Julia Blackburn   Daisy Bates in the Desert (Minerva UK; Random US). For almost thirty years from 1913, Daisy Bates was Kabbarli, "the white-skinned grandmother", to the Aboriginal people with whom she lived in the desert. Blackburn's beautifully written biography interweaves fiction with fact to conjure up the life of one of Australia's most eccentric and misunderstood women.

 

Jill Ker Conway   The Road from Coorain (Minerva UK; Vintage US). Conway's childhood, on a drought-stricken Outback station during the 1940s, is movingly told, as is her battle to establish herself as a young historian in sexist, provincial 1950s Australia.

Albert Facey   A Fortunate Life (Viking UK o/p; Viking Penguin US o/p; Penguin Aus). A hugely popular autobiography of a battler, tracing his progress from a bush orphanage to Gallipoli, through the Depression, another war and beyond.

Eddie Mabo and Noel Loos   Edward Koiko Mabo: His Life and Struggle for Land Rights (University of Queensland Press Aus). Mabo spent much of his life fighting for the autonomy of Torres Strait Islanders and in the process overthrew the concept of terra nullius , making his name a household word in Australia. Long interviews with the late black hero form the basis of this book and affectionately reveal the man behind the name.

David Malouf   12 Edmondstone Street (Chatto UK; Vintage Aus). An evocative autobiography-in-snatches of one of Australia's finest literary novelists, describing, in loving detail, the eponymous house in Brisbane where Malouf was born, life in the Tuscan village where he lives for part of each year, and his first visit to India.

Hazel Rowley   Christina Stead: a Biography (Minerva Aus). Stead (1902-83) has been acclaimed as Australia's greatest novelist. After spending years in Paris, London and New York with her American husband, she returned to Australia in her old age.

Daryl Tonkin and Carolyn Landon   Jackson's Track (Penguin Aus). Ghostwritten autobiography of Tonkin, a bushman who fell in love with an Aboriginal woman, Euphemia Mullet, who worked on his timber-milling property in East Gippsland in the 1930s. The cross-cultural couple overcame prejudices to create their own life and family, living amongst a wider Aboriginal community at Jackson's Track.