawn backgrounds of Fisherman's (Watson's) Bay and the innercity slums, the various characters seek to resolve their individual spiritual dilemmas; through politics, religion and philosophy.
Their struggles, their pain and their frustrations are portrayed with consummate skill in this memorable evocation of a city and an era.' (Publication summary)
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y The Twyborn Affair London : Jonathan Cape , 1979 Z448841 1979 single work novel (taught in 14 units)
'Eddie Twyborn is bisexual and beautiful, the son of a Judge and a drunken mother. With his androgynous hero - Eudoxia/Eddie/Eadith Twyborn - and through his search for identity, for self-affirmation and love in its many forms, Patrick White takes us into the ambiguous landscapes, sexual, psychological and spiritual, of the human condition.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y Wild Cat Falling Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1965 Z203627 1965 single work novel (taught in 13 units)
'Wild Cat Falling is the story of an Aboriginal youth, a 'bodgie' of the early sixties who grows up on the ragged outskirts of a country town, falls into petty crime, goes to gaol, and comes out to do battle once more with the society who put him there. Its publication in 1965 marked a unique literary event, for this was the first novel by any writer of Aboriginal blood to be published in Australia. As well, it is a remarkable piece of literature in its own right, expressing the dilemmas and conflicts of the young Aboriginal in modern Australian society with its memorable insight and stylishness.' (Publication summary)
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y Brumby Innes, and Bid Me to Love Katharine Brisbane (editor), Sydney : Currency Methuen Drama , 1974 Z169610 1974 selected work drama (taught in 8 units)
'Written in the 1920s, Brumby Innes confronts the turbulent relations between the sexes and the races in the remote Pilbara region of Western Australia. It is published with another Prichard play from the 1920s, Bid Me To Love which, by contrast, is set among the fashionable rich in the lush hills outside Perth.'
'The two plays are compelling for their dramatic styles and for their insight into the novels which followed: Coonardoo and Intimate Strangers. And both had to wait more than forty years for their first production.' (Source: Reading Australia website)
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The Chapel Perilous 1971 extract musical theatre (taught in 2 units)
— Appears in: Westerly , March no. 1 1971; (p. 33-40) -
y Collected Poems 1942-1985 Pymble : Angus and Robertson , 1994 Z501989 1994 selected work poetry war literature satire (taught in 8 units)
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y The Dreamers Paddington : Currency Press , 1996 Z450251 1982 single work drama (taught in 18 units)
— Appears in: ドリーマーズ : ノー・シュガー 2006;'With humane irony the Western Australian poet, Jack Davis gives a painful insight into the process of colonisation and the transformation of his people.'
'The Dreamers is the story of a country-town family and old Uncle Worru, who in his dying days, recedes from urban hopelessness to the life and language of the Nyoongah spirit which in him has survived 'civilisation'.' (Currency Press website)
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y The Hanging Garden 1981 (Manuscript version)x402198 Z1852189 1981 single work novel (taught in 4 units)
'Two children are brought to a wild garden on the shores of Sydney Harbour to shelter from the Second World War. The boy's mother has died in the Blitz. The girl is the daughter of a Sydney woman and a Communist executed in a Greek prison. In wartime Australia, these two children form an extraordinary bond as they negotiate the dangers of life as strangers abandoned on the far side of the world. With the tenderness and rigour of an old, wise novelist, Patrick White explores the world of these children, the city of his childhood and the experience of war. The Hanging Garden ends as the news reaches Sydney of victory in Europe, and the children face their inevitable separation.
White put the novel aside at this point and how he planned to finish the work remains a mystery. But at his death in 1990 he left behind a masterpiece in the making, which is published here for the first time.'
Source: Publisher's blurb
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y Maurice Guest London : Heinemann , 1908 Z821550 1908 single work novel (taught in 6 units)
'A passionate and controversial novel set in turn-of-the-century Europe
'Henry Handel Richardson’s debut, published in London in 1908, is set in the music scene of Leipzig, a cosmopolitan centre for the arts drawing students from around the world—among them Maurice Guest, a young Englishman, who falls helplessly in love with an Australian woman, Louise Dufrayer. Maurice Guest is the story of this overwhelming passion.
'The novel was deemed too controversial to be published as Richardson intended, and she was forced to cut twenty thousand words from the original manuscript and tone down its language.' (Publication summary)
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y Poems Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1957 Z531943 1957 selected work poetry (taught in 5 units)
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y Prelude to Christopher Sydney : P. R. Stephensen , 1934 Z824226 1934 single work novel (taught in 22 units)
'Should a woman bear a child knowing that there are traces of insanity in her family? Linda Hainlin, niece of a famous biologist, was aware of the danger when she married Dr. Nigel Hendon, a practical idealist, whose creed was normality and the rational ordering of the world. This book tells how, years later, while temporarily deprived of her husband's sane companionship, Linda feels the oncoming of those homicidal impulses which presage madness. On this tragic theme, 'Prelude to Christopher' is written with strong literary art as a narrative of four days of crisis. The story goes back in memory to the happiness of Linda's love for Nigel, and forward in her frightened imagination to a future from which the strongest must flinch. Christopher, the unborn child, dominates terrific events in which he has no living part to play. The prelude to his birth is told with emotional power.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
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y The Sparrow Garden Marianna Lacek (translator), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2004 Z1111071 2004 single work autobiography (taught in 5 units)
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y Voss : A Novel London : Eyre and Spottiswoode , 1957 Z872480 1957 single work novel (taught in 33 units)
'Set in nineteenth-century Australia, Voss is the story of the secret passion between an explorer and a naïve young woman. Although they have met only a few times, Voss and Laura are joined by overwhelming, obsessive feelings for each other. Voss sets out to cross the continent. As hardships, mutiny and betrayal whittle away his power to endure and to lead, his attachment to Laura gradually increases. Laura, waiting in Sydney, moves through the months of separation as if they were a dream and Voss the only reality.
'From the careful delineation of Victorian society to the sensitive rendering of hidden love to the stark narrative of adventure in the Australian desert, Patrick White's novel is a work of extraordinary power and virtuosity.'
Source: Random House Books (Sighted 21/09/2012)
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y Digger J. Jones Digger J. Jones : Holy Snappin' Duckpoo! : My Diary Lindfield : Scholastic Press Scholastic Press , 2007 Z1363824 2007 single work novel young adult (taught in 4 units)
'Digger is keeping a diary about the things that matter to him: piffing yonnies at the meatworks, fishing with his cousins, and brawling with the school bully. But it's 1967, and bigger things keep getting in the way. Digger is finding out who he is, what he believes, and what's worth fighting for.' (Source: Goodreads website)
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y Jethro Byrde, Fairy Child Bob Graham (illustrator), Cambridge : Candlewick Press , 2002 Z967874 2002 single work picture book children's (taught in 1 units)
'Annabelle's dad says she'll never find fairies in cement and weeds. But Annabelle does. She finds a tiny fairy child. Jethro Byrde, and his family. And together they spend a magical afternoon ..."'
(Source: Back cover)
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y Penny Pollard's Diary Ann James (illustrator), Melbourne : Oxford University Press , 1983 Z830828 1983 single work diary children's humour (taught in 1 units) Penny's diary reveals her love of horses and her hatred of such things as wearing dresses, doing homework and old people until a meeting with the unusual eighty-one-year-old Mrs. Edith Bettany begins to challenge her point of view.
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y Seven Little Australians London Melbourne : Ward, Lock and Bowden , 1894 Z863667 1894 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 25 units)
'Without doubt Judy was the worst of the seven, probably because she was the cleverest.'
'Her father, Captain Woolcot, found his vivacious, cheeky daughter impossible – but seven children were really too much for him and most of the time they ran wild at their rambling riverside home, Misrule.
'Step inside and meet them all – dreamy Meg, and Pip, daring Judy, naughty Bunty, Nell, Baby and the youngest, 'the General'. Come and share in their lives, their laughter and their tears.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y Sky Legs Sydney : Sceptre , 2003 Z1004271 2003 single work novel young adult (taught in 1 units)
'Eleni moves to a village in the clouds, where the blue mountains and the sky seem to stretch forever but, surprisingly, people's minds don't. She's been hoping that she can make a new start and leave behind the sense of loss and the low self-esteem that she has been struggling with for most of her life. But this is the kind of place where she'll never fit in. And Eleni is definitely different! So when she and her friends come up against small-mindedness, they find a way to fight it and to change attitudes - beginning with their own. Eleni draws unexpected strength from her mother's determination to live triumphantly and realises that even in her bleakest moments, her life has been transformed by various kinds of magic and more than once has been touched by angels.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
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y Way Home Gregory Rogers (illustrator), Milsons Point : Random House , 1994 Z798083 1994 single work picture book children's (taught in 2 units) A young boy who lives in a hole in a wall in a big city makes a dangerous night trip to bring a stray cat back to his little cell for company.
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y Yirra and Her Deadly Dog, Demon Sydney : ABC Books , 2007 Z1381001 2007 single work children's fiction (taught in 1 units) 'Yirra's Mum's sick of vacuuming up fur balls, the neighbours are fed up with having their undies nicked from the clothesline, and her Step-Dad just wants his slippers back.
'If Yirra doesn't find a dog-trainer soon, she'll have to give her beloved Demon to a new family - one who likes dogs who run and dig a lot. Bursting with energy and madcap fun, Yirra and Her Deadly Dog, Demon gives young readers a contemporary view of urban Indigenous life in Sydney.' (Publisher's blurb)
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y The Brush-Off Melbourne : Text Publishing , 1996 Z316121 1996 single work novel crime humour (taught in 3 units)
— Appears in: The Murray Whelan Trilogy 2001;'On a sultry summer night Murray Whelan is in the Botanical Gardens tasting Salina Fleet's apricot lips. Meanwhile the body of an artist is being fished from the ornamental moat outside the Art Gallery. The papers called it suicide. The police say it's an accident.
'Political minder, brushed-off lover and art buff on the make, Murray goes looking for the big picture. He finds there's more than meets the eye among the self-made millionaires, ruthless culture vultures, and cool operators of Melbourne's art world. He learns that when you dabble with death there's nothing abstract about a loaded gun.
'Murray Whelan, the hero of Stiff, Shane Maloney's brilliant debut novel, is back at his richly futile best. A romantic comedy and drop-dead thriller, The Brush-Off mixes high art with low blows.' (Publication summary)
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form y The Brush-Off ( dir. Sam Neill ) Australia : Ruby Entertainment Huntaway Films Seven Network , 2004 Z1125639 2004 single work film/TV crime humour (taught in 3 units)
'When Agnelli is demoted to Minister of Arts and Water, he decides to earn brownie points by raising funds for the next election campaign. Murray is on the case, meeting with philanthropists and arts connoisseurs. This is where the trouble begins.'
Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 5/4/2013)
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y My Brilliant Career Edinburgh London : William Blackwood , 1901 Z161522 1901 single work novel (taught in 56 units)
'My Brilliant Career was written by Stella Franklin (1879-1954) when she was just nineteen years old. The novel struggled to find an Australian publisher, but was published in London and Edinburgh in 1901 after receiving an endorsement from Henry Lawson. Although Franklin wrote under the pseudonym 'Miles Franklin', Lawson’s preface makes it clear that Franklin is, as Lawson puts it 'a girl.'
'The novel relates the story of Sybylla Melvyn, a strong-willed young woman of the 1890s growing up in the Goulburn area of New South Wales and longing to be a writer.' (Publication summary)
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form y My Brilliant Career ( dir. Gillian Armstrong ) Adelaide : Margaret Fink Productions , 1979 Z817179 1979 single work film/TV (taught in 7 units)
Based on the book by Miles Franklin, this feature film tells the story of an Australian country girl who, at the end of the nineteenth century, wants to make her own way in the outside world.
Rejecting an offer of marriage from a wealthy suitor (who is also her childhood friend), she instead finds herself obligated to work off her father's debt to a neighbouring family, for whom she works as governess and housekeeper. Returning home, she again rejects her suitor's proposal, this time in favour of writing a novel based on her experiences.
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y Australian Plays for the Colonial Stage : 1834-1899 Richard Fotheringham (editor), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2006 Z1238215 2006 anthology drama (taught in 3 units)
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y The One Day of the Year 1960 (Manuscript version)x400866 Z525120 1960 single work drama (taught in 11 units)
'Undoubtedly one of Australia's favourite plays, the One Day of the Year explores the universal theme of father-son conflict against the background of the beery haze and the heady, nostalgic sentimentality of Anzac Day. It is a play to make us question a standard institution - Anzac Day, the sacred cow among Australian annual celebrations - but it is the likeability and genuineness of the characters that give the play its memorable qualities: Alf, the nobody who becomes a somebody on this day of days; Mum, the anchor of the family; Hughie, their son, with all the uncertainties and rebelliousness of youth; and Wacka, the Anzac, with his simple, healing wisdom.'
(Description from publishers website)
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y Summer of the Seventeenth Doll 1955 London Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1957 Z522838 1955 single work drama (taught in 56 units)
'The most famous Australian play and one of the best loved, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is a tragicomic story of Roo and Barney, two Queensland sugar-cane cutters who go to Melbourne every year during the 'layoff' to live it up with their barmaid girl friends. The title refers to kewpie dolls, tawdry fairground souvenirs, that they brings as gifts and come, in some readings of the play, to represent adolescent dreams in which the characters seem to be permanently trapped. The play tells the story in traditional well-made, realistic form, with effective curtains and an obligatory scene. Its principal appeal – and that of two later plays with which it forms The Doll Trilogy – is the freshness and emotional warmth, even sentimentality, with which it deals with simple virtues of innocence and youthful energy that lie at the heart of the Australian bush legend.
'Ray Lawler’s play confronts that legend with the harsh new reality of modern urban Australia. The 17th year of the canecutters’ arrangement is different. There has been a fight on the canefields and Roo, the tough, heroic, bushman, has arrived with his ego battered and without money. Barney’s girl friend Nancy has left to get married and is replaced by Pearl, who is suspicious of the whole set-up and hopes to trap Barney into marriage. The play charts the inevitable failure of the dream of the layoff, the end of the men’s supremacy as bush heroes and, most poignantly, the betrayal of the idealistic self-sacrifice made by Roo’s girl friend Olive – the most interesting character – to keep the whole thing going. The city emerges victorious, but the emotional tone of the play vindicates the fallen bushman.'
Source: McCallum, John. 'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.' Companion to Theatre in Australia. Ed. Philip Parson and Victoria Chance. Sydney: Currency Press , 1997: 564-656.
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y The Time is Not Yet Ripe : A Comedy in Four Acts Melbourne : Fraser and Jenkinson , 1912 Z855849 1912 single work drama humour (taught in 2 units)
The action takes place in Melbourne in the weeks leading up to a federal election. The Women’s Anti-Socialist League have selected Doris Quiverton—daughter of the conservative Prime Minister, Sir Joseph Quiverton—to stand for the seat of Wombat. However, no sooner than Doris learns that she has been selected, her fiancé, Sydney Barrett, reveals that he is competing for the same seat. A socialist and an atheist, Barrett opposes everything both Doris’ Liberal father and the Women’s Anti-Socialist League stand for. Doris must carefully navigate extreme political ideals and intense personal relationships.
"That hilarious comedy, "The Time is Not Ripe," published in 1912, is rather a breathless play, in which the political distractions of that era are complicated by the invention of a love affair between the socialist leader and the daughter of his principal opponent."
The Daily Mercury (1943). Louis Esson. [online] p.2. Available [Accessed 5 Mar. 2018].
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y The Touch of Silk 1928 (Manuscript version)x401235 Z968576 1928 single work drama (taught in 4 units)
— Appears in: The Touch of Silk [and] Granite Peak 1988; (p. 1-83)A poignant drama centred on Jeanne, a homesick French war bride and her shell-shocked husband battling hardship and prejudice in a drought-stricken Mallee town.
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2011
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y His Natural Life For the Term of His Natural Life 1870-1872 Z1032375 1870-1872 single work novel (taught in 15 units)
'Scarcely out of print since the early 1870s, For the Term of His Natural Life has provided successive generations with a vivid account of a brutal phase of colonial life. The main focus of this great convict novel is the complex interaction between those in power and those who suffer, made meaningful because of its hero's struggle against his wrongful imprisonment. Elements of romance, incidents of family life and passages of scenic description both relieve and give emphasis to the tragedy that forms its heart.' (Publication summary : Penguin Books 2009)
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y The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry John Kinsella (editor), Camberwell : Penguin , 2009 Z1553543 2009 anthology poetry (taught in 16 units)
'This is a comprehensive survey of Australian poetic achievement, ranging from early colonial and indigenous verse to contemporary work, from the major poets to those who deserve to be better recognised.' (Provided by the publisher).
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y The Penguin Best Australian Short Stories Mary Lord (editor), Ringwood : Penguin , 2000 Z861313 2000 anthology short story (taught in 5 units)
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y Power Without Glory : A Novel in Three Parts Melbourne : Realist Printing and Publishing Company , 1950 Z512009 1950 single work novel (taught in 5 units)
'This is a tale of corruption stretching from street corner SP bookmaking to the most influential men in the land - and the terrible personal cost of the power such corruption brings. John West rose from a Melbourne slum to dominate Australian politics with bribery, brutality and fear. His attractive wife and their children turned away from him in horror. Friends dropped away. At the peak of his power, surrounded by bootlickers, West faced a hate-filled nation - and the terrible loneliness of his life. Was John West a real figure? For months during the post-war years, an Australian court heard evidence in a sensational libel action brought by businessman John Wren's wife. After a national uproar which rocked the very foundations of the Commonwealth, Frank Hardy was acquitted. This is the novel which provoked such intense uproar and debate across the nation. The questions it poses remain unanswered…' (Publication summary)
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y Seven Poor Men of Sydney London : Peter Davies , 1934 Z461354 1934 single work novel (taught in 18 units)
'Seven Poor Men of Sydney is a brilliant portrayal of a group of men and women living in Sydney in the 1920s amid conditions of poverty and social turmoil.
Set against the vividly drawn backgrounds of Fisherman's (Watson's) Bay and the innercity slums, the various characters seek to resolve their individual spiritual dilemmas; through politics, religion and philosophy.
Their struggles, their pain and their frustrations are portrayed with consummate skill in this memorable evocation of a city and an era.' (Publication summary)
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y Short Stories Sydney : Beagle Press , 1981 Z1342037 1981 selected work short story (taught in 3 units)
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y The Twyborn Affair London : Jonathan Cape , 1979 Z448841 1979 single work novel (taught in 14 units)
'Eddie Twyborn is bisexual and beautiful, the son of a Judge and a drunken mother. With his androgynous hero - Eudoxia/Eddie/Eadith Twyborn - and through his search for identity, for self-affirmation and love in its many forms, Patrick White takes us into the ambiguous landscapes, sexual, psychological and spiritual, of the human condition.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y Brumby Innes, and Bid Me to Love Katharine Brisbane (editor), Sydney : Currency Methuen Drama , 1974 Z169610 1974 selected work drama (taught in 8 units)
'Written in the 1920s, Brumby Innes confronts the turbulent relations between the sexes and the races in the remote Pilbara region of Western Australia. It is published with another Prichard play from the 1920s, Bid Me To Love which, by contrast, is set among the fashionable rich in the lush hills outside Perth.'
'The two plays are compelling for their dramatic styles and for their insight into the novels which followed: Coonardoo and Intimate Strangers. And both had to wait more than forty years for their first production.' (Source: Reading Australia website)
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y Carpentaria Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2006 Z1184902 2006 single work novel (taught in 47 units) Carpentaria's portrait of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance centres on the powerful Phantom family, whose members are the leaders of the Pricklebush people, and their battles with old Joseph Midnight's tearaway Eastend mob on the one hand, and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine on the other. Wright's storytelling is operatic and surreal: a blend of myth and scripture, politics and farce. The novel is populated by extraordinary characters - Elias Smith the outcast saviour, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, leader of the holy Aboriginal pilgrimage, the murderous mayor Stan Bruiser, the ever-vigilant Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist and prodigal son Will Phantom, and above all, Angel Day the queen of the rubbish-dump, and her sea-faring husband Normal Phantom, the fish-embalming king of time - figures that stand like giants in this storm-swept world. (Backcover)
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y The Chapel Perilous, Or, The Perilous Adventures of Sally Banner Frank Arndt (composer), Michael Leydon (composer), Sydney : Currency Press , 1972 8274485 1972 single work musical theatre (taught in 7 units)
Written in Hewett's freewheeling epic style, The Chapel Perilous is a journey play that spans the period between the 1930s and the late 1960s. The story concerns Sally Banner, an over-reacher who attempts to find fulfilment – whether through her gift of poetic expression, through her sexual relationships, or in later years through political activism - and ultimately finds it through self-acceptance. Thematically the play contains the qualities and concerns which are often associated with Hewett's style – female sexuality, questioning of authority and morality, and anarchic tendencies towards structure in both dramatic text and social attitudes.
As Hewett remarks in her 1979 Hecate article: 'Sally is balanced by several symbolic female figures, the "Authority figures" of Headmistress, Anglican teaching "sister", and mother... [along with the] lesbian love figure, Judith, who stands for intellectual control and denial of sensual love' ('Creating Heroines in Australian Plays', p. 77).
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y Collected Poems 1942-1985 Pymble : Angus and Robertson , 1994 Z501989 1994 selected work poetry war literature satire (taught in 8 units)
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y Poems Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1957 Z531943 1957 selected work poetry (taught in 5 units)
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y Prelude to Christopher Sydney : P. R. Stephensen , 1934 Z824226 1934 single work novel (taught in 22 units)
'Should a woman bear a child knowing that there are traces of insanity in her family? Linda Hainlin, niece of a famous biologist, was aware of the danger when she married Dr. Nigel Hendon, a practical idealist, whose creed was normality and the rational ordering of the world. This book tells how, years later, while temporarily deprived of her husband's sane companionship, Linda feels the oncoming of those homicidal impulses which presage madness. On this tragic theme, 'Prelude to Christopher' is written with strong literary art as a narrative of four days of crisis. The story goes back in memory to the happiness of Linda's love for Nigel, and forward in her frightened imagination to a future from which the strongest must flinch. Christopher, the unborn child, dominates terrific events in which he has no living part to play. The prelude to his birth is told with emotional power.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
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y The Sparrow Garden Marianna Lacek (translator), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2004 Z1111071 2004 single work autobiography (taught in 5 units)
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y Voss : A Novel London : Eyre and Spottiswoode , 1957 Z872480 1957 single work novel (taught in 33 units)
'Set in nineteenth-century Australia, Voss is the story of the secret passion between an explorer and a naïve young woman. Although they have met only a few times, Voss and Laura are joined by overwhelming, obsessive feelings for each other. Voss sets out to cross the continent. As hardships, mutiny and betrayal whittle away his power to endure and to lead, his attachment to Laura gradually increases. Laura, waiting in Sydney, moves through the months of separation as if they were a dream and Voss the only reality.
'From the careful delineation of Victorian society to the sensitive rendering of hidden love to the stark narrative of adventure in the Australian desert, Patrick White's novel is a work of extraordinary power and virtuosity.'
Source: Random House Books (Sighted 21/09/2012)
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y Love, Ghosts and Nose Hair St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1996 Z536725 1996 single work novel young adult humour (taught in 2 units) Jack is sixteen, obsessed with the beautiful Annabel, the ghost of his mother and nose hair. - back cover
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y Playing Beatie Bow Melbourne : Nelson , 1980 Z47803 1980 single work novel young adult fantasy (taught in 5 units) When Abigail joins in the game of Beatie Bow she is transported back in time to a Sydney of the late 19th century where she meets the Bow family, whose fate she can predict, but which she is powerless to change.
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y Seven Little Australians London Melbourne : Ward, Lock and Bowden , 1894 Z863667 1894 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 25 units)
'Without doubt Judy was the worst of the seven, probably because she was the cleverest.'
'Her father, Captain Woolcot, found his vivacious, cheeky daughter impossible – but seven children were really too much for him and most of the time they ran wild at their rambling riverside home, Misrule.
'Step inside and meet them all – dreamy Meg, and Pip, daring Judy, naughty Bunty, Nell, Baby and the youngest, 'the General'. Come and share in their lives, their laughter and their tears.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y The Best Australian Essays 2007 Drusilla Modjeska (editor), Melbourne : Black Inc. , 2007 Z1434576 2007 anthology essay (taught in 4 units)
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y Dead Europe Milsons Point : Vintage Australia , 2005 Z1186455 2005 single work novel (taught in 14 units) 'The novel comprises two separate narratives. The first, told in the style of a fairytale, is set in a traditional Greek peasant village during and after World War II. Its world is still magical. ... The second narrative is set in the present time. The narrator is a 36-year-old gay, Greek-Australian photographic artist named Isaac. We meet Isaac at a time when he has travelled to Greece for what turns out to be a rather dismal officially funded exhibition of his works.'
Source: Manne, Robert. 'Dead Disturbing'. The Monthly. (June, 2005) -
y El Dorado Sydney : Pan Macmillan Australia , 2007 Z1362160 2007 single work novel crime detective thriller (taught in 10 units)
'There is a serial killer stalking the streets of Melbourne. The victims are killed gently, lovingly, a gold mark traced on their forehead. This killer doesn't hate children. This killer believes in childhood innocence at any cost...El Dorado is the story of a friendship under siege, and the very long shadows that jealousy and betrayal can cast.' - back cover
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y Gangland : Cultural Elites and the New Generationalism St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 1999 Z306210 1999 single work criticism (taught in 1 units)
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y Love and Vertigo St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 2000 Z514595 2000 single work novel (taught in 4 units)
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y Sixty Lights London : Harvill Press , 2004 Z1136231 2004 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 15 units)
'Sixty Lights is the captivating chronicle of Lucy Strange, an independent girl growing up in the Victorian world. From her childhood in Australia through to her adolescence in England and Bombay and finally to London, Lucy is fascinated by light and by the new photographic technology. Her perception of the world is passionate and moving, revealed in a series of frozen images captured in the camera of her mind's eye showing her feelings about love, life and loss. In this confident, finely woven and intricate novel Jones has created an unforgettable character in Lucy; visionary, gifted and exuberant, she touches the lives of all who know her.' (Publication summary)
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y Writing from the Fringe : A Study of Modern Aboriginal Literature Melbourne : Hyland House , 1990 Z818610 1990 single work criticism (taught in 2 units)
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y The Best Australian Essays 2007 Drusilla Modjeska (editor), Melbourne : Black Inc. , 2007 Z1434576 2007 anthology essay (taught in 4 units)
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y The Best Australian Poetry 2008 David Brooks (editor), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2008 Z1537239 2008 anthology poetry (taught in 3 units)
'His selection of 40 poems from Australia's print and online journals captures a sense of poetry as passion, as lived experience, and momentary distillations into action.' (Source: Publisher's website)
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y Carpentaria Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2006 Z1184902 2006 single work novel (taught in 47 units) Carpentaria's portrait of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance centres on the powerful Phantom family, whose members are the leaders of the Pricklebush people, and their battles with old Joseph Midnight's tearaway Eastend mob on the one hand, and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine on the other. Wright's storytelling is operatic and surreal: a blend of myth and scripture, politics and farce. The novel is populated by extraordinary characters - Elias Smith the outcast saviour, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, leader of the holy Aboriginal pilgrimage, the murderous mayor Stan Bruiser, the ever-vigilant Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist and prodigal son Will Phantom, and above all, Angel Day the queen of the rubbish-dump, and her sea-faring husband Normal Phantom, the fish-embalming king of time - figures that stand like giants in this storm-swept world. (Backcover)
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y Dead Europe Milsons Point : Vintage Australia , 2005 Z1186455 2005 single work novel (taught in 14 units) 'The novel comprises two separate narratives. The first, told in the style of a fairytale, is set in a traditional Greek peasant village during and after World War II. Its world is still magical. ... The second narrative is set in the present time. The narrator is a 36-year-old gay, Greek-Australian photographic artist named Isaac. We meet Isaac at a time when he has travelled to Greece for what turns out to be a rather dismal officially funded exhibition of his works.'
Source: Manne, Robert. 'Dead Disturbing'. The Monthly. (June, 2005) -
y El Dorado Sydney : Pan Macmillan Australia , 2007 Z1362160 2007 single work novel crime detective thriller (taught in 10 units)
'There is a serial killer stalking the streets of Melbourne. The victims are killed gently, lovingly, a gold mark traced on their forehead. This killer doesn't hate children. This killer believes in childhood innocence at any cost...El Dorado is the story of a friendship under siege, and the very long shadows that jealousy and betrayal can cast.' - back cover
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y Love and Vertigo St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 2000 Z514595 2000 single work novel (taught in 4 units)
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y The Secret River Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2005 Z1194031 2005 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 69 units)
'In 1806 William Thornhill, a man of quick temper and deep feelings, is transported from the slums of London to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. With his wife Sal and their children he arrives in a harsh land he cannot understand.
'But the colony can turn a convict into a free man. Eight years later Thornhill sails up the Hawkesbury to claim a hundred acres for himself.
'Aboriginal people already live on that river. And other recent arrivals - Thomas Blackwood, Smasher Sullivan and Mrs Herring - are finding their own ways to respond to them.
'Thornhill, a man neither better nor worse than most, soon has to make the most difficult choice of his life.
'Inspired by research into her own family history, Kate Grenville vividly creates the reality of settler life, its longings, dangers and dilemmas. The Secret River is a brilliantly written book, a groundbreaking story about identity, belonging and ownership.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y Sixty Lights London : Harvill Press , 2004 Z1136231 2004 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 15 units)
'Sixty Lights is the captivating chronicle of Lucy Strange, an independent girl growing up in the Victorian world. From her childhood in Australia through to her adolescence in England and Bombay and finally to London, Lucy is fascinated by light and by the new photographic technology. Her perception of the world is passionate and moving, revealed in a series of frozen images captured in the camera of her mind's eye showing her feelings about love, life and loss. In this confident, finely woven and intricate novel Jones has created an unforgettable character in Lucy; visionary, gifted and exuberant, she touches the lives of all who know her.' (Publication summary)
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y True History of the Kelly Gang St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2000 Z668312 2000 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 29 units)
'"I lost my own father at 12 yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in Hell if I speak false."
'In TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG, the legendary Ned Kelly speaks for himself, scribbling his narrative on errant scraps of paper in semi-literate but magically descriptive prose as he flees from the police. To his pursuers, Kelly is nothing but a monstrous criminal, a thief and a murderer. To his own people, the lowly class of ordinary Australians, the bushranger is a hero, defying the authority of the English to direct their lives. Indentured by his bootlegger mother to a famous horse thief (who was also her lover), Ned saw his first prison cell at 15 and by the age of 26 had become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and defying the law until he was finally captured and hanged. Here is a classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y 4F for Freaks Four F for Freaks Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2006 Z1230016 2006 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 3 units)
'It's Miss Corker's first day at her new school (in fact, it's her first day at anyschool) and she is looking forward to meeting her class. Leigh Hobbs turns his sharply observant eyes to the oddballs and misfits in Grade 4 in this absolutely hilarious illustrated story for 7-11 year olds.' (Publication summary)
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y Deadly, Unna? Ringwood : Penguin , 1998 Z517608 1998 single work novel young adult (taught in 20 units)
'"Deadly, unna?" He was always saying that. All the Nungas did, but Dumby more than any of them. Dumby Red and Blacky don't have a lot in common. Dumby's the star of the footy team, he's got a killer smile and the knack with girls, and he's a Nunga. Blacky's a gutless wonder, needs braces, never knows what to say, and he's white. But they're friends... and it could be deadly, unna? This gutsy novel, set in a small coastal town in South Australia is a rites-of-passage story about two boys confronting the depth of racism that exists all around them.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
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y Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1996 Z126936 1996 single work biography (taught in 26 units)
'The film Rabbit-Proof Fence is based on this true account of Doris Nugi Garimara Pilkington's mother Molly, who as a young girl led her two sisters on an extraordinary 1,600 kilometre walk home. Under Western Australia's invidious removal policy of the 1930s, the girls were taken from their Aboriginal family at Jigalong on the edge of the Little Sandy Desert, and transported halfway across the state to the Native Settlement at Moore River, north of Perth...
The three girls - aged 8, 11 and 14 - managed to escape from the settlement's repressive conditions and brutal treatment. Barefoot without provisions or maps, they set out to find the rabbit-proof fence, knowing it passed near their home in the north. Tracked by native police and search planes, they hid in terror, surviving on bush tucker, desperate to return to the world they knew.
The journey to freedom - longer than many of the legendary walks of [the Australian nation's] explorer heroes... told from family recollections, letters between the authorities and the Aboriginal Protector, and ... newspaper reports of the runaway children.' Source: Publisher's blurb
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y Hating Alison Ashley Ringwood : Puffin , 1984 Z262253 1984 single work novel young adult (taught in 3 units) Classmates Erica Yurgen and Alison Ashley vie with each other to become the undisputed star of their class.
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Little Lunch 2001- series - author children's fiction children's humour (taught in 3 units)
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y Poems by Young Australians : Vol 3 : The Best Entries from the 2005 Taronga Foundation Poetry Prize Milsons Point : Random House Australia , 2005 Z1224070 2005 anthology poetry (taught in 3 units)
The winning and commended poets from the 2005 Taronga Foundation Poetry Prize (TFPP) showcase their amazing talents in this third volume of Poems by Young Australians. The TFPP seeks to inspire a love of nature and poetry. When the two come together the results are spectacular, as this volume clearly demonstrates. (Back cover)
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y Saving Francesca Camberwell : Viking , 2003 Z1019212 2003 single work novel young adult (taught in 6 units) 'Sixteen-year-old Francesca could use her outspoken mother's help with the problems of being one of a handful of girls at a parochial school that has just turned co-ed, but her mother has suddenly become severely depressed' (Source: NLA).
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y Creating Poetry Melbourne : Edward Arnold , 1987 Z1341450 1987 single work criticism (taught in 5 units) A handbook for creative writing and poetry.
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y The Writing Book : A Workbook for Fiction Writers Sydney : Allen and Unwin , 1990 Z410184 1990 single work non-fiction (taught in 13 units)
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y Candy St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 1997 Z253307 1997 single work novel (taught in 4 units) He met Candy during a lush Sydney summer. Gorgeous, sexy, free-spirited Candy. They fell in love fast, lots of laughter and lust, the days melting warmly into each other. He never planned to give her a habit. But she wanted a taste. And wasn't love, after all, about sharing lives? But when the money ran out, the craving remained, and the days ceased their luxurious stretch. But there was still love. Only now, it was a threesome. Heroin had its own demands, its own timetable, and thoughts of nabbing the next fix hurled them into each day. Then, when desperation set in, Candy would stop at nothing to secure a blast, as she and her love became hostage to the nightmarish world of addiction. (Source: Trove)
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y Monkey Grip Melbourne : McPhee Gribble , 1977 Z115661 1977 single work novel (taught in 12 units)
Set in inner suburban 1970s Melbourne, Monkey Grip describes the fluid relationships of a community of friends who are living and loving in new ways. Single parent Nora falls in love with Javo, a heroin addict, and together they try to make sense of their lives and the choices they have made.
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y The Memoir Book : A Guide To Life Writing Pymble : HarperCollins Australia , 2007 Z1382169 2007 single work criticism (taught in 4 units)
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y The Brush-Off Melbourne : Text Publishing , 1996 Z316121 1996 single work novel crime humour (taught in 3 units)
— Appears in: The Murray Whelan Trilogy 2001;'On a sultry summer night Murray Whelan is in the Botanical Gardens tasting Salina Fleet's apricot lips. Meanwhile the body of an artist is being fished from the ornamental moat outside the Art Gallery. The papers called it suicide. The police say it's an accident.
'Political minder, brushed-off lover and art buff on the make, Murray goes looking for the big picture. He finds there's more than meets the eye among the self-made millionaires, ruthless culture vultures, and cool operators of Melbourne's art world. He learns that when you dabble with death there's nothing abstract about a loaded gun.
'Murray Whelan, the hero of Stiff, Shane Maloney's brilliant debut novel, is back at his richly futile best. A romantic comedy and drop-dead thriller, The Brush-Off mixes high art with low blows.' (Publication summary)
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form y The Brush-Off ( dir. Sam Neill ) Australia : Ruby Entertainment Huntaway Films Seven Network , 2004 Z1125639 2004 single work film/TV crime humour (taught in 3 units)
'When Agnelli is demoted to Minister of Arts and Water, he decides to earn brownie points by raising funds for the next election campaign. Murray is on the case, meeting with philanthropists and arts connoisseurs. This is where the trouble begins.'
Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 5/4/2013)
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y My Brilliant Career Edinburgh London : William Blackwood , 1901 Z161522 1901 single work novel (taught in 56 units)
'My Brilliant Career was written by Stella Franklin (1879-1954) when she was just nineteen years old. The novel struggled to find an Australian publisher, but was published in London and Edinburgh in 1901 after receiving an endorsement from Henry Lawson. Although Franklin wrote under the pseudonym 'Miles Franklin', Lawson’s preface makes it clear that Franklin is, as Lawson puts it 'a girl.'
'The novel relates the story of Sybylla Melvyn, a strong-willed young woman of the 1890s growing up in the Goulburn area of New South Wales and longing to be a writer.' (Publication summary)
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form y My Brilliant Career ( dir. Gillian Armstrong ) Adelaide : Margaret Fink Productions , 1979 Z817179 1979 single work film/TV (taught in 7 units)
Based on the book by Miles Franklin, this feature film tells the story of an Australian country girl who, at the end of the nineteenth century, wants to make her own way in the outside world.
Rejecting an offer of marriage from a wealthy suitor (who is also her childhood friend), she instead finds herself obligated to work off her father's debt to a neighbouring family, for whom she works as governess and housekeeper. Returning home, she again rejects her suitor's proposal, this time in favour of writing a novel based on her experiences.
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y Australian Plays for the Colonial Stage : 1834-1899 Richard Fotheringham (editor), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2006 Z1238215 2006 anthology drama (taught in 3 units)
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y Collected Plays : Volume II Sydney : Currency Press , 1993 Z859306 1993 selected work drama (taught in 2 units)
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y Parramatta Girls Strawberry Hills : Currency Press , 2007 Z1192242 2007 single work drama (taught in 3 units)
'The Parramatta Girls Training School operated from 1889 to its close in the late 1970s as a state home for 'uncontrollable' girls. Under the guise of 'reforming' them, these teenagers were subjected to mental, emotional and physical brutality. It was a start in life that was metered out to vulnerable, uniformly poor and frequently indigenous women. 'Parramatta Girls' is based on verbatim accounts of the women who were incarcerated at the Parramatta Girls Training School.'
Source: Belvoir Street Theatre website, http://www.belvoir.com.au/
Sighted: 09/05/2005
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y Plays of the 60s : Volume 2 Katharine Brisbane (editor), Sydney : Currency Press , 1998 Z184660 1998 anthology drama (taught in 2 units)
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y Plays of the 70s [Volume 1] Katharine Brisbane (editor), Sydney : Currency Press , 1998 Z34704 1998 anthology drama (taught in 11 units)
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y The Removalists 1971 Sydney : Currency Press , 1972 Z365225 1971 single work drama (taught in 12 units)
A young policeman’s first day on duty becomes a violent and highly charged initiation into law enforcement. Remarkable for its blend of boisterous humour and horrifying violence, the play has acquired a reputation as a classic statement on Australian authoritarianism and is a key work in the study of Australian drama.
(Publication Synopsis)
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y Summer of the Seventeenth Doll 1955 London Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1957 Z522838 1955 single work drama (taught in 56 units)
'The most famous Australian play and one of the best loved, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is a tragicomic story of Roo and Barney, two Queensland sugar-cane cutters who go to Melbourne every year during the 'layoff' to live it up with their barmaid girl friends. The title refers to kewpie dolls, tawdry fairground souvenirs, that they brings as gifts and come, in some readings of the play, to represent adolescent dreams in which the characters seem to be permanently trapped. The play tells the story in traditional well-made, realistic form, with effective curtains and an obligatory scene. Its principal appeal – and that of two later plays with which it forms The Doll Trilogy – is the freshness and emotional warmth, even sentimentality, with which it deals with simple virtues of innocence and youthful energy that lie at the heart of the Australian bush legend.
'Ray Lawler’s play confronts that legend with the harsh new reality of modern urban Australia. The 17th year of the canecutters’ arrangement is different. There has been a fight on the canefields and Roo, the tough, heroic, bushman, has arrived with his ego battered and without money. Barney’s girl friend Nancy has left to get married and is replaced by Pearl, who is suspicious of the whole set-up and hopes to trap Barney into marriage. The play charts the inevitable failure of the dream of the layoff, the end of the men’s supremacy as bush heroes and, most poignantly, the betrayal of the idealistic self-sacrifice made by Roo’s girl friend Olive – the most interesting character – to keep the whole thing going. The city emerges victorious, but the emotional tone of the play vindicates the fallen bushman.'
Source: McCallum, John. 'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.' Companion to Theatre in Australia. Ed. Philip Parson and Victoria Chance. Sydney: Currency Press , 1997: 564-656.
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y His Natural Life For the Term of His Natural Life 1870-1872 Z1032375 1870-1872 single work novel (taught in 15 units)
'Scarcely out of print since the early 1870s, For the Term of His Natural Life has provided successive generations with a vivid account of a brutal phase of colonial life. The main focus of this great convict novel is the complex interaction between those in power and those who suffer, made meaningful because of its hero's struggle against his wrongful imprisonment. Elements of romance, incidents of family life and passages of scenic description both relieve and give emphasis to the tragedy that forms its heart.' (Publication summary : Penguin Books 2009)
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y The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry John Kinsella (editor), Camberwell : Penguin , 2009 Z1553543 2009 anthology poetry (taught in 16 units)
'This is a comprehensive survey of Australian poetic achievement, ranging from early colonial and indigenous verse to contemporary work, from the major poets to those who deserve to be better recognised.' (Provided by the publisher).
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y The Penguin Best Australian Short Stories Mary Lord (editor), Ringwood : Penguin , 2000 Z861313 2000 anthology short story (taught in 5 units)
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y Power Without Glory : A Novel in Three Parts Melbourne : Realist Printing and Publishing Company , 1950 Z512009 1950 single work novel (taught in 5 units)
'This is a tale of corruption stretching from street corner SP bookmaking to the most influential men in the land - and the terrible personal cost of the power such corruption brings. John West rose from a Melbourne slum to dominate Australian politics with bribery, brutality and fear. His attractive wife and their children turned away from him in horror. Friends dropped away. At the peak of his power, surrounded by bootlickers, West faced a hate-filled nation - and the terrible loneliness of his life. Was John West a real figure? For months during the post-war years, an Australian court heard evidence in a sensational libel action brought by businessman John Wren's wife. After a national uproar which rocked the very foundations of the Commonwealth, Frank Hardy was acquitted. This is the novel which provoked such intense uproar and debate across the nation. The questions it poses remain unanswered…' (Publication summary)
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y Seven Poor Men of Sydney London : Peter Davies , 1934 Z461354 1934 single work novel (taught in 18 units)
'Seven Poor Men of Sydney is a brilliant portrayal of a group of men and women living in Sydney in the 1920s amid conditions of poverty and social turmoil.
Set against the vividly drawn backgrounds of Fisherman's (Watson's) Bay and the innercity slums, the various characters seek to resolve their individual spiritual dilemmas; through politics, religion and philosophy.
Their struggles, their pain and their frustrations are portrayed with consummate skill in this memorable evocation of a city and an era.' (Publication summary)
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y Short Stories Sydney : Beagle Press , 1981 Z1342037 1981 selected work short story (taught in 3 units)
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y The Twyborn Affair London : Jonathan Cape , 1979 Z448841 1979 single work novel (taught in 14 units)
'Eddie Twyborn is bisexual and beautiful, the son of a Judge and a drunken mother. With his androgynous hero - Eudoxia/Eddie/Eadith Twyborn - and through his search for identity, for self-affirmation and love in its many forms, Patrick White takes us into the ambiguous landscapes, sexual, psychological and spiritual, of the human condition.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y Cloudstreet 1998 Sydney Perth : Currency Press Company B Belvoir Black Swan Theatre Company , 1999 Z396116 1998 single work drama (taught in 2 units) Tim Winton's quintessential Australian yarn of the spirited child Fish, his family and unlikely neighbours - sharing determination, faith, pain, and laughter is a story of love and the bonds that tie us to our sense of place. Hailed as one of the most acclaimed theatrical events of the decade, it is a five hour epic. (Source: Libraries Australia)
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y Plays of the 60s : Volume 2 Katharine Brisbane (editor), Sydney : Currency Press , 1998 Z184660 1998 anthology drama (taught in 2 units)
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y The Removalists 1971 Sydney : Currency Press , 1972 Z365225 1971 single work drama (taught in 12 units)
A young policeman’s first day on duty becomes a violent and highly charged initiation into law enforcement. Remarkable for its blend of boisterous humour and horrifying violence, the play has acquired a reputation as a classic statement on Australian authoritarianism and is a key work in the study of Australian drama.
(Publication Synopsis)
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y The Seven Stages of Grieving 1995 Brisbane : Playlab , 1996 Z355402 1995 single work drama (taught in 14 units)
— Appears in: アボリジニ戯曲選 : ストールン; 嘆きの七段階 2001;'This is a proud milestone in Australian theatre history; a contemporary Indigenous performance text from the highly acclaimed Kooemba Jdarra. Appropriating western forms whilst using traditional storytelling, it gives emotional insight into Murri life. This one-woman show follows the journey of an Aboriginal ‘Everywoman’ as she tells poignant and humorous stories of grief and reconciliation. A powerful, demanding and culturally profound text, The 7 Stages of Grieving is a celebration of Indigenous survival, an invitation to grieve publicly, a time to exorcize pain. It has a universal theme told through the personal experiences of one incredible character.'
Source: Publisher's blurb (Playlab).
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y Summer of the Seventeenth Doll 1955 London Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1957 Z522838 1955 single work drama (taught in 56 units)
'The most famous Australian play and one of the best loved, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is a tragicomic story of Roo and Barney, two Queensland sugar-cane cutters who go to Melbourne every year during the 'layoff' to live it up with their barmaid girl friends. The title refers to kewpie dolls, tawdry fairground souvenirs, that they brings as gifts and come, in some readings of the play, to represent adolescent dreams in which the characters seem to be permanently trapped. The play tells the story in traditional well-made, realistic form, with effective curtains and an obligatory scene. Its principal appeal – and that of two later plays with which it forms The Doll Trilogy – is the freshness and emotional warmth, even sentimentality, with which it deals with simple virtues of innocence and youthful energy that lie at the heart of the Australian bush legend.
'Ray Lawler’s play confronts that legend with the harsh new reality of modern urban Australia. The 17th year of the canecutters’ arrangement is different. There has been a fight on the canefields and Roo, the tough, heroic, bushman, has arrived with his ego battered and without money. Barney’s girl friend Nancy has left to get married and is replaced by Pearl, who is suspicious of the whole set-up and hopes to trap Barney into marriage. The play charts the inevitable failure of the dream of the layoff, the end of the men’s supremacy as bush heroes and, most poignantly, the betrayal of the idealistic self-sacrifice made by Roo’s girl friend Olive – the most interesting character – to keep the whole thing going. The city emerges victorious, but the emotional tone of the play vindicates the fallen bushman.'
Source: McCallum, John. 'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.' Companion to Theatre in Australia. Ed. Philip Parson and Victoria Chance. Sydney: Currency Press , 1997: 564-656.
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y Playing Beatie Bow Melbourne : Nelson , 1980 Z47803 1980 single work novel young adult fantasy (taught in 5 units) When Abigail joins in the game of Beatie Bow she is transported back in time to a Sydney of the late 19th century where she meets the Bow family, whose fate she can predict, but which she is powerless to change.
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y Seven Little Australians London Melbourne : Ward, Lock and Bowden , 1894 Z863667 1894 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 25 units)
'Without doubt Judy was the worst of the seven, probably because she was the cleverest.'
'Her father, Captain Woolcot, found his vivacious, cheeky daughter impossible – but seven children were really too much for him and most of the time they ran wild at their rambling riverside home, Misrule.
'Step inside and meet them all – dreamy Meg, and Pip, daring Judy, naughty Bunty, Nell, Baby and the youngest, 'the General'. Come and share in their lives, their laughter and their tears.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y The Best Australian Essays 2007 Drusilla Modjeska (editor), Melbourne : Black Inc. , 2007 Z1434576 2007 anthology essay (taught in 4 units)
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y The Best Australian Poetry 2008 David Brooks (editor), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2008 Z1537239 2008 anthology poetry (taught in 3 units)
'His selection of 40 poems from Australia's print and online journals captures a sense of poetry as passion, as lived experience, and momentary distillations into action.' (Source: Publisher's website)
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y Carpentaria Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2006 Z1184902 2006 single work novel (taught in 47 units) Carpentaria's portrait of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance centres on the powerful Phantom family, whose members are the leaders of the Pricklebush people, and their battles with old Joseph Midnight's tearaway Eastend mob on the one hand, and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine on the other. Wright's storytelling is operatic and surreal: a blend of myth and scripture, politics and farce. The novel is populated by extraordinary characters - Elias Smith the outcast saviour, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, leader of the holy Aboriginal pilgrimage, the murderous mayor Stan Bruiser, the ever-vigilant Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist and prodigal son Will Phantom, and above all, Angel Day the queen of the rubbish-dump, and her sea-faring husband Normal Phantom, the fish-embalming king of time - figures that stand like giants in this storm-swept world. (Backcover)
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y Dead Europe Milsons Point : Vintage Australia , 2005 Z1186455 2005 single work novel (taught in 14 units) 'The novel comprises two separate narratives. The first, told in the style of a fairytale, is set in a traditional Greek peasant village during and after World War II. Its world is still magical. ... The second narrative is set in the present time. The narrator is a 36-year-old gay, Greek-Australian photographic artist named Isaac. We meet Isaac at a time when he has travelled to Greece for what turns out to be a rather dismal officially funded exhibition of his works.'
Source: Manne, Robert. 'Dead Disturbing'. The Monthly. (June, 2005) -
y El Dorado Sydney : Pan Macmillan Australia , 2007 Z1362160 2007 single work novel crime detective thriller (taught in 10 units)
'There is a serial killer stalking the streets of Melbourne. The victims are killed gently, lovingly, a gold mark traced on their forehead. This killer doesn't hate children. This killer believes in childhood innocence at any cost...El Dorado is the story of a friendship under siege, and the very long shadows that jealousy and betrayal can cast.' - back cover
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y Love and Vertigo St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 2000 Z514595 2000 single work novel (taught in 4 units)
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y The Secret River Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2005 Z1194031 2005 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 69 units)
'In 1806 William Thornhill, a man of quick temper and deep feelings, is transported from the slums of London to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. With his wife Sal and their children he arrives in a harsh land he cannot understand.
'But the colony can turn a convict into a free man. Eight years later Thornhill sails up the Hawkesbury to claim a hundred acres for himself.
'Aboriginal people already live on that river. And other recent arrivals - Thomas Blackwood, Smasher Sullivan and Mrs Herring - are finding their own ways to respond to them.
'Thornhill, a man neither better nor worse than most, soon has to make the most difficult choice of his life.
'Inspired by research into her own family history, Kate Grenville vividly creates the reality of settler life, its longings, dangers and dilemmas. The Secret River is a brilliantly written book, a groundbreaking story about identity, belonging and ownership.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y Sixty Lights London : Harvill Press , 2004 Z1136231 2004 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 15 units)
'Sixty Lights is the captivating chronicle of Lucy Strange, an independent girl growing up in the Victorian world. From her childhood in Australia through to her adolescence in England and Bombay and finally to London, Lucy is fascinated by light and by the new photographic technology. Her perception of the world is passionate and moving, revealed in a series of frozen images captured in the camera of her mind's eye showing her feelings about love, life and loss. In this confident, finely woven and intricate novel Jones has created an unforgettable character in Lucy; visionary, gifted and exuberant, she touches the lives of all who know her.' (Publication summary)
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y True History of the Kelly Gang St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2000 Z668312 2000 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 29 units)
'"I lost my own father at 12 yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in Hell if I speak false."
'In TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG, the legendary Ned Kelly speaks for himself, scribbling his narrative on errant scraps of paper in semi-literate but magically descriptive prose as he flees from the police. To his pursuers, Kelly is nothing but a monstrous criminal, a thief and a murderer. To his own people, the lowly class of ordinary Australians, the bushranger is a hero, defying the authority of the English to direct their lives. Indentured by his bootlegger mother to a famous horse thief (who was also her lover), Ned saw his first prison cell at 15 and by the age of 26 had become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and defying the law until he was finally captured and hanged. Here is a classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y 4F for Freaks Four F for Freaks Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2006 Z1230016 2006 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 3 units)
'It's Miss Corker's first day at her new school (in fact, it's her first day at anyschool) and she is looking forward to meeting her class. Leigh Hobbs turns his sharply observant eyes to the oddballs and misfits in Grade 4 in this absolutely hilarious illustrated story for 7-11 year olds.' (Publication summary)
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y Deadly, Unna? Ringwood : Penguin , 1998 Z517608 1998 single work novel young adult (taught in 20 units)
'"Deadly, unna?" He was always saying that. All the Nungas did, but Dumby more than any of them. Dumby Red and Blacky don't have a lot in common. Dumby's the star of the footy team, he's got a killer smile and the knack with girls, and he's a Nunga. Blacky's a gutless wonder, needs braces, never knows what to say, and he's white. But they're friends... and it could be deadly, unna? This gutsy novel, set in a small coastal town in South Australia is a rites-of-passage story about two boys confronting the depth of racism that exists all around them.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
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y Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1996 Z126936 1996 single work biography (taught in 26 units)
'The film Rabbit-Proof Fence is based on this true account of Doris Nugi Garimara Pilkington's mother Molly, who as a young girl led her two sisters on an extraordinary 1,600 kilometre walk home. Under Western Australia's invidious removal policy of the 1930s, the girls were taken from their Aboriginal family at Jigalong on the edge of the Little Sandy Desert, and transported halfway across the state to the Native Settlement at Moore River, north of Perth...
The three girls - aged 8, 11 and 14 - managed to escape from the settlement's repressive conditions and brutal treatment. Barefoot without provisions or maps, they set out to find the rabbit-proof fence, knowing it passed near their home in the north. Tracked by native police and search planes, they hid in terror, surviving on bush tucker, desperate to return to the world they knew.
The journey to freedom - longer than many of the legendary walks of [the Australian nation's] explorer heroes... told from family recollections, letters between the authorities and the Aboriginal Protector, and ... newspaper reports of the runaway children.' Source: Publisher's blurb
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y Hating Alison Ashley Ringwood : Puffin , 1984 Z262253 1984 single work novel young adult (taught in 3 units) Classmates Erica Yurgen and Alison Ashley vie with each other to become the undisputed star of their class.
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Little Lunch 2001- series - author children's fiction children's humour (taught in 3 units)
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y Poems by Young Australians : Vol 3 : The Best Entries from the 2005 Taronga Foundation Poetry Prize Milsons Point : Random House Australia , 2005 Z1224070 2005 anthology poetry (taught in 3 units)
The winning and commended poets from the 2005 Taronga Foundation Poetry Prize (TFPP) showcase their amazing talents in this third volume of Poems by Young Australians. The TFPP seeks to inspire a love of nature and poetry. When the two come together the results are spectacular, as this volume clearly demonstrates. (Back cover)
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y Saving Francesca Camberwell : Viking , 2003 Z1019212 2003 single work novel young adult (taught in 6 units) 'Sixteen-year-old Francesca could use her outspoken mother's help with the problems of being one of a handful of girls at a parochial school that has just turned co-ed, but her mother has suddenly become severely depressed' (Source: NLA).
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y Creating Poetry Melbourne : Edward Arnold , 1987 Z1341450 1987 single work criticism (taught in 5 units) A handbook for creative writing and poetry.
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y The Writing Book : A Workbook for Fiction Writers Sydney : Allen and Unwin , 1990 Z410184 1990 single work non-fiction (taught in 13 units)
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y Brilliant Lies Paddington : Currency Press , 1993 Z261594 1993 single work drama satire (taught in 2 units)
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y Parramatta Girls Strawberry Hills : Currency Press , 2007 Z1192242 2007 single work drama (taught in 3 units)
'The Parramatta Girls Training School operated from 1889 to its close in the late 1970s as a state home for 'uncontrollable' girls. Under the guise of 'reforming' them, these teenagers were subjected to mental, emotional and physical brutality. It was a start in life that was metered out to vulnerable, uniformly poor and frequently indigenous women. 'Parramatta Girls' is based on verbatim accounts of the women who were incarcerated at the Parramatta Girls Training School.'
Source: Belvoir Street Theatre website, http://www.belvoir.com.au/
Sighted: 09/05/2005
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y The Brush-Off Melbourne : Text Publishing , 1996 Z316121 1996 single work novel crime humour (taught in 3 units)
— Appears in: The Murray Whelan Trilogy 2001;'On a sultry summer night Murray Whelan is in the Botanical Gardens tasting Salina Fleet's apricot lips. Meanwhile the body of an artist is being fished from the ornamental moat outside the Art Gallery. The papers called it suicide. The police say it's an accident.
'Political minder, brushed-off lover and art buff on the make, Murray goes looking for the big picture. He finds there's more than meets the eye among the self-made millionaires, ruthless culture vultures, and cool operators of Melbourne's art world. He learns that when you dabble with death there's nothing abstract about a loaded gun.
'Murray Whelan, the hero of Stiff, Shane Maloney's brilliant debut novel, is back at his richly futile best. A romantic comedy and drop-dead thriller, The Brush-Off mixes high art with low blows.' (Publication summary)
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form y The Brush-Off ( dir. Sam Neill ) Australia : Ruby Entertainment Huntaway Films Seven Network , 2004 Z1125639 2004 single work film/TV crime humour (taught in 3 units)
'When Agnelli is demoted to Minister of Arts and Water, he decides to earn brownie points by raising funds for the next election campaign. Murray is on the case, meeting with philanthropists and arts connoisseurs. This is where the trouble begins.'
Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 5/4/2013)
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y My Brilliant Career Edinburgh London : William Blackwood , 1901 Z161522 1901 single work novel (taught in 56 units)
'My Brilliant Career was written by Stella Franklin (1879-1954) when she was just nineteen years old. The novel struggled to find an Australian publisher, but was published in London and Edinburgh in 1901 after receiving an endorsement from Henry Lawson. Although Franklin wrote under the pseudonym 'Miles Franklin', Lawson’s preface makes it clear that Franklin is, as Lawson puts it 'a girl.'
'The novel relates the story of Sybylla Melvyn, a strong-willed young woman of the 1890s growing up in the Goulburn area of New South Wales and longing to be a writer.' (Publication summary)
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form y My Brilliant Career ( dir. Gillian Armstrong ) Adelaide : Margaret Fink Productions , 1979 Z817179 1979 single work film/TV (taught in 7 units)
Based on the book by Miles Franklin, this feature film tells the story of an Australian country girl who, at the end of the nineteenth century, wants to make her own way in the outside world.
Rejecting an offer of marriage from a wealthy suitor (who is also her childhood friend), she instead finds herself obligated to work off her father's debt to a neighbouring family, for whom she works as governess and housekeeper. Returning home, she again rejects her suitor's proposal, this time in favour of writing a novel based on her experiences.
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Writing for Publication (WRT210)
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y Creating Poetry Melbourne : Edward Arnold , 1987 Z1341450 1987 single work criticism (taught in 5 units) A handbook for creative writing and poetry.
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y The Writing Book : A Workbook for Fiction Writers Sydney : Allen and Unwin , 1990 Z410184 1990 single work non-fiction (taught in 13 units)
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y Australian Plays for the Colonial Stage : 1834-1899 Richard Fotheringham (editor), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2006 Z1238215 2006 anthology drama (taught in 3 units)
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2009
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y His Natural Life For the Term of His Natural Life 1870-1872 Z1032375 1870-1872 single work novel (taught in 15 units)
'Scarcely out of print since the early 1870s, For the Term of His Natural Life has provided successive generations with a vivid account of a brutal phase of colonial life. The main focus of this great convict novel is the complex interaction between those in power and those who suffer, made meaningful because of its hero's struggle against his wrongful imprisonment. Elements of romance, incidents of family life and passages of scenic description both relieve and give emphasis to the tragedy that forms its heart.' (Publication summary : Penguin Books 2009)
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y The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry John Kinsella (editor), Camberwell : Penguin , 2009 Z1553543 2009 anthology poetry (taught in 16 units)
'This is a comprehensive survey of Australian poetic achievement, ranging from early colonial and indigenous verse to contemporary work, from the major poets to those who deserve to be better recognised.' (Provided by the publisher).
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y The Penguin Best Australian Short Stories Mary Lord (editor), Ringwood : Penguin , 2000 Z861313 2000 anthology short story (taught in 5 units)
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y The Penguin Henry Lawson : Short Stories John Barnes (editor), Ringwood : Penguin , 1986 Z282880 1986 selected work short story humour (taught in 8 units)
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y Power Without Glory : A Novel in Three Parts Melbourne : Realist Printing and Publishing Company , 1950 Z512009 1950 single work novel (taught in 5 units)
'This is a tale of corruption stretching from street corner SP bookmaking to the most influential men in the land - and the terrible personal cost of the power such corruption brings. John West rose from a Melbourne slum to dominate Australian politics with bribery, brutality and fear. His attractive wife and their children turned away from him in horror. Friends dropped away. At the peak of his power, surrounded by bootlickers, West faced a hate-filled nation - and the terrible loneliness of his life. Was John West a real figure? For months during the post-war years, an Australian court heard evidence in a sensational libel action brought by businessman John Wren's wife. After a national uproar which rocked the very foundations of the Commonwealth, Frank Hardy was acquitted. This is the novel which provoked such intense uproar and debate across the nation. The questions it poses remain unanswered…' (Publication summary)
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y Seven Poor Men of Sydney London : Peter Davies , 1934 Z461354 1934 single work novel (taught in 18 units)
'Seven Poor Men of Sydney is a brilliant portrayal of a group of men and women living in Sydney in the 1920s amid conditions of poverty and social turmoil.
Set against the vividly drawn backgrounds of Fisherman's (Watson's) Bay and the innercity slums, the various characters seek to resolve their individual spiritual dilemmas; through politics, religion and philosophy.
Their struggles, their pain and their frustrations are portrayed with consummate skill in this memorable evocation of a city and an era.' (Publication summary)
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y The Twyborn Affair London : Jonathan Cape , 1979 Z448841 1979 single work novel (taught in 14 units)
'Eddie Twyborn is bisexual and beautiful, the son of a Judge and a drunken mother. With his androgynous hero - Eudoxia/Eddie/Eadith Twyborn - and through his search for identity, for self-affirmation and love in its many forms, Patrick White takes us into the ambiguous landscapes, sexual, psychological and spiritual, of the human condition.' (From the publisher's website.)
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Australian Literature (Murray campus) (LIT214-M)
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y His Natural Life For the Term of His Natural Life 1870-1872 Z1032375 1870-1872 single work novel (taught in 15 units)
'Scarcely out of print since the early 1870s, For the Term of His Natural Life has provided successive generations with a vivid account of a brutal phase of colonial life. The main focus of this great convict novel is the complex interaction between those in power and those who suffer, made meaningful because of its hero's struggle against his wrongful imprisonment. Elements of romance, incidents of family life and passages of scenic description both relieve and give emphasis to the tragedy that forms its heart.' (Publication summary : Penguin Books 2009)
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y The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry John Kinsella (editor), Camberwell : Penguin , 2009 Z1553543 2009 anthology poetry (taught in 16 units)
'This is a comprehensive survey of Australian poetic achievement, ranging from early colonial and indigenous verse to contemporary work, from the major poets to those who deserve to be better recognised.' (Provided by the publisher).
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y The Penguin Best Australian Short Stories Mary Lord (editor), Ringwood : Penguin , 2000 Z861313 2000 anthology short story (taught in 5 units)
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y Power Without Glory : A Novel in Three Parts Melbourne : Realist Printing and Publishing Company , 1950 Z512009 1950 single work novel (taught in 5 units)
'This is a tale of corruption stretching from street corner SP bookmaking to the most influential men in the land - and the terrible personal cost of the power such corruption brings. John West rose from a Melbourne slum to dominate Australian politics with bribery, brutality and fear. His attractive wife and their children turned away from him in horror. Friends dropped away. At the peak of his power, surrounded by bootlickers, West faced a hate-filled nation - and the terrible loneliness of his life. Was John West a real figure? For months during the post-war years, an Australian court heard evidence in a sensational libel action brought by businessman John Wren's wife. After a national uproar which rocked the very foundations of the Commonwealth, Frank Hardy was acquitted. This is the novel which provoked such intense uproar and debate across the nation. The questions it poses remain unanswered…' (Publication summary)
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y Seven Poor Men of Sydney London : Peter Davies , 1934 Z461354 1934 single work novel (taught in 18 units)
'Seven Poor Men of Sydney is a brilliant portrayal of a group of men and women living in Sydney in the 1920s amid conditions of poverty and social turmoil.
Set against the vividly drawn backgrounds of Fisherman's (Watson's) Bay and the innercity slums, the various characters seek to resolve their individual spiritual dilemmas; through politics, religion and philosophy.
Their struggles, their pain and their frustrations are portrayed with consummate skill in this memorable evocation of a city and an era.' (Publication summary)
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y Short Stories Sydney : Beagle Press , 1981 Z1342037 1981 selected work short story (taught in 3 units)
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y The Twyborn Affair London : Jonathan Cape , 1979 Z448841 1979 single work novel (taught in 14 units)
'Eddie Twyborn is bisexual and beautiful, the son of a Judge and a drunken mother. With his androgynous hero - Eudoxia/Eddie/Eadith Twyborn - and through his search for identity, for self-affirmation and love in its many forms, Patrick White takes us into the ambiguous landscapes, sexual, psychological and spiritual, of the human condition.' (From the publisher's website.)
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Australian Screen and Stage (COM122)
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y Don's Party 1971 1971 (Manuscript version)x402002 Z1505961 1971 single work drama satire (taught in 17 units)
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form y The Home Song Stories ( dir. Tony Ayres ) Australia : Big and Little Films Porchlight Films , 2007 Z1390692 2007 single work film/TV (taught in 4 units)
'This is the true story of Rose, a glamorous Shanghai nightclub singer, who struggles to survive in '70s Australia with two young children. Based on writer/director Tony Ayres' own life, The Home Song Stories is an epic tale of mothers and sons, mothers and daughters, unrequited love, secrets and betrayal.'
Source: Australian Film Commission. (Sighted: 8/10/2014)
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form y Mad Max ( dir. George Miller ) Australia : Kennedy Miller Entertainment , 1979 Z1040124 1979 single work film/TV science fiction (taught in 5 units)
In a post-apocalyptic Australia, law and order has begun to break down due to energy shortages, despite the efforts of Main Force Patrol (MFP) officers like Max Rockatansky. After Rockatansky encounters Toecutter's motorcycle gang, who are running runshod over isolated communities, he grows disillusioned with his role in the MFP. At first convinced by his superior officer not to resign, he is driven into a state of cold-blooded revenge when Toecutter's gang murder his wife and young son.
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form y Ten Canoes ( dir. Rolf De Heer ) Australia : Fandango Australia Vertigo Productions , 2006 Z1262398 2006 single work film/TV (taught in 11 units)
A story within a story and overlaid with narration, Ten Canoes takes place in two periods in the past. The first story, filmed in black-and-white as a reference to the 1930s ethnographic photography of Donald Thompson, concerns a young man called Dayindi who takes part in his first hunt for goose eggs. During the course of several trips to hunt, gather and build a bark canoe, his older brother Minygululu tells him a story about their ancestors and the old laws. The story is also about a young man who had no wife but who coveted one of his brother's wives, and also of the stranger who disrupted the harmony of their lives. It is cautionary tale because Minygululu is aware that Dayinidi desires his young and pretty third wife.
The second story (shot in colour) is set much further back in time. Yeeralparil is a young man who desires the third wife of his older brother Ridjimiraril. When Ridjimiraril's second wife disappears, he suspects a man from another tribe has been seen near the camp. After he spears the stranger he discovers that he was wrong. Knowing that he must face the man's relatives he chooses Yeeralparil to accompany him during the ritual payback. When Ridjimiraril dies from his wounds the tribe's traditions decree that Yeeralparil must inherit his brother's wives. The burden of these responsibilities, however, is more than the young man expects.
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Australian Theatre (ACT310)
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y Love, Ghosts and Nose Hair St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1996 Z536725 1996 single work novel young adult humour (taught in 2 units) Jack is sixteen, obsessed with the beautiful Annabel, the ghost of his mother and nose hair. - back cover
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y Playing Beatie Bow Melbourne : Nelson , 1980 Z47803 1980 single work novel young adult fantasy (taught in 5 units) When Abigail joins in the game of Beatie Bow she is transported back in time to a Sydney of the late 19th century where she meets the Bow family, whose fate she can predict, but which she is powerless to change.
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y Seven Little Australians London Melbourne : Ward, Lock and Bowden , 1894 Z863667 1894 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 25 units)
'Without doubt Judy was the worst of the seven, probably because she was the cleverest.'
'Her father, Captain Woolcot, found his vivacious, cheeky daughter impossible – but seven children were really too much for him and most of the time they ran wild at their rambling riverside home, Misrule.
'Step inside and meet them all – dreamy Meg, and Pip, daring Judy, naughty Bunty, Nell, Baby and the youngest, 'the General'. Come and share in their lives, their laughter and their tears.' (From the publisher's website.)
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Contemporary Australian Writing (LIT302)
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y The Best Australian Essays 2007 Drusilla Modjeska (editor), Melbourne : Black Inc. , 2007 Z1434576 2007 anthology essay (taught in 4 units)
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y Carpentaria Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2006 Z1184902 2006 single work novel (taught in 47 units) Carpentaria's portrait of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance centres on the powerful Phantom family, whose members are the leaders of the Pricklebush people, and their battles with old Joseph Midnight's tearaway Eastend mob on the one hand, and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine on the other. Wright's storytelling is operatic and surreal: a blend of myth and scripture, politics and farce. The novel is populated by extraordinary characters - Elias Smith the outcast saviour, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, leader of the holy Aboriginal pilgrimage, the murderous mayor Stan Bruiser, the ever-vigilant Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist and prodigal son Will Phantom, and above all, Angel Day the queen of the rubbish-dump, and her sea-faring husband Normal Phantom, the fish-embalming king of time - figures that stand like giants in this storm-swept world. (Backcover)
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y Dead Europe Milsons Point : Vintage Australia , 2005 Z1186455 2005 single work novel (taught in 14 units) 'The novel comprises two separate narratives. The first, told in the style of a fairytale, is set in a traditional Greek peasant village during and after World War II. Its world is still magical. ... The second narrative is set in the present time. The narrator is a 36-year-old gay, Greek-Australian photographic artist named Isaac. We meet Isaac at a time when he has travelled to Greece for what turns out to be a rather dismal officially funded exhibition of his works.'
Source: Manne, Robert. 'Dead Disturbing'. The Monthly. (June, 2005) -
y El Dorado Sydney : Pan Macmillan Australia , 2007 Z1362160 2007 single work novel crime detective thriller (taught in 10 units)
'There is a serial killer stalking the streets of Melbourne. The victims are killed gently, lovingly, a gold mark traced on their forehead. This killer doesn't hate children. This killer believes in childhood innocence at any cost...El Dorado is the story of a friendship under siege, and the very long shadows that jealousy and betrayal can cast.' - back cover
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y Love and Vertigo St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 2000 Z514595 2000 single work novel (taught in 4 units)
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y Moral Hazard Moral Hazard : A Novel New York (City) : Fourth Estate , 2002 Z931717 2002 single work novel (taught in 1 units) 'A liberal young woman finds herself working for arrogant, greedy men on Wall Street while her beloved husband begins to suffer from the early onset of Alzheimer's Disease.' (Publication release)
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y New Music : An Anthology of Contemporary Australian Poetry John Leonard (editor), Wollongong : Five Islands Press , 2001 Z823311 2001 anthology poetry (taught in 4 units)
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y Sixty Lights London : Harvill Press , 2004 Z1136231 2004 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 15 units)
'Sixty Lights is the captivating chronicle of Lucy Strange, an independent girl growing up in the Victorian world. From her childhood in Australia through to her adolescence in England and Bombay and finally to London, Lucy is fascinated by light and by the new photographic technology. Her perception of the world is passionate and moving, revealed in a series of frozen images captured in the camera of her mind's eye showing her feelings about love, life and loss. In this confident, finely woven and intricate novel Jones has created an unforgettable character in Lucy; visionary, gifted and exuberant, she touches the lives of all who know her.' (Publication summary)
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y True History of the Kelly Gang St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2000 Z668312 2000 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 29 units)
'"I lost my own father at 12 yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in Hell if I speak false."
'In TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG, the legendary Ned Kelly speaks for himself, scribbling his narrative on errant scraps of paper in semi-literate but magically descriptive prose as he flees from the police. To his pursuers, Kelly is nothing but a monstrous criminal, a thief and a murderer. To his own people, the lowly class of ordinary Australians, the bushranger is a hero, defying the authority of the English to direct their lives. Indentured by his bootlegger mother to a famous horse thief (who was also her lover), Ned saw his first prison cell at 15 and by the age of 26 had become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and defying the law until he was finally captured and hanged. Here is a classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist.' (From the publisher's website.)
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y 4F for Freaks Four F for Freaks Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2006 Z1230016 2006 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 3 units)
'It's Miss Corker's first day at her new school (in fact, it's her first day at anyschool) and she is looking forward to meeting her class. Leigh Hobbs turns his sharply observant eyes to the oddballs and misfits in Grade 4 in this absolutely hilarious illustrated story for 7-11 year olds.' (Publication summary)
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y Deadly, Unna? Ringwood : Penguin , 1998 Z517608 1998 single work novel young adult (taught in 20 units)
'"Deadly, unna?" He was always saying that. All the Nungas did, but Dumby more than any of them. Dumby Red and Blacky don't have a lot in common. Dumby's the star of the footy team, he's got a killer smile and the knack with girls, and he's a Nunga. Blacky's a gutless wonder, needs braces, never knows what to say, and he's white. But they're friends... and it could be deadly, unna? This gutsy novel, set in a small coastal town in South Australia is a rites-of-passage story about two boys confronting the depth of racism that exists all around them.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
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y Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1996 Z126936 1996 single work biography (taught in 26 units)
'The film Rabbit-Proof Fence is based on this true account of Doris Nugi Garimara Pilkington's mother Molly, who as a young girl led her two sisters on an extraordinary 1,600 kilometre walk home. Under Western Australia's invidious removal policy of the 1930s, the girls were taken from their Aboriginal family at Jigalong on the edge of the Little Sandy Desert, and transported halfway across the state to the Native Settlement at Moore River, north of Perth...
The three girls - aged 8, 11 and 14 - managed to escape from the settlement's repressive conditions and brutal treatment. Barefoot without provisions or maps, they set out to find the rabbit-proof fence, knowing it passed near their home in the north. Tracked by native police and search planes, they hid in terror, surviving on bush tucker, desperate to return to the world they knew.
The journey to freedom - longer than many of the legendary walks of [the Australian nation's] explorer heroes... told from family recollections, letters between the authorities and the Aboriginal Protector, and ... newspaper reports of the runaway children.' Source: Publisher's blurb
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y Hating Alison Ashley Ringwood : Puffin , 1984 Z262253 1984 single work novel young adult (taught in 3 units) Classmates Erica Yurgen and Alison Ashley vie with each other to become the undisputed star of their class.
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Little Lunch 2001- series - author children's fiction children's humour (taught in 3 units)
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y Poems by Young Australians : Vol 3 : The Best Entries from the 2005 Taronga Foundation Poetry Prize Milsons Point : Random House Australia , 2005 Z1224070 2005 anthology poetry (taught in 3 units)
The winning and commended poets from the 2005 Taronga Foundation Poetry Prize (TFPP) showcase their amazing talents in this third volume of Poems by Young Australians. The TFPP seeks to inspire a love of nature and poetry. When the two come together the results are spectacular, as this volume clearly demonstrates. (Back cover)
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y Saving Francesca Camberwell : Viking , 2003 Z1019212 2003 single work novel young adult (taught in 6 units) 'Sixteen-year-old Francesca could use her outspoken mother's help with the problems of being one of a handful of girls at a parochial school that has just turned co-ed, but her mother has suddenly become severely depressed' (Source: NLA).
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Creative Writing (LIT221)
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y Creating Poetry Melbourne : Edward Arnold , 1987 Z1341450 1987 single work criticism (taught in 5 units) A handbook for creative writing and poetry.
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y The Writing Book : A Workbook for Fiction Writers Sydney : Allen and Unwin , 1990 Z410184 1990 single work non-fiction (taught in 13 units)
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Drugs and Alcohol in Literature (LIT219)
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y Candy St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 1997 Z253307 1997 single work novel (taught in 4 units) He met Candy during a lush Sydney summer. Gorgeous, sexy, free-spirited Candy. They fell in love fast, lots of laughter and lust, the days melting warmly into each other. He never planned to give her a habit. But she wanted a taste. And wasn't love, after all, about sharing lives? But when the money ran out, the craving remained, and the days ceased their luxurious stretch. But there was still love. Only now, it was a threesome. Heroin had its own demands, its own timetable, and thoughts of nabbing the next fix hurled them into each day. Then, when desperation set in, Candy would stop at nothing to secure a blast, as she and her love became hostage to the nightmarish world of addiction. (Source: Trove)
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y Monkey Grip Melbourne : McPhee Gribble , 1977 Z115661 1977 single work novel (taught in 12 units)
Set in inner suburban 1970s Melbourne, Monkey Grip describes the fluid relationships of a community of friends who are living and loving in new ways. Single parent Nora falls in love with Javo, a heroin addict, and together they try to make sense of their lives and the choices they have made.
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y Brilliant Lies Paddington : Currency Press , 1993 Z261594 1993 single work drama satire (taught in 2 units)
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y Parramatta Girls Strawberry Hills : Currency Press , 2007 Z1192242 2007 single work drama (taught in 3 units)
'The Parramatta Girls Training School operated from 1889 to its close in the late 1970s as a state home for 'uncontrollable' girls. Under the guise of 'reforming' them, these teenagers were subjected to mental, emotional and physical brutality. It was a start in life that was metered out to vulnerable, uniformly poor and frequently indigenous women. 'Parramatta Girls' is based on verbatim accounts of the women who were incarcerated at the Parramatta Girls Training School.'
Source: Belvoir Street Theatre website, http://www.belvoir.com.au/
Sighted: 09/05/2005
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Literature and Film (COM327)
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y That Eye, the Sky Melbourne : McPhee Gribble , 1986 Z426161 1986 single work novel young adult (taught in 8 units) Ort knows the sky is watching. He knows what it means to watch; he spends long hours listening at doors and peering through cracks. Things are terribly wrong. His father is withering away, his sister is consumed by hatred, his grandmother is all inside herself, and his mother, a flower-child of the 1960s, is brave but helpless. Then a strange man appears at their door. That Eye, the Sky is about love, about a boy's vision of the world beyond, about the blurry distinctions between the natural and the supernatural. All this, and more, begins at the moment the ute driven by Ort Flack's father ploughs into a roadside tree, throwing the whole world out of kilter. (Source: Bookseller's website)
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Writing for Publication (WRT210)
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y Creating Poetry Melbourne : Edward Arnold , 1987 Z1341450 1987 single work criticism (taught in 5 units) A handbook for creative writing and poetry.
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y The Writing Book : A Workbook for Fiction Writers Sydney : Allen and Unwin , 1990 Z410184 1990 single work non-fiction (taught in 13 units)
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Theatre in Australia (ACT318)
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y Concise Companion to Theatre in Australia : Theatre, Film, Radio, Television Philip Parsons (editor), Victoria Chance (editor), Sydney : Currency Press , 1997 Z214691 1997 reference criticism biography (taught in 2 units)
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