Ross Coulthart: The Lost Diggers

“These photographs rank up there with one of the most important discoveries from the First World War.”

Ashley Ekins, Head of Military History, Australian War Memorial, Canberra


“A fascinating and important record of First World War history. There’s an intimacy about these photographs I’ve never seen before… it’s like looking back into time, looking into the eyes of men who’ve just been in battle.”

Australian War Memorial historian and First World War expert Peter Burness

During the First World War, thousands of Aussie diggers and other Allied troops passed through the small French town of Vignacourt, two hours north of Paris. Many of them had their photographs taken by Louis and Antoinette Thuillier as souvenirs while they enjoyed a brief respite from the carnage of the Western Front. For all too many of those soldiers, this was their last moment away from the lines before being sent to their deaths in battles that are now part of the mythology of Australian nationhood — Pozieres, Bullecourt, the mud and blood of the Somme. The weariness and horror of battle is reflected in their eyes, but the photos also capture a sense of camaraderie, high spirits and even a soupçon of romance.

The Lost Diggers is the riveting detective story of the hunt across northern France for a rumoured treasure trove of antique glass photographic plates that led investigative journalist Ross Coulthart to an ancient metal chest in a dusty attic in a small farmhouse. The nearly 4000 glass plates he and his team from Channel 7’s Sunday Night discovered are being hailed by experts as one of the most important First World War historical discoveries ever made.

Part thriller, part family history and part national archive, The Lost Diggers brings together these wonderful images and the amazing stories behind them, such as that of Jim Holland, the grandfather of Aussie actress Val Lehman and Joe Maxwell, awarded both the MC and VC and author of the memoir Hell’s Bells and Mademoiselles.

Publication will coincide with the launch of The Australian War Memorial’s exhibition of the lost diggers’ photo collection, Remember Me: The Lost Diggers of Vignacourt.

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Kirsten Tranter: A Common Loss

They were originally five. Elliot. Brian. Tallis. Cameron. And Dylan — charismatic Dylan — the mediator, the leader, the man each one turned to in a time of crisis. Five close friends, bonded in college, still coming together for their annual trip to Las Vegas. This year they are four. Four friends, sharing a common loss: Dylan’s tragic death. A common loss that, upon their arrival in Vegas, will bring with it a common threat: one that will make them question who their departed friend really was, and whether he is even worthy of their grief.

A Common Loss is Kirsten Tranter’s follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut, The Legacy. Yet again, Tranter’s weave of watertight prose and literary sensibilities shows her to be a born writer with a precocious control of storytelling and style.

Follow Kirsten’s internet diary: www.kirstentranter.com
A Common Loss: Fourth Estate / HarperCollins

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Matt Peacock

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, was published by ABC Books in 2009. This book inspired the ABC1 mini-series Devil’s Dust, which airs in November 2012. It tells the inside story of how Matt and asbestos campaigner Bernie Banton brought the company to account, revealing the corporate tactics which allowed Hardie to conceal what is Australia’s greatest peacetime disaster.

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Ned Kelly Awards

Of the nine shortlisted authors for the Ned Kelly Awards for Australian crime fiction in 2012, three are represented by Australian Literary Management, Malcolm Knox and Barry Maitland, and the winner of the Best First Fiction award:

Winner, Best First Fiction: Peter Twohig, for The Cartographer (HarperCollins) Melbourne, 1959. An 11-year-old boy witnesses a murder as he spies through the window of a strange house. God, whom he no longer counts as a friend, obviously has a pretty screwed-up sense of humour: just one year before, the boy had looked on helplessly as his twin brother, Tom, suffered a violent death.

The Ned Kelly Awards website says: “Crime fiction is immensely popular, and important in the context of Australian Literature. This award encourages both established and first time writers working in the genre to enter. Many writers nominated for the Best First Fiction award have gone to produce highly regarded crime fiction. Previous winners include: Chris Gadd, Chris Womersley, Adrian Hyland, Wendy James and Malcolm Knox.” The winner for 2012 is Peter Twohig, for The Cartographer (HarperCollins)

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Will Elliott — Novels, fantasy

Nightfall

Will Elliott is the critically acclaimed author of The Pilo Family Circus, which won the inaugural ABC Fiction Award and the Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist Award; it was also shortlisted for the International Horror Guild Award, the first Australian writer to be listed in the Novel Category — against the likes of Stephen King.

Here is Nightfall… Journey into a strange and atmospheric world and enjoy this wildly entertaining story. Intensely written, dark and brooding, the bizarre, grotesque and magical characters will lead you into the depths of the imagination to confront the nature of storytelling and reality, love and loss.

“I couldn’t put Elliott’s debut novel down. It’s fantastic… An entertaining mixture of Palahniuk and David Lynch”’ Independent on Sunday

“This is a first novel of real promise. At his best, Elliott writes with a power commensurate with the originality of his vision. It is not just that he has unusually nasty visions to put on the page, but he has the ability to make us share them” Times Literary Supplement

A bad dream with a funnybone, a nightmare broken by laughter. Look out — here comes Will Elliott’ — Malcolm Knox, Judge of ABC Fiction Award

“…plunges the reader full-pelt into a world of comic-book violence that is underpinned by a more sinister and ancient evil”  — Delia Falconer, Judge of ABC Fiction Award

Australian and New Zealand Rights: HarperCollins Australia

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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.

His new novel is Currawalli Street:

We all have secret lives. And we are all pretty good at keeping them secret.

With simplicity and great beauty, Currawalli Street reveals the echoes between past and present through the story of one ordinary street and its families, from the pre-war innocence of early 1914 to the painful and grim consequences of the Vietnam War.

In 1914, Thomas, the young rector, questions his faith and falls in love; his sister Janet, a dutiful spinster, hides a surprising secret; and their neighbour, Rose, is burdened with visions of the coming hell. In 1972, Jim, a soldier fresh from Vietnam, returns home to Currawalli Street to find that death has a way of seeping in everywhere; Patrick, looked after by his elderly wife, Mary, can’t relinquish his former identity; and always there is the boy up in the tree, watching them all and keeping note.

In only three short generations, working horses and wagons are lost to cars, wood-fired ovens are replaced by electric stoves, and the lessons learned at such cost in the Great War seem forgotten. But despite all the changes, the essential human things remain: there will always be families and friends reaching out for connection; people will always have secrets to keep hidden from view; and desire and love are as inevitable as war and violence.

Deep, rich and satisfying, Currawalli Street links families and neighbours, their lovers and friends, in a powerful and moving dance through time.

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