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From life in small New South Wales country towns to the glitter of Sydney, this memoir explores life in a changing Australia, from age 7 to 17. Especially written and recorded for ABC radio, this book evokes an innocent Australia through a quietly comic delivery, where we witness again holidays in quiet seaside villages, the days when newspapers were king, Decimal Currency Day was a big thing and Beatles haircuts were all the rage. When teenagers were inspired by pop music to a fresh idealism, protest and groovy gear. When man walked on the moon. A journey through the drama and excitement of an Australia now known only by memory. This is the first publication of Growing Up in the 60s as broadcast on ABC's Nightlife several times, and on many ABC regional stations including Broken Hill, Wagga Wagga, Camberra, Upper Hunter, Tamworth and Darwin. If you remember UV lights, if you loved Easy Rider, if you still know the words to Norwegian Wood and once had a poster of Che Guevara on your bedroom wall - in other words, if you grew up in Australia in the 1960s - you will get a lot of fun with Tom Thompson's book. It is funny and astute and wonderfully nostalgic.- Jane Cadzow, The Australian

Out of print for nearly 70 years, more classic tales from Ion Idriess, who explored Australia, chasing down the stories of a changing continent: "The stories in this volume record happenings or incidents in men''s lives which interested me during years of wandering among the bushmen and natives of Cape York Peninsula; the pearlers, trochus and beche-de-mer getters of the Coral Sea; the native islanders of Torres Strait; the "beachcombers" of the Great Barrier Reef; and along the eastern coast and in the Arafura Sea towards the west."With authenticity that sometimes surprises the reader, Idriess introduces us to Aboriginals from Northern Australia, Papuan head-hunters, and Islanders around the Great Barrier Reef, all still in the colonial phase of European contact. Chinese gold diggers appear too, well before the rise of China. Idriess knew these individuals; he met them, lived with them, before the contemporary world had a chance to make so much difference. The first peoples in the stories are in their tribal state, infused with age-old traditions and behavioral norms, proud but fearful of the white colonialists. It wasn''t so long ago - barely three generations. That closeness in time can be said to offer a benefit to the reader; to some extent it helps us understand better their descendants who are alive today and within our society''s reach.- Tony Grey, from his Introduction.

In this book, Ion Idriess reflects on his life prospecting in far North Queensland from 1912 to 1914, and coincided with his earliest writing as "Gouger" for the Bulletin.In Back of Cairns, Jack gives the reader a picture of what life was like when the peninsula jungle was falling under the settler''s axe, his own day-to-day experiences, and the district''s historical background. The book is peopled by characters given to polite chiacking and the writing of poetry, and the reading of ''pomes'' by the evening campfire... Perhaps the most interesting is the ''Jungle Man'' who could scent animals and Aborigines in the scrub before they scented him. He also possessed incredible hearing... who took Jack into the rugged mountains and the dense jungle and showed him a primitive world few men have ever seen. Jack was treading in the paths of his heroes - the explorers.Beverley Eley, from her biography Ion Idriess.

In 1936, the celebrated American author Zane Grey arrived in the sleepy New South Wales town of Bermagui, with the express reason of angling for the world's largest fish - Marlin, sharks and Swordfish. Here is his little classic of the chase.Four miles out I sighted a long sickle fin cutting through a swell. Did I yell, Marlin!? I certainly did. An instant later Peter sighted another farther out, and this tail fin belonged to a large fish. I could not tell whether or not it indicated a black marlin. It stood up three feet or more, and that much would make a tail spread of over six feet. These marlin were riding the swells and they were moving fast. The tails would come up out of the top of a swell and cut the water at more than a ten-knot speed. Then they would vanish. It is always necessary to run the boat in the right direction to head the fish off. The Avalon is fast - she can do eighteen knots when opened up - but we could not catch up with the big fellow.

''I felt certain there must be gold in those hills, Jack'', wrote a prospector to Ion Idriess, ''but I know very little about the game.'' And so Jack Idriess wrote Prospecting for Gold in 1931. This is the 20th edition and known throughout Australia as the classic self-help manual for would-be prospectors. ''This book is written to help the new hand who ventures into the bush seeking gold... The "towny" prospector, with this book as a guide, will soon master methods of prospecting and the working of his find.'' In an easy conversational tone, the author of Lasseter''s Last Ride and Flynn of the Inland sets many a hopeful prospector on the road to discovering gold.