New Releases

When Cyclone Tracy flattened Darwin on Christmas Day 1974, it was the worst natural disaster Australians had ever experienced. Stationed in the city with the Women's Royal Australian Naval Service, Patricia Collins not only lived through Tracy but was part of the massive clean-up effort. This is her extraordinary story. Rock and Tempest contains astonishing first-person accounts of terror and uncertainty as well as courage and survival. It is fascinating and moving, and absolutely essential listening.

Australia’s war tales could be said to be the closest thing we have to sacred stories: ANZAC, Simpson and his donkey, Changi, the wronged diggers in Vietnam, Ben Roberts-Smith. Millions of dollars are spent enshrining these stories in the War Memorial in Canberra and the Australian National Memorial in France, amongst others. But did what we’re celebrating actually happen? In this book, award-winning author and historian Mark Dapin shows that often the reality was completely different from the myth—and that by celebrating the wrong people, we often forget about the real heroes.