Try free for 30 days
-
The Desert Column
- Narrated by: John Derum
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $42.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also picked
-
The Last Charge of the Australian Light Horse
- From the Australian bush to the Battle of Beersheba - an Epic Story of Courage, Resilience and Derring-Do
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Richard Bligh
- Length: 16 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On 31st October 1917, as the day's light faded, the Australian Light Horse charged against their enemy. Eight hundred men and horses galloped four miles across open country, towards the artillery, rifles and machine guns of the Turks occupying the seemingly unassailable town of Beersheba. What happened in the next hour changed the course of history. This brave battle and the extraordinary adventures that led to it are brought vividly to life by Australia's greatest storyteller, Peter FitzSimons.
-
-
A great story of a great Australian event
- By Russell on 22-02-2024
-
Flynn of the Inland
- By: Ion Idriess
- Narrated by: David Baldwin
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since the early days of settlement men, women and children have battled the harshness of outback Australia to survive and in many cases prosper. But the price for settlement was high in the early days. Medical assistance was often thousands of miles away and children were raised without the benefit of education. The Australian Inland Mission, founded and led by the indomitable John Flynn, was the first organisation to recognise the unique needs of outback Australians.
-
-
Great story, well read
- By Sam on 23-03-2015
-
Bastard Behind the Lines
- The Extraordinary Story of Jock McLaren's Escape from Sandakan and His Guerrilla War Against the Japanese
- By: Tom Gilling
- Narrated by: David Tredinnick
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Scottish-born but a Queenslander to the bone, Jock McLaren was a true Australian hero. As a prisoner, he escaped twice, first from Changi and later from the infamous Sandakan POW camp in Borneo. After paddling a dugout canoe across open sea, he fought for two years with American-led Filipino guerrillas, his exploits so audacious the Japanese put a price on his head.
-
-
text book rather than a story
- By Anonymous User on 01-06-2021
-
Secret and Special
- By: Will Davies
- Narrated by: Steve Shanahan
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Soon after the declaration of war on Japan, a secret military reconnaissance unit was established, based on the British Special Operations Executive (known as SOE) and called the Inter-allied Services Department. The unit was tasked with the role to "obtain and report information of the enemy...weaken the enemy by sabotage and destruction of morale and to lend aid and assistance to local efforts to the same end in enemy occupied territories."
-
-
Tuff buggers
- By tlcdc on 20-01-2024
-
The Cattle King
- By: Ion Idriess
- Narrated by: Various Artists
- Length: 2 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This book is an inspiring tribute to the remarkable life of Sir Sidney Kidman - the Cattle King. At the age of 13 Sidney Kidman ran away from home with only five shillings in his pocket. He went on to become a horse dealer, drover, cattle buyer and bush jockey and he also ran a coach business.
-
-
Great listen, definitely recommend
- By Anonymous User on 02-01-2023
-
The Red Chief
- By: Ion Idriess
- Narrated by: James Condon
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It would be hard to find a more satisfying hero than the young warrior Red Kangaroo, who by his mental and physical prowess became a chief of his tribe – the revered and powerful Red Chief of the Gunnedah district. His story is a first rate tale of adventure but it is something more – a true story handed down from generation to generation by its hero's tribe and given by the last survivor, "King" Bungaree, to the white settlers of the district.
-
-
Great insight into lost world
- By Anonymous User on 05-01-2023
-
The Last Charge of the Australian Light Horse
- From the Australian bush to the Battle of Beersheba - an Epic Story of Courage, Resilience and Derring-Do
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Richard Bligh
- Length: 16 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On 31st October 1917, as the day's light faded, the Australian Light Horse charged against their enemy. Eight hundred men and horses galloped four miles across open country, towards the artillery, rifles and machine guns of the Turks occupying the seemingly unassailable town of Beersheba. What happened in the next hour changed the course of history. This brave battle and the extraordinary adventures that led to it are brought vividly to life by Australia's greatest storyteller, Peter FitzSimons.
-
-
A great story of a great Australian event
- By Russell on 22-02-2024
-
Flynn of the Inland
- By: Ion Idriess
- Narrated by: David Baldwin
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since the early days of settlement men, women and children have battled the harshness of outback Australia to survive and in many cases prosper. But the price for settlement was high in the early days. Medical assistance was often thousands of miles away and children were raised without the benefit of education. The Australian Inland Mission, founded and led by the indomitable John Flynn, was the first organisation to recognise the unique needs of outback Australians.
-
-
Great story, well read
- By Sam on 23-03-2015
-
Bastard Behind the Lines
- The Extraordinary Story of Jock McLaren's Escape from Sandakan and His Guerrilla War Against the Japanese
- By: Tom Gilling
- Narrated by: David Tredinnick
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Scottish-born but a Queenslander to the bone, Jock McLaren was a true Australian hero. As a prisoner, he escaped twice, first from Changi and later from the infamous Sandakan POW camp in Borneo. After paddling a dugout canoe across open sea, he fought for two years with American-led Filipino guerrillas, his exploits so audacious the Japanese put a price on his head.
-
-
text book rather than a story
- By Anonymous User on 01-06-2021
-
Secret and Special
- By: Will Davies
- Narrated by: Steve Shanahan
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Soon after the declaration of war on Japan, a secret military reconnaissance unit was established, based on the British Special Operations Executive (known as SOE) and called the Inter-allied Services Department. The unit was tasked with the role to "obtain and report information of the enemy...weaken the enemy by sabotage and destruction of morale and to lend aid and assistance to local efforts to the same end in enemy occupied territories."
-
-
Tuff buggers
- By tlcdc on 20-01-2024
-
The Cattle King
- By: Ion Idriess
- Narrated by: Various Artists
- Length: 2 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This book is an inspiring tribute to the remarkable life of Sir Sidney Kidman - the Cattle King. At the age of 13 Sidney Kidman ran away from home with only five shillings in his pocket. He went on to become a horse dealer, drover, cattle buyer and bush jockey and he also ran a coach business.
-
-
Great listen, definitely recommend
- By Anonymous User on 02-01-2023
-
The Red Chief
- By: Ion Idriess
- Narrated by: James Condon
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It would be hard to find a more satisfying hero than the young warrior Red Kangaroo, who by his mental and physical prowess became a chief of his tribe – the revered and powerful Red Chief of the Gunnedah district. His story is a first rate tale of adventure but it is something more – a true story handed down from generation to generation by its hero's tribe and given by the last survivor, "King" Bungaree, to the white settlers of the district.
-
-
Great insight into lost world
- By Anonymous User on 05-01-2023
-
The Scrap Iron Flotilla
- By: Mike Carlton
- Narrated by: Mike Carlton
- Length: 15 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the Second World War broke out in September 1939, the British asked Australia for help. With some misgivings, the Australian government sent five destroyers to beef up the British Royal Navy in the Mediterranean. HMAS Vendetta, Vampire, Voyager, Stuart and Waterhen were old ships, small with worn-out engines. Their crews used to joke they were held together by string and chewing gum; when the Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels heard of them, he sneered that they were a load of scrap iron.
-
-
Great book to hear from the author.
- By Kindle Customer on 17-08-2022
-
Monash's Masterpiece
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Michael Carman
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Battle of Le Hamel on 4 July 1918 was an Allied triumph and strategically very important in the closing stages of WWI. A largely Australian force, commanded by the brilliant Sir John Monash, fought what has been described as the first modern battle - where infantry, tanks, artillery and planes operated together as a coordinated force. Monash planned every detail meticulously, with nothing left to chance. Peter FitzSimons brings this Allied triumph to life and tells this magnificent story as it should be told.
-
-
Wonderful story.
- By Ian Martin on 08-07-2018
-
The Battle of Long Tan
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: David Tredinnick
- Length: 21 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It was the afternoon of 18 August 1966, hot, humid with grey monsoonal skies. D Company, 6RAR were four kilometres east of their Nui Dat base, on patrol in a rubber plantation not far from the abandoned village of Long Tan. A day after their base had suffered a mortar strike, they were looking for Viet Cong soldiers. Then—just when they were least expecting—they found them. Under withering fire, some Diggers perished, some were grievously wounded, the rest fought on, as they remained under sustained attack. For hours these men fought for their lives against the enemy onslaught.
-
-
A reasonable look at an important battle.
- By DGC on 09-12-2022
-
Tobruk
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Humphrey Bower
- Length: 23 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the early days of April 1941, the 14,000 Australian forces garrisoned in the Libyan town of Tobruk were told to expect reinforcements and supplies within eight weeks. Eight months later these heroic, gallant, determined "Rats of Tobruk" were rescued by the British Navy having held the fort against the might of Rommel's never-before-defeated Afrika Corps.
-
-
detailed intimate account
- By luke on 28-08-2018
-
Australia's Secret Army
- By: Michael Veitch
- Narrated by: Michael Veitch
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Established after World War I by the Royal Australian Navy, the Coast Watchers were a loose organisation of several hundred European settlers, missionaries, patrol officers and planters living in British and Australian Pacific Island territories whose job it was to observe and report on the enemy. They were mostly all unpaid volunteers whose job it was simply to observe and report on foreign shipping and aeroplane movements. It was never envisaged that the Coast Watchers would do any fighting, nor operate inside enemy-occupied territory.
-
-
Truly engaging
- By Bob Hartley on 26-02-2023
-
Retaking Kokoda
- The Battles for Templeton's Crossing, Eora Creek and the Oivi-Gorari Positions
- By: David W. Cameron
- Narrated by: Steve Shanahan
- Length: 16 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Japanese Major General Horii Tomitarō, commanding the South Seas Force, had the Australians on the back foot. Australia was holding the last defendable ridge in the Owen Stanley ranges, Imita Ridge. Horii to his distress was then given orders from Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo that he was to fall back across the mountains to the Japanese beachheads at Gona, Sanananda, and Buna, leaving a force between Templeton's Crossing and Eora Creek to stop any Australian advance through the mountains.
-
-
get it right.
- By matthew brown on 27-03-2024
-
Kokoda (by Peter FitzSimons)
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Lewis FitzGerald
- Length: 16 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For Australians, Kokoda is the iconic battle of World War II, yet few people know just what happened and just what our troops achieved. Now, best-selling author Peter FitzSimons tells the Kokoda story in a gripping, moving story for all Australians.
-
-
Compulsory listening...we must know this.
- By Phillip on 13-12-2015
-
Larrikins in Khaki
- By: Tim Bowden
- Narrated by: Stephen Hunter
- Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Larrikins in Khaki, Tim Bowden has collected compelling and vivid stories of individual soldiers whose memoirs were mostly self-published and who told of their experiences with scant regard for literary pretensions and military niceties. NCOs and officers who were hopeless at their jobs were made aware of it - they laughed their way through the worst of it by taking the mickey out of one another and their superiors.
-
-
Blatant Plagiarism
- By Peter on 19-03-2021
-
The Battle for Isurava
- Fighting on the Kokoda Track in the Heart of the Owen Stanleys
- By: David W. Cameron
- Narrated by: Steve Shanahan
- Length: 14 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Within 24 hours of the Japanese invasion of Northern New Guinea at Gona in July 1942, the Australian militiamen of ‘B’ Company, 39th Battalion, spent four weeks fighting a delaying action against a crack Japanese force outnumbered by three to one. By mid-August, the rest of the battalion had arrived, and these men took up a position at Isurava, in the heart of the cloud-covered mountains and jungles of the Owen Stanley Range. The battle for Isurava would be the defining battle of the Kokoda Campaign and has rightfully been described as Australia’s Thermopylae.
-
-
Battle history well written and read.
- By Anonymous User on 05-09-2022
-
Bill the Bastard
- The Story of Australia's Greatest War Horse
- By: Roland Perry
- Narrated by: David Tredinnick
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bill was massive. He had power, intelligence, and unmatched courage. In performance and character he stood above all the other 200,000 Australian horses sent to the Middle East in the Great War. But as war horses go he had one serious problem. No one could ride him but one man - Major Michael Shanahan. Some even thought Bill took a sneering pleasure in watching would-be riders hit the dust. Bill the Bastard is the remarkable tale of a bond between a determined trooper and his stoic but cantankerous mount. They fought together.
-
-
brilliant book
- By Eric on 17-08-2015
-
The Battles for Kokoda Plateau
- By: David W. Cameron
- Narrated by: Steve Shanahan
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On 21 July 1942, a large Japanese reconnaissance mission landed along the north-eastern coastline of Papua. It would soon turn into an all-out attempt to capture Port Morseby. This is the powerful story of the three weeks of battle by a small Australian militia force, the 39th Battalion, supported by the 1st Papua Infantry Battalion and the Royal Papuan Constabulary, to keep the Japanese at bay. Outnumbered by at least three to one, they fought courageously to hold the Kokoda Plateau - the gateway to the Owen Stanleys.
-
-
A validation of the courage of those on the track
- By Leo on 06-02-2021
-
Rorke's Drift
- By: Adrian Greaves
- Narrated by: Paul Herzberg
- Length: 15 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On 22nd January 1879 a force of 20,000 Zulus overwhelmed and destroyed the British invading force at Isandlwana, killing and ritually disemboweling more than 1,200 troops. That afternoon, the same Zulu force turned their attention on a small outpost at Rorke's Drift. The battle that ensued, one of the British Army's great epics, has since entered into legend. Throughout the night 85 men held off six full-scale Zulu attacks at the cost of only 27 casualties, forcing the Zulu army to withdraw.
-
-
First class
- By Geoff Alford on 13-10-2022
Publisher's Summary
One of the most popular accounts by an Australian veteran of WWI - written entirely from the private soldier's point of view.
Critic Reviews
More from the same
What listeners say about The Desert Column
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 15-12-2023
It feels very real 
A fantastic story through the first war the best one I’ve read an amazing man he was
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 30-04-2023
Excellent
Loved it .Read it years ago and enjoyed it just as much 2nd time around. One of Australia's greatest authors. Have read some of his other books, all vert good. The wog dog, another of his classics needs to be added to audible. Narration was very good.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!