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Australian Stories
Remind me why I'm here by Kate Colmer
When 18 year-old Maya leaves Chicago for a six week Australian home stay, she assumes she's heading to beautiful Barangaroo with its famous Sydney Harbour views, not Barangaroo Creek, a stinking hot, fly-ridden, wi-fi dead zone hours from a decent body of water. Host brother Gus wishes she had landed in someone else's sheep paddock. He has an important trip planned for the summer before he heads off to agricultural college like every generation of his family has. Maya's clichéd Aussie must-do bucket-list is revised by Gus into one one guaranteed to send Maya back across the Pacific. But Maya doesn't scare easily and sparks begin to fly!
Call Number: F COL
ISBN: 9781925563924
Publication Date: 2020
Australian Stories
Tirra Lirra by the river by Jessica Anderson
Nora Porteous, a witty, ambitious woman from Brisbane, returns to her childhood home at age seventy. Her life has taken her from a failed marriage in Sydney to freedom in London; she forged a modest career as a seamstress and lived with two dear friends through the happiest years of her adult life.
At home, the neighborhood children she remembers have grown into compassionate adults. They help to nurse her back from pneumonia, and slowly let her in on the dark secrets of the neighborhood in the years that have lapsed.
With grace and humor, Nora recounts her desire to escape, the way her marriage went wrong, the vanity that drove her to get a facelift, and one romantic sea voyage that has kept her afloat during her dark years. Her memory is imperfect, but the strength and resilience she shows over the years is nothing short of extraordinary. A book about the sweetness of escape, and the mix of pain and acceptance that comes with returning home.
Call Number: F AND
ISBN: 9780330359719
Publication Date: 1978
Australian Stories
Georgiana: woman of flowers by Libby Hathorn
A mixture of fact and fiction, this novel tells the story of a young pioneer woman, Georgiana Molloy, and her family as they settle in to the alien bushland of Augusta, Western Australia from England, on their promised land grant. Threaded through the pioneering adventures is the (imagined) story of young Will Summerfield and his sister Charlotte, the children of a hopeful yet weak mother who has married a violent stepfather, Thomas, a man keen to take up land grants in the New World at whatever cost to his wife and stepchildren. At 23 years of age Georgiana has married retired military man Captain Jack Molloy, undertaking the five-month journey on a small sailing ship, the Warrior, crammed with other settlers, their farming animals and faming tools and their hopes of making their fortunes in Australia. Fortune does not smile on young Georgiana at first, when she gives birth to her first baby girl, camping on the beach, nine days after landing. Will finds himself drawn to this gentle and friendly woman, who more than once has shown him kindness on the ship voyage out.
Call Number: F HAT
ISBN: 9780733609169
Publication Date: 2008
The Girl and the ghost-grey mare by
From Rachael Treasure, one of Australia's favourite rural storytellers, comes this charming collection of short stories
Remind me why I'm here by
When 18 year-old Maya leaves Chicago for a six week Australian home stay, she assumes she's heading to beautiful Barangaroo with its famous Sydney Harbour views, not Barangaroo Creek, a stinking hot, fly-ridden, wi-fi dead zone hours from a decent body of water. Host brother Gus wishes she had landed in someone else's sheep paddock. He has an important trip planned for the summer before he heads off to agricultural college like every generation of his family has. Maya's clichéd Aussie must-do bucket-list is revised by Gus into one one guaranteed to send Maya back across the Pacific. But Maya doesn't scare easily and sparks begin to fly!
Tirra Lirra by the river by
Nora Porteous, a witty, ambitious woman from Brisbane, returns to her childhood home at age seventy. Her life has taken her from a failed marriage in Sydney to freedom in London; she forged a modest career as a seamstress and lived with two dear friends through the happiest years of her adult life.
At home, the neighborhood children she remembers have grown into compassionate adults. They help to nurse her back from pneumonia, and slowly let her in on the dark secrets of the neighborhood in the years that have lapsed.
With grace and humor, Nora recounts her desire to escape, the way her marriage went wrong, the vanity that drove her to get a facelift, and one romantic sea voyage that has kept her afloat during her dark years. Her memory is imperfect, but the strength and resilience she shows over the years is nothing short of extraordinary. A book about the sweetness of escape, and the mix of pain and acceptance that comes with returning home.
Georgiana: woman of flowers by
A mixture of fact and fiction, this novel tells the story of a young pioneer woman, Georgiana Molloy, and her family as they settle in to the alien bushland of Augusta, Western Australia from England, on their promised land grant. Threaded through the pioneering adventures is the (imagined) story of young Will Summerfield and his sister Charlotte, the children of a hopeful yet weak mother who has married a violent stepfather, Thomas, a man keen to take up land grants in the New World at whatever cost to his wife and stepchildren. At 23 years of age Georgiana has married retired military man Captain Jack Molloy, undertaking the five-month journey on a small sailing ship, the Warrior, crammed with other settlers, their farming animals and faming tools and their hopes of making their fortunes in Australia. Fortune does not smile on young Georgiana at first, when she gives birth to her first baby girl, camping on the beach, nine days after landing. Will finds himself drawn to this gentle and friendly woman, who more than once has shown him kindness on the ship voyage out.