Showing results by narrator "David Tredinnick" in All Categories

Birdsville is one of the most remote police postings in Australia. It can be lonely and uneventful for weeks, then the dramas come thick and fast: from desert rescues to rising floods, venomous vipers to visiting VIPs. Throw in heat, dust and flies and it's not a job for the faint-hearted, unless you're Senior Constable Neale McShane, who has single-handedly taken care of a beat the size of Victoria for the past 10 years. Recently retired, Neale and his family thrived on the adventures and colourful times.

Welcome to Volume 9 of Seniors' Stories displaying the thoughts, emotions, lifestyles, pleasures, disappointments, elation, sadness, and every emotion we have been willing to share of the exciting age group known in Australia as our Seniors.

On 4th July 1975, Juanita Nielsen set out on foot through the wintry streets of Sydney's red-light district. The chic heiress and newspaper publisher had a business meeting with a man called Eddie Trigg, a manager at the seedy Carousel Cabaret nightclub in Kings Cross. The following day, Juanita was reported missing. She has not been seen since and her body has never been found.

Watsonia gathers the fruits of a writing life. It covers everything from Australian humour to America gone berserk; from Don Bradman to Oscar Wilde; from birds and horses to history and politics. Wherever Don Watson turns his incisive gaze, the results are as illuminating as they are enjoyable. Watsonia displays the many sides of Don Watson: historian, speechwriter, social critic, humourist, biographer and lover of nature and sports.

Neale Daniher sat down to pen a letter to the grandchildren he'll never get to know. And then he kept on writing. In 2013, the AFL legend was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease - a cruel and incurable condition. He had a choice. He could spend his remaining time focused on himself, or he could seize the opportunity to make a better future for others. Neale is no stranger to challenge. When All is Said & Done is a book of stories and wisdom from a man who has always held his beliefs to the Bunsen burner of life.

After the departure of the woman he loves, Frank drives out to a shack by the ocean that he had last visited as a teenager. There, among the sugarcane and sand dunes, he struggles to rebuild his life. Forty years earlier, Leon is growing up in Sydney, turning out treacle tarts at his parents’ bakery and flirting with one of the local girls. But when he’s drafted to serve in Vietnam, he finds himself confronting the same experiences that haunt his war-veteran father. As these two stories weave around each other, we learn what binds Frank and Leon and what may keep them apart.

The secret and dangerous operations of Australia's Pacific War Catalina crews told for the first time. RAAF Black Cats chronicles a little-known, yet crucial and courageous chapter in Australia's war history. While this story involved Australia and the United States, very few people on either side of the Pacific know of the significance the RAAF Catalina Squadrons had on the outcome of the war against Japan and General Douglas MacArthur's triumphant 'return' to the Philippines.

On an unnamed island, in a Gothic hospital sitting in the shadow of a volcano, a wordless orphan girl works on the wards housing the insane and the incapable. When a silent, unmoving and unnerving new patient - a foreigner - arrives at the hospital, strange phenomena occur, bizarre murders take place and the lives of the patients and the island's inhabitants are thrown into turmoil. What happens between them is an extraordinary exploration of consciousness, reality and madness.

At first it looked like a swag, said the grader driver who found the body just off the road outside the outback town of Katherine. Police identify the dead man as Ray Nicefero, who'd recently appeared in court for aggravated assault and breaching a domestic violence order. Three days later, the constabulary rounds up three young local suspects: Christopher Malyschko, 24, Darren 'Spider' Halfpenny, 22, and 19-year-old Zak Grieve, who happens to be Indigenous.

How a famous cold case, a murderous fire and a quest for justice finally brought down one of Australia's worst killers. In 2017, Vincent O’Dempsey was sentenced to life in prison for the brutal murders of Barbara McCulkin and her two young daughters. It took over 40 years to bring him to justice. Feared for decades by criminals and police alike, O’Dempsey associated with convicted underworld figures and has been linked to a string of haunting cold cases, including the deadly Whiskey au Go Go nightclub firebombing that killed 15 innocent people.

In McGahan's prequel to his best-selling debut, Praise, Gordon, failed writer and bottleshop boy, feels his life is going nowhere and heads north with Wayne in search of their rightful place in the culture of a nation. It's the Bicentennial year, and for Gordon it seems his life is going nowhere. It's time to escape. From his overcrowded house, from Brisbane, from Expo 88, from everything.

Cavalier has heard that his daughter - kidnapped by a notorious Mexican drug warlord - is still alive but is a sex slave for the Mexican drug gang operating in the Golden Triangle. Through his contacts, he manages to uncover the fact that the Mexicans plan to secretly leave Thailand in the next few days on the Bangkok Express, along with their accumulated fortunes from drugs and sex slave trafficking. Their imminent departure is prompted by intel from their insider contacts that the Americans, led by the CIA and involving Navy Seals, may be closing in on them.

Lance Dillon is owner of a new cattle station on the southern fringe of Australia's Arnhem Land. When an aboriginal hunting party targets Dillon's prize bull for a ritual killing and then spears Dillon in the shoulder, it's clear they want him off their traditional land. Under the merciless rays of the burning sun, the wounded Dillon flees into the bush, with expert tracker Mundaru in hot pursuit. Dillon's city-born wife, Mary, and handsome local policeman Neil Adams set out to search for her husband.

The story of the emergence and dominance of two brilliant Australian soldiers who commanded the most effective armies in defeating the Germans and the Turks in the Great War. Monash and Chauvel is a gripping narrative history that follows the extraordinary campaigns of the two most outstanding battlefield commanders of the First World War across all the Allied armies: John Monash and Harry Chauvel.

Sixteen stories of amazing outback doctors and their heroic deeds, from the best-selling author of Nurses of the Outback. Imagine yourself critically injured or seriously ill in the middle of nowhere. You'd be hoping like hell there was a doctor nearby to take charge - someone resourceful, who'd think quickly and stay calm under pressure; someone who could, if necessary, take charge from a distance. You'd want to be in the safe and sure hands of one of these amazing bush doctors.

The gripping finale to Three Crooked Kings and Jacks and Jokers brings to a close Matthew Condon's best-selling true-crime trilogy. In 1983, the soon-to-be-knighted Police Commissioner Terry Lewis continues to turn a blind eye to the operation of The Joke, a highly organised system of graft payments from illegal gambling, prostitution and illicit drugs. As the tentacles of this fraudulent vice network spread, the fabric holding together the police, judiciary and political system starts to unravel.

In 1943, when Grace and Leo Waterhouse married in Australia, they were part of a young generation ready to sacrifice themselves to win the war, while being confident they would survive. Sixty years on, as Grace recounts what happened to her doomed hero, she can say what she suspected then: that for many men, bravery is its own end.

What do three dogs and a cat have to say when a baby kookaburra is found in their yard? Buddha, the cat, starts by asking, “What the blooming tail is it, mate?” Hoover, one of the dogs, thought it looked like lunch. Ajax thought it was a toy. But Stelze, an aging Doberman, informed everyone it was a baby, and she planned to protect it in every way possible. A young kookaburra named Pirate finds himself on an unfamiliar farm after a storm.

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 O'Brien has been a battler all his life - riding the rodeo circuit and droving sheep with his missus on the far west stock route to survive. But Battler sees that the only chance for his family lies with the "Bundaroo" land ballot. He's prepared to do almost anything to win...

Do you believe in love? Do you trust your partner? Nick Souter did, with good reason - he and Anne had something special. He didn't make a habit of going through her pockets but what's a man supposed to do when he's got a rotten cold and a wife who helps herself to his handkerchiefs? You can't blow your nose on an adulterous love-note but it certainly took Nick's mind off his sniffles. Secrets and lies can turn doubt into obsession and a loving couple into snarling adversaries. Secrets and lies can kill.