Cirrus@Austlit

Wake in Fright is the harrowing story of a young schoolteacher, John Grant, who leaves his isolated outback school to go on holidays to Sydney (and civilization). Things start to go horribly wrong, however, when stays overnight in a rough outback mining town called Bundanyabba. After a drink fuelled night, in which he loses all his momey, Grant finds himself both broke and stuck in the town with means of escape. He subsequently descends into a cycle of hangovers, fumbling sexual encounters, and increasing self-loathing as he becomes more and more immersed in the grotesque and surreal nightmare that is 'the Yabba.'

'Pig is an adventure-thriller about Alan Treval, a conservationist who sets out to trap a monstrous black pig whose lethal tusks have already massacred several dogs, and almost ripped a man to pieces.

'This feral fugitive assumes human proportions when it calculatingly evades capture and seems to be hell-bent on killing Treval, and his teenage son, Michael.

'Like an insane despot, this king piglords over the other wild pigs in the area and seems to mastermind the relentless destruction of the surrounding landscape.

'Treval enlists the support of a local farmer Tom Robbins and his daughter Anne. They join forces against the pig and even try to flush it out with a light plane piloted by Anne.

'Pig plunges us into a gripping chase sequence with Treval fighting a lethal animal, a harsh environment, and a pattern of senseless destruction by masses of ravaging feral pigs.

'The harrowing climax to the book will leave you in a state of nervous exhaustion and disquieted about the fragile balance between man and his environment.

'Pig epitomizes what can happen when nature goes out of control.'

Source: Goodreads.

'Through revolution and empire, war and bloodshed, France remained fascinated with Australia, sending expeditions of dedicated young men to explore the utopian Paradise of the Pacific and Australia to the frozen hell of Antarctica. Voyages to the South Seas reveals the true stories of explorers who risked, and often lost, their lives in pursuit of their passion. It is the story of noble men impoverished by their passion, nobodies made famous by courage and intellect and young men–and some women–who often risked their lives for adventure and excitement but above all, in the pursuit of knowledge and discovery.

This is Australia through French eyes–beautiful, mystifying, untouched nature–an Australia few Englishmen ever saw.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The film Rabbit-Proof Fence is based on this true account of Doris Nugi Garimara Pilkington's mother Molly, who as a young girl led her two sisters on an extraordinary 1,600 kilometre walk home. Under Western Australia's invidious removal policy of the 1930s, the girls were taken from their Aboriginal family at Jigalong on the edge of the Little Sandy Desert, and transported halfway across the state to the Native Settlement at Moore River, north of Perth...

The three girls - aged 8, 11 and 14 - managed to escape from the settlement's repressive conditions and brutal treatment. Barefoot without provisions or maps, they set out to find the rabbit-proof fence, knowing it passed near their home in the north. Tracked by native police and search planes, they hid in terror, surviving on bush tucker, desperate to return to the world they knew.

The journey to freedom - longer than many of the legendary walks of [the Australian nation's] explorer heroes... told from family recollections, letters between the authorities and the Aboriginal Protector, and ... newspaper reports of the runaway children.' Source: Publisher's blurb

'When Mike Langford, a war photographer with a reputation for unusual risk-taking, disappears inside Cambodia, he becomes a mythic figure in the minds of his friends. The search for him which is at the heart of this novel explores the personal highways that led him to war, and to his ultimate fate.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.