Meredith Burgmann

Nadia Wheatley

Remembering the Sixties

Radicals

We use the bush as our school and as our playground, says one of the many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people whose voices combine in this anthology of true stories about childhood, compiled from a wide range of memoirs and oral histories.

Playground

Donna Rawlins

Depicts life in Australia at different times in its development by viewing one place in different years while moving backwards from 1988 to 1788.

My Place

Reissue of a novel for young readers. Lucy's mother died when she was very young and she and her dad have managed quite well until this leap year when their world changes dramatically. Things happen to make Lucy grow up in leaps and bounds. She learns a lot about friendships and family, memories and life. Honour book in the 1994 Children's Book Council Awards and shortlisted for both the NSW State Literary Awards and the Multicultural Children's Literature Awards in 1994. The author has written several other acclaimed children's books including 'Five Times Dizzy', 'Dancing in Anzac Deli' and 'The Blooding'.

Lucy in the Leap Year

Winner of the New South Wales Premier's Children's Book Award, 1985. It's 1981 and Evie is sixteen. She has left school but can't find work, and her family has just moved into the run-down inner Sydney suburb of Newtown. Noel lives in the adjoining terrace house. He's fifteen, not taking school seriously and fed up with looking after his ancient bed-ridden grandmother. As a friendship grows between Evie and Noel, the past is set back in motion, and the events of the 1930s Depression era begin to play out in the high-unemployment times of the early 1980s, and the house again is the centre of the Sydney anti-eviction campaign of 1931. Based on historical fact, meticulously researched, The House that Was Eureka is a critically acclaimed novel about a history we all share. Nadia Wheatley is a long-standing fixture of Australian literature having written fiction and non-fiction for both children and adults. Seven of her books have been Children's Book Council of Australia Honour Books including Five Times Dizzy, The House that Was Eureka and My Place. She has won the New South Wales Premier's Children's Book Prize twice, for The House that Was Eureka and Five Times Dizzy and is known and respected for her contributions to Indigenous communities and the preservation of environment. Nadia is currently the Artist in Residence at The University of Sydney. textclassics.com.au 'A fine piece of work, well researched and beautifully plotted around the Depression when people were tipped out of their houses by landlords and unemployed men took to the roads with swags.' Sydney Morning Herald 'An absorbing and wholly convincing recreation of the Depression of the 1930s, with the traumatic experiences of the Cruise family, destitute and threatened with eviction, running parallel to the problems of today.' Australian Book Review 'Wheatley's book has urgency and a fierce strength...The characters from both eras are "alive and flying", freedom fighters who are aware that they are making history.' Maurice Saxby

Text Classics

The House that Was Eureka

Ken Searle

Presents a history of Australia, from the Ice Age to the Apology, with brief accounts of the lives of real young Australians arranged chronologically.

A History of Growing Up from the Ice Age to the Apology

Australians All

"Why didn't you and Daddy want people to give you any wedding presents?" I used to ask. But my mother could never be drawn into talking about the wedding. Later, I assumed it was because she did not wish to be reminded of the ghastly mistake she had made in marrying my father. Born in Australia in 1949, author Nadia Wheatley grew up with a sense of the mystery of her parents’ marriage. Caught in the crossfire between an independent woman and a controlling man, the child became a player in the deadly game. Was she her mother’s daughter, or her father’s creature? After her mother’s death, the ten-year-old began writing down the stories her mother had told her—of a Cinderella-like childhood, followed by an escape into a career as an army nurse in Palestine and Greece, and as an aid-worker in the refugee camps of post-war Germany. Some fifty years later, the finished memoir is not only a loving tribute but an investigation of the bewildering processes of memory itself. Nadia Wheatley is an Australian writer whose publications range from biography and history to fiction and picture books. Her biography The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift was the Age Book of the Year, Non-fiction, and is the only biography to have won the Australian History Prize, NSW Premier's History Awards. ‘One of the greatest Australian biographies...a work which never confuses itself with fiction but which has the same readability and flair and command of tempo. It’s a hell of a story.’ Peter Craven, Sydney Morning Herald on The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift. ‘Outstanding...a rare feat in Australian literary biography.’ Weekend Australian on The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift ‘An important addition to the history of Australian social life and a vivid insight into how individual people can be controlled by repressive social attitudes. Wheatley reminds us of the difference between how family life is supposed to be and how it is actually experienced.’ Inside Story ‘In a moving and beautifully written memoir, Wheatley brings to life her mother’s adventures...My bet is that this fascinating book will prove to be an award-winner. Highly recommended.’ Courier-Mail ‘[Her] Mother’s Daughter is one of the most devastating examples of gaslighting that I have ever read. It is not only a beautiful rendering of an “ordinary” life, it is also a significant social history of wartime Europe and post-war Australia.’ Australian ‘Her Mother's Daughter is a great read for two reasons. Firstly, it provides a thoughtful, authentic - sometimes exciting, sometimes disturbing - social history of the times. And secondly, with Wheatley's ability to write engaging narratives, it makes for engrossing, moving, provocative reading. I do recommend it.’ Whispering Gums

Nadia Wheatley

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