Adventurers, Pioneers and Misfits: Australia’s Most Amazing True Life Stories by Jim Haynes

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges. Interior and binding are still excellent.

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. (back cover)

Includes George Morrison, Percy Gainger, Jim Kelly, Bert Hinkler, Mttew Flinders, Edith Cowan, Tom Wills, Nancy Bird, Thomas Barrett, James Squire and William Walker.