Books like Larrikins, Bush Tales and Other Great Australian Stories — picked by fans

A bold and broad-sweeping book, written in the 1940s, described as a novel but featuring a mix of real and fictional characters, The Timeless Land is a beautifully imaginative telling of the arrival of the First Fleet in what became Sydney in 1788, as seen through the eyes of the Aboriginal people, the Governor and his officers, convicts and the odd settler. The depiction of the part-real, part-invented Aboriginal people may cause raised eyebrows nowadays, but the book is based on thorough research and written with great imagination and sensitivity. I love the mix of the real and the imaginary, while never distorting the facts. It’s a brilliant way to paint a vivid portrait of a subject, I’ve done it myself (if I may be presumptuous enough to bracket myself with Ms. Dark).

'Original, provocative, and witty, Australia is the most comprehensive single-volume history of Australia yet published.' This is the blurb on the back cover of the paperback but it echoes my own views of this marvellous book completely. It covers everything: from the plight of the convicts to the Europeans’ experiments with farming and land grabs; relationships with the Aboriginal people, and especially the virtues or otherwise of respective Governors and their often spiky relationships with the government back home. All of it written with authority and a wonderfully wry wit.

This is a memoir of life in the Riverina district in early colonial rural Australia written by the wonderfully insightful Mary Gilmore. It’s full of fascinating detail about domestic life and class consciousness, where poor families had to make do with wooden needles and cutlery and women were so used to sitting on blocks that they felt unsafe on a chair; whereas the better-off had standards to maintain so women’s skirts had to be weighted at the hem for fear of showing an ankle while horse-riding. How a line was drawn across the floor at the Wagga Wagga Club Ball ‘to separate the “grandees” from the “commonage”’. She is also fascinated by Aboriginal culture and how they so naturally looked after the land and preserved the fruit, animals, and fish, evidence that ‘the aborigines as a nation were as naturally intellectual as we ourselves.’  

I’m a townie, but early colonial Australia is all about the land and how some early colonial pioneers made their fortunes from it. (Many didn’t, needless to say.) This book is all about them: the squatters, the stock riders, the drovers, the station hands, etc. The long and perilous journeys into remote New South Wales looking for land—officially and unofficially; how early pioneers coped with droughts, floods, disappearing stock, financial uncertainty, and not least, relationships with local Aboriginal people. There are hilarious accounts of the strange habits of cows, and of the “new chums”—wide-eyed young men who migrated to the colony with money but no farming experience hoping to make their fortunes, and how the (colonial) locals took the mickey out of them. Readable, witty, and again, written with great authority and in-depth knowledge.

I love this novel for its beautiful imagery, its character development, and its deeply sensitive portrayal of the clash of civilisations that was to prove so devastating to the countryside as well as to its original inhabitants. Salt Creek tells the story of the European settlers’ incursion in the mid-1850s into a remote coastal region of South Australia, and it focuses on one particular family’s struggles with establishing themselves in a land that already belonged to others. 

Written by the revered god-daddy of Australian songcraft, Shots is a beat peek behind the curtain of what it is to be a young band on the road and on the rise, all lens flare vignettes; dry, brutal, and perfect, as cool as The Don himself. His uncanny way with words lets us bear witness to the country hall dances, Kings Cross streets, and back of the van like a poetic spy cam.

This amazing book is about Oblivia a girl who survives gang rape living in a swamp with thousands of black swans who is promised to Warren Finch the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia an indigenous man.

In her journey we meet many out there characters told in mythic style in a future Australia devastated by climate change. This book is a potent mix of speculative fiction and magic realism featuring indigenous communities and characters. I admire it for the breadth of its vision and the intimacy of Oblivia and of course the swans.

I loved this book because it was as much about the author's inner journey as it was the outer one. I loved both aspects of this book.

I love books that give you almost a window into the soul of the writer. Robyn shares her thoughts and experience so well as she makes her way solo 2,000 miles in the Australian Outback. I loved her bravery. This was an epic trip. As one of the first adventure books I had read, it got me hooked. This was a book that made an impact. 

Australians love a road-trip – the longer, the better. This book, by one of Australia’s top driving holiday experts, is jam-packed with information and advice to make yours as easy as possible. Driving is definitely the best way to see our vast continent, and the route maps and distance lists are hugely useful. It’s a great resource on where to stay – everything from swank hotels to camping spots – and what to do. Want to know the best time of year to visit a certain place? That’s covered too.

My next book is by far the least well-known of my authors, and it’s by far the least well-known book. It’s by my friend and colleague, Samuel Alexander, with whom I’ve co-written a couple of books now, including This Civilisation is Finished.

It’s a splendid read. For philosophers, it’s charming, because Sam is continually bringing in implicitly, and most explicitly, the great philosophers. He’s quoting or talking about Hobbes, Rousseau, Marx, and the rest. His characters sometimes offer lines of one of them to each other. And, in that sense, it’s very much a novel of ideas in the tradition of utopias and dystopias.