Blue Ribbons Bitter Bread
Title | Blue Ribbons Bitter Bread PDF eBook |
Author | Susanna de Vries |
Publisher | Pirgos Press |
Pages | 569 |
Release | 2018-10-01 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 1925281795 |
This unforgettable story has become an Australian classic describing how an Australian bush girl saved the lives of 1,000 Polish and Jewish children in a daring escape from the Nazis. This updated edition contains an important eye-witness account of the burning of Smyrna (Izmir) causing a vast number of deaths. The author's father, a young British naval officer, saved hundreds of Greeks from the blaze that destroyed their beautiful city and many of them would be cared for by Joice Loch in a Greek refugee camp and later in the refugee village of Ouranoupolis, now a holiday resort. Joice Loch was an extraordinary Australian. She had the inspired courage that saved many hundreds of Jews and Poles in World War II, the compassion that made her a self-trained doctor to tens of thousands of refugees, the incredible grit that took her close to death in several theatres of war, and the dedication to truth and justice that shone forth in her own books and a lifetime of astonishing heroism. Born in a cyclone in 1887 on a Queensland sugar plantation she grew up in grinding poverty in Gippsland and emerged from years of unpaid drudgery by writing a children's book and freelance journalism. In 1918 she married Sydney Loch, author of a banned book on Gallipoli. After a dangerous time in Dublin during the Troubles, they escaped from possible IRA vengeance to work with the Quakers in Poland. There they rescued countless dispossessed people from disease and starvation and risked death themselves. In 1922 Joice and Sydney went to Greece to aid the 1,500,000 refugees fleeing Turkish persecution. Greece was to become their home. They lived in an ancient tower by the sea in the shadows of Athos, the Holy Mountain, and worked selflessly for decades to save victims of war, famine and disease. During World War II, Joice Loch was an agent for the Allies in Eastern Europe and pulled off a spectacular escape to snatch over a thousand Jews and Poles from death just before the Nazis invaded Bucharest, escorting them via Constantinople to Palestine. By the time she died in 1982 she had written ten books, saved many thousands of lives and was one of the world's most decorated women. At her funeral the Greek Orthodox Bishop of Oxford named her 'one of the most significant women of the twentieth century.' This classic Australian biography is a tribute to one of Australia's most heroic women, who always spoke with great fondness of Queensland as her birthplace. In 2006, a Loch Memorial Museum was opened in the tower by the sea in Ouranoupolis, a tribute to the Lochs and their humanitarian work.
The Bibliography of Australasian Judaica 1788-2008
Title | The Bibliography of Australasian Judaica 1788-2008 PDF eBook |
Author | Serge Liberman |
Publisher | Hybrid Publishers |
Pages | 1093 |
Release | 2018-11-01 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1742981291 |
This bibliography includes all traceable self-contained books, monographs, pamphlets and chapters from books which in some way pertain to Jews in Australia and New Zealand between 1788 and 2008 Born in Russia in 1942, Serge Liberman came to Australia in 1951, where he now works as a medical practitioner. As author of several short-story collections including On Firmer Shores, A Universe of Clowns, The Life That I Have Led, and The Battered and the Redeemed, he has three times received the Alan Marshall Award and has also been a recipient of the NSW Premier's Literary Award. In addition, he is compiler of two previous editions of A Bibliography of Australian Judaica. Several of his titles have been set as study texts in Australian and British high schools and universities. His literary work has been widely published; he has been Editor and Literary Editor of several respected journals and has contributed to many other publications.
Lusting for London
Title | Lusting for London PDF eBook |
Author | P. Morton |
Publisher | Springer |
Pages | 492 |
Release | 2011-12-05 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1137002107 |
This book examines the flight of young Australian writers to London in the decades before and after Federation in 1901. Peter Morton studies how their careers were shaped by shifting their country of residence, the expatriate experience, and how the loss of these expatriates affected the evolving literary culture of Australia.
The Flower Hunter
Title | The Flower Hunter PDF eBook |
Author | Christine Morton-Evans |
Publisher | National Library Australia |
Pages | 354 |
Release | 2009 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN | 064227701X |
Ellis Rowan was one of Australia's most accomplished artists and an incredible--if somewhat unexpected--adventurer. During World War I Ellis ventured alone into the tropical jungles of New Guinea in search of all 72 known species of the Bird of Paradise. Not only was she the first white woman to do such a thing, she was also 70 years old. The Flower Hunter is the incredible story of a woman who went to extraordinary lengths to paint her beloved subject matter, journeying to some of the most wild and inhospitable areas of Australia and beyond. On her death in 1922 there was hardly a household in Australia that didn't know her name. Sadly today she is all but forgotten, yet her work lives on in the 970 paintings carefully preserved in the National Library of Australia and in this, the definitive story of Ellis Rowan's remarkable life.
Trailblazers
Title | Trailblazers PDF eBook |
Author | Susanna de Vries |
Publisher | Pirgos Press |
Pages | 469 |
Release | 2018-10-01 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 1925280195 |
Caroline Chisolm's hard work and determination changed the history of female migration to Australia and ensured better conditions for families on migrant ships and offered them paid work.Eliza Hawkins was a trailblazer, surviving a dangerous journey as the first European woman to cross the Blue Mountains to Bathurst, travelling by horse and cart.Mary Gaunt from Ballarat dared to lead her own expeditions in West Africa and China, travelling from Peking to the edge of the Gobi desert in a mule cart and became a very popular travel writer and novelist.Hilda Rix Nicholas fought for women painters to be taken seriously and held successful exhibitions in France and Britain, before returning to Australia to paint superb images of rural life in the Monaro.Sister Anne Donnell was one of the first nurses to volunteer in World War One. Her letters made her famous, recounting the sufferings of Anzacs in a military hospital on Lemnos, where British administrative bungles kept the nurses and their patients short of sheets, bandages and drinking water.Nell Tritton from Brisbane became personal assistant and translator to handsome Alexander Kerensky, the reformist Russian Prime Minister who was later deposed by Lenin. As Madame Kerensky she helped him escape assassins sent by Stalin. As the Nazis advanced on Paris Nell used her own money to purchase forged Spanish visas so her husband's Russian-Jewish employees and their families could escape from the invading Nazis.Louise Mack worked in Tuscany and became the world's first female war correspondent in German-occupied Belgium. She wrote a bestselling war memoir and donated her royalties to help Belgian war victims before returning to Sydney, where she married an Anzac veteran.Margaret Ogg and Vida Goldstein were ridiculed when they dared to claim that women were intelligent enough to sit in Parliament. Enid Lyons, mother of twelve, became Australia's first Cabinet Minister, but it took another 50 years for Julia Gillard to become Australia's first female Prime Minister.A lawyer by profession, mother and grandmother, Dame Quentin Bryce blazed a trail for women by becoming Australia's first female Governor-General. After leaving office she returned to her home state of Queensland where she now heads a programme designed to combat domestic violence.
Royal Marriages
Title | Royal Marriages PDF eBook |
Author | Susanna de Vries |
Publisher | Pirgos Press |
Pages | 593 |
Release | 2018-10-01 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 192528364X |
Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, made history when she married Prince Harry in a genuine love match, as the first divorced, bi-racial American woman to be welcomed into the British royal family. But for centuries it was accepted that princes married virginal aristocrats for dynastic reasons (and often the large dowries of their brides) and few arranged royal marriages were happy. Most kings and princes took mistresses – or, in the case of Edward II and James I, male lovers. Royal wives were used as baby factories and if found to be unfaithful could be beheaded or have the lover murdered. Prince George of Wales (later George IV) married for money but found his bride, Princess Caroline of Brunswick, physically repulsive, and his marriage became the first War of the Wales. This fascinating book is now able to tell the full story of the second War of the Wales – the tragic mismatch of Prince Charles and Princess Diana which ended in 'Camillagate' and divorce. Now, decades later, the Queen has relaxed the ancient rules, allowing Prince Charles to marry his mistress and the Queen's grandsons, William and Harry to marry for love, in a significant change in royal history.
Nell
Title | Nell PDF eBook |
Author | Susanna de Vries |
Publisher | Pirgos Press |
Pages | 344 |
Release | 2020-05-18 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 0980621690 |
Attractive Nell Tritton was determined to embrace a life of adventure after her elder siblings died in the 1919 flu pandemic. She became Brisbane’s first female journalist and won prizes for rally driving before moving to Paris, met struggling writers and fell in love with a penniless Tsarist officer. Warned by her wealthy father to avoid fortune hunters, Nell married after a whirlwind courtship. She wrote Tales from the Left Bank but her publisher demanded sexual privileges so she sold individual chapters as short stories. Her spy novel set against the infamous ‘Lockhart plot’ to kill Lenin in September 1918 was banned under the Official Secrets Act. When divorced, Nell worked in Paris for the former Russian Prime Minister, Alexander Kerensky who edited an anti-Communist anti-Hitler newspaper. Her rally driving skills saved her husband from Stalin’s assassins in a harrowing car chase through the narrow streets of Montparnasse. As the Germans invaded Paris, Kerensky was on Hitler’s death list and they joined a long queue of cars heading south. German planes bombed cars and machine-gunned their drivers so they sheltered in a ditch with only polluted water to drink. Eventually they reached the coast and were rescued by a British warship. The American government financed their passage to New York, where Kerensky became an advisor on Russian affairs and they were treated like royalty by exiled Russians. Nell suffered kidney damage as a result of drinking polluted water. They returned to Brisbane for the last months of Nell’s life when her family home became a centre of international intrigue.