Writers Hub

Today a new book for teens & tweens is featured on this website. Set around 1860, Escaping the Triad it is the story of a young man who escaped a triad in China and travelled to Australia in the hope of making his fortune at the goldfields. It is a great adventure involving a band of friends- an elderly Chinese, a   British sailor, a tribal aborigine,  a beautiful girl and the young hero, My Li. Chased by two Chinese assassins, the gro…

Today I posted the story of Douglas Frazer Allan on this webpage. He was an ANZAC who served at Gallipoli and the Somme in France. Miraculously he survived the war. When reading his story it is difficult not to ask how he survived. After all on at least two occasions he was tossing live grenades from his trench into the enemy trench. He was not just doing this for a few minutes but for the duration of a battle. This could be for hours. Lance Corporal Leonard Keysor won his Victoria Cross at the battle of Lone Pine for continually throwing bombs for over fifty hours. How is this possible? Imagi…

Next year marks the centenary of the beginning of World War I.  On the pretext of Serbia being responsible for the assassination of the heir to the Austrian and Hungarian thrones in June 1914, Austria invaded Serbia on 28^th July.   Austria thought that the small Serbian Army would be no match for the might of the Austrian Hungarian Empire and that little Serbia could be quickly defeated before its ally Russia could enter the fray. This was the first big mistake of the war. Russia was more than ready to fight. She mobilised immediately. Germany came to the aid of Austria and Germa…

    There are two interesting items in the “News of Yesterday’’ this week. They are the death of Pemulwuy on 1^st June 1802 and the Marbo decision on 2^nd June 1992.  These two anniversaries provide an opportunity to examine some of the circumstance behind the treatment of the original inhabitants of this land by the invading British people from 1788 onwards. Do you remember a time when you looked at a map of the world and a third of it was red?  Today there are 196 recognised nations on Earth and 54 of them belong to the British Commonwealth of N…

Imagine, if you can, being employed as a servant, by a middle class family, in country England over two hundred years ago. Life is hard. You are both house maid and under cook.  The master is a brewer; comfortably well off, providing he toils over twelve hours each day.  The mistress is still weak following the birth of her sixth child. You work from sun up to long after sun down. Your family is poor and becoming poorer. Whilst some scrape a living as tenant farmers, most are forced into service and some into the workhouse.  One day you are at the village markets and you see a shawl. It is …

The Solar System first formed from a nebula, a cloud of dust and gas. Gravitation attraction between the dust particles drew then together then the cloud began to spin and differentiate.  Imagine water circling a plughole. Closer to the hold the water increases in speed and the circling ripples become closer together and steeper sided. In the embryonic solar system there was a high accumulation of matter in the centre of the cloud. This eventually became the sun. As it spun, it became denser and hotter until, about 5 billion years ago, it ignited.  The remaining matter separated into bands, …

I have been reading a really scary book. The Weather Makers, by Tim Flannery,    was first published in 2005. Then the predictions made in the book were far enough into the future as to allow time for scepticism, thought and action. Just seven years on, some predictions are taking place now.  Consider Cyclone Sandy. While cyclones have always been with us, wind speed appears to have increased since 1995. Sea levels have also increased, just a little bit, to be sure, but enough to cause storm surges that travel far inland during major weather events, like Sandy. Perhaps, the most d…

Rememberance Day has just past and our thoughts turn to the many young Australians who have risked their lives fignting for Australia. Australian Family Stories is a new web site for tales about Australian and Australians. Is it surprising that three of the four stories sent to me since the site opened, are about war? What does this say about us, as Australians? Our troops first set sail to fight in a war on 3^rd March 1885. An infantry contingent from NSW, travelled to Africa, to help England defend Khartoum in the Sudan. The young men, who volunteered to across the globe to fi…

When your first book is published the question is –how to sell it. With the thought that others might be in the same category, I established this webpage, Australian Family Stories.   The World Wide Web will give access to millions of potential readers who might be interested in reading my book, I thought. Of course nobody knows where your site is! It needs publicising. Author Clancy Tucker came to my aid. He gave encouragement, placed his excellent book Gunnedah Hero of this site and promoted the site of his blog.  Clancy is an author of young adult fiction. He is al…