100 Books Like Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray

I first read Voss – Patrick White’s 1957 fictionalised account of the doomed expedition and eventual disappearance of German explorer Ludwig Leichhardt - 25 years ago at university. I returned to it a couple of years ago as I embarked on my fifth novel, similarly set in 19th century Sydney, recalling how I enjoyed the novel in my earlier reading but finding myself, in this my second reading two decades later, utterly blown away by White’s stunning and bitingly witty evocation of mid-1800s Sydney society. 

Although The Territory was published in the 1940s, the book is as vivid as if it came out last year. Neither a novel nor a history, it is an evocative account of Ernestine Hill’s extensive travels around Northern Australia, the Aboriginal and white people she met, the stories she came across, and the joys and hardships she faced. I view it as essential reading for anyone planning to visit the Top End of Australia. I first read it while I was mapping out the plot of my own book, and was blown away by Ernestine Hill’s evocation of The Territory. 

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. 

I love this novel by Jessica Anderson for its subtle psychological insights and its powerful evocation of an Australian colony in its early days. Set in the 1830s, The Commandant tells the story of a young Irish woman arriving in Australia to visit her sister, whose husband runs the Moreton Bay penal settlement, where he is much-hated by the convicts for his fanatical implementation of punishments. Becoming the object of a convict’s obsession, Frances feels responsible for that convict’s brutal lashing and is changed by the experience. The Indigenous people are shadowy figures in the background, for Anderson’s focus is on the brutality of the penal regime and how it affects a young woman’s innocence. 

When August’s grandfather—the bedrock of a multi-generational Wiradjuri family—dies, she must return to Australia, and to the town of Prosperous. There, she comes face-to-face with the things that have driven her out, a process that began long before her birth. The book’s three narrators chart the casualties of colonialism: the loss of indigenous culture, the stamping out of language, the land that is taken and forever altered. But the book is so much more than a catalogue of losses, and Winch’s song is ultimately one of identity—and history—reclaimed.  

The quality and production of this phenomenal hardcover of imposing size are mesmeric. Its metaphoric text on mental illness and accompanying artwork are visually appealing and poignantly immersive. Transformative text transports the reader, any reader—child, young adult, adult—to beauty and hurt, evolution and transformation. The perfect book for anyone living with psychosis or other illness, and for everyone else to understand the fragility of debilitating conditions.  

I could not bear to put this book down. Each time I reached the end, I started again from the beginning. It lived on my bedside table for months. It was only after three readings that I could let it go.

Gregory Day had drawn me right into the places and times of early settler colonialism; his characters formed, against the odds, a way of life that was creative—poetic, musical, sensual, and, above all, ecological. They listened to the earth and found their place as part of it, belonging to it and belonging to the Earth. 

This really is quite an extraordinary book, published on 1 January 1999. Alice Thomson is a British journalist who came to Australia to write a history of the overland telegraph line connecting Darwin to Adelaide. The line was built by her great-grandfather Charles Todd, a young English engineer. It is partly a touching love story, part a great historical narrative, and part a fascinating travel book. To do her research, Alice Thomson and her husband came to Australia and drove the length of the old telegraph line, picking up anecdotes and atmosphere along the way. As an aside, I mention that a seamless line of women in Alice Thomson’s family have borne the name Alice. Alice Springs was named after Charles Todd’s young wife Alice. The dry river that runs through Alice Springs is called the Todd River.

The first time I set foot in Sydney, Australia (after a 19-hour flight from Los Angeles), I knew that I needed to learn as much about the history of that continent as possible.

In bars and cafes, I would listen to Australians speaking to each other, marveling at their accents. I wondered how a colony of convicts could thrive in a place completely different from their homes in England and Ireland. I wondered what they did to the Aboriginal people to claim as much land and wealth as they had.

This is why I was drawn to Christina Baker Kline’s book, which follows three young women in Australia, telling the story of its colonization in the 19th century from very different perspectives. Kline’s prose is effortless–descriptive without getting in its own way, but not simplistic. At some point, when I was reading this book cover to cover, I looked up… show more.

I loved this book of adventure, passion, discovery and love.

Flinders was one of the most important pioneers of early Australia, and yet he is hardly mentioned in Australia today. The book promotes itself by saying Flinders put Australia on the map. In fact, he was the first person to circumnavigate Australia and create the charts that are still used today.

The book made me realise what a struggle his life became, complicated by the war with France, his long imprisonment, shipwrecks, hunger, and his longing to return to his beloved wife Ann.