A moving and witty portrayal of a family and community in turmoil during the Second World War. It is 1942 and the sleepy village of Saint-Boniface in the Ardèche has become stuffed with refugees from all over France and indeed Europe. Expats, exiles and migrant Jews all mingle together. Daily life is shambolic. Several Jewish families have washed up in Saint-Boniface, lodged in guest houses and rented farmhouses, they are attempting to carve out a new life for themselves among the folded h...

This is the moving story of a young man who found himself along with thousands of his comrades in the nightmare of Japanese captivity. Unlike so many (it is said that one Commonwealth POW died for every sleeper laid) Bill lived to tell the tale. Indeed it is remarkable that this story has not been told before, so graphic are Bill's memories of the hardships and horrors. The book goes on to describe how the experiences of those years have affected his life since.

Safe Harbor A Boy's Story is a memoir of a lonely boy growing up in a dysfunctional family during World War II and the struggle to find his way as a teen and young man in the fifties. Set during World War II and the early fifties, Safe Harbor a Boy's Story chromicles my struggle as a lonely boy in a dysfunctional family. It began as a memoir for my children, but when completed, I realized it was much more than that. Its about victory over abuse, not physical, as in "A Child called It" and ...

We cannot blame Charles Dickens for not meeting our national Arts treasure Philip P. Pirip, but:go blame yr rottern Fate;whos flushs beat yr faces straightsIt could be said, though, Dickens did lend his major characters to Philip P. Pirip, although 'lend' might not be the best word; rather freedom opened the door to its wide-open spaces to allow them to escape and give vent to their grievances with their famous author, seeing as to how he never once mentioned the fabul...

Surely you all remember Wi, a name especially chosen to fit our attention spans? Him, the world-record kidnappee, nabbee, swipee, snatchee, hoisted so many times even he's lost count? (How about those three times in five minutes effort? That takes real talent, that does.) I mean, if it wasn't for our Wi how many of these yabbers, yarns, shaggy dogs and yank-your-chain whoppers could I trot out for you? Even getting across one's not easy when it's always against the wind from people ...

You could say man into wolf and wolf into man got blasted into existence. You could also say the Tasmanian Aborigines and the Tasmanian Wolf got blasted out of existence too. It's called extinction and it lasts forever and, when Ihe the wolfman did the sums of early Tasmania, it all added up. This was except for one thing… the existence of the truly last Thylacine Wolf hiding out somewhere life-giving and life-preserving from the ever-hunters and the always-killers.This made it all ...

Seven years after King Billy's death, Truganinni stood alone, arguably the most important living relic of her Tasmanian race. She would walk the streets of Hobart Town, resembling Queen Victoria in her voluminous skirts and headdress. She quite enjoyed the curiosity and finger pointing wherever she went. And she could go anywhere.Towards the end, she appeared to bear no malice towards her race's persecutors. Growing stoutish, she smoked a pipe and enjoyed a daily jug of beer. But s...

Sire? Sire!Over here, in the boiling oil, just kicking my heels up while I can, ha ha.O King, his name mightn't be Scheherazade, but if he was a she, it might well have been Scheherazade, or, otherwise, something like Sinbad the Sailor, or whatnot. You never know.He'd still be singing for his supper or else be despatched if he didn't keep your interest by spinning out his oh-pull-this-one-it's-got-bells-on yarns. If you had ever been listening, you might even admit to ...

Dorothy is married to a south Indian surgeon who has been shot in a gang-related murder in Melbourne. She knows nothing about what's behind this but she feels obliged to travel to her mother-in-law in Chennai to relate what little she does know. This, she dreads doing, not just because this once-Australian, everyone's 'auntie' has always turned a blithe deaf ear to her, but more because the old girl is a scrawn, a whack job, a dizzy, shouting commands and bouncing around doing power-prayin...

Henry had one good eye until the surgeon lost even that one's lens down some drain. He had a wife he could call his own until she started to shack up very noisily with some young turk Australian postgraduate in his (Henry's) own home. He had a housekeeper until she left in built-up disgust claiming Henry continuously confessed to some vague past unspeakable crime. Henry also had this itch which his new housekeeper – his wife's cousin – could keep in check with her very personal fingernails...

He hadn't told his son he was adopted, nor that his son had a twin sister who hadn't been handed over with him when they travelled from Melbourne to India all that time ago to pick up both infants. Part of his silence was the guilt of being on the end of what was then undoubtedly a child-racketeering scam.Charged by his estranged wife to go back to India to find out more about the recent brutal murder of their son – and, consequentially, what had happened to the infant girl child, ...

This is a rollicking play about one of the founding and/or foundling fathers of Western Australia… Thomas Peel, first cousin of the then British Prime Minister. He was the leader of the first organized group of settlers, but from the moment he arrived on western shores, he became, as it were, rooted to the spot, utterly unable to marshal himself to provide the leadership and employment to his hundreds of artisans, labourers and families. Indeed, for one whole paralyzing year, he couldn't e...