Showing results by publisher "Bolinda audio" in Sports & Outdoors

Douglas Mawson, born in 1882 and knighted in 1914, was Australia’s greatest Antarctic explorer. On 2 December 1911, he led an expedition from Hobart to explore the virgin frozen coastline below, 2000 miles of which had never felt the tread of a human foot. After setting up Main Base at Cape Denision and Western Base on Queen Mary Land, he headed east on an extraordinary sledging trek with his companions, Belgrave Ninnis and Dr Xavier Mertz. After tragedy struck, Mawson found himself all alone, 160 miles from safety, with next to no food.

The problem was that Les Darcy didn't want to march at the fore of such a procession, nor to such a destination. He wanted to continue what he had been doing to extraordinary acclaim before the war began - taking on the best boxers the world could throw at him, and lifting his entire family out of poverty as he did so. Torn between the duty he felt he owed his family, and the duty many felt he owed his country, Les made his choice ... and faced the consequences.

Many critics believe Adam Gilchrist is the greatest wicketkeeper/batsman to have played the game, but Adam's huge popularity does not rest solely on his incredible track record. To his millions of fans around the world, it is the way he plays the game - rather than simply the sum of his achievements - that marks him out as one of the best-loved cricketers of his generation.

Glenn McGrath is one of the most highly regarded fast - medium pace bowlers in cricketing history, and was a leading contributor to Australia's domination of world cricket from the mid-1990s to 2007.

At 83 years old, Valerie Taylor has lived a big, bold, adventurous life. Born in Australia, Valerie spent a great deal of her childhood in New Zealand. A talented artist, she dropped out of school when she contracted polio and was saved by Sister Elizabeth Kenny's treatment plan; it was two years before she could walk unaided. When Valerie was 15, she found work as an animator and moved back to Australia with her family. All the while she thrived on being close to the ocean, and was a keen spearfisher.

In Tom Hawkins: An Autobiography you will discover what has made him the star player he is, and meet all of the people who have been part of his journey including players, coaches and family. Tom's story is rich with events, people and the development of a winning attitude that has been his mainstay.

Joel Selwood’s remarkable leadership is well-known across AFL football. Selwood will not only go down in history as an icon of the game – a record breaker – but also as a selfless leader who supported his team through one of the club’s most successful periods in its history. After Selwood was made captain of the team in 2012, Geelong made the finals in all but one season, playing in seven preliminary finals and two Grand Finals – culminating in Geelong’s tenth premiership in 2022. Now, for the first time, Selwood tells his story in his own words.

Journalist Nicole Madigan was stalked for over three years. The relentless and debilitating experience wreaked havoc in her personal and professional life, leaving her trapped in a constant state of fear and anxiety. Nicole uses her own story as an entry point to examine the psychology behind stalking behaviours and their impact on victim-survivors. Whether by a stranger, acquaintance or former partner, stalking can have a catastrophic effect on a victim-survivor's mental, social and financial wellbeing. At its worst, it can lead to physical violence, even death.

From childhood to his zenith as a player, Ablett's story is an audiobook about a player without equal. Drafted in 2001, Gary Ablett’s incredible career has spanned two great clubs, two Grand Finals and two Brownlow medals among many other accolades. In his audiobook, Gary takes listeners through the trials and triumphs of his life: his close bonds with his family; his famous father Gary Ablett Senior’s influence on his life; joining Geelong Football Club along with his brother Nathan; becoming a star player and the pressure that brings from the media; and more.

As the daughter of an Indian Muslim father and a white Australian mother, growing up in the conservative environment of 1970s Perth, Rabia Siddique was always going to be marked as different. Escaping her traumatic childhood, Rabia moved to London after graduating from law school to pursue her passionate commitment to social justice. She joined the British Army as a military lawyer just days after 9/11, finally finding herself stationed in Southern Iraq.

When Chloe Dalton was eight years old, she would practise her goal kicks in the half-time break of her brothers' rugby matches, all the while telling impressed onlookers: 'Girls don't play rugby.' Sixteen years later, Chloe Dalton won Olympic gold playing rugby sevens for Australia and is now a fixture in the AFLW. In 2020, she started her own news platform, The [Female] Athlete Project, because while she was surrounded by women achieving incredible things in sport, nobody was hearing about them.

An Afghan refugee’s extraordinary journey - from his early life as a shepherd boy in the mountains of Northern Afghanistan, to his forced exile after being captured and tortured by the Taliban, to incarceration in an Australian detention centre...and finally, to freedom. This moving and poignant work gives the listener a rare insight into the contented ‘milk and honey’ life of a simple Afghan family before the civil war ripped their country apart. The lives and centuries-old livelihood of farmers, craftsmen and small business owners were destroyed in just weeks and months.

When it comes to the natural world, Australia is home to a disproportionately large share of the world's riches. That means we Australians are caretakers of a unique natural heritage in a land which tolerates few mistakes. So how are we doing? In Quarterly Essay 48 Tim Flannery says: we're often failing nature. In the clash between money and conservation, money usually wins.

Carly-Jay Metcalfe was born with cystic fibrosis, survived a double-lung transplant at the age of 21 and faced a rare cancer at the age of 30. What she has endured should have killed her, but her humour, courage and optimism became her best survival skills. From her hospitalised childhood to her many friendships, loves and losses, Metcalfe shares the fickle nature of life with candour and warmth. She writes with compelling insight about organ donation, opioid addiction and survivor's guilt, while still managing to find joy amongst the wreckage.

Why do birds have regional accents? Can horses learn maths? What do animals without eyes see? Questions such as these have fascinated scientists and animal lovers alike long before ethology – the study of animal behaviour – became recognised as a science in the 1970s. Now, as issues of conservation and welfare dominate the field, an understanding of how and why animals act the way they do has become even more critical. In Animal Behaviour, John A. Byers explains the mechanisms and motivations behind a range of animal movements.

When celebrated radio personality and columnist Kerre Woodham found herself 40, overweight, and depressed she faced two choices - do nothing and probably not make it to 50 or do something and get her life back. Fortunately for all of us, and especially those women who like to eat and dress well, she decided to fight back. Leaving kilos of herself and two bra sizes behind 'somewhere in the Waitakeres', she embarked on a fitness and training regime, with a goal to complete the Auckland marathon.

In this dazzling piece of reportage, Anna Krien investigates the contemporary animal kingdom and our place in it. From pets to food, from wildness to science experiments, Krien also reveals how animals are faring in this new world order. Examples range from the joyful to the deeply unsettling. As Krien delves deeper, she finds that animals can trigger primal emotions in us, which we are often not willing to acknowledge. "Us and Them" is a clear-eyed look at how we do - and should - treat animals.

On New Year’s Day 2012, Amy-Jane Beer’s beloved friend Kate set out with a group of others to kayak the River Rawthey in Cumbria. Kate never came home, and her death left her devoted family and friends bereft and unmoored. Returning to visit the Rawthey years later, Amy realises how much she misses the connection to the natural world she always felt when on or close to rivers, and so begins a new phase of exploration.

Artificial light is everywhere. Not only is it damaging to humans and to wildlife, disrupting our natural rhythms, but it obliterates the subtler lights that have guided us for millennia. In this beautiful exploration of the power of light, Matt Gaw ventures forth into darkness to find out exactly what we're missing.

The horses he names in The Chosen Few include the sprinters, the stayers and the freakish all-round competitors who could do everything. But he also teases out myths and mistakes, pulls focus on racing's history and ponders the tantalising list of 'coodabeen' champions whose careers were cut short. The result is a collection of stories about beauty and bravery, speed and greed.