Ten years on from the speech that stopped us all in our tracks – Julia Gillard’ s misogyny speech. Where were you then? And where are we now? This is a barnburning piece of Australian feminist history in the making. MATILDA, BETTER READ THAN DEAD Then it was done. After staying silent, I’ d had my say. At no time did I feel worked up or hotly angry. I felt strong, measured, controlled. Yet emotion did play its role in the energy of the speech. The frustration that sexism and misogyny could still be so bad in the twenty-first century. The toll of not pointing it out. On 9 October 2012, Prime Minister Julia Gillard stood up and proceeded to make all present in Parliament House that day pay attention – and left many of them squirming in their seats. The incisive ‘ misogyny speech’ , as her words came to be known, continues to energise and motivate women who need to stare down sexism and misogyny in their own lives.

Not Now, Not Ever: Ten years on from the misogyny speech

Politics & Social Sciences

Gillard, Julia

Social Sciences

Vintage Australia

Red Dog

Red Dog: True Blue

Literature & Fiction

Louis de Bernières

Literary

This is what happened the year I met my other mother. In 1965, Robin, unmarried and pregnant, comes to Melbourne to give birth and give her baby up for adoption, then returns to Perth to resume her life having never seen her baby. After 10 days alone, the baby is taken home, named Susannah, and made part of a wonderful family that loves her. The adoption laws at the time guarantee that there can be no contact between birth mother and child. Ever. In 1984, the law is changed and sealed files can be opened. In 1989 Robin tries to make contact with Susannah who is now the same age as Robin was when she had her. Susannah replies to Robin in a letter, declining contact. In 2014, Susannah, at the same age Robin was when she wrote her first letter, writes Robin a different letter. The heartlines open. After nearly 50 years apart, a mother and daughter are reunited. But the path to a relationship is not smooth. Very few adoption reunions result in meaningful, long-term reconnection. The fragile relationships stumble and fall under the weight of years of repressed anger, hurt, grief and loss, different beliefs, and of whole lives spent apart. A feeling of connection isn’t enough. You have to fight for a relationship. This is the story of two women who did. The raw openness of their writing and the breakneck speed of their reconnection is compelling. Heartlines is at once both unique and universal. It’s a story of courage and what can happen when you open rather than close your heart; when you decide to stay just as every fearful instinct tells you to run away. Heartlines is about connection and reconnection and why relationships are worth the fight. It is a piercingly honest and often hilarious story of what it takes to reconnect—and stay there—after a lifetime apart. Fast-paced, warm, and funny, this is an adoption story that pulls the reader on to a wonderful if wobbly rollercoaster ride, exploring themes of family, motherhood, loss, belonging, hope, courage, and the importance of never giving up.

Heartlines: The Year I Met My Mother

Parenting & Relationships

McFarlane,Susannah

Leuba, Robin

Adoption

Rosetta

Romance

Alexandra Joel

Historical

Maybe the Horse Will Talk

The Year Everything Changed

Phillipa McGuinness

Politics & Government

As someone who has a foot in both the Western and Arabic worlds, Amal set out to explore the lives of Arab women, in Australia and the Middle East, traveling to the region and interviewing more than 60 women about feminism, intimacy, love, sex and shame, trauma, war, religion, and culture. Beyond Veiled Clichés explores the similarities and differences experienced by these women in their daily lives—work, relationships, home and family life, friendships, the communities they live in, and more. Arab-Australian women are at the intersection—between Western ideals and Arab tradition. It can get messy, but there is also great beauty in the layers. In a time of racial tension and rising global fear around terrorism, there is a renewed fear of "the other." At its heart this fascinating book normalizes people and their experiences. The breadth, variety, and beauty of what Amal has discovered will enthrall and surprise you.

Beyond Veiled Clichés: The Real Lives of Arab Women

Awad, Amal

In this witty, engrossing and sometimes poignant memoir, a sequel to his best-selling The Justice Game, Australia’s inimitable Geoffrey Robertson charts his progress from pimply state schoolboy to top Old Bailey barrister and thence onwards and upwards to a leading role in the struggle for human rights throughout the world. He wryly observes the absurdities of growing up as one of ‘Ming’s kids’; the passion of student protest in the sixties and his early crusades for ‘Down Under-dogs’, before leaving on a Rhodes Scholarship to combat the British establishment, with the help of John Mortimer of ‘Rumpole’ fame. There are dramatic accounts of fighting for lives on death rows, freeing dissidents and taking on tyrants, armed only with a unique mind and a passion for justice – on display whenever he boomeranged back to Australia to conduct Geoffrey Robertson’s Hypotheticals. His is an amazing life story of David and Goliath battles – riveting, laugh-out-loud tales filled with romance and danger, featuring a cast of characters ranging from General Pinochet to Pee-Wee Herman; from Malcolm Turnbull to Mike Tyson; from Nigella Lawson to Kathy Lette and Julian Assange. Throughout his exploits – recounted here with irreverent humour and dashes of true wisdom – Geoffrey Robertson has remained determinedly independent and his own man. He has also, in respect of human rights, changed the way we think.

Rather His Own Man

Biographies & Memoirs

ROBERTSON, GEOFFREY

Leaders & Notable People

In March 1918, with sixty divisions recently transferred from the Eastern Front and with the fear of a one-million-man American army landing in France, the Germans attacked. This resulted for the Australians in a number of battles and engagements from late March through to late April 1918, culminating in the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux and the saving of Amiens, and as a result Paris, from German occupation. Then, after a period of see-sawing fighting, the Australians attacked the French village of Le Hamel. This was General John Monash’s first victory as the Commanding Officer of the newly formed Australian Corps. Given 90 minutes to reach their objective, they were there in 93 minutes, and with low casualties. This victory and Monash’s tactics changed the course of the war, tactics that became crucial to the allied victory after 8 August, the 'black day of the German Army' as General Hindenburg called it. On this day, the major Allied counter-offensive began with the AIF in the vanguard of the attack. The Australians, with the Canadians to the south and the British across the Somme to the north, drove the Germans back, first along the line of the Somme and then across the river to Mont St Quentin, Péronne and on to the formidable Hindenburg Line. The last Australian infantry action was at Montbrehain in early October, but this was not in fact the last action for the Australians. Australian tunnellers, famous for their work at Hill 60 near Ypres, were tasked with laying down a metal tank bridge across a lock near the village of Rejet-de-Beaulieu, and to do this under fire. This resulted in the death of five men, killed just six days before the end of hostilities on 11 November 1918.

The Last 100 Days: The Australian Road to Victory in the First World War

History

Davies PhD, Will

Australia & Oceania

Review\n"Will Davies and I sometimes paddle our kayaks on the very waters Z Special Force used when training for its amphibious attack on Singapore in 1943. Echoing through these pages I hear once again the voice of a natural storyteller and hands-on historian. Rendered with clarity, insight and passion this work of unlocked secrets is itself special." —Chris Walters\nSoon after the declaration of war on Japan, a secret military reconnaissance unit was established, based on the British Special Operations Executive (known as SOE) and called the Inter-allied Services Department. The unit was tasked with the role to "obtain and report information of the enemy ... weaken the enemy by sabotage and destruction of morale and to lend aid and assistance to local efforts to the same end in enemy occupied territories." In 1943 it became known under the cover name Special Reconnaissance Department (SRD) and included some British officers who had escaped from Singapore. After arriving in Australia, they assembled in Melbourne, forming the nucleus of ISD and together with some Australians established what became the Z Special Unit. Training began in a number of locations around Australia including on Fraser Island off the Queensland coast, In Broken Bay near Sydney, at Careening Bay in Western Australia, at the “House on the Hill” in Cairns and at East Arm near Darwin. From these training areas and bases, Z Special undertook intelligence gathering and raiding missions throughout Southeast Asia including New Guinea, Singapore, Timor, Malaya, Borneo, Vietnam and the Dutch East Indies. The first operation was Jaywick in September 1943. Led by a 28 year old officer from the Gordon Highlanders, Captain Ivan Lyon. Using an old Japanese fishing boat renamed Krait this captured vessel was re-fitted and provisioned for a voyage from Australia to just south of Singapore where it released six commandos in three folding kayaks to attack Japanese shipping in the harbour. They placed limpet mines on several Japanese ships sinking 40,000 tons of shipping. After the successful attack, they paddled south, were picked up by the Krait and successfully returned to Australia. This was followed by Operation Rimau again led by Lyon but this time things went very wrong very early. Identified, they made a fighting withdrawal but all of the raiding party were shot or captured, with the last ten being executed just before the end of the war. Important in Z Special operations were a number of vessels designated “snake boats”. Four 66’ modified trawlers were constructed as well as a range of Asian vessels that allowed their operation in South East Asian areas of operation. One Z Special, the last in PNG, set out on the night of the 11 April 1945. Eight operatives were landed on the Japanese held island of Muschu about five kilometres off the coast near Wewak to determine the status of two 140mm Japanese naval guns that had been placed there. These guns would prove dangerous to planned naval landings at Wewak, and allied command needed to know if these were operational. The operatives were launched in four double folding kayaks from a HTML fast crash boat but the current carried them away from their landing position and the surf capsized their boats. The men swam ashore but both their radio and their signal torches had been destroyed and the men had no way of connecting with the return crash boat. Soon their lost equipment was found by the Japanese and a massive search with 1,000 troops scoured the island. Quite soon seven of the eight men had been captured, killed or died trying to swim to the mainland and only one man, Sergeant ‘Mick’ Dennis remained. Over the next three days he continued a one man war, fighting off Japanese patrols and living off the land. Unable to do this for long, he took to the dangerous shark and crocodile infested waters and with the aid of a log, paddled to the mainland. Landing on a Japanese controlled beach, he snuck ash

Secret and Special

Military

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