​A number of classic older titles that are out of print are highlighted below.  More details are in REVIEWS.
This page concludes with two booklets produced for the Yirralka Rangers in NE Arnhem Land that can be downloaded as pdfs for free​. 

Conserving Aboriginal Places in Coastal Victoria

Commissioned by Aboriginal Affairs Victoria in the year 2000, this booklet presents approaches and general guidelines for conserving Aboriginal cultural sites and  places in coastal Victoria. 

Aboriginal cultural sites and places are found from one end of the Victorian coast to the other – more than 4,000 to date. And this number is increasing every year.

Many of the sites are very fragile and exposed to a large number of threats. The very instability of the coastal environment and its high population density places coastal Aboriginal sites at significant risk.

Development does not have to be destructive. Awareness of an area’s cultural heritage values can ensure any development is compatible with the preservation of sites. How planning authorities and local government can ensure this precious cultural heritage is preserved for the future is the subject of this booklet.  

NOW OUT OF PRINT

​A Fortunate Accident: A boy from Balranald
By Kevin Coombs

An inspirational story of an Aboriginal boy from Balranald, who went out rabbit shooting and was shot in the back, in an instant transforming the nature of his life, putting him in a hospital bed for two years, making him paraplegic. From this very ordinary beginning, author Kevin Coombs grew up to become an extraordinary man with a stellar international sporting career in basketball – one of the few people in Australia to have carried both the Olympic and Paralympic torches.

In his own direct, good-humoured way, Kevin tells a life story infused with his philosophy of, “When you think you’re gone, you can turn a negative into a positive.”

Recovering in the Spinal Unit in the Austin Hospital, Kevin discovered basketball and a reason to get out of bed every morning. At the age of 19, he was selected for the very first Paralympics in Rome in 1960. Over the next 24 years, he was to play and captain the basketball team in five Paralympics. His contribution to sport was acknowledged with the naming of an avenue after him in the Sydney Olympics Village in the year 2000.

But Kevin is more than a sporting hero. He has played a leading role in a wide range of disabled, health, housing, educational and legal organisations and initiatives. He is a founding member of Paravics; acted as the first Manager of the Koori Health Unit; continues to sit on the Board of the Aboriginal Hostels Association; serves as an advocate in a Koori Court; and was an ambassador as part of the National Indigenous Strategy for Literacy and Numeracy. He has an Order of Australia for a lifetime’s service to sport and the community.

Throughout it all, Kevin has built up an ever-widening circle of friends at sport and work, whose tales pepper this book. “There’s always been someone there ready and willing to give me a lift,” claims Kevin. At the very foundation are his own family and wider community back at Balranald.

Kevin reckons he’s been more fortunate than most. 

William Barak: Bridge builder of the Kulin
By Gib Wettenhall

A true Aboriginal leader and hero, this 24 page booklet tells William Barak's incredible story clearly and simply.  It includes many photos and illustrations of his artwork and would be ideal for students. 

As a politically astute Kulin leader and an artist painting about Aboriginal subjects in a European style, Barak was one of the few Aboriginal people to have an impact on public consciousness in the nineteenth century. 

He led his people to a land they could call their own at Coranderrk near Healesville.

The booklet was commissioned by the Victorian Government on the building of the William Barak footbridge in 2006, connecting Birrarung Mar to the MCG stadium.

FREE E-BOOK DOWNLOADS
NE Arnhem Land's booklet series by Indigenous rangers

In collaboration with an  Indigenous land management group, the Yirralka Rangers, em PRESS  has published two free booklets that tell a positive story about the middle path that the Yolngu people are following in protecting their largely pristine natural environment and cultural sites over an area the size of Wales  in north-east Arnhem Land.

​The Keeping Country series highlights the work of the 60 or so highly trained and capable Yirralka Rangers. See below  for the 1st and 2nd booklets as free pdf versions.

In 2006, a group of Yolngu traditional owners agreed to incorporate a parcel of their high conservation and culturally significant land into Australia’s national reserve system as an Indigenous Protected Area (IPA). Subsequently, the elders formed Yirralka Rangers to care for land and sea country within the Laynhapuy IPA, which now covers over 17,320 sq.km of land and sea country, incorporating some 800km of coastline. 

Written in collaboration with the Yirralka Rangers, two 32 page booklets were produced for visitors camping in their recreation areas.

Keeping Country: Putting both ways culture into practice

​The first booklet focused on the Yirralka Rangers  ‘both ways’ bicultural approach integrating western skills and science with traditional Indigenous knowledge. To achieve effective management over such a large, complex area of land and sea requires knowledgeable and innovative rangers. The rangers manage recreation areas, control pest plants and animals, patrol 800km of coastline, integrate traditional burning practises with western science, undertake scientific research and protect cultural sites.

Keeping Country: Putting both ways culture into practice can be downloaded as a pdf here. 

Keeping Country: No country without people

Many visitors are curious about how the Yirralka Rangers know that when the wind blows from a certain direction or a plant comes into flower, it's time to go fishing or foraging.
 
As this second booklet in the series on Keeping Country reveals, it’s not magic. The source of the rangers deep, locally intimate environmental knowledge comes from being on country. From learning creation stories and songlines and all that they contain by walking through their homelands with parents and kin. By seeing, touching, tasting, hearing; by absorbing the fundamental connections between culture and country underpinning body and souls.

Keeping Country: No country without people can be downloaded as a pdf  by clicking here.