Australia Adventure

On this adventure we're travelling right around the world - to visit Australia! We're going to learn about everything this brilliant vibrant county has to offer. We're going to learn about the amazing Great Barrier Reef, see the magnificent Uluru, encounter some wonderful wildlife and we might even have time to take in a performance at the Opera House.

Miss Arabella Braithewaite of Switherby knows there is no future for the 10 orphans - a remarkable mix of genteel and working-class children - she has gathered together in these years of England’s grim factory growth in the early 1820s. Her plan, quite outrageous in the eyes of most, is to take the children to Australia to take up a land grant. Thus, one day the townsfolk gather to watch a line of departing “pilgrims” led by the fearless “Missabella”.

One month into our stay, we'd managed to dispatch most of our charges. We executed the chickens. One of the cats disappeared, clearly disgusted with our urban ways. And Lucky [the cow] was escaping almost daily. It seemed we didn't have much of a talent for farming. And we still had eleven months to go." Antonia Murphy, you might say, is an unlikely farmer. Born and bred in San Francisco, she spent much of her life as a liberal urban cliché, and her interactions with the animal kingdom rarely extended past dinner.

Ed Stafford - adventurer extraordinaire and Guinness World Record holder for walking the length of the Amazon River - likes a challenge. Casting about for an adventure that would top the extraordinary feat he recounts in Walking the Amazon, Stafford decides to maroon himself on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific. His mission: to survive for 60 days equipped with nothing - no food, water, or even clothing - except the video cameras he would use to document his time.

The author of the acclaimed Only Killers and Thieves returns to turn-of-the-century Australia in this powerful sequel that follows the story of brothers Tommy and Billy McBride, the widow of their family’s killer, Katherine Sullivan, and the sadistic Native Police officer Edmund Noone.

Will Chaffey is 18 when he boards a plane in New York bound for Australia. Taking time off to work and travel, Will meets an enigmatic wanderer and herpetologist. Together they cross the inland desert to the tropical northwest coast, home to the saltwater crocodile, a known man-eater and a predator who has been hunting since the age of the dinosaurs. They devise a plan to explore the remote Prince Regent River, a trek so dangerous it had never been attempted by outsiders.

Swept off to live in Sydney by his Australian bride, American writer Tony Horwitz longs to explore the exotic reaches of his adopted land. So one day, armed only with a backpack and fantasies of the open road, he hitchhikes off into the awesome emptiness of Australia's outback. What follows is a hilarious, hair-raising ride into the hot red center of a continent so desolate that civilization dwindles to a gas pump and a pub. While the outback's terrain is inhospitable, its scattered inhabitants are anything but.

This is the most comprehensive guide to these islands. Where to stay, where to eat, how to get around, what to see and do. All of the practical information you need is spelled out in detail. And hundreds of color photos bring the islands alive!

Inspired by Disney Animation Studios' latest film, Moana, this middle grade novel features characters and adventures based on the rich culture of Oceania. It includes original content in the form of mini folktales interspersed throughout the story of the film.

The future. Climate change has rendered much of the world desolate. Crops are failing. Rising seas have flooded coastal communities. The earth is dying, and humanity careens toward extinction. Enter the Olympus Project—a plan to colonise the moon, building on the fledgling Artemis base, led by three of humankind’s best and brightest: Troy Bruin, Xavier Consus, and Xanthe Waters.

Dive deep into the mystical world of Aboriginal culture with Charles William Peck's landmark work, Australian Legends. As one of the earliest compilations, this book intricately narrates tales steeped in Dreamtime mythology, helping you explore the indigenous culture's understanding of the cosmos, morality, and the natural world. Peck's storytelling draws you into an ancestral past that resonates profoundly with modern listeners.

Sixteen-year-old Nipper and his Gallipoli mates Lanky, Spud, Bluey and Wallaby Joe are starving, freezing and ill-equipped. By November 1915 they know that that there is more to winning a war than courage. The Gallipoli campaign has been lost. Nipper has played cricket with the Turks in the opposing dugout, dodged rocket fire and rescued drowning, freezing men when the blizzard snow melted. He is one of the few trusted with the secret kept from even most of the officers: how an entire army will vanish from the Peninsula over three impeccably planned nights.

Socialite Abigail Mulholland has spent a lifetime surrounded by luxury…until her scenic flight plummets into the remote Australian wilderness. When rescue doesn’t come, she finds herself thrust into a world of deadly snakes and primitive conditions in a landscape that is both brutal and beautiful. But trekking the wilds of Kakadu means fighting two wars—one against the elements and the other against the magnetic pull she feels toward fellow survivor Mackenzie, a much younger man.

It is 1885. After a decade spent fighting for Queen and Country across the globe, Colonel Ian Steele is enjoying the quiet life in the colony of New South Wales, reunited with his friend Conan Curry and watching over his children and numerous business enterprises. But the British Empire's pursuits are ceaseless, and when the colony's soldiers are required to assist a campaign in Sudan, North Africa, Ian's son Lieutenant Josiah Steele heeds the call, despite an ultimatum from the love of his life, Marian.

Sandy Thorne launched the first bestseller I've Met Some Bloody Wags!: By Biting the Top Off a Stubbie of Beer on the Midday Show, and has spent over 20 years travelling the world spinning bush yarns and humour. Battler gets a vacation when his missus wins a holiday on the Gold Coast. The kids have never seen the sea and Battler has never seen the brief-as-brief bikinis…they're all just about to go completely woomba! Please note: Battler O'Brien is no softie.

The immense state of Queensland nearly takes up Australia's entire northeastern quadrant, stretching from halfway up the rough-chiseled east coast all the way to the middle of the Gulf of Carpentaria. With a landmass of 1,727,200 square kilometers, it's the second-largest state after Western Australia, and it encompasses every environment imaginable. To the east, golden beaches and touristy surf towns are cloaked in thick swathes of rainforest and fronted by palm-fringed islands in clear, azure bays.

Julia is granted a working holiday visa and heads to Australia. Never one to do things quietly, she tours the country via a jumble of hostels, road trips, and randomness, indulging in more than her fair share of debauchery along the way. She attempts and fails to learn to surf, attends her very first festival, and explores the open-minded village of Nimbin.

Oliver Wormwood is sure his new job in the library will be boring. Until he learns that books hold great power - and danger. By the end of his first day, Oliver has witnessed the librarian's death, been frozen by a book, met a perplexing number of cats, and fought off a horde of terrifying creatures. With only a mysterious girl called Agatha to show him the ropes, Oliver needs to learn fast . . . if he wants to live longer than the 112 assistant librarians before him.

As the son of 'the Colonial', legendary Queen's Captain Ian Steele, Josiah Steele has big shoes to fill. Although his home in the colony of New South Wales is a world away, he dreams of one day travelling to England so he can study to be a commissioned officer in the Scottish Regiment. After cutting his teeth in business on the rough and ready goldfields of Far North Queensland's Palmer River, he finally realises his dream and travels to England, where he is accepted into the Sandhurst military academy.

Australia is different - a vast island continent with distances so great that the capital of Western Australia is closer to Singapore than it is to Sydney. The landscape embraces magnificent tropical rainforests and deserts the size of several European states; temperate areas that sustain a flourishing wine industry, making Australia the world's fourth largest wine exporter; and a 16,000-mile coastline of breathtaking beaches. Plus its unique fauna is testament to the country's down-underness.