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Author: Ray Gilleland Publisher: Allen & Unwin ISBN: 1743318790 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 273
Book Description
He was a pioneer trucker in postwar Australia--a time when outback roads were little more than corrugated dirt goat tracks. This is a story of vast distances, ill-equipped machines, heat and dust, humor, and good mates. If you had worked with them, if you had driven with them, if you had had a drink with them, if you helped them when broken down, you would have been proud to be one of them and called them mates. Meet Ray Gilleland, pioneer trucker in postwar Australia, a time when trucks were viewed as an "upstart industry" that threatened existing railway systems. Ray was part of the new breed, determined not to be chained to the old ways. The Nullarbor Kid tells of the true adventures Ray and his mates had when the trucking industry was born, and the battle lines between government and truckers. Ray tells stories of trucks not suited for blistering Australian heat, long mountain climbs in low gear, and the vast distances that sapped the strength of driver and truck. Of tolls, inspectors, and regulations set to strangle the new industry, and drivers who fought back with every trick in the book, of incredible near misses that could have killed them, and through it all, the smell and noise and romance of long-haul driving. In this world, when the chips were down, indeed at all times, humor loomed large and real life adventure abounded.
Author: Ray Gilleland Publisher: Allen & Unwin ISBN: 1743318790 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 273
Book Description
He was a pioneer trucker in postwar Australia--a time when outback roads were little more than corrugated dirt goat tracks. This is a story of vast distances, ill-equipped machines, heat and dust, humor, and good mates. If you had worked with them, if you had driven with them, if you had had a drink with them, if you helped them when broken down, you would have been proud to be one of them and called them mates. Meet Ray Gilleland, pioneer trucker in postwar Australia, a time when trucks were viewed as an "upstart industry" that threatened existing railway systems. Ray was part of the new breed, determined not to be chained to the old ways. The Nullarbor Kid tells of the true adventures Ray and his mates had when the trucking industry was born, and the battle lines between government and truckers. Ray tells stories of trucks not suited for blistering Australian heat, long mountain climbs in low gear, and the vast distances that sapped the strength of driver and truck. Of tolls, inspectors, and regulations set to strangle the new industry, and drivers who fought back with every trick in the book, of incredible near misses that could have killed them, and through it all, the smell and noise and romance of long-haul driving. In this world, when the chips were down, indeed at all times, humor loomed large and real life adventure abounded.
Author: Jane Jolly Publisher: National Library of Australia ISBN: 0642278636 Category : Juvenile Fiction Languages : en Pages : 38
Book Description
The Tea and Sugar train only came once a week on a Thursday. But the special Christmas train only came once a year. Today was Sunday. Four more days without sugar. Four more days until the Christmas train. Please, please be on time. Please don’t be late. Join Kathleen in the outback as she eagerly awaits the Christmas Tea and Sugar train. Will she meet Father Christmas? Will she receive a Christmas gift from him? A delightful, heart-warming story from the National Library of Australia that will intrigue, captivate and introduce readers to a slice of the past. Wonderful sensitive illustrations, including a beautiful double fold-out image showing the shops inside all the carriages.
Author: Ray Gilleland Publisher: ISBN: 9780958019736 Category : Australia Languages : en Pages : 224
Book Description
He was a pioneer trucker in postwar Australia - a time when outback roads were little more than corrugated dirt goat tracks. This is a story of vast distances, ill-equipped machines, heat and dust, humour and mateship.
Author: R Gosman Publisher: Xlibris Corporation ISBN: 1669885313 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 82
Book Description
I lived in the middle of the Nullarbor with my family and 3 other families from 1981 – 1984. We were employed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and manned the Weather Station 24/7. The Weather Station closed in 1995. The Nullarbor is a huge flat arid area with no trees which straddles the States of South Australia and Western Australia. The name Nullarbor derives from the Latin Nullus - Arbor ( no trees ). It is larger than the UK. In the 2016 census it had a population of 50. Also on the 2016 census, Forrest, where we lived, had a population of zero. In the book I have described the history, geography, how it was formed, fauna and flora of the area, and some of the experiences we had during our three years there. We had an airstrip there. Apart from my job at the Weather Station I had the contract for refuelling both civilian and military aircraft. Most of the military aircraft are now obsolete and have either been scrapped or are in museums. We lived there at a place and time which will never be the same again.
Author: Peter Yeldham Publisher: Penguin UK ISBN: 0857965484 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 400
Book Description
'A heart-warming evocation of childhood during the Great Depression . . . I loved every page.' BRYCE COURTENAY The small town of Gundagai in the 1930s is no place for the attractive and flamboyant Belle Carson and her young son, Teddy – particularly when she longs for him to achieve the success that eluded her on the stage and screen. Determined to pursue this dream, she abandons her husband and their Murrumbidgee River home for a more vibrant city life. But Belle's obsession leads her and Teddy – whom the press christens 'the Murrumbidgee Kid' – into a world where nothing is safe or familiar. And from her carefully hidden past a threat soon emerges to make their precarious lives even more vulnerable . . . From rural Gundagai to the bright lights and shady underbelly of 1930s Sydney, this is a beautifully written and adsorbing story about an unconventional family's coming-of-age.
Author: Jim Haynes Publisher: Allen & Unwin ISBN: 1742693741 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 290
Book Description
A collection of true stories taken from the lives of trucking men and women from Tarcutta to Alice Springs and all over Australia. The trucker's job-so vital to our nation's everyday life-makes for a diverse treasure trove of stories. This first-ever collection of stories about Aussie truckers captures the humour, tragedy and fascinating history of their world, proving once again that truth is often stranger, funnier and more inspiring than fiction. The unlikely yarns and tales, collected by Jim Haynes, quickly transport the reader into the intriguing but often hard and lonely world of the long-distance truck driver. There are stories of endurance while crossing the Nullarbor in the early 1950s, of rescuing mates stranded in the desert and dumping wheat in protest at Parliament House, of repossessing vehicles in suburban Adelaide, and of men imprisoned during the long political battle to make the roads of Australia free to carry freight. Steeped in larrikinism, these are salt-of-the-earth Aussie voices from the most genuine characters to ever spin a yarn. Whether you're interested in one of the most significant social revolutions to have shaped our nation, or in these never-say-die modern pioneers who astound with their resourcefulness, or whether you're just after a laugh and a bloody good story, this book is for you.
Author: Rex Ellis Publisher: Boolarong Press ISBN: 1921920653 Category : Travel Languages : en Pages : 181
Book Description
You have probably seen Rex Ellis on TV. He is constantly turning up on the box with his team of camels and his adventurous urban guests hanging on for dear life somewhere in the sandy wastes of the Red Heart, maybe near Birdsville. Or traversing Lake Eyre full of water and pelicans in his beloved tinny. Rex lives a nomadic, desert life out there that you and I can only dream about. For a desert wanderer he is pretty talkative and has a mad sense of humour, but when he does do his block with a recalcitrant safari guest or a stubborn camel, he gets volcanic. Ellis has the knack of extracting the ridiculous or the absurd essence wherever he travels. He is an observer of the human condition, and focuses by inclination on the farcical. Perhaps his lifetime of observing outback wildlife gives him an excellent basis for a comparative study of crazy human behaviour. He has always taken paying guests on his outback adventures, and his colourful and varied descriptions of their shenanigans will bring great satisfaction to the superior armchair adventurer. And of course every evening there is the campfire. Ellis sees the campfire as the quintessence of the freedom of the outback, the relaxation after a hard day’s yakka, the yarn spinning, the chai-yacking and the camaraderie that develops so easily while you all stare at the mysterious, inspiring flames rather than at a mind-deadening TV set. This is the very essence of outback travelling, and Ellis’s highly emotional introduction leaves no doubt about the way he feels about these magic evenings. So, folks, it’s still not too late! If you can’t get out there straightaway, then read the book. Ten Thousand Campfires leaves no doubt that there is still plenty of the real, old-fashioned Australia in the Red Heart and it is pretty easy to distinguish it from what the author refers to as the ‘sanitized’ metropolitan Australia.
Author: Lily Bragge Publisher: Penguin Group Australia ISBN: 1742530761 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 259
Book Description
Comedian and writer Lily Bragge knows what it is to be a user and a taker, a liar, cheat and thief. It wasn't until she had lost everything - custody of her son, her friends, her career, her possessions and , almost, her sanity - that she was able to gain some kind of understanding of herself and rebuild her life from a blank, empty slate. In My Dirty Shiny Life, she traces with verve and humour her experience growing up with the chaos, fear and violence of a career-criminal father, and her survival of sexual abuse, heroin addiction, clinical depression and incarceration - and her ultimate redemption. Both harrowing and hilarious, My Dirty Shiny Life is a story of blood ties that bind and inordinate familial love.
Author: Peter Ruehl Publisher: Melbourne Univ. Publishing ISBN: 052286113X Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
Ruehl's irreverent wit and ability to puncture pretentiousness with a well-turned phrase gave thousands of dedicated readers a good reason to read the paper back to front on the days the column appeared. His descriptions of growing up with teenage children are laugh-out-loud funny (well, for parents), and a younger generation of readers decided he was cool, with his constant satirical references to their music, dress and approach to life. Politicians sometimes winced but knew his hilarious descriptions of what was really going on in Canberra resonated more loudly than any press release. Peter Ruehl never lost his distinctive American style but he was able to understand Australian culture and to write about it and his views in a passionately funny and deeply personal way. Greg Hywood, chief executive of Fairfax, says he became a 'national institution'.
Author: Roger KA Allen Publisher: Xlibris Corporation ISBN: 1453595317 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 258
Book Description
The water was as smooth as glass, and with a hint of diesel oil on the surface I could see all the colours of the rainbow ... we were not there just to catch fish but to dream. This is the story of my childhood in Ballina in the 1950s. Packed with adventure on the bustling Richmond River; filled with fascination for my father’s medical practice, despite its intrusion into our family life; and enriched by his enquiring, scholarly mind, these years offered a way of life that I loved, and that exists no longer. Book Review: Roger KA Allen has written a beautiful and fascinating memoir about his family and childhood growing up in Australia in the 1950s. The son of a “unique” country doctor and a nurse, Allen touchingly chronicles his life in Australia from the time that his mother was pregnant with him to his ninth birthday. He describes how his father’s “restlessness drove us into the wilderness like the Israelites in search of that promise of a land of milk and honey,” which his family found in Ballina, New South Wales, where his father bought a local doctor’s practice. The author’s observations and accounts are very telling of the place and time that he grew up, from the descriptions surrounding his father’s medical practice to the medical profession in general, and the practice of frontal lobotomy or the “horrors of shock therapy,” to the introduction of television which had most Australians more educated about American culture and politics than their own. Allen also brings to light the similarities between the way the Australians and Americans treated the real “first settlers” to both those countries, recounting the history of racism and atrocities against the Aboriginal people, and the imaginary games of “Explorers versus Aboriginals” and “Cowboys and Indians.” Throughout the book, Allen places the events of his childhood Australia in context with world events, effectively comparing and contrasting just how similar and different his own experiences and “struggles” were compared to those of people in other countries. Allen’s characters are human and real, filled with strengths and flaws, with all their prejudices, love, and hate, from his father who is so devoted to his profession to his mother’s relentless loyalty to her family, to the residents of the town and the people he meets on his travels. Allen’s story captures the wide range of boyhood emotions. We see joys of his childhood expressed in humorous accounts, like his father battling with crabs that are doing their best to avoid the “final trip on the tumbrels to the final hell of the execution pot.” He evokes a young boy’s wonder in the description of the aftermath of a flood which lends itself to a great exploration of the insects, shrimp, and frogs that have surfaced. The author evinces the humor of the “sex education” offered by the “literary delights” at the local barber and the heartbreak of childhood lessons when he describes a touring marionette company’s performance about a little Aboriginal boy who befriends a baby wombat. “But in the end the boy had to leave them all to return to the world of humans as if this mortal life always has to have a sad ending.” Ballina Boy is a childhood account brought to life in a rich tapestry of anecdotes, stories, culture, and history lessons—a highly recommended read. Maya Fleischmann
Author: Ray Gilleland
Author: Ray Gilleland
Author: Jane Jolly
Author: Ray Gilleland
Author: R Gosman
Author: Peter Yeldham
Author: Jim Haynes
Author: Rex Ellis
Author: Lily Bragge
Author: Peter Ruehl
Author: Roger KA Allen