Australian Quotes

(backpacker having conversation with Lizzie the Australian main character)Backpacker: 'What's the drinking age in Australia?''eighteen''is that enforced'Lizzie thought for a second before answering seriously, 'yes, they make us drink

Catherine Deveny

Hush now, ‘tis time to sleep and dream secrets of long ago.

Jan Reid

All the best! You are a local legend in a Brisbane and Australia...you probably don't realise just how much...you will get released from that hell hole...you will come home...and discover your 'celebrity status'...which you will probably find nearly as hard to cope with...a different version of hell...anonymity to global fame...what a remarkable journey your life is. Keep safe...head down...this will pass.

Look at the truth from how it stands, not where it comes from. The truth is still the truth no matter whether it is spoken by an Indian, an American, a Chinese, an European, an African or an Australian!

Israelmore Ayivor

If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us walk together...

Daily we make decisions, sometimes small, sometimes large, that affect our lives.Usually we know the events and people that influence these decisions.However sometimes we have no knowledge, and may never know, of the events and people that change the course of our lives.

Valverde MacLean

For fourteen years Wiliam Walker alias Brown alias Shields alias Swallow alias Waldon alias Todd alias Watson had been a major irritant to British authorities on both sides of the world. To the London police he was an accomplished thief. To the colonial government in Van Diemen's Land, he was a clever and determined escaper; he had stolen one of its vessels and caused much embarrassment by making it back to England not once but twice, one of only a handful of runaways to do so. To these skills of theft and evasion must be added outstanding seamanship, a glib tongue, extraordinary resourcefulness and a capacity for leadership. Among his more admirable attributes his loyalty to his family should also not be forgotten. To the convicts of Macquarie Harbour and Port Arthur he was a living legend, tangible proof that escape from the island prison was possible. By any standards, he was a remarkable man...

If he had given away anything else, he would have been charged with indecent exposure.

The e-reading revolution may have reached our shores this year but it has yet to reckon with Australia's summer holidays. Intense sunlight plays havoc with screens and the sand invades every nook and cranny, so as convenient and sexy as your new iPad may be, the battered paperback, its pages pocked and swollen from contact with briny hands, will likely remain the beach format of choice for a few years yet.

Geordie Williamson

...stories want to be told. Stories have a power of their own ... you can't write a story until you've felt it. Breathed it in. Walked with your characters. Talked with them.

I love a sunburnt country,A land of sweeping plains,Of ragged mountain ranges,Of droughts and flooding rains.I love her far horizons,I love her jewel-sea,Her beauty and her terror –The wide brown land for me!

Dorothea Mackellar