TDK Australian Audio Book Awards
Subcategory of The TDK Australian Audio Book Awards
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2001

winner (Young People) y separately published work icon Borrowed Light Anna Fienberg , St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 1999 Z934133 1999 single work novel young adult Callisto May, a sixteen-year-old with a passion for astronomy, has grown up in a family traumatised by a secret, unresolved grief, until her own crisis finally precipitates an openess between her parents and their children. -- From Trove record.

Year: 2000

winner y separately published work icon The Binna Binna Man Meme McDonald , Boori Pryor , St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 1999 Z492840 1999 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 7 units) 'The powerful story of an Aboriginal teenage boy who is caught between the attractions of city life and the ways of his people. After a terrifying encounter with the Binna Binna man he knows what he must do in order to be true to himself.' Source: Libraries Australia.
winner y separately published work icon My Girragundji Meme McDonald , Boori Pryor , St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 1998 Z834922 1998 single work children's fiction children's humour (taught in 8 units) 'Alive with humour, this is the vivid story of a boy growing up between two worlds. With Girragundji, the little green tree frog, he finds the courage to face the Hairyman, the bullies at school, and also learns the lessons of manhood that his father teaches him. A young boy growing up in a large family and caught between Koori and white worlds, finds his attachment to a little tree frog gives him the courage to face his fears.' Source: Libraries Australia.

Year: 1997

winner (Unabridged Non-Fiction Category) y separately published work icon Kings in Grass Castles Mary Durack , London : Constable , 1959 Z419305 1959 single work biography

'‘... far better than any novel; an incomparable record of a great family and of a series of great actions.' The Bulletin When Patrick Durack left Western Ireland for Australia in 1853, he was to found a pioneering dynasty and build a cattle empire across the great stretches of Australia. With a profound sense of family history, his grand-daughter, Mary Durack reconstructed the Durack saga - a story of intrepid men and ground-breaking adventure. This sweeping tale of Australia and Australians remains a classic nearly fifty years on.' (2008 Publication summary)

Year: 1996

winner (Overall Award) y separately published work icon The Riders Tim Winton , Chippendale : Pan Macmillan Australia , 1994 Z295967 1994 single work novel (taught in 3 units)

Fred Scully is in another country, a 'desert Irishman' far from home. After two long years of travelling through Europe, he decided to move his family from Australia to western Ireland. Scully arrived weeks ahead of his family to renovate the old farmhouse they'd bought in the shadow of a castle in County Offally, and which he's renovated by hand. Now, at the gate of Shannon's international airport, he anxiously awaits the arrival of his pregnant wife and seven-year-old daughter, envisioning a new life ahead, a fresh start. He has waited for and worried about this for months. He is a man who does not like being alone. The plane lands, the glass doors to the terminal slide open and his daughter emerges. Alone. There is no note, no word of explanation from his wife, only the mute silence of his stunned child. In an instant, Scully's life goes down in flames. This is a story of a marriage in our time. So begins a love-crazed odyssey across Europe, to the underside of the male psyche, in search of a woman vanished.

(Adapted from Trove)

winner (Unabridged Fiction Category) y separately published work icon The Riders Tim Winton , Chippendale : Pan Macmillan Australia , 1994 Z295967 1994 single work novel (taught in 3 units)

Fred Scully is in another country, a 'desert Irishman' far from home. After two long years of travelling through Europe, he decided to move his family from Australia to western Ireland. Scully arrived weeks ahead of his family to renovate the old farmhouse they'd bought in the shadow of a castle in County Offally, and which he's renovated by hand. Now, at the gate of Shannon's international airport, he anxiously awaits the arrival of his pregnant wife and seven-year-old daughter, envisioning a new life ahead, a fresh start. He has waited for and worried about this for months. He is a man who does not like being alone. The plane lands, the glass doors to the terminal slide open and his daughter emerges. Alone. There is no note, no word of explanation from his wife, only the mute silence of his stunned child. In an instant, Scully's life goes down in flames. This is a story of a marriage in our time. So begins a love-crazed odyssey across Europe, to the underside of the male psyche, in search of a woman vanished.

(Adapted from Trove)

winner (Abridged Fiction Category) y separately published work icon Foxspell Gillian Rubinstein , South Melbourne : Hyland House , 1994 Z816897 1994 single work novel young adult fantasy

'Foxspell is a fable of shape-shifters and animal spirits, of teenage gangs and schoolyard friends and finding your place in the world—or worlds—all concentrated in a dense, vivid corner of the half-wild Adelaide hills. A Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year for Older Readers, Foxspell is a mysterious and unforgettable dream.

'Deserted by his father, Tod moves with his sisters and mother into his grandmother's house in the foothills of Adelaide, South Australia. He finds refuge in the hills and quarries, where he meets a fox spirit who teaches him to cross between the human and animal worlds. As his family life and his involvement in a local gang become more complicated, the lure of the fox grows ever stronger.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

winner (Special Award) y separately published work icon That Eye, the Sky Tim Winton , Melbourne : McPhee Gribble , 1986 Z426161 1986 single work novel young adult (taught in 8 units) Ort knows the sky is watching. He knows what it means to watch; he spends long hours listening at doors and peering through cracks. Things are terribly wrong. His father is withering away, his sister is consumed by hatred, his grandmother is all inside herself, and his mother, a flower-child of the 1960s, is brave but helpless. Then a strange man appears at their door. That Eye, the Sky is about love, about a boy's vision of the world beyond, about the blurry distinctions between the natural and the supernatural. All this, and more, begins at the moment the ute driven by Ort Flack's father ploughs into a roadside tree, throwing the whole world out of kilter. (Source: Bookseller's website) Given to Bolinda Audio Book version for "an audio book of outstanding quality aimed at a younger market"

Year: 1995

winner (Unabridged Non-Fiction Category) y separately published work icon Goodbye Girlie Patsy Adam-Smith , Ringwood : Penguin , 1995 Z104232 1995 single work autobiography
winner (Abridged Non-Fiction Category) y separately published work icon Kings in Grass Castles Mary Durack , London : Constable , 1959 Z419305 1959 single work biography

'‘... far better than any novel; an incomparable record of a great family and of a series of great actions.' The Bulletin When Patrick Durack left Western Ireland for Australia in 1853, he was to found a pioneering dynasty and build a cattle empire across the great stretches of Australia. With a profound sense of family history, his grand-daughter, Mary Durack reconstructed the Durack saga - a story of intrepid men and ground-breaking adventure. This sweeping tale of Australia and Australians remains a classic nearly fifty years on.' (2008 Publication summary)

winner (Overall Winner and Unabridged Fiction Category) y separately published work icon Dark Places Kate Grenville , Sydney : Macmillan , 1994 Z454528 1994 single work novel

'This is Albion Gidley Singer at the pen, a man with a weakness for a good fact. The first fact is always the hardest: you have to begin somewhere, and such is the nature of this intractable universe that the only thing you can start with is yourself.

'Dark Places, a companion novel to Lilian’s Story, is the tale of a man with a comically grand exterior who believes he has the right, and the duty, to conquer the mocking flesh of any woman. Even his own daughter.' (Publication summary)

Works About this Award

Raising the Standard : The TDK Audio Book Awards Mary Dickenson , 1998 single work criticism
— Appears in: National Library of Australia News , February vol. 8 no. 5 1998; (p. 19-21)
Raising the Standard : The TDK Audio Book Awards Mary Dickenson , 1998 single work criticism
— Appears in: National Library of Australia News , February vol. 8 no. 5 1998; (p. 19-21)
Awards for Audio Books 1997 single work column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 17 November 1997; (p. 11)
`Dark Places' Lit Up Norma Allen , 1995 single work column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 20 November 1995; (p. 13)
Audio Books Find New Popularity Christopher Uhlmann , 1994 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 16 November 1994; (p. 23)
X