Showing results by narrator "David Tredinnick" in All Categories

After a men's room confrontation with his new boss right-hand man, Maori cop Tito Ihaka has been sent into exile. And yet, out of the blue McGrail summons him back to Auckland. Christopher Lilywhite, the businesswoman s terminally ill husband whom Ihaka suspected was behind his wife's death, wants to see him. Lilywhite confesses that he had his wife murdered, but he dealt with the hit-man at arm's length so has no idea who he is. In quick succession Lilywhite and another potential source of information are murdered.

From the age of 12, Scott Ryder knew he wanted to join the army, and he signed up as soon as he could. After serving as a paratrooper and in East Timor with 3 RAR, he wanted more. He trained all summer and took the grueling selection course for the commandos, earning the prized green beret on his second attempt. Forged in Fire takes us inside the secretive world of the commandos. Ryder shares battlefield stories from his tours to Afghanistan, where his regiment saw some of the heaviest fighting Australian forces have experienced since the Vietnam War.

It was the afternoon of 18 August 1966, hot, humid with grey monsoonal skies. D Company, 6RAR were four kilometres east of their Nui Dat base, on patrol in a rubber plantation not far from the abandoned village of Long Tan. A day after their base had suffered a mortar strike, they were looking for Viet Cong soldiers. Then—just when they were least expecting—they found them. Under withering fire, some Diggers perished, some were grievously wounded, the rest fought on, as they remained under sustained attack. For hours these men fought for their lives against the enemy onslaught.

In 1868, Charles Dickens dispatches his youngest child to Australia. Like his brother Alfred before him, 16-year-old Edward is expected to learn to apply himself in what his father considers to be the new land of opportunity. Posted to a remote sheep station in New South Wales, Edward discovers that Charles Dickens' fame has reached even there, as has the gossip about his father's scandalous liaison with an actress.

Somewhere deep beneath the wild seas of the southern Indian Ocean, perhaps in the eerie underwater canyons of Broken Ridge along the Seventh Arc satellite band, lies the answer to the world's greatest aviation mystery. Why, on the night of 8 March 2014, did Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 suddenly U-turn, zig-zag up the Straits of Malacca, then vanish with 239 souls on board? Was it an elaborate murder-suicide by a rogue pilot? A terrible accident such as onboard fire, rapid decompression or systems failure? A terrorist hijacking gone wrong? Or something else entirely?

Bob Irwin's extraordinary life as a wildlife pioneer, father to wildlife warrior Steve and founder of Australia Zoo, told in his own words. Bob Irwin grew up in the Dandenong Ranges, where his passion for wildlife was born. A near-death experience while working as a plumber made Bob realise he needed to follow his dreams, so he and his wife, Lyn, moved their young family to Queensland, where they opened a wildlife park on the Sunshine Coast. The Irwin children grew up in around the Beerwah Reptile and Wildlife Park....

In 1978, Warren Fellows was convicted of heroin trafficking between Thailand and Australia. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in the notorious Bang Kwang prison - better known as the Bangkok Hilton. It was the beginning of 12 years of hell in a place where sewer rats and cockroaches are the only nutritious food, where prison guards laugh as they deliver pulverising blows, and where the worst punishment is the khun deo - solitary confinement, Thai style.

Australia has always been a land of mysteries. Some are ancient, some are historical and many continue to perplex us today—and will probably continue to do so tomorrow. More often than most of us would like to think, things simply vanish and people disappear without explanation, leaving a trail of heartbreak across generations. Australia also has its fair share of buried loot and fabulous riches gone missing—somewhere. Master storyteller Graham Seal has gathered mysteries from around Australia.

When top Hollywood star and bad girl Clarise Chalmers met a writer of trashy military science fiction William Moreland by chance in a bar she knew he was not her type at all. He was good looking but not of the film star standard she had come to expect and certainly not mega-successful with a top-range sports car. Anyway, she had a boyfriend—another top star and heart throb for millions of female fans. But Will made a lot of sense suggesting solutions to problems that had been plaguing her.

Steve Austin isn't your average dog trainer. In this feel-good, yarn-laden memoir he shares amazing stories from a career of rescuing and training shelter dogs to become a crack force of K9s, culminating in his work for the Young Diggers program, which pairs specially trained dogs with returned Diggers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and more, with astonishing results.

At the dawn of the 20th century, young Dan Sullivan signs on to fight the Boers, but discovers war has horrors beyond the battle fields. In East Africa, a railway crosses a land with an unimaginable throng of wild animals. It is the golden age of the white hunter - men whose exciting lives entice rich hunters to go in search of big, dangerous game. After many failed attempts, old Bill Freeman sees his chance to make his fortune as a hunter and convinces Dan to join his fledgling safari company.

Best-selling author Evan McHugh gets behind the wheel of his four-wheel drive to find out what life is like in outback stations. Given special access to these properties, Evan goes behind the scenes at Adria Downs in the dead heart of Central Australia, helps drove cattle from the air at Wave Hill, and gets a lesson in trapping dingoes at the remote Commonwealth Hill station. Following in the footsteps of the pioneering greats, Evan reveals the fascinating history of these outback stations, and what it takes to work on one today.

Frank and Leon are two men from different times, discovering that sometimes all you learn from your parents' mistakes is how to make different ones of your own. Frank is trying to escape his troubled past by running away to his family's beach shack. As he struggles to make friends with his neighbours and their precocious young daughter, Sal, he discovers the community has fresh wounds of its own. A girl is missing, and when Sal too disappears, suspicion falls on Frank. Decades earlier, Leon tries to hold together his family's cake shop as their suburban life crumbles in the aftermath of the Korean War.

Michael Clarke is an international cricket legend and one of the most talked about Australians of the 21st century. He was the greatest batsman of his generation and, as captain, possessed the sharpest tactical mind in the game. Bursting onto the scene in 2004 with a Test century on debut, Michael Clarke was Australian cricket's golden boy. And the batting prodigy they nicknamed Pup certainly fulfilled his destiny in a stellar 11-year international career of 115 Tests, 8,643 runs and 28 centuries.

Yearning for what they’d left behind and disillusioned by city living, Jack Ferguson and Harry Turner leave Perth to return to the rough opal-mining environment of Coober Pedy, on the edge of the Stuart Ranges in South Australia. They discover, however, that all is not as idyllic as they remembered. They face harsh conditions, personal trials and a lack of funds. But determination, hard work and a little luck see them begin to establish themselves....

Robert G. Barrett is a master of political incorrectness. For more than a decade now, Robert G. Barrett has been entertaining Australians with the cocky Queenslander Les Norton and his outrageous exploits. In this collection, as well as more great Les Norton stories, Robert G. Barrett offers his views on getting published, getting famous, getting the dole and getting a date. Rider on the Storm and Other Bits is Les Norton at his worst and Robert G. Barrett at his best.

From the mountains to the valleys, from big cities to tiny towns, to the outback and our islands, Di Morrissey knows this country. She's been there. In The Road Back, Di weaves a tale of reconnection and starting over. Journalist Chris Baxter is at a crossroads. Returning with his teenage daughter to his mother's house in the beautiful township of Neverend, Chris hopes to pick up the pieces after his life takes an unexpected turn. Sometimes taking the road back is the start of a journey forward.

In March 1945 Reg Cleworth, a navigator on PBY Catalina seaplanes flying out of Darwin, went missing in action. No details were ever given about the incident that took his life, nor the reason his plane went down. For Reg’s younger brother, Robert, the news came as a prophecy fulfilled. The last time they saw each other, Reg confided in Robert, ‘I don’t think I’m coming back’.

Summer, 1847. People are getting used to the corpses lying by the road and along the ditches. For John Mitchel - lawyer, journalist, activist, politician - the word 'famine' will forever conjure the hollowed faces of Ireland's dead, the liquid Irish of the past now mute on their tongues. Propelled by disgust at the injustice, Mitchel will do all he can to fight for the destitute, the starved, the forgotten. His odyssey will take him all the way to America - that land of promise - but it will draw him into a terrible paradox.

When Brendan Watkins was eight years old, his parents told him he was adopted. In his late twenties, he discovered the identity of his birth mother - a woman who had been a Catholic nun when he was born - but she wanted nothing to do with him. For thirty years he only managed limited communication with her, and had no clues to the identity of his birth father. In 2018, a DNA test led him to the truth: he was the son of a celebrated missionary priest.