Showing results by narrator "James Saunders" in All Categories

When Campbell & Clark, Scottish merchants based in India, dispatched an Indian ship hurriedly renamed the Sydney Cove to the colony of NSW in 1797, they were hoping to make their fortune. The ship's 'speculative' cargo included all kinds of products to entice the new colony's inhabitants, including 7,000 gallons of rum intended to be sold to the Rum Corp. But when the ship went down north of Van Diemen's Land, cargo master William Campbell and 16 other crew members decided to walk the 600 miles to Sydney Town to get help and rescue crew and cargo.

Sex workers in 19th-century Melbourne were judged morally corrupt by the respectable world around them. But theirs was a thriving trade, with links to the police and political leaders of the day, and the leading brothels were usually managed by women. While today a popular bar and a city lane are famously named after Madame Brussels, the identities of the other ‘flash madams’, the ‘dressed girls’ who worked for them and the hundreds of women who solicited on the streets of the Little Lon district of Melbourne are not remembered.

An old witch is losing her power, her husband is in a living death and a criminal mastermind is dying: what if the immense life force in one very special girl could save them all? It’s the mid-1970s, and when young Lía Munro moves into a big country house in Australia after moving from Hong Kong with her father, Paul, things start to happen that make her question who she is and what she might really be. The old house has ghosts; her father, Paul, has a past that links him to both this rural hideaway and the ancient Italian witch named Adelina Russo who once held sway....

Stories from when life was so bad it was funny. We've all had days when if we didn't laugh, we'd cry. Whether it's a domestic drama, a career cock-up or just a run-of-the-mill disaster, we've all been there - no matter who we are. In this hilarious and moving collection, well-known Australians from all walks of life share their stories as a kind of mass therapy: a feel-good tonic for when the proverbial s--t hits the fan.

Stories from when life was so bad it was funny. We've all had days when if we didn't laugh, we'd cry. Whether it's a domestic drama, a career cock-up or just a run-of-the-mill disaster, we've all been there - no matter who we are. In this hilarious and moving collection, well-known Australians from all walks of life share their stories as a kind of mass therapy: a feel-good tonic for when the proverbial s--t hits the fan.

You'd think a ghost grandad would be a great sidekick for a wannabe detective. Unfortunately, if there was a 'being a good ghost' exam, Jay's grandad would fail spectacularly—he hates walking through walls, he can't touch anything, and he's rubbish at haunting. Since his dad literally did a vanishing act (he's a magician), Jay Patel has turned detective, and now, with the help of his granddad, he's on the case of a dead body that vanished from the library of his Glasgow primary school. But what do diamonds, blackmail, and dodgy launderettes have to do with it?

You'd think a ghost grandad would be a great sidekick for a wannabe detective. Unfortunately, if there was a 'being a good ghost' exam, Jay’s grandad would fail spectacularly – he hates walking through walls, he can't touch anything and he's rubbish at haunting. Jay is investigating a murder in a fancy country hotel where the cause of death appears to be – soup! While Jay is surrounded by suspects, Grandad has his own informants – the ghosts haunting the hotel. But will they catch the killer before it's too ladle?

As a boy living in a tribe in what is now South Sudan, the youngest country in the world, Ayik Chut Deng was a member of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA). During his time as a child soldier, he witnessed unspeakable violence and was regularly tortured by older boys. At age 19, he and his family escaped the conflict in Sudan and resettled in Toowoomba, Australia. But adjusting to his new life in small-town Queensland was more difficult than he anticipated. 

Popular culture has mythologised the Dunera Boys–but who were the real men who sailed on the infamous ship, and how did the voyage transform their lives? Art historian Tonia Eckfeld draws on a deeply personal history to tell the story of her father and her uncle, Jewish refugees whose lives were shaped indelibly by their wartime experiences and internment–each to very different outcomes.