Access Must-Have Full Audiobooks in History, Australia & Oceania

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/503963 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Jerilderie Letter

Author: Ned Kelly

Narrator: Denis Daly

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 0 hours 42 minutes

Release date: February 8, 2021

Genres: Australia & Oceania

Publisher's Summary:

The Jerilderie Letter   By Ned Kelly   Narrated by Denis Daly   Edward 'Ned' Kelly (1854 -1880) was the last and most celebrated Australian bushranger (outlaw).   After being implicated in the shooting of three policemen at Stringybark Creek in October, 1878, Kelly and his gang were declared by the Victorian government to be outlaws, and were the subjects of an extensive man hunt over the next two years.   In February, 1879, the Kelly gang staged a daring and highly organized raid on the Bank of New South Wales in the town of Jerilderie. During the occupation of the town Kelly dictated a letter to fellow gang member Joe Byrne, which he wished the editor of the Jerilderie & Urana Gazette to publish. Unable to locate the editor of the paper, Kelly gave the letter to Edwin Living, the accountant of the bank, with a demand that it be printed. However, the letter was not actually published until 1930   In the letter the outlaw gives a detailed explanation of his various grievances and, in particular, attempts to justify his actions at Stringybark Creek.   Kelly was captured after an epic shootout at the Glenrowan Hotel in June 1880, and was executed by hanging in Melbourne on 11th November.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/502155 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Notes and Sketches of New South Wales during a residence 1839 to 1844 (Illustrated)

Author: Louisa Anne Meredith

Narrator: Amy Soakes

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 6 hours 56 minutes

Release date: January 24, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1

Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1

Genres: Australia & Oceania

Publisher's Summary:

In the summer of 1839, 26-year-old Louisa Anne Meredith, in the company of her husband, Charles Meredith, sailed from England to the British colony of New South Wales, in what was then New Holland.   Four years later, she published a detailed account of theyears since she had left England. A fascinating window into the past, Louisa's impressions and experiences cover the four-month ocean voyage; life within the fledgling city of Sydney; travels across the Blue Mountains to Bathurst; and eventual settlement at Homebush in Sydney's west. Vivid observations of Sydney as it was in the 1840s combine with descriptions of flora, fauna and the general way of life in the colony, all told through the eyes of a well-educated, articulate and well-to-do woman who had come from a very different climate and upbringing to that she found in Australia.   Louisa was a naturalist, author and illustrator and her eye for detail provides a historically significant document giving a unique window into early Australian settlement. From descriptions of polite society, to hardships of drought and overland travel; from architecture to politics, convicts to aboriginal customs, Louisa's keen wit and clever insight provide a fascinating account of life in colonial Australia.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/442694 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Angel of Waterloo

Author: Jackie French

Narrator: Edwina Wren

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 13 hours 58 minutes

Release date: December 2, 2020

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 2

Genres: Australia & Oceania

Publisher's Summary:

A powerful novel from master storyteller Jackie French The soldiers she saved called her the Angel of Waterloo. The husband she loved and lost called her Hen. The patients she treated in secret called her Auntie Love. She was Henrietta Bartlett, a surgeon's daughter, a survivor of the Napoleonic Wars. But now the battlefield is just a blood-soaked memory, and Hen dreams of peace, a home, and a society that allows women to practise medicine. On the other side of the world, the newly founded colony of New South Wales seems a paradise. But Europe's wars cast long shadows ... From bestselling author Jackie French comes the story of one woman's journey from the hell of Waterloo to colonial Australia, where she can forge her own dreams in a land of many nations. PRAISE FOR JACKIE FRENCH 'a master storyteller ... [she] gives women a rich, strong, and brutally honest voice' - Better Reading 'Heartwarming, heartbreaking and hard to put down' - Australian Women's Weekly on If Blood Should Stain the Wattle

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/461187 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Whatever Happened to Ned Kelly's Head

Author: Eamon Evans

Narrator: Jay Hackett

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 6 hours 15 minutes

Release date: November 24, 2020

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 1

Genres: Australia & Oceania

Publisher's Summary:

Who stole the priceless Picasso from the NGV? Was Errol Flynn a Nazi spy? Did an Australian kill the infamous Red Baron? If you think Australia's history is straightforward, you're dead wrong. This is a land of the strange, the spooky and the unexplained. From the eerie ball of light that stalked a terrified family across the Nullabor, to the whereabouts of Victoria's parliamentary mace, to the unidentified body found propped up on an Adelaide beach, and, yes, to the whereabouts of Ned Kelly's skull, you'll find our history has plenty of mysterious twists and unanswered questions. With his signature wit, Eamon Evans investigates Australia's most curious mysteries, digs up the evidence and lays it out for the court of public opinion to decide. What Ever Happened to Ned Kelly's Head? will have you scratching your head and wondering long after the last page.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/456774 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Adventurers, Pioneers and Misfits

Author: Jim Haynes

Narrator: Jim Haynes

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 10 hours 38 minutes

Release date: November 3, 2020

Genres: Australia & Oceania

Publisher's Summary:

The petty thief . . . who escaped Van Diemen's Land, twice, stole the government brig and set sail for Japan, where, by the Shogun's decree, all foreigners were to be executed. The world's best cricketer . . . a champion of Aboriginal people who ‘invented' Aussie Rules, survived the worst massacre of white settlers in Australia's history and killed himself with a pair of scissors. The eccentric musical genius . . . who played in the greatest concert halls in the world but pushed his favourite piano stool between venues in a wheelbarrow. Over the many years Jim Haynes has spent exploring and writing about the quirkier events and people in Australia's history, he has discovered characters who have amazed, surprised and simply baffled him. This is a book about some of those men and women and their remarkable, out-of-the-ordinary and almost unbelievable lives. As he always does, Jim has discovered that there is more to the story than first meets the eye. Who knew that the first man hanged in Australia made an artefact now valued at over one million dollars? Or that an Australian swimmer was the highest-paid act on the American vaudeville circuit and the star of the first million-dollar movie ever made? And that the father of the first Australian woman to serve in parliament was hanged for murder? With a light touch, a wry eye and his gifts as a master storyteller, Jim shares the tales and adventures of a group of heroic, feisty, flawed and pioneering characters who have shaped our nation and introduced Australia to the world.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/545066 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Down South: In Search of the Great Southern Land

Author: Bruce Ansley

Narrator: Kevin Keys

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 12 hours 10 minutes

Release date: October 7, 2020

Genres: Australia & Oceania

Publisher's Summary:

In Down South, writer Bruce Ansley goes on a journey back to his beloved South Island of New Zealand in search of what makes it unique. From Curio Bay to Golden Bay, in Down South writer Bruce Ansley sets off on a vast expedition across the South Island, Te Waipounamu, visiting the places and people who hold clues to the south's famous character. 'A wild and a contemplative journey that gives readers a glimpse of the fascinating stories that made up some of the South Island's glittering past.' - RNZ

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/464021 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: This Could Be Serious

Author: Julius Grafton

Narrator: Graeme Hague

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 43 minutes

Release date: October 3, 2020

Genres: Australia & Oceania

Publisher's Summary:

Sex, drugs, rock and roll, Absinthe, splatter, death, internet dating and MUCH MORE. The story of an innocent Sydney boys journey from slum to splendour along the explosive rock and roll highways of the 70's, through heartbreak and happiness. Having made and lost fortunes, 4 wives and adventures all around the world. Julius Grafton is a writer, former rock and roll roadie, and entrepreneur doing business in the music, events and media industries. This fast moving story gathers some unbelievable chapters in a colourful life lived hard. You meet plenty of interesting people: Bruce Jackson, Eric Robinson, Garry Glitter, Roger Davies, A. J. Maddah and Tom Misner all get a chapter.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/453952 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Moonlite: The Tragic Love Story of Captain Moonlite and the Bloody End of the Bushrangers

Author: Garry Linnell

Narrator: Ryan Corr

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 38 minutes

Release date: September 29, 2020

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 1

Ratings of Narrator: 4 of Total 1

Genres: Australia & Oceania

Publisher's Summary:

Read by Ryan Corr, acclaimed for his roles in Holding the Man and HBO's House of Dragon. Immerse yourself in the captivating, true story of a unique bushranger's life, perfect for history enthusiasts and true crime fans. From Walkley Award-winning writer Gary Linnell comes the true and epic story of George Scott, an Irish-born preacher who becomes, along with Ned Kelly, one of the nation's most notorious and celebrated criminals. A Cast of Unforgettable Characters. A gay bushranger with a love of poetry and guns. A grotesque hangman with a passion for flowers and gardening. A broken young man desperate for love and respect. These men - two of them lovers - are about to bring the era of Australia's outlaws to a torrid and bloody climax. From Privilege to Notoriety Charismatic, intelligent, and handsome, George Scott was born into a privileged life in famine-wracked Ireland. His family lost its fortune and fled to New Zealand. There, Scott joins the local militia and after recovering from gunshot wounds, sails to Australia. The Birth of Captain Moonlite One night he dons a mask in a small country town, arms himself with a gun and, dubbing himself Captain Moonlite, brazenly robs a bank before staging one of the country's most audacious jailbreaks. After falling in love with fellow prisoner James Nesbitt, a boyish petty criminal desperately searching for a father figure, Scott finds himself unable to shrug off his criminal past. Pursued and harassed by the police, he stages a dramatic siege and prepares for a final showdown with the law - and a macabre executioner without a nose. A Window Into Australia's Past Told at a cracking pace, and based on many of the extensive letters Scott wrote from his death cell, Moonlite is set amid the violent and sexually-repressed era of Australia in the second half of the 19th century. 'Linnell's vibrant, lyrical retelling of Scott's remarkable life reads like a colourful novel' Daily Telegraph

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/436920 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story

Author: Christina Thompson

Narrator: Sarah Mollo-Christensen

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 8 hours 29 minutes

Release date: September 8, 2020

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.5 of Total 2

Genres: Australia & Oceania

Publisher's Summary:

Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is the story of the cultural collision between Westerners and the Maoris of New Zealand, told partly as a history of the complex and bloody period of contact between Europeans and the Maoris in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and partly as the story of Christina Thompson's marriage to a Maori man. As an American graduate student studying history in Australia, Thompson traveled to New Zealand and met a Maori known as 'Seven.' Their relationship is one of opposites: he is a tradesman, she is an intellectual; he comes from a background of rural poverty, she from one of middleclass privilege; he is a 'native,' she descends directly from 'colonizers.' Nevertheless, they shared a similar sense of adventure and a willingness to depart from the customs of their families and forge a life together on their own. In this book, which grows out of decades of reading and research, Thompson explores cultural displacement through the ages and the fascinating history of Europeans in the South Pacific, beginning with Abel Tasman's discovery of New Zealand in 1642 and Cook's circumnavigation of 1770.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/390583 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Australia's Greatest Escapes: Gripping tales of wartime bravery

Author: Colin Burgess

Narrator: Steve Shanahan

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 11 hours 7 minutes

Release date: July 22, 2020

Genres: Australia & Oceania

Publisher's Summary:

Australia's greatest escape stories from two world wars    Australia’s Greatest Escapes is a collection of stories about the most hazardous aspect of the prisoner of war experience – escape. Here is all the adventure, suspense and courage of ordinary Australians who defied their captors; men who tunnelled to freedom, crawled through stinking drains, or clawed a passage beneath barbed wire in a desperate attempt to flee captivity.   They were willing to risk the odds and even death in the loneliest war of all – the fight to be free. Each possessed in spades the noble qualities of boldness, resourcefulness, cunning, determination and mateship we have come to admire about our Australian service men and women under adversity.   Featuring stories of Australian POWs from all theatres of war, including one who fled a German work camp during World War I, another involved in a mass tunnel escape from a notorious Italian camp, and an airman who brazenly attempted to steal a German fighter and fly it back to England. We also re-live the tragic saga of the Sandakan death marches in which six Australian escapers became the only survivors from 2000 POWs, and follow the perilous journeys to freedom undertaken by Australian infantrymen following the appalling massacre of their fellow soldiers on the Japanese-held island of Ambon.