New Books in February

Welcome to the first of our new book blogs. We’re going to take you beneath the covers of some of our exciting new books every month. Each of the categories below you’ll see reflected in our physical displays in the library.

Ready to dive in?…

Local Victorian Stories

Six peaks speak : unsettling legacies in Southern Dja Dja Wurrung Country / Barry Golding, with Clive Willman.

This fascinating book takes you to the six peaks of the Dja Dja Wurrung Country: Mounts Kooroocheang, Beckworth,

Greenock, Tarrengower, Alexander and Franklin. It also ties in with the amazing talk that the author, Barry Golding, gave at the library in 2024. You can view this talk on our catalogue and on You Tube. The blurb for Six Peaks  tells of the ‘unique stories and continuing legacies of these mountains from a multidisciplinary perspective. Created as part of Professor Barry Golding’s State Library Victoria Creative Fellowship in 2023, it accesses seldom-visited archives, turning the idea of ‘settling’ on its head, instead using ‘unsettling’ as its key organising principle. The book threads together insights and evidence from diverse historic sources, including First Nations, geological, ecological, community and reserve management…’

And that’s what this book does, it takes you to that unsettled legacy that marks all of our country. It places these peaks and their past front and centre as a core of the history of the landscape and of the people who have lived there.

And as a final point of interest… The Mount Franklin discussed is the same Mount Franklin where so much bottled water supposedly comes from. But the complexities there are another story.

Sports Arts and Entertain

Orstralia : a punk history 1974-1989 / Tristan Clark.

Australia’s arts and entertainment history is one that shapes so much of our cultural identity. Which is why it is so exciting to see books on the less traditional modes of artistic expression being written. Punk music definitely comes under this heading.

Orstralia (as the blurb says) offers an unprecedented snapshot of an underacknowledged segment of Australian life and history. Far from punk’s more modish North Atlantic core in the late 1970s, discontented youth were enacting similar musical and cultural reckonings. Australia was another of the eager participants at its periphery. Yet despite its purported ‘laidback’ national demeanour, punks in Australia were routinely met with insult, fist, or the police baton. More subterranean than the national scandal that was punk back in ‘homeland’ Britain, Australia’s own bands nonetheless came to be heralded internationally. Orstralia represents the first definitive account of the country’s initial years, from progenitors The Saints and Radio Birdman in the mid-70s, through the emergence of hardcore in the eighties, to the stylistic diffusion that accompanied transition to the 1990s. Based on over 130 interviews, Orstralia documents the most renowned to the most fleeting and obscure acts the nation produced. Included are equally engrossing and shocking personal narratives befitting such a passionate and intemperate cultural form, as well as punk’s placing within broader Australian society at the time

So grab the book and relive your own punk youth, or delve into the totally new world of iconoclasts that shaped Australia’s sub culture.

Science and Environment

Yarra Birrarung : artists, writers and the river / Dr Judith Buckrich

The Yarra is the life blood of Melbourne- it has been at the centre of Melbourne’s history since its inception and well before as a place of meeting, connection, fresh water and so much more for Victoria’s first nations peoples. In Yarra Birrarung Judith Buckrich (former president of the PMI) takes us on a dive in the river’s cultural history through the lens of artists and writers. She explores how life has flourished on the river including recreation , industry and land use, as well as infrastructure, natural history and social history. It’s the first illustrated history of the Yarra to be written and leans into the visual side to explore the changes wrought by time and a rapidly growing city. We’re also very fond of Yarra Birrarung  because not only was a lot of the research done at the PMI, but Judith also donated some of the external research materials given to her back to the PMI’s collection. Including this fascinating collection of Yarra articles and ephemera we’ve called the Yarra River Collection which was given to her by PMI member Peter Gill in the first place. So in many ways Yarra Birrarung  feels like a very PMI book.

Family History

The Genealogist V ol.17 no.12 SUMMER 2024

The Genealogist is the journal of our friends over at Family History Connections. Coming out four times a year it explores all things genealogy.

In this issue the PMI even features! We have an article in it about other second oldest things in Victoria (as the PMI is the second oldest public library in Victoria). It was written originally as a blog post for our blog by placement student Fiona Wilkinson and Family History Connections asked to print it in The Genealogist which we wholeheartedly agreed with as we have had a similar arrangement in the past and we love a bit of reciprocal connectivity.

This issue, along with our amazing article 😊 features William Caxton and printing, Henry Woodruffle and his Clyde Works, The Shannon Club, Boyd Park and the Outer Circle Railway. This is only the latest issue of the magazine; we have a collection going back to 1983, all of which is indexed on our catalogue. So come down and lose yourself in the family stories, you never know what you might find.

Australia From A Different Angle

Black convicts : how slavery shaped Australia / Chingaipe, Santilla

History is not all about pretty stories and great achievements, it’s vitally important to acknowledge and understand the dark part of our history that has and continue to shape both us and our society. Black Convicts is a book explore one of our darkest, but least known histories.

As the blurb says: The story of Australia’s Black convicts has been erased from our history. Recovering their lives, Santilla Chingaipe offers a fresh understanding of this fatal shore, and shows how empire, slavery, race and memory have shaped our nation. On the First Fleet of 1788, at least 15 convicts were of African descent. By 1840 that number had risen to almost 500. Among them were David Stuurman, a revered South African chief transported for anti-colonial insurrection; John Caesar, who became Australia’s first bushranger; Billy Blue, the stylishly dressed ferryman who gave his name to Sydney’s Blues Point; and William Cuffay, a prominent London Chartist who led the development of Australia’s labour movement. Two of the youngest were cousins from Mauritius — girls aged just 9 and 12 — sentences over a failed attempt to poison their mistress. But although some of these lives were documented and their likenesses hang in places like the National Portrait Gallery, even their descendants are often unaware of their existence. By uncovering lives whitewashed out of our history, in stories spanning Africa, the Americas, and Europe, this book also traces Australia’s hidden links to slavery, which both powered the British Empire and inspired the convict system itself. Situating European settlement in its global context, Chingaipe shows that the injustice of dispossession was driven by the engine of labour exploitation.

This isn’t an easy book and nor is it intended to be. But it is a vitally necessary one.

Literature

The merger [Blu-ray DVD] / directed by Mark Grentell.

Our literature doesn’t only include our fictional book collection (of which we have many) but also our DVDs and BluRay. Did you know that we collection Australian movies? One of the new ones is a film that has been out for a little while, but is wonderful so we thought it was worth highlighting. The Merger is a both lighthearted and serious film- it’s a very Australian film with its quiet sense of humor. It was one our Collections Librarian watched during lockdown and it’s a memorable bright spot- of nearly crying with laughter. She says it’s the heart, the very real life, but the delightful absurdity that got to her, and the characters which has made The Merger one of her comfort films.

But what is it about?

As the blurb says: In the tradition of The Castle and Ali’s Wedding, Damian Callinan adapts his entertaining and topical stage play, The Merger for the big screen! Bodgy Creek is a struggling town. The drought won’t let up, jobs are scarce after the mill was shut down, and the footy team looks like it will have to merge with another club or fold. Living a hermit-like existence on the town’s fringe, former football star turned ‘Town Killer’ Troy Carrington (Damian Callinan), is coaxed into rescuing the team after striking up an unlikely friendship with young Neil (Rafferty Grierson) who is struggling with the recent loss of his father. Teaming up with Neil’s mum Angie (Kate Mulvany, The Great Gatsby) who runs a nearby refugee support centre, they unite to recruit the new arrivals to save the team and take the community on a journey of change. But for some, like Neil’s grandfather and Club President, Bull (fan-favourite, John Howard, SeaChange) and ‘star’ player Carpet Burn (Angus McLaren, Hotel Mumbai), it’s more change than they’re willing to take. With a winning cast including Penny Cook (A Country Practice), Nick Cody (Please Like Me), Zenia Starr (Hotel Mumbai), Aaron Gocs, Sahil Saluja (Tomorrow, When the War Began), Ben Knight (The Warriors), Stephen Hunter (The Hobbit) and Fayssal Bazzi (Peter Rabbit), The Merger is an hilarious and heart-felt comedy from the team who brought you Backyard Ashes.

The Merger (like all our DVDs and BluRays) can be borrowed physically (in this case in BluRay format). It can also be viewed in the library on the library computers or the big screen (but not in a group due to copyright) from the electronic format that is hosted on our inhouse servers.

Biographies

Because I’m Not Myself, You See : A Memoir of Motherhood, Madness and Coming Back from the Brink / Ariane Beeston.

Stories about mental health, especially when it relates to motherhood have very much got lost in the past. Until quite recently mental health problems were seen as shameful and were hidden away and not understood. Books like Because I’

m Not Myself You See  have helped to change that. And this is why they’re so important.

But what is it about? As the blurb says, it is: A frank, hopeful and darkly funny memoir of postpartum psychosis and recovery. “I do not know who I am anymore or where I have gone …”Ariane Beeston is a child protection worker and newly registered psychologist when she gives birth to her first child – and very quickly begins to experience scary breaks with reality. Out of fear and shame, she keeps her delusions and hallucinations secret, but as the months pass Ariane gets worse. Much worse. Finally admitted to a mother and baby psychiatric unit, the psychologist is forced to learn how to be the patient. With medication, the support of her husband, psychotherapy and, ultimately, time, Ariane rebuilds herself. And she also begins a new chapter working in perinatal mental health, developing resources to support other new mothers. Because I’m Not Myself, You See is a candid, often humorous memoir of motherhood and madness, interwoven with research and expert commentary. It’s the story of the impossible pressures placed on new mothers and how quickly things can go wrong during ‘the happiest time of your life’. It’s also about life on the other side of serious illness, trying to make sense of what doesn’t make sense, and finding humour, beauty and joy when things don’t go according to plan.