Graham Lang: Lettah’s Gift
Step into the heart of modern-day Africa in this compelling story of hope and redemption.
Failed writer Frank Cole can barely remember Lettah. When his family left Zimbabwe, their beloved servant was gradually forgotten. Now, forty years on, Frank has been set a mysterious task in his mother’s will: he must find Lettah and deliver her bequest.
What Frank finds is not the country of his childhood, but a place where memories of civil war and colonial injustice fester beneath the surface, where brutality stands for the law, where fear and farce preside. But in chaotic Bulawayo, Frank discovers life and humour among unlikely companions – friends from his youth and new acquaintances, old Rhodesians and young liberals, all those who stayed behind. As he pieces together Lettah’s fate, Frank begins to see the new Zimbabwe – and himself – in the delicate chemistry between meaning and hope.
Graham Lang was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. He is the author of Clouds Like Black Dogs and Place of Birth, which was longlisted for the Sunday Times Prize, South Africa’s premier literary award. An accomplished artist, he has exhibited widely and taught art in both Australia and South Africa. Graham has lived in Australia since 1990.
His website: www.grahamlang-author.com
Kate Lilley
photo John Tranter
Kate Lilley — Poetry, criticism, Renaissance studies
Kate’s new book of poems Versary is published by Salt Publications in Cambridge, England:
http://www.saltpublishing.com/
Amanda Lohrey — Novels, short fiction, essays
Amanda is one of Australias leading literary fiction writers. She has published five novels: The Morality of Gentlemen, The Reading Group, Camille’s Bread (which won the Australian Literature Society’s Gold Medal), The Philosopher’s Doll (Penguin, 2004) and Vertigo. She has also written two Quarterly Essays, Groundswell and Voting for Jesus.
Vertigo is a fable of love and awakening, a bush pastoral about the unexpected way emotions can return and life can change. This beautifull written novella tells the story of Luke and Anna, who decide they no longer want to live in the city and seek refuge in a sleepy settlement on the coast. There they build a new life amid the beauty and danger of the natural world. But the country is not what it seems from a distance as they begin to realise once they are faced with the dangers of the environment. There is drought and then a life-threatening fire, plus the various local characters they begin friendships with. And then there is their son who comes with them… or does he?
World rights: Black Ink. Contact: Sophy Williams http://www.blackincbooks.com/
Amanda Lohrey
photo by Richard Whitfield/ Penguin Group
In 1995 Amanda’s novel Camille’s Bread was published to high critical acclaim by HarperCollins. It won the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Fiction and the Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society, and has remained in print since publication.
‘A novel about love and noodles, dreams and responsibilities. A contemplative, wry and tender book.’ — Philippa Hawker, Marie Claire
Her 2004 novel The Philosopher’s Doll focuses on a modern dilemma: a married couple have to choose whether they should have children, and if so when? In a short but complex novel about the timeless conundrum of free will, Amanda explores the postmodern condition of hi-tech affluence where there is such a thing as too much choice. Or is it only the illusion of choice?
Her newest book, Reading Madame Bovary, is her first collection of short fiction. A woman finds her everyday life engulfed by vivid fantasies, a businessman explores new ways to deal with his rage, a young woman is stuck on a boat with a bunch of delinquents, a diary is discovered, a commune goes wrong …
In this captivating collection or stories, Amanda’s characters find themselves caught between body and spirit, memory and desire, ambition and mortality — and they must transform themselves or be trapped.
World rights: Black Ink. Contact: Sophy Williams http://www.blackincbooks.com/
Helen MacDonald
London, 1868: visiting Australian Aboriginal cricketer Charles Rose has died in Guy’s Hospital. What happened next is shrouded in mystery. The only certainty is that Charles Rose’s body did not go directly to a grave.
Written with clarity and verve, and drawing on a rich array of material, Possessing the Dead explores the disturbing history of the cadaver trade in Scotland, England and Australia, where laws once gave certain officials possession of the dead, and no corpse lying in a workhouse, hospital, asylum or gaol was entirely safe from interference.
With a rare blend of curiosity, delight in the unexpected and an eye for detail, award-winning historian Helen MacDonald brings to life this gruesome past to reveal the chicanery at play behind the procuring of bodies for dissections, autopsies and collections.
Helen MacDonald is the author of the critically acclaimed Human Remains, which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award (History) and was short listed for the Ernest Scott History Prize. She is a Senior Fellow at The Australian Centre in the School of Historical Studies at the University of Melbourne.
Mark McKenna
Currently a Research Fellow at ANU, Mark McKenna is an outstanding historian, and author of The Captive Republic (Cambridge University Press, 1996) and Looking For Blackfellas’ Point: An Australian History of Place (University of NSW Press, 2002) which won the Australian Cultural Studies Prize 2002; the NSW Premier’s Award for Non-Fiction 2003; and the NSW Premier’s Award (Book of the Year), 2003.
His biography of historian Manning Clark was recently published by MUP:
‘This is a remarkably impressive biography. It is deeply immersed in the subject, unflinching in its assessment yet empathetic in the best sense... The insights and observations are original and penetrating. I found it hard to put down.’
– Stuart Macintyre
‘This big, dramatic and intellectually enthralling book will surely become a landmark in Australian biography. Mark McKenna… cross-questions the reputation of the teacher, the family man, the drinker and the historian; as well as Clark’s extraordinary later incarnations as prophet, political Cassandra, bush mountebank and genuine visionary. He… finally establishes Manning Clark as one of the key figures in the new assertion of Australian cultural identity in the mid-twentieth century, alongside Patrick White and Sidney Nolan.’
– Richard Holmes
Duncan McNab
A former detective in the NSW police force in 1986, Duncan moved into sleuthing for criminal defence cases and the corporate world, then worked as a producer/journalist for programs such as 4 Corners and Sunday and in the print media as well. The Usual Suspect, a biography of notorious crime figure Abe Saffron, was published by Pan Macmillan in 2005. His book The Dodger, based on the life of ex-policeman Roger Rogerson, was released by Pan Macmillan in late 2006.
In 2008 Duncan joined forces with investigative journalist Ross Coulthart to write Dead Man Running, an exposé of the world's most feared motorcycle gang: The Bandidos. Dead Man Running was published by Allen and Unwin in 2008 and became an instant best-seller. Read about those two books below.
Meantime, Duncan’s latest books tells the true story of a secret military operation deep behind enemy lines… In late 1940 a group of five young Australian soldiers set out on a classified mission: one of the Second World War’s most daring operations.
Leading a small force of Ethiopian freedom fighters on an epic trek across the harsh African bush from the Sudan, the Australians entered Italian-occupied Ethiopia and began waging a guerilla war against the 250,000-strong Italian army. Codenamed Mission 101, it was the very first campaign organised by the soon-to-be-legendary Special Operations Executive, and one of the most successful guerilla actions of the entire war. One of the young Australian soldiers was Duncan McNab’s uncle. Using a combination of fascinating research and personal anecdotes, McNab tells the little known story of Mission 101, and how a small group of Australians helped free a nation.
… in the battle for public opinion, the mayhem at the Qantas Domestic Terminal that day cost the one-percenters, as outlaw bikers are known, the beginning of the end of the tolerance that many Australians and their politicians had, for baffling reasons, long extended to them.
In Dead Man Running, one of the shocking revelations was the challenge faced by Australian police in tackling the vast and thriving crime empire that outlaw motorcycle gangs had established.
In Above the Law, the news just gets worse. Above the Law takes an unflinching and chilling look at the world’s most successful criminal empire and one that is growing in power, reach and ruthlessness. It exposes outlaw motorcycle gangs as a sophisticated, bloody and brutal international criminal franchise that operates with impunity in plain sight of law enforcement and the public.
The biker gangs are both strategic and opportunistic — where they cannot dominate, they broker alliances. Yet through their deft manipulation of the media and public opinion they have sold a romantic notion of “outlaw bikers” — a view in complete contrast to the brutal reality. In a world first, Above the Law investigates how it all started: the turf wars, the deals, the business plans, and how the sea of cash that was earned was laundered. It also reveals how law enforcement at an international level is losing the battle against the gangs.
Read it and be afraid.
Barry Maitland
Barry Maitland — Crime fiction
Barry Maitland was born in Scotland and after studying architecture at Cambridge University practised and taught in Britain before moving to Australia to take up the position of Professor of Architecture at the University of Newcastle. His crime novels feature Detective Chief Inspector David Brock and Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla as two London-based police investigators.
His first Brock and Kolla novel was The Marx Sisters (1994) which was followed by The Malcontenta; All My Enemies; The Chalon Heads; Silvermeadow; Babel; The Verge Practice; No Trace, Spider Trap, and a s tandalone title, Bright Air.
His tenth Brock and Kolla novel was published in 2010: Dark Mirror, a mystery with a focus on the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rosetti.
“Comparable to the psychological crime novelists such as
Ruth Rendell… tight plots, great dialogue, very atmospheric.”
— Sydney Morning Herald.
Barry Maitland is published in Australia by Allen & Unwin;
in the U.K. by Orion and Arciadia Books, and in the U.S. by St Martin’s Press.
His new book: ‘Maitland crafts a suspenseful whodunit with enough twists and turns to keep even the sharpest readers on their toes.’ — Publishers Weekly, USA
When Nancy Haynes, an elderly American tourist, is brutally murdered in a seemingly senseless attack after visiting the Chelsea Flower Show, DI Kathy Kolla suspects there is more to the case than first appears. When another occupant of the palatial Chelsea Mansions is murdered hot on the heels of the first — but this time a Russian oligarch — everybody wants to get involved. Is it a Litvinenko-style KGB assassination? The spooks muscling in certainly think so. Are the murders linked? Or is Nancy’s death just the result of mistaken identity? Kathy is determined to dig deeper but comes up against walls of silence. If she persists, does she risk her career — and possibly more?
DCI Brock, meanwhile, faces the fight of his life as his past comes back to haunt him. A crime long buried, a deadly African virus, and some of the most resourceful criminals Brock and Kolla have ever faced, conspire to make this Maitland’s best mystery yet.
‘No one drops so many wonderful threads to a story or lies them so satisfyingly together at the end.’ — The Australian
Andrew Main
Andrew’s first book Other People’s Money published in 2003 by Harper Collins is a thorough and entertaining account of the Royal Commission into the collapse of insurance giant HIH. A finance journalist for more than twenty years, Andrew reported on the Commission each day from its inception and cleverly captures the arrogance, ignorance and self-delusion of the major players. His last title was a biography of the highly controversial financier, Rene Rivkin (HarperCollins 2005)
Kathy Marks — Non-fiction
Kathy Marks is a highly respected journalist who works for the Independent covering major stories for Australia and the Pacific region. Her non-fiction book Pitcairn: Paradise Lost is a riveting account of the child sex abuse trials on Pitcairn Island. In late 2004 Marks was one of only four reporters who remained on the island for the duration of the six-week case. For the first time her book tells the extraordinary story of the inner workings of this closed, secretive community and the events that have exposed it to the world.
Pitcairn: Paradise Lost was published by HarperCollins in Australia and New Zealand,
by HarperCollins in Britain and by the Free Press in the US.
David Marr — Journalism, biography, essays, television production
David Marr
panic (noun). A sudden uncontrollable fear or anxiety,
often causing wildly unthinking behaviour.
Australians see themselves as a relaxed and tolerant bunch. But scratch the surface and you’ll uncover an extraordinary level of fear.
Cronulla. Henson. Hanson. Wik. Haneef. The boats… Panic shows all of David Marr’s characteristic insight, quick wit and brilliant prose as he cuts through the froth and fury that have kept Australia simmering over the last fifteen years. “Turning fear into panic is a great political art: knowing how to stack the bonfire, where to find the kindling, when to slosh on a bucket of kero to set the whole thing off with a satisfying roar ... These are dispatches from the republic of panic, stories of fear and fear-mongering under three prime ministers. Some chart panic on the rise and others pick through the wreckage left behind, but all grew out of my wish to honour the victims of these ugly episodes: the people damaged and a damaged country.” — David Marr
David Marr is the multi-award-winning author of Patrick White: A Life and The High Price of Heaven, and co-author with Marian Wilkinson of Dark Victory. He has written for the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and the Monthly, been editor of the National Times, a reporter for Four Corners and presenter of ABC TV’s Media Watch. In 2010 he wrote the Quarterly Essay Power Trip: The Political Journey of Kevin Rudd.
Panic is published in Australia by Black Inc. at http://www.blackincbooks.com/
Patrick White — A Life; photo by William Yang
David’s first book was Barwick (Allen & Unwin), a biography of the former Chief Justice of Australia, which won the 1981 NSW Premier’s Literary Award. This was followed by The Ivanov Trail, the story of the spy scare in Canberra. Then in 1991 the brilliant and universally critically acclaimed biography Patrick White — A Life was released by Random House in Australia, Jonathan Cape in Britain, and Random House in the USA. This biography of the Novel Prize winning novelist won seven major Australian awards.
In 1994 Patrick White — Letters was published in Australia followed by publications in the UK and USA.
The Henson Case, released by Text Publishing in 2008, examined the uproar caused by the withdrawal of some of Bill Henson’s photographs from a Sydney art gallery on the grounds that they may have been obscene.
David Marr and Marian Wilkinson — Dark Victory: The Story of The Tampa
In August 2001 a Norwegian cargo ship came across a sinking ferry off the coast of Australia. Those on board were mainly Afghans. The Captain of The Tampa picked up the people and tried to land in Australia but was refused permission, setting off an international incident. Dark Victory is the inside story of the Tampa crisis and the political strategy that powered it; of how the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, seized on the issue of ‘border protection’ to start a scare campaign and bring his party back from the politically dead.
Award-winning writer David Marr and Marian Wilkinson are accomplished investigative journalists, who burrow deep into the world of spin-doctors, bureaucrats and the military to unravel this extraordinary saga.
An updated version of this highly successful book has recently been released by Allen & Unwin.
Rights sold: Australia/New Zealand (Allen & Unwin, October 2002)
Robert Milliken — Journalism, biography
Robert Milliken
Robert Milliken nternational acclaimed journalist who in 1986 published
No Conceivable Injury (Penguin) regarded as the definitive account of
the British atomic weapon tests at Maralinga, in the Australian desert.
Robert’s latest work is a biography of Lillian Roxon, the fast-living
Australian journalist who compiled the world’s first Rock Encyclopedia and who died tragically in New York in 1973 aged 41. It was published by Black Inc. in Australia in 2002. US publisher Thunder’s Mouth Press (http://www.thundersmouth.com/) released their edition in 2005, and a new edition was released by Black Ink in 2010. A documentary on Lillian Roxon, inspired by the biography, is due to premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2010, and to be shown on SBS-TV later. Film rights to the book have been sold to Decade Films.
Lorenzo Montesini — Fiction, autobiography
Lorenzo Montesini
An Alexandrian by birth, Lorenzo heads the Australian Friends of the Alexandrian Library in Egypt. His stylish autobiography My Life and Other Misdemeanours was released by Penguin in 1999. With enormous gusto Lorenzo Montesini, Prince Giustiniani, recalls his early years in Egypt, his arrival in Australia, his military service in Vietnam, and his tumultuous relationship with his partner Robert Straub, and the events surrounding a certain wedding in Venice.
Mary Moody — Memoirs, gardening author, television presenter
Mary Moody
A prolific and popular gardening author as well as a television presenter. Mary left her television career, husband, children, grandchildren and garden for a glorious six month break away from it all in France. She turned the experience into a personal memoir titled Au Revoir which was released in 2001 by Pan Macmillan. It featured as one of the five titles in the Books Alive Program for 2004.
Mary’s love affair with France was so strong that she decided towards the end of her stay to buy a dilapitated house in the small village of Frayssinet-le-Gélat in The Lot region.
When she returned to Australia she realised that the six months in France had given her the opportunity to stop and reflect on her childhood as well as her adult life, marriage, career, relationships with her mother, her children and grandchildren. She had now reached a watershed. She could either pick up from where she’d left off before she’d set off to France, or make some radical decisions about her future.
Mary and her husband David had lived in a beautiful old house in the Blue Mountains for over twenty years. After some serious thinking, she realised that farming was one thing she had always wanted to do. She and David went exploring and discovered Yetholme, a beautiful old Federation house set on 28 acres near Orange, and saw the potential to set up a French-style farm complete with potager garden and goose and duck breeding. So that took care of Australia.
But there was still France, with memories of wonderful times she’d had and a house waiting to be renovated. And a sister that she has not seen for over thirty years who has come back into her life as a result of the publication of Au Revoir.
What resulted was the best-selling Last Tango in Toulouse, a moving, tender and at times hilarious account of farming and houses, marriage, lovers, and glorious, glorious food.
Both these titles were on the best-seller list for many months. She then wrote the final part of her memoir, Long Hot Summer, which was released in 2005.
This was followed by a beautifully photo-illustrated book titled Lunch at Madame Murat’s, a celebration of the local restaurant managed by Madame Murat, which has celebrated one hundred years of continuous operation in the French village in which Mary has her house. Both of these new titles are published by Pan Macmillan.
Mary's latest memoir, Sweet Surrender, was released in May 2009. Surrendering… to the process of ageing, to the pull of family, the influence of her parents, her husband and children who have shaped the person she now is.
Rights sold: Australia/New Zealand (Pan Macmillan Australia)
Christopher Morgan — Fiction, children’s fiction
Christopher Morgan has been a singer in a French restaurant, an artificial tree builder, a kitchen hand, a fire brigade roster clerk and a printing factory storeroom worker. In 1996 Christopher was diagnosed with a brain tumour and found that the only thing that was improved by the tumour was his imagination and decided to put it to good use. His first novel, The Island of Four Rivers, was published in June 2006 by Scribe. His children’s story Pirates Eat Porridge was published by Allen & Unwin in 2006 with a follow-up story Pirates Drive Buses in 2007.
Joyce Morgan and Conrad Walters
Journeys on the Silk Road
When a Chinese monk broke through a hidden door in 1900, he uncovered one of history’s greatest literary secrets: a 1000-year-old time capsule of life along the ancient Silk Road. Inside the chamber on the edge of the Gobi Desert, documents were piled from floor to ceiling. The gem among them was the Diamond Sutra of 868 A.D., now recognised as the world’s oldest printed book.
The sutra, a key Buddhist teaching, was made more than 500 years before printing transformed European civilisation. The book’s journey — by camel through treacherous deserts, by boat to London’s curious scholars, by train to evade the bombs of World War II — merges an explorer’s adventures, political intrigue and continued controversy.
The words of the Diamond Sutra have inspired Jack Kerouac, Aldous Huxley and the Dalai Lama. Its path from East to West has coincided with the growing appeal of Buddhism in the contemporary world. As the Gutenberg Age cedes to the Google Age, the discovery of the Silk Road’s greatest treasure is an epic tale of survival, a literary investigation and an evocation of the travelling power of the book.
Joyce Morgan has worked as a journalist for more than three decades in London, Sydney and Hong Kong. Her writing has appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Guardian and The Bangkok Post. She has written on arts and culture since 1994. Joyce is a senior arts writer at The Sydney Morning Herald and a former arts editor of the paper. She has also worked as a producer with ABC Radio. Born in Liverpool, England, she has travelled extensively in Asia, including India, Pakistan, China and Tibet.
Conrad Walters has worked in the media for more than thirty years in the United States, where he won awards for investigative journalism, and in Australia, where he is a feature writer and book reviewer at The Sydney Morning Herald. Conrad was born in Boston, educated in Europe and the Middle East and has lived in seven countries. He has travelled widely through North America, Europe and Asia. He has a master's degree in Creative Writing from the University of Technology, Sydney.
They live in Sydney with a vial of sand from the Taklamakan Desert on their mantelpiece.
See: http://journeysonthesilkroad.com/
Kerrie O’Connor
Kerrie is a journalist turned fantasy writer. Her writing is exciting, energetic, and compelling. Her first children’s book Through the Tiger’s Eye (Allen & Unwin) is a spellbinding story suffused with humour. Rights have been sold to Mondodori in Italy.
Book 2 in this trilogy, By The Monkey’s Tail, has just been released with Book 3 to follow. Kerrie’s illustrated children’s book, Little Jingle Says No!, was also published by Allen and Unwin in 2006.
Ben Naparstek
Ben Naparstek graduated with degrees in Arts and Law from The University of Melbourne and took up a graduate fellowship to study with the Humanities Center at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. At twenty-three, he was appointed editor of the magazine The Monthly in May 2009.
He has written regularly about literature and politics for a wide array of international publications including The Financial Times, The Age, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Jerusalem Post, The New Zealand Listener, The South China Morning Post and The Vancouver Sun.
Ben Naparstek: photo Ponch Hawkes
A collection of his interview-profiles on leading international writers will be published by Scribe in late 2009.
He is also co-editor with Justin Clemens of The Jacqueline Rose Reader, due out from Duke University Press in early 2010.
Helen O’Neill — Non-fiction
Award-winning newspaper and TV journalist. Helen’s work appears in Australia, the US and the UK. Her first book, Life Without Limits, published by Random House in 2003, is a testament to the spirit of David Pescud, a dyslexic who pioneered Sailors with Disabilities. Just released by Hardie Grant is an exquisite book, Florence Broadhurst – Her Secret and Extraordinary Lives, based on the life and art of the brilliant wallpaper and fabric designer Florence Broadhurst. Chronicle will release a US edition in 2007.
A biography of architect Harry Seidler has been contracted to Murdoch Books in conjunction with Historic Houses Trust.
Melanie Oppenheimer — Non-fiction, Australian history
Dr Melanie Oppenheimer has written extensively on twentieth century Australian history, especially women, volunteering and war. Among her books is All Work No Pay, Australian Civilian Volunteers in War (2002), which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s History Awards. Melanie is a Senior Lecturer in Australian History at the University of Western Sydney, and her latest book Oceans of Love: Narrelle – An Australian Nurse in World War 1 was released by ABC Books in 2006.
Shirley Painter — Memoir
When Shirley Painter’s first book was published, she was 83 years old. She was lucky to get that far: when she was four years old, she was so badly injured she was pronounced dead and taken to the morgue. The man who had beaten her almost to death was her father.
The Bean Patch is the story of how a young girl survived growing up in a volatile household in the 1920s and 1930s; how school, and later university, became her escape route from a family filled with secrets and violence.
It is also the story of how, as a mature woman and a mother herself, she came face to face with what happened to her as a child — how she found the strength to drag her terrible and long-buried memories into the light in order to move on.
Beautifully written, this is a disturbing, compelling and ultimately inspirational story.
Rights sold: Australia/New Zealand (HarperCollins Australia, Sept. 2002)
Fiona Palmer — Rural Romance
C J Wishart is a hardworking country girl with a heart of gold but a life that can be tough. Her job as a wool classer is back-breaking, her family life is a disaster and, after a string of dating debacles, she has put men in the too-hard basket.
When strong, handsome Lindsay arrives on the scene as their new shearer, C J can’t help but take notice. They have an undeniable spark, but can she handle the complications and potential heartbreak of falling in love?
With help from her best friend and an endearing old farmer, C J learns that when you stay true to yourself and open your heart, anything is possible.
Set in the colourful world of the shearing sheds, this is a lively and uniquely Australian story of love overcoming adversity.
Fiona Palmer lives in the tiny rural town of Pingaring in Western Australia. She discovered Danielle Steele at the age of eleven, and has now written her own brand of rural romance. She has attended romance writers’ groups and received an Australian Society of Authors mentorship for her first novel, The Family Farm. She has extensive farming experience, does the local mail run, and was a speedway-racing driver for seven years. She currently works two days a week at the local shop, in between writing her next book and looking after her two small children.
For shearing information, pictures and video, please head to Fiona’s website at http://www.fionapalmer.com/
Glyn Parry
Glyn Parry — Fiction, and fiction for young adults
Glyn is a highly talented award-winning writer for young adults. His novels includeMonster Man, LA Postcards, Radical Takeoffs, Stoked and Mosh. Sad Boys and Scooter Boy were published by Hodder Headline in 1998 and 1999.
A recent title was Invisible Girl, published by Fremantle Arts Centre Press in 2003.
His recent adult novel The Ocean Road was published in 2007 by Fremantle Arts Centre Press:
In the summer of 1976, Frank and Laura travel down south to a cottage by the sea with their son Toby. Toby lays bare all that he sees. It is the summer Frank is called away and Laura meets a man in the street. It is a summer of fragile lives and uncertain times, of loss and longing, and secrets that can destroy.
It is the summer where one phone call
changes a marriage forever.
Matt Peacock
James Hardie: the name, like the company, is a lie. The real James Hardie died a long time ago and had almost no connection to the Australian asbestos empire that grew under the Reid family, killing in its wake thousands of unwitting workers and customers.
For more than 20 years, Hardie chairman John Reid oversaw a strategy that ignored the dangers of asbestos and silenced Australia’s largest asbestos union and government health authorities, concealing the nation’s biggest peacetime disaster. Reid’s eventual successor, Meredith Hellicar, defended Hardie’s move offshore until public campaigning by asbestos disease sufferers like Bernie Banton forced the company to adequately provide for its victims.
ABC journalist Matt Peacock first warned the public about the dangers of Hardie’s asbestos empire in an award-winning radio series in 1977. He has followed the tragic trail for more than 30 years: from the company’s factories where workers had asbestos ‘snowball’ fights, to the mine where Aboriginal children played in the tailings, and into thousands of houses where Hardie’s asbestos now threatens home renovators, not just from their fibro walls and ceilings, but from the dust that still lurks under their carpets. His painstaking research, involving newly discovered documents and interviews with over a hundred former Hardie employees and other key figures, reveals in stark detail how the company subverted the institutions designed to protect ordinary citizens, and how a dedicated group of unionists, lawyers and activists finally exposed Hardie’s subterfuge.
Matt’s book, Killer Company: James Hardy Exposed, was published by ABC Books in 2009.
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