For the first time in one volume: the bestsellers GREAT PIONEER WOMEN OF THE OUTBACK and HEROIC AUSTRALIAN WOMEN. Providing inspiration for today's women, in this book of profiles, Susanna de Vries examines what it takes to be a truly heroic Australian. Women of grit and courage, women of integrity, resilience and resourcefulness: the 21 individuals whose stories make up tHE COMPLEtE BOOK OF HEROIC AUStRALIAN WOMEN were a rare breed. they faced different tests - harshness as pioneers in outback Australia; the turmoil of war - but when encountering adversity, even death, each proved her mettle. From Olive King, who saved countless lives in the war-ravaged Balkans, to Vivian Bullwinkel, who survived the Bangka Island Massacre only to endure three tragedy-filled years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, to Jeannie Gunn, who turned her experiences of hostile outback conditions into a classic book, We of the Never-Never, these are women who displayed extraordinary determination in often terrible circumstances. the 21 women are: Georgiana Molloy, Frances ('Fanny') Bussell, Elizabeth ('Bessie') Bussell, Charlotte Cookworthy Bussell, Emma Mary Withnell, Atlanta Hope Bradshaw, Jeannie Gunn OBE, Evelyn Maunsell, Catherine Langloh Parker, Myrtle Rose White, Olive May Kelso King, Dr Agnes Elizabeth Lloyd Bennett, Dr Lilian Violet Cooper, Sister Alice Elizabeth Kitchen, Joice NanKivell Loch, Sister Sylvia Muir, Sister Vivian Bullwinkel, Sister Joyce tweddell, Sister Betty Jeffrey, Mavis Parkinson, and Sister Frances May Hayman.

The convict women who built a continent..."A moving and fascinating story." --Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost Historian Deborah J. Swiss tells the heartbreaking, horrifying, and ultimately triumphant story of the women exiled from the British Isles and forced into slavery and savagery-who created the most liberated society of their time. The Tin Ticket takes us to the dawn of the nineteenth century and into the lives of Agnes McMillan, whose defiance and resilience carried her to a far more dramatic rebellion; Agnes's best friend Janet Houston, who rescued her from the Glasgow wynds and was also transported to Van Diemen's Land; Ludlow Tedder, forced to choose just one of her four children to accompany her to the other side of the world; Bridget Mulligan, who gave birth to a line of powerful women stretching to the present day. It also tells the tale of Elizabeth Gurney Fry, a Quaker reformer who touched all their lives. Ultimately, it is the story of women discarded by their homeland and forgotten by history-who, by sheer force of will, become the heart and soul of a new nation.

Profiles the grit, determination and selflessness of 11 outstanding Australian women serving in the two World Wars. This book focuses not only on the outstanding courage these women displayed in battle, but also on their personal struggles and accomplishments - proving they were as heroic in life as they were in war.

A riveting new work from Susanna de Vries continuing astonishing stories of female bravery from Gallipoli to Kokoda. the brave deeds of women in war have long been overshadowed by male heroics. In this inspiring new book, renowned writer and historian Susanna de Vries profiles the grit, determination and selflessness of 11 outstanding Australian women serving in two World Wars: from Olive King, volunteer ambulance driver who saved countless lives in France and Serbia during World War I, to Vivian Bullwinkel, Joyce twedell and Sylvia Muir, all three of whom endured years of starvation and cruelty on Bangka Island at the hands of their Japanese captors. Other women featured include Sister Alice Kitchen, Dr Agnes Bennett, Dr Lilian Cooper, Louise Mack, Joice Nankivell Loch, Mavis Parkinson and Sister May Hayman. these are all women who deserve to be known, recognised and celebrated alongside their male peers. In her informal, vivid style, de Vries focuses not only on the astounding courage these women displayed in battle, but also on their personal struggles and accomplishments - proving that they were each as influential and heroic in life as they were in war.

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.

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.

The book the military censors banned As a young soldier in the battlefields of Gallipoli, Sydney Loch witnessed the horror of war first-hand. On his return to Australia he detailed what he saw in his book, the Straits Impregnable. Hoping to avoid military censorship, his publishers dubbed Sydney's book a novel. But as the war ground on and the numbers of casualties grew, the publisher inserted a note saying the story was factual. the book, which had enjoyed huge literary acclaim, was immediately withdrawn from sale by the censors. Sydney Loch's experiences in the war shaped his life afterwards. With his wife, Joice, he went on to work in refugee camps in Poland and Palestine, and his many subsequent books, set in war-torn countries, reflected his humanitarian beliefs. In to Hell and Back, historians Susanna and Jake de Vries have recovered and edited Sydney's book for a new generation of readers and written a biography of his remarkable life. PRAISE '...eloquent and laconic...' The Australian, 5th April 2007 'Susanna and Jake de Vries have done well to resurrect this forgotten Australian story.' The Sun Herald, 14th-15th April 2007

This book focuses on twentieth-century Australian leprosaria to explore the lives of indigenous patients and the Catholic women missionaries who nursed them. Distinguished from previous historical studies of leprosy, the book examines the care and management of the incarcerated, enabling a broader understanding of their experience, beyond a singular trope of banishment, oppression and death. From the 1930s until the 1980s, respective governments appointed the trained sisters to four leprosaria across remote northern Australia, where almost two thousand people had been removed from their homes and detained under law for years - sometimes decades. The book traces the sisters’ holistic nursing from early efforts of amelioration and palliation to their part in the successful treatment of leprosy after World War II. It reveals the ways the sisters stepped out of their assigned roles and attempted to shape the institutions as places of health and hygiene, of European culture and education, and of Christianity. Making use of accounts from patients, doctors; bureaucrats; missionary men; and Indigenous families and communities, the book offers fresh perspectives on two important strands of history. First, its attention to the day-to-day work of the Australian sisters helps to demystify leprosy healthcare by female missionaries, generally. Secondly, with the sisters specifically caring for Indigenous people, this book exposes the institutional practices and goals specific to race relations of both the Australian government and Catholic missionaries. An important and timely read for anyone interested in Indigenous history, medical history and the connections between race, religion and healthcare, this book contextualizes the twentieth-century leprosy epidemic within Australia's broader colonial history.

This collection of essays focuses on the history and politics of the Women's Liberation Movement and Women's Studies, in Australia and around the world.

The Queen of the Never Never as never seen before! In the 1890s, when a woman's role was seen as marrying well and raising a family, Daisy Bates reinvented herself from humble governess to heiress-traveller and 'woman of science'. She would become one of the best-known and most controversial ethnologists in history, and one of the fi rst people to put Aboriginal culture on the map. Born into tough circumstances, Daisy's prospects were dim; her father an alcoholic bootmaker, her mother dying of consumption when Daisy was only four years old. through sheer strength of will, young Daisy overcame her miserable start, and in 1883 she migrated to Australia with a boatload of orphans, passing herself off as an heiress who taught for fun. Marriage followed - first with the young Breaker Morant, then bigamously with two other husbands. For decades she led a double life. But who was the real Daisy Bates? While other biographies have presented her as a saint, historian Susanna de Vries gives readers a more complex portrait of the 'Queen of the Never Never'.