Nick Harris has been drifting for years – until the day he finds himself amid red dirt and razor wire, a refugee-prison guard in a detention center. Nick is no crusader and no bleeding-heart. He's just a man in debt who needs a job. Time passes slowly behind the wire, no matter who you are. To distract themselves, the asylum seekers tell Nick about their lives and cultures, and the families they have left behind. They steal from him with good humour, and swear at him with bad. Nick breaks all the rules: slacking off when he guards the cordial machine, swimming with crocodiles, brawling with locals, romancing workmates. And then there is the cardinal sin – becoming friends with the detainees. --- The novel is a realistic window into the hidden world of immigration detention centres, drawn from the experience of a former guard. It is one man's vision, looking through the wire at the people locked inside our desert prisons, and looking out at the people who put them there.

Useful, instructive manual shows would-be explorers, hikers, bikers, scouts, sailors, and survivalists how to find their way outdoors by observing animals, weather patterns, shifting sands, and other elements of nature.

Conservation and sustainable productivity are vital issues for Australia. In order to manage vegetation well from an agricultural, recreational or conservation point of view, an understanding of individual plant species is important. Plants of Central Queensland provides a guide for identifying and understanding the plants of the region so that pastoralists and others can be better equipped to manage the vegetation resource of our grazing lands. Central Queensland straddles the Tropic of Capricorn, although many of the plants in the book will also be found outside this area, as shown by their distribution maps. The book provides information on the habit, distribution, foliage and fruits of 525 plant species. Informative notes highlighting declared, poisonous, weed and medicinal plants are included, and plants useful for bees and bush tucker are also noted. These are the most important plants you might see if you live in or travel through central Queensland. This book has an easy-to-read, non-botanical format, with helpful photographs and distribution maps that greatly aid anyone interested in the vegetation of central Queensland. It is based on a previous work of the same title but is greatly expanded, incorporating information on an additional 285 plant species.

We are a nation of gardeners, and we take pleasure in tending our backyards. But this pleasure sits uneasily with our knowledge that the places where most of us live are running out of water. We suspect that our lawns and many of our plants from the damp climates of northern European gardens are too demanding of scarce supplies, but can't imagine our streets and gardens without them. The Old Country opens our eyes, and minds, to other possibilities. It does so by telling us stories about our natural landscape. George Seddon believes that the better we understand the delicacy and beauty of our natural environment, the more 'at home' we will feel as Australians. This passionate, wise and witty book, enriched with breathtakingly beautiful illustrations, suggests that the answers to our water problems lie here, at home.

Accompanying CD-ROM includes 600 figures, tables and color plates from the book Plants in action which can be used for the production of color transparencies or for projections in lectures.