The acclaimed naturalist celebrates his native Australia and one of its most extraordinary creatures as he examines how the kangaroo both shapes and is shaped by its environment, looks at Australia's natural history, and traces the evolution of the kangaroo.

Don Tweedie, Fighting Bandsman's Last Stand is a story of courage, determination, heroism, faith, love, and mateship throughout World War II. Don Tweedie’s last stand against the Japanese was in 1942 at Holland Hill, Singapore where he was severely wounded. Most stories that have been written have been more of a historical sense, whereas this is a more personal story. This book is written in three parts, and outlines his childhood/teenage years and leads into World War II, and then how he dealt with the images of war when he returned home in 1945. Part 2 is written from the heart, as it was told to his son about his war experience. Don Tweedie grew up throughout the Depression years, leading into WWII. He worked in a clothing warehouse in Sydney, and always wanted to play in a brass band. He joined the militia in 1937, and then enlisted in the infantry in 1940 to fight for his country. Don Tweedie was posted with the 2/20th Battalion in the Australian 8th Division to Malaya. It was while he was in the infantry that he became a bass drummer for the 2/20th Battalion band. However, he was severely wounded and captured in the fall of Singapore and was placed in captivity in Changi, Burma Railway, Saigon, Singapore, and Japan for the rest of the war. Don Tweedie was a quiet honest and respectful person. He was a very proud man who loved the fact that he fought for his country. More importantly, he was not going to give in to his captors. He had a strong bond between himself and those POWs who suffered or died and witnessed all those atrocities with him. While the physical problems were an issue, it was the emotional and psychological scars that a lot of these men suffered that would haunt them for a lifetime. However, life goes on, and Don Tweedie fulfilled his dreams to own his own cattle studs and play in a brass band. He played in the Forbes Town band for forty-six years right up until he passed away. This book is to pay tribute to Don Tweedie and all his fellow POWs, and also the families and friends of those POWs including the mothers, wives, and girlfriends who suffered along with their husbands, sons, uncles, brothers, grandfathers, or friends.

Don Tweedie, Fighting Bandsman’s Last Stand is a story of courage, determination, heroism, faith, love, and mateship throughout World War II. Don Tweedtie’s last stand against the Japanese was in 1942 at Holland Hill, Singapore where he was severely wounded. Most stories that have been written have been more of a historical sense, whereas this is a more personal story. This book is written in three parts, and outlines his childhood/teenage years and leads into World War II, and then how he dealt with the images of war when he returned home in 1945. Part 2 is written from the heart, as it was told to his son about his war experience. Don Tweedie grew up throughout the Depression years, leading into WWII. He worked in a clothing warehouse in Sydney, and always wanted to play in a brass band. He joined the militia in 1937, and then enlisted in the infantry in 1940 to fight for his country. Don Tweedie was posted with the 2/20th Battalion in the Australian 8th Division to Malaya. It was while he was in the infantry that he became a bass drummer for the 2/20th Battalion band. However, he was severely wounded and captured in the fall of Singapore and was placed in captivity in Changi, Burma Railway, Saigon, Singapore, and Japan for the rest of the war.

The first scholarly dictionary of Australian and New Zealand English, including loan words from indigenous languages, originally published in 1898.

Drawn from engagements ranging from World War I through to operations in East Timor and Iraq, these stories are taken from the Australians at War Film Archive, a collection of the memories of more than 2000 Australians who have served, both on the front line and at home. Some are unbelievably, unbearably tragic, even after sixty or seventy years; others are the golden memories of happy, albeit unusual, times. And, more often than not, they are stories that have never been shared with others, even family members. There are stories from winners of the Victoria Cross; from the POW camps of Asia and Europe; from the patrols of Vietnam, through to those who served as peacekeepers in Rwanda and Somalia. There are stories from nurses, from those who have volunteered to serve with aid agencies and stories of ordinary Australians caught up by circumstances and by duty, in wartime. These are their words.

From the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century, hundreds of British women wrote about and drew from nature. Some—like the beloved children's author Beatrix Potter, who produced natural history about hedgehogs as well as fiction about rabbits—are still familiar today. But others have all but disappeared from view. Barbara Gates recovers these lost works and prints them alongside little-known pieces by more famous authors, like Potter's field notes on hedgehogs, reminding us of better known stories that help set the others in context. The works contained in this volume are as varied as the women who produced them. They include passionate essays on the protection of animals, vivid accounts of travel and adventure from the English seashore to the Indian Alps, poetry and fiction, and marvelous tales of nature for children. Special features of the book include a detailed chronology placing each selection in its historical and literary context; biographical sketches of each author's life and works; a comprehensive bibliography of primary and secondary literature; and over sixty illustrations. An ideal introduction to women's powerful and diverse responses to the natural world, In Nature's Name will be treasured by anyone interested in natural history, women, or Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

To the first Europeans who came to Australia, everything seemed topsy turvy. Christmas was in the summer and trees shed their bark but not their leaves. And the animals were bizarre. There was a bird that laughed like a donkey and a type of greyhound that bound along on its hind legs like a hare. There was an animal in Tasmania whose nocturnal screeches sounded like the devil and a river creature that had a duck's bill at one end and a beaver's tail at the other. The Europeans had never seen anything like these animals before and gave them names similar to those of the European creatures they already knew. They drew and painted odd pictures of them, showing they did not understand the animals' habits. In one illustration, a wombat is standing on its back legs and in another a Tasmanian tiger is wrestling with a platypus of the same size.