Author: Ian Mannix
Publisher: HarperCollins Australia
ISBN: 0730495930
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 156
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Book Description
'the biggest cleared area was my vegetable patch ... I ran and lay down and made a little tent over myself. I thought it would preserve the last of the oxygen. Under the blanket I could hear explosions - the gas bottles from the houses further up, and I could just imagine all my neighbours dead up the road. the wind was roaring, the trees cracking: an awful lot of noise ... I thought I wasn't going to survive.' Peter Luke, Gaffneys Creek, Victoria 'the sky got darker again ... I started to think about the next day's newspaper headlines: "Stupid thirty-eight-weeks pregnant woman drives into fire with toddler."' Sonia Stanton, Canberra 'I looked down into where the houses were totally surrounded by a sea of flame and thought, well, that's it, she's all over. Everybody will be killed down there.' John Hyles, Namadgi Ranges GREAt AUStRALIAN BUSHFIRE StORIES is a collection of remarkable tales from all around Australia that tell of our country's fiercest natural phenomenon: the bushfire. Farmers, landowners, firefighters and city dwellers share with ABC journalist Ian Mannix their experiences of fires: preparing for them, fighting them, and the heartbreak task of mopping up when even their best efforts failed. Some stories are funny, some tragic, many courageous, but all are a testimony to the ingenuity and grit of human beings as they fight to save their homes, their towns and, in some cases, their lives.
Author: Paul Collins
Publisher: Scribe Publications
ISBN: 1922072443
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 449
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Book Description
‘Dry heat and hot, dry winds worked upon a land already dry, to suck from it the last, least drop of moisture. Men who had lived their lives in the bush went their ways in the shadow of dread expectancy. But though they felt the imminence of danger they could not tell that it was to be far greater than they could imagine. They had not lived long enough.’ — Report of the Royal Commission into the bushfires of January 1939 With the start of every bushfire season and the first threatening hints of burning eucalypt in the air, we are reminded, no matter where we live, that bushfire is an inescapable reality in this country. In Burn Paul Collins tells the epic story of bushfire in Australia, drawing on accounts of the most devastating conflagrations in Australia’s European history — from the 1851 Black Thursday fire (which burnt out one quarter of Victoria) to the 1939 Black Friday fires (which took many lives and destroyed thousands of hectares in Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania), the Canberra inferno of 2003, and the Black Saturday fires of February 2009. Frightening, compelling, vivid, and provocative, Burn reveals stories of heroism, stupidity, political incompetence, and environmental vandalism. This is the grand narrative of bushfire in Australia, the most fire-prone land on Earth.
Author: Sophie Cunningham
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 1760874523
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 31
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Book Description
Based on a heartwarming true story. Tippy and her baby Jellybean live in a beautiful eucalyptus forest. One day, they wake up and sniff the air. It's smoky, hot and windy. Kangaroos and wallabies are bounding. Wombats are heading to their burrows. The cockatoos take off in an enormous flock. Tippy can't hop. Or run. Or fly. So she shelters her baby in the only way she can This is the uplifting true story of a koala who saved her baby from a bushfire, and the dedicated vets who looked after them until they were healed and ready to go home.
Author: John Pickrell
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1642832022
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 298
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Book Description
Over Australia's 2019-20 Black Summer bushfire season, scientists estimate that more than three billion native animals were killed or displaced. Many species - koalas, the regent honeyeater, glossy black cockatoo, the platypus - are inching towards extinction at the hands of mega-blazes and the changing climate behind them. In Flames of Extinction, award-winning science writer John Pickrell investigates the effects of the 2019-2020 bushfires on Australian wildlife and ecosystems. Journeying across the firegrounds, Pickrell explores the stories of creatures that escaped the flames, the wildlife workers who rescued them, and the conservationists, land managers, Aboriginal rangers, ecologists and firefighters on the front line of the climate catastrophe. He also reveals the radical new conservation methods being trialled to save as many species as possible from the very precipice of extinction.
Author: Chloe Hooper
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 1644210010
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 195
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Book Description
The true story of one of the most devastating wildfires in Australian history and the search for the man who started it. On the scorching February day in 2009, a man lit two fires in the Australian state of Victoria, then sat on the roof of his house to watch the inferno. What came to be known as the Black Saturday bushfires killed 173 people and injured hundreds more, making them among the deadliest and most destructive wildfires in Australian history. As communities reeling from unspeakable loss demanded answers, detectives scrambled to piece together what really happened. They soon began to suspect the fires had been deliverately set by an arsonist. The Arsonist takes readers on the hunt for this man, and inside the puzzle of his mind. But this book is also the story of fire in the Anthropocene. The command of fire has defined and sustained us as a species, and now, as climate change normalizes devastating wildfires worldwide, we must contend with the forces of inequality, and desperate yearning for power, that can lead to such destruction. Written with Chloe Hooper’s trademark lyric detail and nuance, The Arsonist is a reminder that in the age of fire, all of us are gatekeepers.
Author: Fiannuala Morgan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780645106312
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
In these stories of a quintessential Australian phenomenon, bushfires reveal a conflagration of human drama. They deepen the pain of a tragic love triangle, bring justice to a false mate, and push a young drover and his horse to the limits of their endurance. A priest and wedding guests find themselves fighting fires instead of toasting the happy couple. A woman capable of saving her farm from fire cannot save herself from the proprietary rage of men. And a good horse and a faithful dog prove themselves the best allies in a dangerous situation. Fiannuala Morgan is PhD candidate at the Australian National University with a particular interest in geospatial analysis of nineteenth century Australian literature and the author of Aboriginal Writers and Popular Fiction: The Literature of Anita Heiss from Cambridge University Press. To Be Continued is an Australian Research Council funded project, led by Associate Professor Katherine Bode, that has unearthed an astonishing bibliographic index and full-text archive of fiction in Australian newspapers from 1803 to 1955.
Author: Ian Mannix
Publisher: HarperCollins Australia
ISBN: 0730497526
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
From ABC Books' Australiana range comes GREAT AUSTRALIAN FLOOD STORIES, stories of humour, survival and courage in the face of one of our country's most powerful natural forces: flood. 'I tried to follow the road but the rushing waters pushed me into a deep rut where I lost my footing and was swept away downstream in the overflow of the river ... I got very frightened at the noise, and the water swept me along ... but I kept saying to myself, "Don't panic." Hampered by the big mail bag I let it go and within seconds the water swept it out of sight.' Lyn Berlowitz, Bullita Station, Nt From ABC Local Radio Manager of Emergency Broadcasting and senior journalist Ian Mannix comes a collection of 15 stories of humour, survival and courage in the face of one of our country's most powerful natural forces - flood. Across Grantham to Condamine, Kempsey to Bullita Station, flood has devastated this wide brown land, in some instances bringing much needed relief from drought, but in many others bringing tragedy, homelessness and a fight for survival. Ian Mannix charts the pattern of floods in Australia and tells amazing stories of danger and survival, from the women trapped in a house infested with snakes as the floodwaters rose ever higher, to the helicopter rescues of people whose homes were inundated without warning, to the brave townsfolk who saved their outback Queensland towns from the menace of the Warego River with all the odds stacked against them. As in Ian's previous book Great Australian Bushfire Stories, these fascinating accounts from the lips of those who have experienced disaster will give you an understanding of what it is like to face nature at its most deadly, how to prepare and how to recover from its shocking impact.
Author: Alice Bishop
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1925774600
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
A young and exciting new literary voice, emerging from one of Australia’s worst natural disasters
Author: Jackie French
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781460759332
Category : Animals
Languages : en
Pages : 24
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Book Description
As the bushfire swallowed up the world they knew, a wombat shared her burrow with other animals. As the flames of the bushfire approach, one small wombat is bravely followed by other animals to the safety of her underground burrow. From best-selling author and Australian Children's Laureate, Jackie French, and award-winning illustrator, Danny Snell, comes a story of survival, courage and friendship.
Author: Bronwyn Adcock
Publisher: Black Inc.
ISBN: 1743821948
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 235
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Book Description
A moving insider’s account of surviving one of Australia’s worst bushfires – and how we live with fire in a climate-changed world The gripping, deeply moving account of a terrifying fire – among the most ferocious Australia has ever seen The Currowan fire – ignited by a lightning strike in a remote forest and growing to engulf the New South Wales South Coast – was one of the most terrifying episodes of Australia’s Black Summer. It burnt for seventy-four days, consuming nearly 5000 square kilometres of land, destroying well over 500 homes and leaving many people shattered. Bronwyn Adcock fled the inferno with her children. Her husband, fighting at the front, rang with a plea for help before his phone went dead, leaving her to fear: will he make it out alive? In Currowan, Bronwyn tells her story and those of many others – what they saw, thought and felt as they battled a blaze of never-before-seen intensity. In the aftermath, there were questions: why were resources so few that many faced the flames alone? Why was there back-burning on a day of extreme fire danger? Why weren’t we better prepared? Currowan is a portrait of tragedy, survival and the power of community. Set against the backdrop of a nation in the grip of an intensifying crisis, this immersive account of a region facing disaster is a powerful glimpse into a new, more dangerous world – and how we build resilience. Bronwyn Adcock is an award-winning Australian journalist and writer. She has worked as a radio current-affairs reporter and documentary maker for the ABC, as a video journalist for SBS’s Dateline and as a freelance writer, including for Griffith Review and The Monthly. ‘A searing account of surviving Australia’s Black Summer, laced with grim warnings about how exposed the country still is to more catastrophic bushfires.’ —Michael Rowland, editor of Black Summer ‘A vivid and terrifying glimpse of not just our future but our present. Every Australian should read this book.‘ —Sophie Cunningham, author of Warning: The Story of Cyclone Tracy ‘Bronwyn Adcock offers a powerful, devastating account of Australia’s worst bushfire disaster from ground zero. This is a story of heartbreaking loss, as well as humble acts of care and bravery that helped save lives and property and find ways forward. Adcock offers us a window into the human story of the climate crisis, beyond the science and politics, to why action now matters so very much.’ —Amanda McKenzie, CEO, Climate Council ‘A brilliant piece of reportage from the inside of the Black Summer maelstrom – and a frightening glimpse of the future that awaits us all as we ignore the causes of climate change.’ —Adrian Hyland, author of Kinglake-350
