Paul Daley

A strong sense of 'otherness' defines Canberra to a point where there is a smugness, bordering on arrogance, that the rest of Australia can hate - but they'll never know just how good it is to live here. Canberra is a city of orphans. People come for the jobs but stay on as they discover unanticipated promise and opportunity. They become Canberrans - prosperous, highly educated and proud of their city. Paul Daley's Canberra fuses narrative history with poignant memoir and contemporary observation to evoke a city he calls the 'accidental miracle'. Beginning and ending at the lake and its submerged, forgotten suburbs, it chronicles the city's unsavoury early life and meanders through St John's graveyard where pioneers rest. Daley contemplates Canberra's vibrant suburban dynamic, while musing on a rich symbolism and internal life fostered by the bush and the treasure of the national cultural institutions. As fate would have it, after Canberra was first published to great acclaim in 2012 Daley moved to Sydney, a change he found wrenching. In a new afterword, he reflects on how much he misses Canberra as it transforms into a thriving city. '... Daley has unveiled a side of the city that many do not see.' -- The Adelaide Advertiser 'Canberra is both a history and a personal love story' -- The Age 'Daley's narration is done with flair and aplomb, making Canberra the best Canberra history yet.' -- Ian Warden, The Canberra Times

Canberra

On Patriotism

From award-winning journalist Paul Daley comes a gripping multi-generational saga about Australian frontier violence and cultural theft that will capture the national imagination.

Jesustown

Vikki Petraitis

The discovery of the body of Beth Barnard in her Phillip Island farmhouse in 1986, began a homicide investigation that rocked a peaceful community.It also created an enduring mystery, for no one was ever brought to trial for her brutal death, and the main suspect disappeared - never to be seen again.Beth Barnard, a popular and attractive 23-year-old, had been having an affair with a local married man.On the night of her brutal murder, a car belonging to Vivienne Cameron - wife of Beth's lover - was found abandoned near the bridge that connects the famous tourist island to the mainland.No trace of Vivienne was ever found, and her disappearance has never been adequately explained.Nevertheless, a Coroner's Court found that Vivienne had killed her rival then jumped to her death into the waters of Westernport Bay. The case was closed but not forgotten.Ever since their first edition of The Phillip Island Murder, in 1993, Vikki Petraitis and Paul Daley have been regularly contacted by people wanting to know more; people who, like the authors, let the case get under their skin.More than three decades later the mystery, rumours and arm-chair solutions continue.

The Phillip Island Murder

Concentrating on the links of Great Britain and Ireland, this book discusses St. Andrews, Ballybunion, Royal St. Georges, and others.

The Inside Story

Links Golf

"A hundred years ago in October 1917 members of the 4th Australian Light Horse Brigade participated in what is now regarded as the last great successful cavalry charge. Waving bayonets overhead in the dying light, they raced across six kilometres of exposed ground in Palestine, surprising the well-entrenched Turks. It was the decisive blow in the British capture of the strategic stronghold of Beersheba. The story of this remarkable military victory has largely slipped through the cracks of history, eclipsed in Australian sentiment by stories of dramatic defeat and loss at Gallipoli and on the Western Front. Paul Daley goes in search of the story of Beersheba. What he uncovers is a story of ordinary men capable of extraordinary acts, as he sheds new light on a dark episode starkly at odds with the Anzac mythology."

Travels Through a Forgotten Australian Victory

Beersheba Centenary Edition

The Battle of Beersheba, a redeeming win for the ANZACs who lost at Gallipoli, has slipped through the cracks of Australia's historical consciousness. Why are Australians so much more content to commemmorate a glorious defeat than we are to celebrate such a resounding, against the odds, victory?

Paul Daley

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