Hear This 14th November 2025

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:18):
Take a look. Take a look inside the book. Take
a look.

S2 (00:33):
Hello and welcome to hear this. I'm Francis Keeland and
this is the Vision Australia library radio program. On today's show,
we've got a couple of, uh, samples of some award
winning books, have won recent awards, and we have some
reader recommended as well. So hope you enjoy the show.

(00:53):
Let's start off with a reader recommended. Couple of them.
This is from a lovely letter that was sent in
by Faye. Thank you. I haven't had a handwritten letter
for a long time. It's so lovely. And Faye says,
I have two books that I found very, very interesting
and well read. I listened to them over and over again.
The first one is 20, 21,500 miles alone in a canoe.

(01:20):
And this is by Don B Watson. Not to be
confused with the Australian Don Watson, that rights are often
political books. This is Don B Watson and the synopsis
is quite short. Here. It says he's self-discipline and faith
in a higher power. See Don Watson, Don B Watson
through almost unbelievable situations during this adventure. And uh, we're

(01:45):
going to hear a sample of it. It's narrated by
Joan Baldwin. And just to remind people, this was published by, um,
the Christian Services for the Blind and Hearing Impaired back
in 2012. And we do have a lot of books
that people might find comforting because they do have a
spiritual nature to them. Feel free to either call the

(02:09):
library to find out more about Christian services for the
blind and hearing impaired. Or. We also inherited a lot
of books from the Christian Blind Mission. When they closed
their library service, they gave us quite a few books.
So let's hear a sample of 21,500 miles alone in
a Canoe by John B Watson, narrated by Joan Baldwin.

S3 (02:32):
Bizarre. Incredible. Foolhardy. Impossible. These are some of the adjectives
people used to express their dismay when hearing about what
was probably to be the most ambitious voyage ever undertaken
in a canoe, a dream that had lain smoldering deep

(02:54):
within my restless breast, now started to unfold into reality
on the beautiful Tennessee River above Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Lake Chickamauga,
the newspaper reporters and television cameramen gathered from as far
away as Atlanta, all wanting to be a part of
the beginning of the longest voyage in a canoe in history.

(03:17):
The excitement of the crowd is contagious, as the curious
pressed to the water's edge, straining to get a look
at the strangely outfitted canoe and the lone man about
to attempt an ultimate travel of 21,500 miles on America's
dangerous but beautiful rivers, waterways and lakes, 8000 miles of

(03:40):
which was to be on ocean water, including the Gulf
of Mexico, the Atlantic, and the Pacific coastlines. The little
15 foot six Grumman Aluminium Sport canoe weighed a mere
£94 in the boat store where I found her. Now
she is riding low in the water with a cargo

(04:03):
of £1,160. My journey will include going up many swift
and treacherous rivers as well as down. So I accept
a generous suggestion and offer from Mr. Ralph Evinrude, owner
and manufacturer of the dependable Evinrude outboard motors. Mr. Evinrude

(04:26):
said that if I would use his name, he would
build me a special engine prepared and equipped to make
the journey with only a couple of spark plug changes.
So I did.

S2 (04:38):
And that was 21,500 miles alone in a canoe and
by Tom Watson. So Don is simply Don middle initial
B and then Watson w a t s o n
w e s o n. I've been trying to find
some information about Don B Watson, and I know that

(05:00):
the book was published in 1980, so it's before um,
a lot of the modern technology of today, and it
sounds like a wonderful adventure book. And I do love
that sample. I might I might give the whole book
a listen because I love a journey in a book.
So thank you very much, Faye. The next book is
another really lovely book and I was unaware of either

(05:21):
of these, so thank you. Um, the wilderness Family at
home with Africa's Wildlife. And this is written by Kobi Kruger.
An intimate account about Kobi Kruger's moving to the isolated
wilderness of South Africa's vast Kruger National Park to raise
a family. They soon become accustomed to living with the unexpected,

(05:42):
yet nothing prepared them for their greatest adventure of all,
the raising of an orphaned lion cub who, when they
found him, was only a few days old and on
the verge of death. Let's hear a sample of the
Wilderness Family at Home with Africa's Wildlife by Kobi Kruger.
It's narrated by Fiona Pickett when Kobi Kruger.

S4 (06:03):
Her game ranger husband Kobus and their three young daughters
moved to one of the most isolated corners of the world,
a remote ranger station in the Malungon region of South
Africa's vast Kruger National Park. She might have worried that
she would become engulfed in loneliness and boredom. Yet for

(06:25):
Coby and her family, the 17 years spent in this
spectacularly beautiful park proved to be the most magical and
occasionally most hair raising of their lives. Now in the
Wilderness Family, Coby recounts their enchanting adventures and extraordinary experiences

(06:48):
in this vast reserve, a place where, bathed in golden sunlight,
hippos basked in the glittering waters of the Letaba River.
Storks and herons perched along the shoreline, and fruit bats
hung in the sausage trees. But as the krugers settled in,

(07:09):
they discovered that not all was peace and harmony. They
soon became accustomed to living with the unexpected. The sneaky
hyenas who stole blankets and cooking pots. The sinister looking
pythons that slithered into the house. And the usually placid
elephants who grew foul tempered in the violent heat of summer.

(07:34):
And one terrible day, a lion attacked Kobus in the
bush and nearly killed him. Yet nothing prepared the Krugers
for their greatest adventure of all the raising of an
orphaned prince, a lion cub who, when they found him,
was only a few days old and on the verge

(07:55):
of death. Reared on a cocktail of love and bottles
of fat enriched milk. Leo soon became an affectionate, rambunctious
and adored member of the family.

S2 (08:06):
And that was the wilderness family at home with Africa's
wildlife by Kobe Kruger Kobe is Kobe. Kobe Kruger k
e r k e r. And that book goes for
16 hours. The Wilderness Family. This book was published in 2001,

(08:30):
and Kobe Kruger was born in the Bushlands of South
Africa in the Northern Province, Bushlands. They did move to
the Kruger National Park in 1980, and the Wilderness Family
was published as two volumes in South Africa, and both
were number one best sellers. So once again, Faye, thank
you so much and I reckon people will really like

(08:50):
to read or listen to both of those books. Um,
people love books are real life stories about animals and
also that journey. Wonderful journey. Thank you. Faye. Fay. You've
also got some other reader recommended that I might put on, um,
next week. Thank you so much for your your feedback. Next,
we're on to the prize winners. Recent prize winners. The

(09:11):
first one is the Booker Prize winner flesh. This is
by David Sally. And, uh, congratulations to the author. 15
year old Ishtvan lives with his mother in a quiet
apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy,
he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and
soon becomes isolated with his neighbor, a married woman close

(09:34):
to his mother's age, as his only companion. These encounters
shift into a clandestine relationship that Ishtvan himself can barely understand,
and his life soon spirals out of control. As the
years pass, he is carried gradually upwards on the currents
of the 21st century's tides of money and power, moving

(09:54):
from the army to the Company of London, super rich
with his own competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth,
winning him unimaginable riches until they threaten to undo him completely.
Let's hear a sample of Flesh by David Salé. It's
narrated by Dan Weyman.

S5 (10:14):
On Sunday, he and his mother visit his grandmother. It's
her birthday. He sits there, bored in her living room
while she and his mother talk. His mother asks him
to fill a vase with water for the flowers they brought.
He goes to the kitchen and does that. The windows
are open. It's a warm day for the time of year.

(10:36):
And how are you? His grandmother asks him. I'm okay,
he says. He stands on the small balcony, wishing he
could smoke in the distance and further down the hill.
He can see the part of the town where he
and his mother live. His mother is telling his grandmother
how well he's doing at school. His grandmother takes some

(10:58):
money from her wallet and gives it to him, apparently
as a sort of reward. His mother tells him to
say thank you. Thank you. He says his grandmother smiles.
She has these travel books. They're lined up next to
each other on a shelf near the TV. Italy, France, Czechoslovakia,

(11:22):
the USSR, West Germany, Great Britain. Out of boredom, he
looks at them while his mother and his grandmother talk.
The books have pictures in them, mostly black and white,
and a few color ones too. The colors in them
look unnatural somehow. They don't look like the colors of

(11:43):
things in reality. There's a lady who lives in the
flat opposite them. Soon after, Ishtvan and his mother moved
into the building. The lady asked his mother if Ishtvan
Estevan would be able to help her with the shopping sometimes.
What does that mean? Estevan said when his mother told
him about it. She wants you to go to the

(12:05):
shop with her and help her to carry the stuff upstairs.
I don't want to do that, he said. She's been
very helpful to us. His mother said, I'm not doing it,
he said.

S2 (12:18):
And that was a sample of this year's Booker Prize winner,
Flesh by David. Silly. David is David. David is s
a l a y s a l a y. The
book goes for 9.5 hours. And just a bit of
a warning there. Um, it does have levels of sex

(12:41):
in it and language. We've got a couple of other
books by David in the collection, All That Man Is,
which involves nine men, each of each of them at
a different stage of life, away from home and striving
in the suburbs of Prague in a cheap Cypriot hotel. Um,
and then there is also turbulence. 12 people on the

(13:02):
move around planet Earth, 12 individual lives, each in turmoil
and each in some way touching the next. And again
with an international flavor. Uh, David. Diverse protagonist. Circumnavigate the
world in 12 plane journeys from London to Madrid. From
Dakar to Sao Paulo to Toronto to Delhi to Doha,

(13:22):
en route to see lovers and parents, children and siblings
or nobody at all. And I'm just reading from Wikipedia here.
David Solé was born in 1974. He's a Canadian born
Hungarian British writer. His novels are noted for their unique
narrative structure, being collections of intertwined short stories. All That

(13:43):
Man Is Um was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize,
and flesh is his sixth novel. This year's winner, and
Zeller said about his book flesh. I wanted to write
a book that stretched between Hungary and London, and involved
a character who was not quite at home in either place.
The next prize winner to talk about is Helen Garner,

(14:05):
and she won the Baillie Gifford Award this year, very
recently for her non-fiction, How to End a Story. This
is part three of her diary. So volume three, and
from 1995 to 1998 these were entered into her diary.
Helen Garner's third volume of diaries is an account of

(14:26):
a woman fighting to hold on to a marriage that
is disintegrating around her, living with a powerfully ambitious writer
who is consumed by his work and trying to find
a place for her own spirit to thrive. She rails
against the confines. At the same time, she's desperate to
find the truth in their relationship and the truth of
her own self. This is a harrowing story, a portrait

(14:49):
of the messy, painful, dark side of love lost, of
betrayal and sadness and the sheer force of a woman's anger.
But it is also a story of resilience and strength,
strewn with sharp insight, moments of joy and hope, and
the immutable ties of motherhood and the regenerative power of
a room of one's own. Let's hear a sample of

(15:09):
this award winning non-fiction. How to End a Story. Diaries,
volume three. 95 to 98 by Helen Garner. It's narrated
by Helen Garner.

S6 (15:21):
Home from hospital minus various worn out internal organs, flat
bellied and sore. Strange nerve shootings in my legs, as
if there were a tightly yanked electric wire between ankle,
bone and groin. Any sudden movement and it flashes a
hot yet cold, dry yet liquid jolt. My widowed sister

(15:49):
comes up from Melbourne for a week to help V
look after me. She says I look pale and washed out.
She shops and cooks and washes and irons, urges me
with her nurses severity to get up and move every
hour or so. One night she washed my feet in
a bucket of warm water, buffed them with a towel

(16:10):
on her lap, then massaged them with skin cream. She
has opinions on world affairs and on the claustrophobia of
our flat, which she expresses in a carrying voice. V
can barely endure our presence here in daylight hours. Bloody
fussy women, I need fuss. She's gone home. I miss her.

(16:35):
I'm still too weak to go to work. He shuts
himself in his room and I shuffle about by myself
up to the cross, down to the park. My agent
says the first stone has sold 40,000 copies. Letters pour
in and I answer them. A librarian tells V she

(16:56):
was so appalled by the way a feminist in long
dangly earrings attacked me on TV that she resolved never
to wear dangly earrings again. To think that my book
might affect fashion.

S2 (17:09):
That was a sample of How to End a Story Diaries,
Volume three, 1995 to 1998 by Helen Garner. Helen is
h e n h e n. Garner is g a
n e r g a n e. And that book
goes for eight hours. And is it too early to

(17:32):
call Helen Garner a national treasure? That term gets bandied
about a lot. And also, um, what's the other bandied about?
Term icon? She's an icon. Uh, that's the wonderful Helen Garner.
We have so many of her books in the collection. When, um,
it was announced that she had won the Baillie Gifford
Award for this year with her third, um, series of

(17:53):
the Diary. I started to listen to the first, um, diary,
and the title of that is The Yellow Notebook Diaries, um,
volume one, 1978 to 1987. She's in her early to
late 30s. During this time, and Helen Garner has kept
a diary for most of her life. But until now,

(18:13):
these exercise books filled with her thoughts, observations, frustrations and
joys have been locked away out of bounds in a
laundry cupboard. And The Yellow Notebook Diaries volume one. Just
after the phenomenal success of Monkey Grip, the controversies that
were around that book at the time, people. Some people
loved it, some people didn't like it. We have Monkey

(18:35):
Grip in the collection, of course, and it really involves
a person coming to terms with a newfound sense of
strength because of they've been able to write this book,
but also all of the doubt and and at times
self-loathing that comes with that. Um, a woman in her 30s.
I really enjoyed it. And part two of her diaries is, um,
one day I'll remember this, which, uh, diaries, volume two,

(18:59):
1987 to 1985. The next book is 50 years since
the dismissal. So the palace letters, the Queen, the governor general,
and the plot to dismiss Gough Whitlam. This is by
acclaimed historian Jenny Hocking and biographer. A political betrayal, a
constitutional crisis, a hidden correspondence. Gough Whitlam was a progressive

(19:23):
prime minister whose reign from 1972 proved tumultuous. After 23
years of conservative government in Australia. After a second election
victory in May 1974, when a hostile Senate refused to
vote on his 1975 budget, the political deadlock that ensued
culminated in Whitlam's unexpected and deeply controversial dismissal by the Governor-General,

(19:47):
Sir John Kerr. Kerr was in close touch with the
Palace during this period, but under the cover of being
designated as personal, that correspondence was locked away in the
National Archives and embargoed by the Queen, potentially forever. This
ruse denied the Australian people access to critical information about

(20:07):
one of the most divisive episodes in the nation's history.
In the face of this, Professor Jenny Hocking embarked on
what would become a ten year campaign and a four
year legal battle to force the archives to release the letters.
In May 2020, despite being opposed by the archives, Buckingham
Palace and the full resources of the federal government, she

(20:30):
won her historic case in the High Court. The Palace
Letters is a groundbreaking account of her indomitable fight. Let's
hear a sample of the palace letters the Queen, the
Governor-General and the plot to dismiss Gough Whitlam, and it's
by Jenny Hocking. It's narrated by Katherine Littrell.

S7 (20:47):
I first caught a glimpse of the Palace letters in 2006,
although I did not know it then. A1984609 was a
catalogue entry for a file that did not exist. There
was a quantity 0.36 M, a date range 1974 to 1977,

(21:09):
and an indeterminate name. Personal records. And yet there was
no content. Number of items zero. It was an empty
record of the cryptic existence of what we now know
as the Palace lettuce. That confused entry, simultaneously acknowledging and
denying the existence of one of its own files, would

(21:31):
be emblematic of all my dealings with the National Archives
of Australia about its royal secrets. I had spent months
in the archives buried in Sir John Kerr's sprawling papers shocked,
dismayed and enthralled in turn, at the depth of political
deception they revealed and the distortions of history they laid bare.

(21:51):
Kerr's papers were a treasure trove of historical revelation, a vast,
untapped source of original material about the most dramatic and
controversial viceregal action in our history. His 1975 dismissal of
the Whitlam government. And when I first began to open them,
they had barely been touched. Kerr's contemporaneous notes and reflections

(22:13):
would refute his most significant public pronouncements about those tumultuous events,
and would overturn decades of established dismissal history because papers
unmasked a parallel history, a secret history of the dismissal
of the twice elected Whitlam government that had been carefully
erased from public view for decades. Yet here they were,

(22:36):
an archival time bomb, forgotten among the thousands of files
in the National Archives in Canberra unremarked, unopened and unexplored.

S2 (22:46):
And that was a sample of the palace letters the Queen,
the governor General and the plot to dismiss Gough Whitlam
by Jenny Hocking Jenny is j j Hocking h o
k I n g h o c k I n g.
And that book goes for seven hours or nearly nearly

(23:06):
eight hours. Other books by Professor Hocking Jenny Hocking are
Frank Hardy, politics, literature. Life. And there's also a biography
of Gough Whitlam called Gough Whitlam His Time. Another book
by Jenny Hocking in conjunction with Colleen Lewis is It's
Time Again Whitlam and Modern Labor, also a biography of

(23:28):
Lionel Murphy. The Palace letters are also available in Braille
if you'd like to read them that way. Palace letters
was published in 2020, and we've got time to squeeze
in a cozy murder mystery here. This is recipes for
Love and Murder by Sally Andrew. Recipe for murder. One
stocky man who abuses his wife. One small, tender wife.

(23:50):
One medium sized tough woman in love with the wife.
One double barreled shotgun. One small Karoo town marinated in secrets.
Three bottles of Klip Drift brandy, three little ducks, one
bottle of pomegranate juice, one handful of chili peppers, one
mild gardener, one fire poker, one red hot new Yorker,

(24:11):
seven seventh day Adventists prepared for the end of the world,
one hard boiled investigative journalist, one soft amateur detective, two
cool policemen, one lamb, one handful of red herrings and
suspects mixed together through all the ingredients into a big
pot and simmer slowly, stirring with a wooden spoon for
a few years. Add the ducks, chilies and brandy towards

(24:35):
the end and turn up the heat. Let's hear a
sample of recipes for Love and Murder by Sunny Andrew.
It's narrated by Sandra Prinsloo.

S8 (24:44):
Isn't life funny? You know how one thing leads to
another in a way you just don't expect. That Sunday morning,
I was in my kitchen stirring my apricot jam in
the cast iron pot. It was another dry summer's day
in the Klein Karoo, and I was glad for the
breeze coming in the window. Mm. Do you smell lovely?

(25:04):
I told the apple crisp comfort when I call it
apricot jam. It sounds like something in a jar from
the spar supermarket. But when it's gone, fight. You know,
it's made in a kitchen. My mother was Afrikaans and
my father was English, and the languages are mixed up
inside me. I taste in Afrikaans and argue in English,

(25:26):
but if I swear, I go back to Afrikaans again.
The fight was just coming, right? Getting thick and clear
when I heard the car, I added some apricot kernels
and a stick of cinnamon to the jam. I did
not know that the car was bringing the first ingredient
in A recipe for love and murder.

S2 (25:47):
And that was a sample of recipes for Love and Murder.
Its part one of the Tannie Maria mystery series. We've
got two in the collection. Sally is spelt Sally. Sally.
Andrew a d w a r e w. Thank you

(26:15):
for joining us on Hear This today I'm Frances Kelland
and this is the Vision Australia Library radio show, where
we talk about books in the collection and talk about
some fantastic reader recommended and have samples of those books,
as I always say, reader recommended. So fabulous and valuable
because our people do unearth the most interesting books from

(26:35):
the over 50,000 books in the collection. And thank you
once again to Fe for this week's selection. If you
would like to join the library, if you would like
to recommend a book, you can always call them on 130654656.
That's 130654656. Or you can email library at Vision Australia.

(26:58):
That's Library Australia. Also I was thinking about the dismissal.
Having had that book on and thinking it's one of
those times in history where everybody remembers where they first
heard about the dismissal and whether people were anti Gough
or for Gough. It'd be lovely to know where you

(27:19):
were on that day. Anyway, have a lovely week and
we'll be back next week with more. Hear this.