Australia & New Zealand

Sydney to Auckland | 15 days

Gain a deep understanding of the native and European influences that shape Australia and New Zealand. Learn about Australia’s penal past from a descendant of its first settlers. See the Victorian treasures of Dunedin, the fragrant English gardens of Christchurch and the art deco glories of Napier. Enjoy the sounds of the didgeridoo and watch the captivating dances of the Māori as you immerse yourself in the rich heritage of these southern lands.

Komodo & the Australian Coast

Bali (Benoa) to Sydney | 17 days

Discover cultural splendors and cerulean beauty on the Indonesian archipelago and Australia’s legendary coast. Viking brings you face to face with the region’s diverse residents, from the Komodo dragon to modern-day Aborigines to good-natured Aussies. Witness colorful traditions on Lombok Island. Explore Komodo National Park with a trained naturalist. Experience the charms of Darwin with a local. And uncover the cosmopolitan culture of Brisbane with a welcoming guide.

South Pacific Sojourn

Bangkok (Laem Chabang) to Sydney | 29 days

Enjoy a 29-day cruise encompassing the rich and varied cultures of Asia and Australia when you combine Bangkok, Bali & Beyond and Komodo & the Australian Coast. Meet the people who shape capitals of Asian art and culture from Thailand to Indonesia. Discover Balinese traditions and timeless crafts and witness the cerulean beauty of Australia’s isles. Overnights in Bangkok, Singapore, Bali and Darwin help immerse you in this breathtaking corner of the world.

Australia, New Zealand & Indonesia

Auckland to Bali (Benoa) | 31 days

Sail from Aotearoa to the Indonesian archipelago on a voyage through diverse cultures. Admire stirring Māori dances and discover Hobart and Sydney’s penal past. See Napier’s art deco glories, Wellington and Christchurch’s scented English gardens, and Dunedin’s Victorian treasures. Immerse in Brisbane’s cosmopolitan flair and the relaxed charms of Darwin. Explore Komodo National Park and Lombock’s artisan villages on this unforgettable journey.

Australia, Asia & Alaska

Sydney to Vancouver, British Columbia | 79 days

Combine Komodo & the Australian Coast, Bangkok, Bali & Beyond, Southeast Asia & Hong Kong, Far Eastern Horizons and North Pacific Passage for a remarkable 79-day journey. From the “Land Down Under” and Indonesia to Indochina and the northern reaches of America’s last frontier, join locals and delve with them into an astonishing array of cultural treasures and breathtaking natural wonders. Overnights in 13 ports bring your destinations into sharp focus.

Grand Pacific Explorer

Auckland to Vancouver, British Columbia | 93 days

This 93-day cruise combines Australia & New Zealand, Komodo & the Australian Coast, Bangkok, Bali & Beyond, Southeast Asia & Hong Kong, Far Eastern Horizons and North Pacific Passage. Bridge oceans and continents on our most epic Pacific itinerary yet. Overnight stays in 13 ports help you immerse yourself in a fascinating array of cultures and let you embrace endless opportunities to get to know locals from East to West. It is an enriching journey unlike any other.

We Of The Never Never

By Jeannie Gunn

In 1902, newly married Jeannie Gunn (Mrs Aeneas Gunn) left the security and comfort of her Melbourne home to travel to the depths of the Northern Territory, where her husband had been appointed manager of 'The Elsey', a large cattle station.
She had an unerring ear and eye for the sounds and sights of the country; and this is the moving and simple account of her life amidst the beauty and cruelty of the land, and the isolation and loneliness - together with the comradeship and kindness of those around her.

True History of the Kelly Gang

By Peter Carey

“I lost my own father at 12 yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in Hell if I speak false.”

In True History of the Kelly Gang, the legendary Ned Kelly speaks for himself, scribbling his narrative on errant scraps of paper in semiliterate but magically descriptive prose as he flees from the police. To his pursuers, Kelly is nothing but a monstrous criminal, a thief and a murderer. To his own people, the lowly class of ordinary Australians, the bushranger is a hero, defying the authority of the English to direct their lives. Indentured by his bootlegger mother to a famous horse thief (who was also her lover), Ned saw his first prison cell at 15 and by the age of 26 had become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and defying the law until he was finally captured and hanged. Here is a classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist.

The Thorn Birds

By Colleen McCullough

The Thorn Birds is a robust, romantic saga of a singular family, the Clearys. It begins in the early part of this century, when Paddy Cleary moves his wife, Fiona, and their seven children to Drogheda, the vast Australian sheep station owned by his autocratic and childless older sister; and it ends more than half a century later, when the only survivor of the third generation, the brilliant actress Justine O'Neill, sets a course of life and love halfway around the world from her roots.

The central figures in this enthralling story are the indomitable Meggie, the only Cleary daughter, and the one man she truly loves, the stunningly handsome and ambitious priest Ralph de Bricassart. Ralph's course moves him a long way indeed, from a remote Outback parish to the halls of the Vatican; and Meggie's except for a brief and miserable marriage elsewhere, is fixed to the Drogheda that is part of her bones - but distance does not dim their feelings though it shapes their lives.

Wonderful characters people this book; strong and gentle, Paddy, hiding a private memory; dutiful Fiona, holding back love because it once betrayed her, violent, tormented Frank, and the other hardworking Cleary sons who give the boundless lands of Drogheda the energy and devotion most men save for women; Meggie; Ralph; and Meggie's children, Justine and Dane. And the land itself; stark, relentless in its demands, brilliant in its flowering, prey to gigantic cycles of drought and flood, rich when nature is bountiful, surreal like no other place on earth.

My Brilliant Career

By Miles Franklin

The fierce, irreverent novel of aspiration and rebellion that is both a cornerstone of Australian literature and a feminist classic

Miles Franklin began the candid, passionate, and contrary My Brilliant Career when she was only sixteen, intending it to be the Australian answer to Jane Eyre. But the book she produced-a thinly veiled autobiographical novel about a young girl hungering for life and love in the outback-so scandalized her country upon its appearance in 1901 that she insisted it not be published again until ten years after her death.

A Fortunate Life

By Albert B. Facey

This is the extraordinary life of an ordinary man. It is the story of Albert Facey, who lived with simple honesty, compassion and courage. A parentless boy who started work at eight on the rough West Australian frontier, he struggled as an itinerant rural worker, survived the gore of Gallipoli, the loss of his farm in the Depression, the death of his son in World War II and that of his beloved wife after sixty devoted years - yet he felt that his life was fortunate.
Facey's life story, published when he was eighty-seven, has inspired many as a play, a television series, and an award-winning book that has sold over half a million copies.

The House: The dramatic story of the Sydney Opera House and the people who made it

By Helen Pitt

The best-loved building in Australia nearly didn't get off the drawing board. When it did, the lives of everyone involved in its construction were utterly changed: some for the better, many for the worse.

Helen Pitt tells the stories of the people behind the magnificent white sails of the Sydney Opera House. From the famous conductor and state premier who conceived the project; to the two architects whose lives were so tragically intertwined; to the workers and engineers; to the people of Sydney, who were alternately beguiled and horrified as the drama unfolded over two decades.

With access to diaries, letters, and classified records, as well as her own interviews with people involved in the project, Helen Pitt reveals the intimate back story of the building that turned Sydney into an international city. It is a tale worthy of Shakespeare himself.

Building a Masterpiece: The Sydney Opera House

By Anne Watson

This richly illustrated book explores new perspectives on the Sydney Opera House’s many stories, encompassing technological and social history, as well as design themes. Through ten engaging essays, written by eminent authors and experts in their fields, Building a Masterpiece explores the history of the Opera House from the international design competition in 1957, through the extraordinary innovations involved in and the saga of its construction, to its opening in October 1973 and its current world status as a symbol of Australia. 

Australians: Origins to Eureka

By Thomas Keneally

Convicts and Aborigines, settlers and soldiers, patriots and reformers, bushrangers and gold seekers—it is from their lives and their stories that Tom Keneally has woven a vibrant history to do full justice to the rich and colorful nature of Australia's unique national character. The story begins by looking at European occupation through Aboriginal eyes, moving between the city slums and rural hovels of 18th-century Britain and the shores of Port Jackson. Readers spend time on the low-roofed convict decks of transports and see the bewilderment of the Eora people as they see the first ships of turaga, or "ghost people." They follow the daily round of Bennelong and his wife Barangaroo and the tribulations of warrior Windradyne. Convicts like Solomon Wiseman and John Wilson find their feet and even fortune, while Henry Parkes' arrival as a penniless immigrant gives few clues to the national statesman he was to become. Chinese diggers trek to the goldfields, and revolutionaries like Italian Raffaello Carboni and black American John Joseph bring readers the drama of the Eureka uprising. Tom Keneally has brought to life the high and the low, the convict and the free of early Australian society. This is truly a new history of Australia, by an author of outstanding literary skill and experience, whose own humanity permeates every page.

Australians: Eureka to the Diggers

By Thomas Keneally

The second volume of bestselling author Thomas Keneally's unique trilogy of Australian history in which people are always center stage 
In the continuation of an impeccably researched, engagingly written people's history, this is the story of Australia through people from all walks of life, from Eureka to Gallipoli. From the 1860s to the great rifts wrought by World War I, an era commenced in which Australian pursued glimmering visions: of equity in a promised land. Immigrants and Aboriginal resistance figures, bushrangers and pastoralists, working men and pioneering women, artists and hard-nosed radicals, politicians and soldiers all populate this richly drawn portrait of a vibrant land on the cusp of nationhood and social maturity. This is truly a new history of Australia, by an author of outstanding literary skill and experience, and whose own humanity permeates every page.

The Songlines

By Bruce Chatwin

In this extraordinary book, Bruce Chatwin has adapted a literary form common until the eighteenth century though rare in ours; a story of ideas in which two companions, traveling and talking together, explore the hopes and dreams that animate both them and the people they encounter. Set in almost uninhabitable regions of Central Australia, The Songlines asks and tries to answer these questions: Why is man the most restless, dissatisfied of animals? Why do wandering people conceive the world as perfect whereas sedentary ones always try to change it? Why have the great teachers—Christ or the Buddha—recommended the Road as the way. to salvation? Do we agree with Pascal that all man's troubles stem from his inability to sit quietly in a room?

We do not often ask these questions today for we commonly assume that living in a house is normal and that the wandering life is aberrant. But for more than twenty years Chatwin has mulled over the possibility that the reverse might be the case.

The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding

By Robert Hughes

The history of the birth of Australia which came out of the suffering and brutality of England's infamous convict transportation system. With 16 pages of illustrations and 3 maps.

One of the greatest non-fiction books I've ever read . . . Hughes brings us an entire world. --Los Angeles Times

The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia

By Bill Gammage

Across Australia, early Europeans commented again and again that the land looked like a park, with extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands, and abundant wildlife. Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific fashion than most people have ever realized. For more than a decade, he has examined written and visual records of the Australian landscape. He has uncovered an extraordinarily complex system of land management using fire, the life cycles of native plants, and the natural flow of water to ensure plentiful wildlife and plant foods throughout the year. Aboriginal people spent far less time and effort than Europeans in securing food and shelter, and this book reveals how. Once Aboriginal people were no longer able to tend their country, it became overgrown and vulnerable to the hugely damaging bushfires Australians now experience. With details of land-management strategies from around Australia, this book rewrites the history of the continent, with huge implications for today. 

In a Sunburned Country

By Bill Bryson

Every time Bill Bryson walks out the door, memorable travel literature threatens to break out. His previous excursion along the Appalachian Trail resulted in the sublime national bestseller A Walk in the Woods. In A Sunburned Country is his report on what he found in an entirely different place: Australia, the country that doubles as a continent, and a place with the friendliest inhabitants, the hottest, driest weather, and the most peculiar and lethal wildlife to be found on the planet. The result is a deliciously funny, fact-filled, and adventurous performance by a writer who combines humor, wonder, and unflagging curiousity.

Despite the fact that Australia harbors more things that can kill you in extremely nasty ways than anywhere else, including sharks, crocodiles, snakes, even riptides and deserts, Bill Bryson adores the place, and he takes his readers on a rollicking ride far beyond that beaten tourist path. Wherever he goes he finds Australians who are cheerful, extroverted, and unfailingly obliging, and these beaming products of land with clean, safe cities, cold beer, and constant sunshine fill the pages of this wonderful book. Australia is an immense and fortunate land, and it has found in Bill Bryson its perfect guide.

Australia

By Phillip Knightley

Australia celebrated one hundred years as a nation in 2001. This book - part history, part travelogue, part memoir - tells the inspiring story of how a one-time British colony of convicts turned itself into a prosperous and confident country. Through the eyes of ordinary people, Phillip Knightley describes Australia's journey, from federation and the trauma of the First World War, the desperate poverty of the Depression, with its attendant spectres of secret armies and near-civil war, the threat of invasion in the Second World War and the immigration that followed it, and the slow but steady decline in the relationship with Britain, the 'Mother Country', as Australia forged its own unique identity.

Cook: The Extraordinary Sea Voyages of Captain James Cook

Commonly regarded as the greatest sea explorer of all time, James Cook made his three world-changing voyages during the 1770s, at a time when ships were routinely lost around the English coast. He made history by making geography-- sailing through previously unknown southern seas, charting the eastern Australian coast and circumnavigating New Zealand, putting many Pacific islands on the map, and exploring both the Arctic and Antarctic. His men suffered near shipwreck, were ravaged by tropical diseases, and survived frozen oceans; his lieutenants-- including George Vancouver and William Bligh-- became celebrated captains in their own right. Exploits among native peoples combined to make Cook a celebrity and a legend.

Cook is not, however, viewed by all as a heroic figure. Some Hawaiians demonize him as a syphilitic rascist who had a catastrophic effect on local health. Indigenous Australians often see him as the violent dispossessor of their lands. Nicholas Thomas explores Cook's contradictory character as never before, by reconstructing the many sides of encounters that were curious and unusual for Europeans and natives alike. The result of twenty years' research, Thomas's magnificently rich portrait overturns the familiar images of Cook and reveals the fascinating and far more ambiguous figure beneath.

Gallipoli

By Les Carlyon

Les Carlyon's Gallipoli is the epic story of the fighting men who forged the legend of Anzac in 1915. Taking the reader behind the lines and into the trenches, Gallipoli not only brings an infamous battlefield to vivid life but puts poignant breath in the bones of the ordinary heroes who lived and died there. War stories are rarely this personal but Carlton's meticulous research and mesmeric storytelling take readers up-close with the conflict like never before, poetically evoking an ancient landscape rooted in myth, a theatre for Alexander the Great, St Paul and the Trojan Wars, and then intimately populating it with soldiers, generals and politicians from the Allied and Turkish forces.

A century on from the Anzac landing on 25 April 1915, Les Carlyon's Gallipoli endures, a masterpiece every bit as haunting and heartbreaking as the events it records. Once read, it is never forgotten.

Australia

Baz Luhrmann

An English aristocrat inherits a large cattle station in northern Australia. When she learns about the English cattle barons’ plot to take her land, she drives 2,000 cattle across treacherous lands to Darwin, Australia with the help of a stockman—only to witness the city’s bombing by Japanese forces. Filmed in multiple locations including Darwin and Sydney.

Aya

Solrun Hoaas

Set in the 1950s, Aya, a young Japanese war bride, and her husband, Frank, arrive in a small Australian town. Aya and Frank love each other, but Frank wants Aya to forget about her Japanese past. She cannot let go of who she is and where she came from, and finds herself drawn to his friend Mac, who respects the Japanese culture. Filmed in Hobart and Melbourne.

All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane

Louise Alston

One by one, Anthea’s friends start to leave Brisbane, tempting her to do so as well. But when she learns that an ex-boyfriend is coming back to Brisbane, she changes her mind. Filmed in Brisbane.

Broken Hill

Dagen Merrill

Tommy, the son of a sheep rancher, lives in the middle of the Australian Outback and dreams of attending the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. In order to apply to the conservatorium, Tommy needs to find musicians in the Outback who can play the music he has composed. Winner of two awards. Filmed in multiple locations including Adelaide and Sydney.

Breath

Simon Baker

Set in coastal Australia in the 1970s, this film is about Pikelet and Loonie, two teenage boys who seek adventure after having grown up in a small town. When Pikelet and Loonie meet Sando, an older surfer, they form a friendship that will lead them to take dangerous risks. Based on the award-winning and international best-selling novel Breath by Tim Winton. Filmed in Albany.

Boys

S. Shankar

This comedy-drama follows the lives of five boys and one girl, each with a different background and upbringing. In the process of fending for themselves, they discover the personal talents that make them special. Filmed in multiple locations including Chennai, India; Cochin, India; and Tasmania, Australia.

Bootmen

Dein Perry

Sean Odken leaves his job at a steel mill to appear on a tap dancing show in Sydney, but finds himself jobless after he gets involved with a lead dancer and is let go. He returns home determined to start his own tap dance group, but with a new twist: the tap dancers will wear hard hats while dancing on industrial steel and wearing shoes welded with metal. Filmed in Newcastle and Sydney.

Beneath Hill 60

Jeremy Sims

Set in 1916, this drama is based on the true story of Captain Oliver Woodward. Along with his secret platoon of Australian tunnelers, he must maintain a leaking complex tunnel system deep beneath German lines that is packed with enough explosives to alter the war. Filmed in Townsville.

Careful, He Might Hear You

Carl Schultz

After PS’s mother dies, his Aunt Lila and Uncle George take him into their home in Sydney. But his Aunt Vanessa shows up claiming her rights as a co-guardian, demanding that PS live with her during the week. With Lila, PS gets to live the life of a child, but with Vanessa, he is forced to live a strict, staunch life. Filmed in Sydney.

Dawn!

Ken Hannam

This sports biopic shares the life experiences and rise to fame of Australian swimmer Dawn Fraser, a three-time Olympic gold medalist. Filmed in multiple locations including Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney.

Fool’s Gold

Andy Tennant

This adventure-romance tells the story of Ben “Finn” Finnegan and Tess Finnegan, a recently divorced couple who fall in love again while searching for a treasure that was lost at sea with the 1715 treasure fleet. Filmed in multiple locations including Cairns, Brisbane and Whitsunday Island.

Love Me Again (Land Down Under)

Rory B. Quintos

Arah and Migo live in the Philippines, but Arah dreams of a better life. When her father has an accident, Arah moves to Australia to earn money. Migo is devastated but does not want to go to Australia. Arah adjusts to life in Australia, fulfilling her dreams for herself and her family. But after several years have passed, Migo shows up in Australia, and he and Arah confront their past and their time apart. Filmed in multiple locations including Darwin.

Lion

Garth Davis

Based on the nonfiction book A Long Way Home, this film tells the story of Saroo Brierley, who, at five years of age, gets separated from his family in Kolkata and then adopted by an Australian family. At 25, Saroo begins a search for his long-lost family using Google Earth. Filmed in multiple locations including Melbourne, Australia; Kolkata, India; and Hobart, Australia.

Mabo

Rachel Perkins

This biographical film is about Eddie Koiki Mabo, an Aboriginal Australian and national hero of Australia. Mabo, who dropped out of school at the age of 15, successfully spearheaded the campaign for land rights for indigenous people, which resulted in the overthrowing of terra nullius (“nobody’s land”) by the High Court. Filmed in Queensland.

Our Generation

Sinem Saban and Damien Curtis

This documentary features stories from one of the last strongholds of traditional Aboriginal culture in Australia: the remote Yolngu of northeastern Arnhem Land. The Aboriginal struggles of land, culture and freedom are explored, and interviews with national indigenous leaders, historians and human rights activists shine a light on threats to the Australian Aboriginal culture.

Rabbit-Proof Fence

Phillip Noyce

This multi-award-winning film tells the story of Molly, Daisy and Grace, two sisters and a cousin who are taken thousands of miles away from their Aboriginal mothers to be trained as domestic staff. The girls escape and follow a rabbit-proof fence while eluding a native tracker and the regional constabulary. Filmed in multiple locations including Adelaide, Perth and Sydney.

Swimming Upstream

Russell Mulcahy

This biographical film tells the inspirational story of Tony Fingleton. After growing up in a troubled household and being overlooked by his father, Tony makes a commitment to become the best athlete possible and prove his confidence and talents to his father. Filmed in multiple locations including Brisbane, Perth and Sydney.

The Light Between Oceans

Derek Cianfrance

Tom, a lighthouse keeper, and his wife, Isabel, live remotely off the coast of western Australia. After Isabel miscarries twice and a baby washes ashore in a dinghy, Isabel convinces Tom that they should raise the baby without telling anyone about her or her father, who is lying dead in the boat. Filmed in multiple locations including Dunedin and Tasmania.

The Tree

Julie Bertuccelli

When her husband, Peter, dies unexpectedly, Dawn is devastated. But Simone, their eight-year-old daughter, is convinced that Peter is speaking to her through the giant Moreton Bay fig tree that stands next to their house—the same tree that Peter crashed his car into on the day he died. And when Dawn begins a relationship with George, the tree seems to take on a life of its own. Filmed in Queensland.