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A rich biography of artist-turned-environmental campaigner John Büsst. Known to his enemies as ‘The Bingil Bay Bastard’, John Büsst, a Bendigo-born Melbourne bohemian artist, moved to tropical Bedarra Island in North Queensland and underwent an extraordinary transformation to become one of Australia’s most successful conservationists. In the 1960s and early 70s Büsst led campaigns to protect two of Australia’s most important and endangered environments — saving lowland rainforests from destruction and the Great Barrier Reef from reckless resource mining for oil, gas, cement and fertiliser. A plan Büsst likened to ‘bulldozing the Taj Mahal to make road gravel’. Along the...
Colin Colahan was an Australian painter of outstanding ability and reputation who from the 1920s to the 1970s was remarkably productive. Colahan was one of the more brilliant pupils of the painter Max Meldrum. Identification with the unfashionable 'Meldrumites' is one explanation for Colahan's disappearance from the public gaze. The other has murkier origins in the still unsolved murder of his girlfriend, Mollie Dean, in 1930. There was nothing of substance to link Colahan to the brutal murder, but fevered public speculation cast a depressing shadow for many years and helped propel him to Europe in 1935. There he stayed for the rest of his long life. The story of Colahan's personal life is tantalising in itself—three marriages, five children, numerous lovers, beautiful houses in England and Italy, portrait painter of the rich and famous. It was an urbane life. He was a witty, charming, talented man. This intimate, engaging portrait is indeed most welcome, and will restore Colahan's life and work to its rightful place in the history of Australian art.
When Albert Johnson, the Mad Trapper of Rat River, was gunned down in February 1932, he went to his death without anyone knowing who he really was—most people believed the name "Albert Johnson" was an alias. He'd eluded a well-organized, well-equipped posse for seven weeks, surviving solely on wits and determination in the bitter cold of a Canadian Arctic winter. Some 75 years later, he was being pursued again, this time by a team of filmmakers and forensic scientists bent on determining his identity once and for all. In this age of DNA testing and leading-edge forensic techniques, would the decades-old mystery finally be solved? Myth Merchant Films' Michael Jorgensen and Carrie Gour hoped...
This book is a synopsis of many years of research in an eff ort to add a human face and personality to the data culled from various sources of vital records. As the family tree unfurls, it reveals the vivid contrasts between its many branches. It exposes the hardships and devastating eff ects of alcoholism that followed several branches, as well as the prestige and prosperity that were perpetuated in others. However, each individual is equally important to the color and texture of the fi ne tapestry created by this OGrady family history.