Award-winning author Bruce Pascoe delivers a call to care for our earth through agriculture. As detailed in his book Dark Emu, he provides compelling evidence from the diaries of early explorers which suggests that systems of food production and land management have been blatantly understated in modern retellings of early Aboriginal history, and that a new look at Australia’s past is required.

Bruce Pascoe is Bunurong/Tasmanian Yuin man and an award winning author and story teller. His book Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident, a history of Aboriginal agriculture, was published by Magabala in 2014 and won both the Book of Year and the Indigenous Writers Prize (joint winner) in the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. In 2018 Dark Emu was transformed into compelling contemporary dance performance by Bangarra Dance Theatre, touring nationally. Other books include Night Animals, Shark, Ocean, Bloke, Cape Otway, Convincing Ground, Little Red Yellow and Black Book. Bloke, Chainsaw File, Fog a Dox, and most recently Mrs Whitlam. In 2018 Bruce Pascoe was awarded the Lifetime Achievement in Literature Award by the Australia Council.

ERIC ROLLS MEMORIAL LECTURE

Eric Rolls was a poet, historian, environmentalist, farmer philosopher and prolific author, including a two-volume history of Chinese immigration, and his classic work A Million Wild Acres, a history of the conquest and destruction of Australia’s wilderness. Eric has been described as 'the finest historian of our natural landscape, who writes books about rabbits, forests, dingoes and turtles, yet can’t stand greenies.' He died in 2007. The Library holds the personal papers of Eric Rolls, as well as oral history recordings, photographs and publications.

The Eric Rolls Lecture was established in 2010 as a bi-annual lecture, organised by the Watermark Literary Society and funded by Elaine van Kempen, the widow of Eric Rolls and executor of his estate. The lecture aims to continue the work of Eric Rolls, highlighting the work of Australia’s environmental scientists and writers.

Image: Bruce Pascoe. Photo courtesy Linsey Rendell.

Dr Anne Summers AO has had an extraordinary career as a journalist, author, policy maker, bureaucrat, editor, publisher, board member and above all change agent. In conversation with Genevieve Jacobs, she will speak about her life and her new memoir Unfettered and Alive.

This is the compelling story of Anne Summers' extraordinary life. Her story has her travelling around the world as she moves from job to job, in newspapers and magazines, advising prime ministers, leading feminist debates, writing memorable and influential books. Anne has not been afraid to walk away from success and to satisfy her constant restlessness by charging down new and risky paths. Whatever position she has held, she has expanded what's possible and helped us see things differently-often at high personal cost.

Anne shares revealing stories about the famous and powerful people she has worked with or reported on and is refreshingly frank about her own anxieties and mistakes. She shares a heart-breaking story of family violence and tells of her ultimate reconciliation with the father who had rejected her. Unfettered and Alive is a provocative and inspiring memoir from someone who broke through so many boundaries to show what women can do.

Image by Kevin McDermott

Markus Zusak, internationally best-selling author of The Book Thief, makes his long-awaited return with a profoundly heartfelt and inventive novel about a family held together by stories, and a young life caught in the current: a boy in search of greatness as a cure for a painful past.

Join us for a special evening at the National Library as Markus is joined by respected journalist and presenter Caroline Baum to discuss his much-anticipated new novel Bridge of Clay.

Image: Markus Zusak, courtesy Hugh Stewart

Share an afternoon tea with a difference as Lish Fejer chats with Annabel Crabb about her new book Special Guest. Co-written with Wendy Sharpe, this is a cookbook for anyone who loves hosting guests at home.

The fraternal twin of Special Delivery - a cookbook for anyone who ever felt like punching a wall before their guests arrive.

If you are someone who prepares for guests by sweeping bills, laundry and newspapers behind sofa cushions, take heart! It's possible to be an imperfect host, but happily so. The essential ingredient is not, paradoxically, the food, nor the perfect house to host in, but the sentiment you convey when you open the door. Do your eyes say: 'I like you and I enjoy your company,' or does a weepy cloud of visceral horror descend as pine nuts burn quietly in the kitchen?

Special Guest is a gentle guide to turning easy basic fare into something of a celebration. For when you want to say to your friends with their spouses and ten small children, 'Why don't you stay for lunch?' without hating yourself afterwards. Learn the lesson of 'one splendid thing done well' without regard to the hundred other things, and call the day a success. Pick up some pointers for the modern conundrum that is cooking for people with seemingly incompatible dietary requirements.

Hosting your friends is not about showing off; it is about delighting others. Your dining table might be decorated with a pile of unmatched socks and kids' homework, but that's no reason not to invite friends in for a chat, a sit-down and something delicious to eat.

Annabel Crabb is one of Australia's best-loved TV and media personalities and a joyfully imperfect host. Wendy Sharpe is Annabel's oldest friend, a recipe consultant on Kitchen Cabinet and co-conspirator in mad-capped cookery projects.

In association with Murdoch Books

Image: Annabel Crabb. Photo courtesy Rob Palmer.

It is frequently contended that present-day working conditions and wagelessness are analogous to those experienced during the severe economic downturn of the 1930s. Using methods of historical sociology, Professor Lisa Adkins explores oral and manuscript testimonies of those who lived through the period to test the claim that the conditions of the present, and especially those associated with work, are comparable to those of the Great Depression.

Professor Lisa Adkins is Head of the School of Social and Political Sciences at The University of Sydney and an Academy of Finland Distinguised Professor (2015-19).

A Family Standing Outside a Tin Shack Called Wiloma during the Great Depression, New South Wales. c. 1932 (detail), nla.cat-vn6247387, courtesy Fairfax Syndication

Treasures Curator, Nat Williams will explore the European discovery and documentation of tapa or barkcloth by Cook’s associates and other navigators and how this ubiquitous material worked its way into cultural exchanges over more than a century. (In association with the Library’s In Cook’s wake: Tapa treasures from the Pacific exhibition until 3 February 2019).

The Treasures Curator is supported by the Australian Government’s Catalyst – Australian Arts and Culture Fund

Canberra journalist and garden-lover Genevieve Jacobs leads a discussion with botanical artist Julia Landford, ANU anthropologist Dr Bronwen Douglas and leading botanist Dr Judy West about the context and importance of the natural history art that arose from the voyages of Captain James Cook, as well as discussing the continuing significance of natural history art in the scientific field today.

Julia Landford is Director of the natural history art school, Canberra NatureArt Lab. In her twenty-year public service career with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Australia’s Aid Program, Julia was deployed to Papua New Guinea, South East Asia and the Pacific Region. The rich biodiversity of these regions was a great source of artistic inspiration and saw her establish Canberra’s first art school dedicated to artistic inspiration from nature.

Dr. Bronwen Douglas is an Honorary Professor at the ANU School of Archaeology and Anthropology and was a Harold White Fellow at the Library in 2010. Her research interests include the history of the idea of race, and the history of archaeology, anthropology, and collecting in Oceania.

Dr. Judy West has had an extensive botanical career and in 2003, she was awarded the Order of Australia for her services to Australian botany. Judy has dedicated her career to botany in several executive positions at the CSIRO and ANU, and is currently the Executive Director of the Australian National Botanic Gardens.

Image: Moses Griffith (1747- 1819), Rainbow Lorikeet, 1772, nla.cat-6155314

In the mid-18th Century, Whitby was a booming industrial town, a centre of shipbuilding and a centre of professional maritime training, in particular in mathematics. It was entrepreneurial and aspirational - a place where there were opportunities to make careers, and in some cases considerable wealth.

James Cook is sometimes described as the son of a farm labourer who learnt to sail on collier barks between Whitby and London, and then learnt cartography while serving in the Royal Navy in Canada. Sophie Forgan, (Chairman of Trustees, Captain Cook Memorial Museum, Whitby, UK) challenges this view and argues that Whitby was key to the formation of the young Cook’s skills and aptitudes.

Image: Thomas Luny (1759–1837), The Bark, Earl of Pembroke, later Endeavour, Leaving Whitby harbour in 1768 c. 1790, nla.cat-vn345842

Dr Joy McCann reveals some of the secrets of the Southern Ocean, drawing from sea captains’ journals, explorers’ letters and whalers’ logs as well as her own research into the Antarctic region’s natural and cultural histories.

Discover the Southern Ocean’s intriguing stories and what it can teach us about our past and our future.

Joy's book Wild Sea: A History of the Southern Ocean was published by NewSouth Publishing in 2018 - she will be available to sign copies at the Bookshop after her talk.

Victor Briggs will takes us on a navigational journey via the stars, sharing the essence of the connections with both land and sea people.

Image: John Cleveley (c.1745-1786), Discovery and Resolution at an Island in the Pacific, 1777, 1780's, nla.cat-vn321742