Here are 100 books that Australian Geographic Outback Queensland fans have personally recommended if you like
Australian Geographic Outback Queensland.
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As a full-time travel writer for 30 years, I’ve travelled all over Australia and am still constantly surprised and thrilled by new places. Ask me what my favourite place is, and it’s impossible to choose! From the grandeur of Western Australia’s Kimberley and the red ochre colours of the Outback to the deep blue of the oceans and lush rainforests...I love it all and I love sharing my discoveries – both in cities and on the long and winding roads – with readers. When I’m not travelling or writing about it, I’m usually planning the next trip!
Australians love a road-trip – the longer, the better. This book, by one of Australia’s top driving holiday experts, is jam-packed with information and advice to make yours as easy as possible. Driving is definitely the best way to see our vast continent, and the route maps and distance lists are hugely useful. It’s a great resource on where to stay – everything from swank hotels to camping spots – and what to do. Want to know the best time of year to visit a certain place? That’s covered too.
In Ultimate Road Trips: Australia,author Lee Atkinson highlights 40 of the best driving holidays around Australia.
Each chapter includes information on things to see and do, detailed route maps and a handy list of distances to help you plan your trip, as well as lots of useful advice on family-friendly attractions, where to eat and the best hotels, guesthouses, caravan parks and camping spots. You'll also find details on the best time of year to visit, driving tips and a guide to surviving a road trip with a back seat full of kids.
As a full-time travel writer for 30 years, I’ve travelled all over Australia and am still constantly surprised and thrilled by new places. Ask me what my favourite place is, and it’s impossible to choose! From the grandeur of Western Australia’s Kimberley and the red ochre colours of the Outback to the deep blue of the oceans and lush rainforests...I love it all and I love sharing my discoveries – both in cities and on the long and winding roads – with readers. When I’m not travelling or writing about it, I’m usually planning the next trip!
Melanie is passionate about the great outdoors and has hiked all over Australia. Her book (a second edition is due out in early 2022) covers an incredible 66 walks and her love of the landscape shines through. Some of the walks are well known, such as Tasmania’s Overland Track, while others are lesser-known. Designed for all abilities and time constraints, there’s really something for everyone, whether you want to walk in tropical rainforests or rocky ancient escarpments. It makes me want to pull on my hiking boots and go!
Australia is mecca for bushwalkers - there are walks crossing every sort of landscape, from rocky deserts to the tropical coast, craggy mountains to verdant rainforest, as well as some shaped by colourful human history. Experienced travel writer Melanie Ball has hiked every track in this book for walkers of all levels of experience. Included are some of Australia's most famous walks, including the Larapinta Trail and Overland Track, plus some undiscovered gems. Most of the tracks can be completed in a few hours, but there are some more difficult multi-day walks for those wanting more of a challenge. For…
As a full-time travel writer for 30 years, I’ve travelled all over Australia and am still constantly surprised and thrilled by new places. Ask me what my favourite place is, and it’s impossible to choose! From the grandeur of Western Australia’s Kimberley and the red ochre colours of the Outback to the deep blue of the oceans and lush rainforests...I love it all and I love sharing my discoveries – both in cities and on the long and winding roads – with readers. When I’m not travelling or writing about it, I’m usually planning the next trip!
Far from an ordinary guidebook, Loving Country, A Guide to Sacred Australia gets to the heart of this ancient continent through the eyes and stories of Australia’s First Nations people. Beautifully designed and illustrated with photographs, the book opens up an Australia that many visitors never – sadly – see. Exploring Australia’s Indigenous culture is one of the best ways to understand this country, and there are many ways of doing that, if you seek them out. After consultation with Indigenous communities and elders, the authors have chosen just 18 places to feature, telling the stories of the Dreaming, explaining traditional cultural practices, and outlining tours that will open a new world to those who care to dive deep into the culture.
Loving Country is a powerful and essential guidebook that offers a new way to travel and discover Australia through an Indigenous narrative. In this beautifully designed and photographed edition, co-authors Bruce Pascoe and Vicky Shukuroglou show travellers how to see the country as herself, to know her whole and old story, and to find the way to fall in love with her, our home.
Featuring 18 places in detail, from the ingenious fish traps at Brewarrina and the rivers that feed the Great Barrier Reef, to the love stories of Wiluna and the whale story of Margaret River, there is…
As a full-time travel writer for 30 years, I’ve travelled all over Australia and am still constantly surprised and thrilled by new places. Ask me what my favourite place is, and it’s impossible to choose! From the grandeur of Western Australia’s Kimberley and the red ochre colours of the Outback to the deep blue of the oceans and lush rainforests...I love it all and I love sharing my discoveries – both in cities and on the long and winding roads – with readers. When I’m not travelling or writing about it, I’m usually planning the next trip!
The Great Barrier Reef is known as one of the world’s greatest natural wonders -and is a major drawcard for visitors to Australia. This book, written by renowned Australian marine biologist Len Zell is not a guide in the usual sense of the word but contains all you’ll ever need to know about what Australians call simply “the Reef” and more. Produced in partnership with the BBC’s The Great Barrier Reef television series, the book takes you on a journey along 2,300km of Australia’s north-eastern coastline. Not one to shy away from reality, Zell also looks at the environmental challenges facing the Great Barrier Reef and what the future may hold. There are practical hints and tips too – but if you just want to buy it for the fabulous photography throughout, that’s fine too!
The Great Barrier Reef really is like nowhere else on earth. For many of us, the thought of it conjures up images of beautiful azure waters teeming with colourful fish against a background of coral of every shape, colour and form imaginable. Yet there is so much more to the Great Barrier Reef than this. It is a massive, complex ecosystem, and one that has gone through enormous changes throughout the history and evolution of our planet. Produced in partnership with the BBC's The Great Barrier Reef television series, the book takes you on a journey along 2,300km of Australia's…
I have been publishing speculative fiction for over thirty years and the Beatrice Beecham Young Adult series since 2005. During this time, my appetite for quality fiction has never waned and, as readers will see from the recommended titles here, my reading is broad and spans not only entertaining, escapist fiction, but also that which has a profound message to tell. As a mentor for the Horror Writers Association (HWA) I have used my experience and passion for writing to help other writers develop and hone their craft and was humbled to be a recipient of the ‘HWA Mentor of the Year Award’ in 2023. In short, I know what makes a good story!
Set in a world that is at once familiar, yet without grounding in time or space, Daniels’ fable of an anonymous girl who escapes to reclaim her life after many years in the belly of a great snake, is fanciful and spellbinding.
It is a story that guides the reader through dark themes such as loss, grief, abuse, denial, and isolation; capturing the very essence of detachment that is the uneven road to recovery from great trauma. Daniels’ prose is beautiful and eerie, and her protagonist’s journey from victim to survivor is nothing short of sublime.
After twelve years trapped in the throat of a serpent, a girl escapes. She returns to her village naked with a monstrous snakeskin trailing behind her. One decision at a time, she reclaims her life. Each character she encounters by land and sea—brute, healer, orphan, mystic, lover—reflects an unhealed aspect of herself and plots her recovery through symbolic milestones. Serpent’s Wake is intended for adults and young adults exploring how, once fractured, we may mend. A tale that weaves around your heart in your darkest times…and points to the greatest lesson of all—that in suffering lies freedom. – Erin L.…
I am an art school dropout and recovering rock critic who, since 1981, has published a dozen books on Australian music and popular culture, plus worked extensively in television and as a freelance journalist. I'm too old to be called an enfant terrible, but with the way I still seem to be able to court controversy, I must remain some sort of loose cannon! Sydney’s Sun-Herald has called me "our best chronicler of Australian grass-roots culture," and that’s a tag I’m flattered by but which does get at what I’ve always been interested in. I consider myself a historian who finds resonances where most don’t even bother to look, in our own backyard, yesterday, and the fact that so much of my backlist including Inner City Sound, Highway to Hell, Buried Country, Golden Miles, History is Made at Night, and Stranded are still in print, I take as vindication I’m on the right track…
Cultural history is now a book business-standard. That wasn’t always the case. For me myself, I had to read Otto Freidrich’s City of Nets (1987) and Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming (1992) before I could properly formulate my 1996 book Stranded. Stalwart rock journalist Andrew Stafford’s debut book from 2004, Pig City, is a cultural history of the Brisbane music scene ‘from the Saints to Savage Garden’, which makes it a regional history too. What makes it gripping, next Stafford’s deft handling of the material, is the story itself, which is not just that of an erstwhile backwater finally coming of age, but up against and overcoming the oppressive jackboots of Queensland state premier, ‘hillbilly dictator’ Joh Bjelke-Peterson. Happily, that era is now long past, and BrisVegas is today a great music town; but wouldn’t have become so without the long struggle so vividly portrayed here.
From cult heroes the Saints and the Go-Betweens to national icons Powderfinger and international stars Savage Garden, Brisbane has produced more than its share of great bands. But behind the music lay a ghost city of malice and corruption. Pressed under the thumb of the Bjelke-Petersen government and its toughest enforcers—the police—Brisbane’s musicians, radio announcers, and political activists braved ignorance, harassment, and often violence to be heard. This updated, 10th anniversary edition features a scathing new introduction by the author, assessing the changing shape of Brisbane, its music, and troubling developments since the return of the state of Queensland to…
I have always loved horses and riding. My dream was to become a showjumper but, unfortunately, my opportunities in London were limited and although I rode a lot in Australia, my jumping was limited to the odd log in the bush. I’m an avid reader and particularly enjoy horse books written for adults, which is why I wrote a book for horse lovers. I have recommended books that gave me pleasure and which I am sure other horse lovers will enjoy.
Teenagers will love The Outback Riders series by Leanne Owens. An Australian author, Leanne is an English/History teacher who also writes freelance for horse magazines. Her experience with horses growing up in the outback is combined with stories about teenagers in her very popular Outback Riders series. She has also written the Dimity Horse Mysteries for readers who like mysteries, crime, romance, and horses.
The outback is burning and the Sunhaven teens risk everything to try and stop the arsonist. Between the fires, the mysterious white dog that appears out of nowhere, Amy's childhood friend who resembles the rock star adored by Lani, and organising a two hundred kilometre Longreach to Winton fund-raising ride, their holidays are jam-packed with excitement and discovery.
The teens of Sunhaven in outback Queensland are a year older and are home for the school holidays to face a wild ride of adventures. The outback has been burning and they are determined to find the arsonist, but the mystery becomes…
I’m a thriller writer with civilian protagonists who find themselves caught in situations way outside their comfort zones. They’re not people to whom guns or regular weapons are accessible or familiar. Consequently, I need my characters to have access to other weapons, and I find these in the environments in which I set my stories – elements that offer both defensive and offensive potential. Whether it be a dangerous natural feature (like a chasm), or a deadly creature, (I love a crocodile or snake), there needs to be something on offer. This is also what I admire in other authors – that harnessing of environmental weaponry that can make stories so exciting.
The Whispering is set in the far northern Queensland tropical rainforest, a thick, densely-foliaged environment that is in turn pulsing with humidity and whispering with the strong winds of an approaching cyclone.
There are enough natural features (boulders, creeks, thorny vines) to make this a dangerous place on its own, but throw a deadly character or two in there, and it gets beyond creepy. Lando harnesses the edginess incredibly well, and readers know from the get go that the place is like a weapon only leashed by a safety catch. Always just one click away from lethal.
The whispering wild will take your child if you dare to look away ...
The stunning Aussie crime debut from the winner of the 2021 Banjo Prize for Fiction.
Shortlisted for the 2023 Courier-Mail People's Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award.
Callum Haffenden swore he'd never return to Granite Creek. But, thirty years after a life-shattering accident, he's thrust back into the clutches of Far North Queensland and a local legend he worked hard to forget.
When a man goes missing in the rainforest, the past begins to resurface, breathing new life into memories of previous tragedies - two…
Throughout my life, I have been fascinated by humanity’s place within deeper time. As a boy, I collected rocks and fossils, and at university studied geology. The long term has also been a theme running throughout my journalism career at New Scientist and the BBC, and it inspired my research during a recent fellowship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US. I believe we need to embrace a deeper view of time if we are to navigate through this century’s grand challenges – and if we can, there’s hope, agency, and possibility to be discovered along the way.
I first met Suddendorf – one of the three co-authors of this book – in Australia back in 2016.
He is a German professor living in Queensland (with an accent untroubled by antipodean influence), and is best known for studying the skill of “mental time travel”. From him I learnt that this is one of the foundational abilities of humanity, which may well have steered our entire evolution.
We can project our minds across the past, present, and future at will - unlike pretty much any other animal. Therefore it’s crucial as a skill if we want to take the long view, and we shouldn’t take it for granted. However, as Suddendorf and colleagues write in this terrific book, it’s also a “Promethean” talent, and is far from perfect.
If we want to take a longer view, understanding our cognitive faculties is key – this book serves as a…
Our ability to think about the future is one of the most powerful tools at our disposal. In The Invention of Tomorrow, cognitive scientists Thomas Suddendorf, Jonathan Redshaw, and Adam Bulley argue that its emergence transformed humans from unremarkable primates to creatures that hold the destiny of the planet in their hands. Drawing on their own cutting-edge research, the authors break down the science of foresight, showing us where it comes from, how it works, and how it made our world. Journeying through biology, psychology, history, and culture, they show that thinking ahead is at the heart of human nature-even…
What makes me passionate about this topic is the racism I’ve witnessed, the books I’ve read, and my deep love of landscape. Australia is a nation built on immigration but it’s also a land with an ancient Indigenous culture, and this is reflected in the books on my list. Born in Melbourne, I grew up in Sydney, and then lived for some years in the UK. I hold a PhD from the London School of Economics and I’m a professor at the Australian National University. I do hope you enjoy the books on my list as much as I have.
I love this novel by Jessica Anderson for its subtle psychological insights and its powerful evocation of an Australian colony in its early days. Set in the 1830s, The Commandanttells the story of a young Irish woman arriving in Australia to visit her sister, whose husband runs the Moreton Bay penal settlement, where he is much-hated by the convicts for his fanatical implementation of punishments. Becoming the object of a convict’s obsession, Frances feels responsible for that convict’s brutal lashing and is changed by the experience. The Indigenous people are shadowy figures in the background, for Anderson’s focus is on the brutality of the penal regime and how it affects a young woman’s innocence.
The penal colony of Moreton Bay is under the command of Patrick Logan, a man not afraid of brutal discipline. But his rule is being questioned, and the arrival of his sister-in-law Frances will change everything. An unforgettable tale of power, duty, and humanity, from one of Australia's most esteemed writers.
