Australian & Oceanian Literature

Sometimes, it pays to just let the call go through to voicemail. Rob answers an unknown caller on his mobile - a very angry young man called Adam. Adam reveals what Rob got up to last night.That's why Adam is so very angry. And everyone knows what happens when Adam gets angry.Except for Rob. And Adam has Rob's mobile number. Rob is about to learn just how much can be discovered from a simple phone number. Someone Called Rob is a play in one act for four performers.

Set in South Australia, 1884; this is the story of three Afghan cameleers as they go about delivering supplies along the Birdsville Track. Follow Nak, Shir and Abdul on an adventure across outback Australia, where their pasts catch up to them in many ways. Individual feelings are tested to the limit, insecurities are measured by fear, and desire is outweighed by need. Angry and forgiving, tired and alive, eager and pessimistic. They fight against the conditions, against the hate, and against their pasts.It is a work of fiction, based on the people of the times, where prejudice is very much alive, many Afghans being treated poorly, not just for the colour of their skin, or their religious belief, but because of the expertise that the Afghan cameleers offer the Australian outback, taking work from many Australians. This story offers an in-depth look at the life of cameleers and the issues surrounding camel strings, shedding a great amount of light on the subject of camels in the outback, opening the eyes of the reader as to the great work that camel strings performed during this time of expansion.Camels were able to out-work bullock teams and horses due to their abilities to adjust to a harsh land, and the cameleers were of no exception.

Daisy May Bates, CBE (born Margaret Dwyer; 16 October 1859 - 18 April 1951) was an Irish-Australian journalist, welfare worker and lifelong student of Australian Aboriginal culture and society. She was known among the native people as "Kabbarli" (a kin term found in a number of Australian languages which means "grandmother" or "granddaughter").Daisy Bates conducted fieldwork amongst several Indigenous nations in western and southern Australia. She supported herself largely by writing articles for urban newspapers on such topics as 'native cannibalism' and the 'doomed' fate of Indigenous peoples. Bates also published her work on Indigenous kinship systems, marriage laws, language and religion in books and articles. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for Aboriginal welfare work in 1934. (wikipedia.org)

Set in South Australia, 1884; this is the story of three Afghan cameleers as they go about delivering supplies along the Birdsville Track. Follow Nak, Shir and Abdul on an adventure across outback Australia, where their pasts catch up to them in many ways. Individual feelings are tested to the limit, insecurities are measured by fear, and desire is outweighed by need. Angry and forgiving, tired and alive, eager and pessimistic. They fight against the conditions, against the hate, and against their pasts.It is a work of fiction, based on the people of the times, where prejudice is very much alive, many Afghans being treated poorly, not just for the colour of their skin, or their religious belief, but because of the expertise that the Afghan cameleers offer the Australian outback, taking work from many Australians.This story offers an in-depth look at the life of cameleers and the issues surrounding camel strings, shedding a great amount of light on the subject of camels in the outback, opening the eyes of the reader as to the great work that camel strings performed during this time of expansion.Camels were able to out-work bullock teams and horses due to their abilities to adjust to a harsh land, and the cameleers were of no exception.

This is the story of a man on walkabout, trekking the centre of Australia some 60,000 yearsago. The adventures open the door to myths and legends of Aboriginal society as never readbefore. The myths, legends and wonders of Aboriginal society are many and vast, passed onby word of mouth for tens of thousands of years.If we assume that the 'religion' of these people dates back so far then we have to assume thatcreatures such as the diprotodon, megalania, and thylacoleo, just to name a few, are foreverpresent in their myths and legend. But there are indicators to show that the religion does notdate back so far, or in the least, that religion was an on-going form of practice, for the dingo[which only dates back some 5,000 years] seems to be rather active in ritual and commonplace amongst some myths and legends.Whether these stories have changed over the years [as word mouth is hard to secure as asource of historical worth] or not, I have taken the liberty, whether justly or otherwise, to putit into story form, so that there appears to be a more rudiment meaning to the entiredevelopment of Aboriginal Dreamtime, which is an eternal way of life and carries with itmany sacred meanings.I can only hope that I have created no ill-will, for my intentions are to provide others with thejoy of understanding in a way which is more effortless then simply passing over one mythafter another in a big thick book.Kulinma! Ngulakujaku-kula!This book might contain names of people who have since departed this world

Paperback

Splintered Heart is the #1 bestselling and award-winning book one in Linda Dowling's Red Dust Novel Series.BETRAYED. ABANDONED. SPLINTERED It is the 1960s, and teenage Lisa O'Connor is growing up in a brutal family in the western suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Abused and forsaken by those she should have been able to trust the most, Lisa is sent away to the notorious Parramatta Girls Home for 'reform'. While captive there, she encounters the depths of human depravity and sinks even further into despair.Luckily for Lisa, she is rescued from this abhorrent life by her childless aunt, who takes her to live at a remote sheep station in outback New South Wales. Lisa finds herself in a world that is different to anything she has known before, and she falls in love with the homestead, Woori, the harsh outback landscape and the Aboriginal culture. With the help of her aunt and uncle, two female Aboriginal elders and Billy, a very special young Aboriginal man, Lisa's splintered heart and broken spirit begin to mend.Splintered Heart, book one in the Red Dust series, takes readers on an emotional journey into the depths of human darkness, and out again, into the light of the human spirit. Lisa's determination and desire to overcome her horrific beginnings tell a saga unlike any other. Both horrifying and inspiring, this is a story that can't be put down.

Over the past 50 years, Indigenous Australian theatre practice has emerged as a dynamic site for the discursive reflection of culture and tradition as well as colonial legacies, leveraging the power of storytelling to create and advocate contemporary fluid conceptions of Indigeneity.

Covering a period of nearly 40 years' work by the author this collection of essays brings the perspective of a Drama academic and practitioner of early English plays to the understanding of how medieval plays and Robin Hood games of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were performed.

Bourke, a small country town in outback Australia.Where skies are bluer than blue, flies and mozzies abound and wide open spaces and fresh country air regenerate the spirit. It was this small town her heart led her back to after fifteen long years away. The place where Ruby's heart had always belonged.Securing a position with the Flying Doctor Service and working for a local doctor was like a dream come true - she was ready to give back to the people who had done so much to help her.Phil was a man who had grown up with Ruby and he'd had his eye on her for years.He'd intended to marry her as soon as he had qualified as a cop and she had qualified as a nurse.So, what caused everything to go so horribly wrong?

This ghost memoir tells the life of Catharine Maber, from her harsh beginnings as a child in Ireland, to her eventual marriage and transportation to a penal colony in Australia. A skilled embroiderer, which often helped her to survive, Catharine tells her story through the making of a patchwork quilt.Catharine's story is told from family research and written from Catharine's point of view, outlining how she survived in a harsh environment, with a husband who constantly absconded with her hard earned savings, and her desperation to survive led to her arrest and conviction and eventual transportation to Australia where she started life anew.

When heatstroke brings geologist Willy to the brink in the Australian outback and triggers epileptic seizures, he makes the impetuous decision to go to temperate Sweden to recover. Sweden is undergoing a great social experiment, which includes taking in political refugees from a score of conflicts and dictatorships. Willy pinballs through alien landscapes in lyrical cascades, looking for a new self in dorm and woods on a pink girls’ bike, humbled by clumsiness in a new language, a bit dazed at the press of Cold War Europe, amused at a trickle of spies and schemers, roused to affection for his language classmates.When he meets fiercely fay Svea she is as a dream he could not have dared. Her scorn undoes him, but she is also intrigued at his wry haplessness. "But hear the world singing. It makes me want to say, holy, and to use words like, OK, chryselephantine in a sentence. I am in the company of Paddy bloody Hannan, gold’s here men!""No, but what is happening, merde! What has truly happened!"

A hillside with an ocean view seems an ideal spot to spend a lonely Christmas Eve. When Jessica, a journalism major, and Beth, a high-profile politician, discover they both have the same idea, they exchange the sort of explosive little gifts that are usually left wrapped. Although barely acquainted, over the course of the day they discover that through their mutual relationship with Jeff, a Government Minister, their lives are intimately connected. This discovery and the substance of their connection leaves their shared past looking like a nightmare. When the shocks of the afternoon turn to violence in the evening, both Jessica and Beth have to decide how to go on in a world where politics and personalities have never been more intimate.

Big Oil is trying to muscle in and drill in the Great Australian Bight. Pristine ocean and coastline is at risk if there's a spill, and Australis Island off the south coast of Australia in the Southern Ocean would be right in its path. There's a dedicated group of people on the island fighting for inhabitants of land and sea - and they're not taking 'no' for an answer.

Lizzie Malley entertains her powerful and kinky clients (the Mayor of Melbourne, an Aussie rules hero, a famous Queens Counsel) in her Winnebago parked on the old Williamstown Ferry. Her father Sandy is the union boss on the wharf, and her Mom, Babs, rules the roost from her kitchen. When shaven and disfigured bodies pop up in the Yarra beside the ferry, tightly bound Paul Striker of CID, is confronted with the web of illegalities that pervades Williamstown, the Malley family with its ties to chairman of the Australian communist party, Lennie Stalinsky, and their protector the strange Father Zappia. Pandemonium breaks out when Lizzie announces that she and her uncle Bobby the ferry driver, whose toe was cut off when he was a little boy, plan to elope, and the body of Stalinsky’s wife Monie is fished out of the Yarra. Then there is Babs, under the spell of the strange Father Zappia, who tries to solve her own mystery of St. Robert’s toe. Things come to a head when Babs throws Lizzie and Bobby a send-off party, and engages a Burl Ives impersonator for entertainment. In good Aussie style all hell breaks loose and both mysteries are solved, sort of.