100 Books Like Ned Kelly's Last Days

 A controversial pick, but I believe this is the finest fictionalised version of Ned's life story written so far. Carey captures a very authentic sense of Ned’s voice and character by basing the book heavily on Ian Jones’ work and the Jerilderie Letter that Ned wrote with gang member Joe Byrne. It retains enough of the truth to craft a realistic world for his creations to exist in, and blends so well with his inventions, that someone unaware that the book is fiction will have a hard time working out some of the fact from the fiction. It is lyrical, powerful, and helped turbo-boost interest in the Kelly legend at a time when it had begun to taper off somewhat.

This is treated like a Bible by “Nedheads” (Ned Kelly buffs) for its detail as much as Jones’ compelling writing style. This was the culmination of decades of Jones’ own research into the Kelly saga that involved sifting through the many disorganised archives and even interviewing people who knew the key players personally. It is the book that set many people off on a journey to find out as much as they could about this incredible period of Australian history and helped revitalise the Kelly legend.

This is the book I usually recommend these days to people wanting to get into Ned Kelly as it covers a much broader view of the Kelly story than Ian Jones’ books while still retaining that almost novelistic approach to the text. It’s a sort of one-stop shop for those who want to know a little about a lot when it comes to Ned, and ties together a lot of different areas of research on the subject.

What sets this book apart from Kieza’s other book on the Kelly story, Mrs. Kelly, is that it concentrates on telling the stories of the men who tracked the outlaws down, many of whom were largely forgotten, including the Aboriginal trackers who were employed to track the gang in the Australian bush. As is the trend in such books, the history is written in a style more akin to a novel which makes it easy to digest. Kieza also positions himself firmly on the side that opposes the notion of Ned Kelly as a folk hero, which creates a good counterpoint to the majority of books on the subject.

There would be few Australians who didn’t know the name Ned Kelly, but there are likely many Australians who are uncertain whether Kelly was a good guy (a la Robin Hood) or a down-and-out bushranger scoundrel (i.e., bad guy).

The research that has gone into this wonderful story is breathtaking, and the fact the author is a distant relative of one of the policemen who hunted Ned Kelly is all the more remarkable. It’s about the law, justice, payback, character, and, importantly, values. The book brings a bygone rural era back to life, with real page-turning impetus lacing the suspense and drama in a way few history books offer.

Read this if you love real-life stories and want to learn more about Australia’s most notorious criminal.

Tiverton, the setting for this book, is a typical outback small town—derelict houses, one pub, a harsh landscape, and a policeman back in uniform after a corruption scandal back in the big city. Hirsch’s patrol area is huge and he’s often as much a social worker as a police officer. He’s an outcast in all senses of the word, but his dogged determination to do his job right leads him into all sorts of trouble. I love the setting, the endless roads, the eccentricities of people living in the back of nowhere, and the murder mystery that takes you where you (and Hirsch) least expect it.

I read this story in my teens and as a result, spent years wanting to join the navy. (That did wear off!) Having read it again recently, it seems a much darker story than I had remembered. But the mystery at its heart won’t let you go. Nevil Shute was a great storyteller and like many writers of his generation had many experiences to draw on. The story is quite slow-moving, but poignant—heartbreaking in fact. Gradually, he unfolds the mystery of Jessie Proctor, an Englishwoman working for a family in Australia. It begins with Jessie’s suicide and we uncover the events that have haunted this young, ex-servicewoman’s life. As Shute says, "a war can go on killing people for a long time after it’s all over."  

Australian author Kirsty Eagar’s love of surfing and the ocean comes through in every book she writes.

Here, she combines quintessential Aussie surf culture with vampires. Not sexy, heart-throb vamps, but soulless killers with an unquenchable thirst and increasingly disturbing plans for themselves and humanity. This novel is equal parts edgy contemporary Aussie coming-of-age story and skin-crawling horror. It’s no mean feat, and Kirsty hits it tone-perfect.

As always, there are well-written, believable characters (teen protagonists, unhinged vamps, and dodgy adults), plus a tense plot that builds to a frenetic pace with high stakes. Kirsty gives us classic mythology, refreshed and transplanted into a sun-drenched beach setting, underpinned by a reimagining of the brutal real-life story of the Batavia shipwreck in 1629.

I first read this over a decade ago and I loved it even more the second time around.

English naturalist John Gould is recognised as the father of bird study in Australia.

During 19 months in 1838-1840 he travelled in NSW, South Australia, and Tasmania, seeing the birds and landscapes before they had been affected much by Europeans, and leaving insightful descriptions that provide a unique window into a past when, for example, regent honeyeaters, endangered today, flitted about in the middle of Adelaide city.

Gould introduced the budgerigar to Europe, was the first to describe the bowers of bowerbirds, and the first in so many ways. His book appeared in 1865 but remains relevant today. I quoted him many times in my bird book for his unique insights and observations. But the common names he used can be difficult to swallow. He praised the regent honeyeater as ‘one of the most beautiful birds inhabiting Australia’ but called it the ‘warty-faced honeyeater’.

This book (or pair of books… show more.

Every Sunday night for nearly a decade between the mid-70s and early 80s, most young Australians could be found in one place – in front of the TV, watching Countdown. Countdown was the most powerful force in the local pop/rock scene, the maker and breaker of hits. Published in 1993 in the afterglow of the show’s long run, Glad All Over, by former Age journalist Peter Wilmoth, is an appropriately loving tribute, which includes acknowledging the many (like me!) who loved to hate the show but still always watched it! As mostly oral history, it’s a sparkling story, and if the Countdown phenomenon still begs harder analysis – because as much as it was a great booster for Australian music, it actually blocked just as much – that’s the nature of a new historiography: the field has to get opened up first, and then is subject to increasingly… show more.