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The Second-Best Job in the World: The Extraordinary Adventures of an ABC Cameraman by Julian Mather
Friday, March 5th, 2010
Queenslander Julian Mather spent 20 years at the ABC, principally as a globetrotting cameraman. His dedication to his craft, his bloody-mindedness, personality flaws, opportunities, triumphs and mishaps all feature in this often funny, self-deprecating autobiography. A failure at school, Mather joined the army hoping to become a field photographer. The army turned him into a sniper so he left after three years and secured a technical traineeship with the ABC in the early 1980s. It was nearly three years before he was sent on a shoot, meanwhile gaining experience in every technical aspect of the organisation. This book works on several levels. Not only does the writer describe his development into an award-winning cameraman, he gives us a very entertaining picture of the ABC as a segmented, fractious, yet strangely effective, media empire: ‘The ABC is a collection of departments that don’t talk to each other. They never have and likely never will.’ He is also game to admit his own shortcomings, acknowledging that he can be his own worst enemy. Yet at the end of this engaging book he reveals that he has set up a grassroots children’s charity and we realise that it’sj his life journey that has led to this uplifting conclusion.
This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine (March 2010, Vol 89, No. 6) is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2009, Thorpe-Bowker.
Not content with reporting on the decline of Australia’s major river system from the bureaucratic remoteness of Canberra, journalist Chris Hammer took six months to travel the length and breadth of the vast Murray- Darling Basin. He witnessed first-hand the state of the waterways and heard for himself the stories of those who live there. The economic and agricultural importance of the rivers cannot be overstated and nor can the immense Indigenous heritage or environmental value of the basin be ignored, but nothing in the Murray-Darling is as simple as it first appears–a point brought home to the reader time and again by Hammer’s admirably balanced and thorough reportage. Drought and overuse dry the river out before it even reaches the sea and disputes are becoming increasingly bitter and desperate as entire towns watch their futures evaporate. Hammer skilfully gathers their individual stories together with his own research and personal observations to clearly enunciate the difficult economic, political and environmental realities these river communities face. Timely and revealing, The River is also an immensely readable travelogue, revelling in the rich heritage and character of the Australian bush, ideal for anyone interested in Australian history, current affairs and the environment.
I opened this, curious about the title. Does Hamilton really think we are beyond the point of no return? Or is he being deliberately pessimistic to shock readers to action before it’s too late? Although fronted by a perhaps superfluous chapter on the frightening recent science, this is not an attempt to convince readers of the existence of human-induced warming. Rather, like many alarmed by impending climate disaster, Hamilton has turned his attention to the psychological factors inhibiting human action to avoid it. Reprising themes from Growth Fetish, he ranges from the political to the psychological, casting light on the dynamics responsible for both denialism and passive inaction. In doing so he covers interesting ground. But the question remains, why this examination if disaster is already certain? This is a book that reads-and was perhaps written-as an attempt to tease meaning from the author’s own despair. It swings between optimism and despondency, but at its core is a break from disingenuous reassurances that minor personal actions will make a difference, and from arguments that the market, weak legislation or science itself will save us. Hamilton instead exhorts readers to ‘Despair. Accept. Act’, using his final chapter to make the case for civil disobedience. In his more optimistic passages Hamilton implies we have 10 years to take action to avoid the worst; the insights into human behaviours he lays out here can hopefully inform the shape of that action.
Brenda Walker, novelist and academic, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004. This is her memoir of that experience, with the difference that she focusses on the books she read that gave her support and helped her, not escape from life, but ‘live it more deeply’. It is a richly satisfying book for those who love reading, prize the life of the mind, and appreciate its inextricable relationship to the body. She discusses certain authors and books in great detail, including Samuel Beckett’s ‘Malone’ trilogy (which she clearly holds close to her heart), Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, The Tale of Genji attributed to Murasaki Shikibu, and J M Coetzee’s Foe. Walker’s language is poetic, her images strong, such as children in a pool being held up by the breaths of their parents filling the water wings. Her own illness is described with a lightness of touch that has no self-pity, and some distance. A combination of factors actually saved her life, including medicine and family, but the reading rescued and steadied her sense of self. Some plot descriptions of valued books are overlong, but otherwise this is a treasure to be read and re-read.
Palm Island tells the story of Palm Island from colonisation, through 1918 when it became a prison camp for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, to the tragedy of Cameron Doomadgee in 2004. The book is an absorbing and largely tragic history of racism, neglect and death. I knew about the death of Doomadgee and the controversy surrounding it, but it was fascinating to read of the history of the island and its inhabitants. Particularly interesting was the tale of Robert Curry, a superintendent on the island who suffered a mental breakdown, attacked the medical staff, poisoned his children, burned down various buildings on the island and was shot by residents on the instructions of the assistant superintendent. Palm Island has a chapter for all five of the longest serving and most notorious of the island’s superintendents. It also includes a chapter on the hospital on nearby Fantome Island, which served as the hospital for Palm Islanders as well as being a leprosarium. Palm Island is a brilliant companion for people who have read Chloe Hooper’s 
The ‘On’ series from Melbourne University Press gathers together great Australian writers to ponder concepts, such as Robert Dessaix’s 
When gestalt therapist Sharon Snir’s mother Lily was diagnosed with dementia, her family experienced the usual emotions–fear of the future, grief at what was being lost and embarrassment as Lily’s memory and inhibitions fell away. Snir questioned whether it had to be that way. Her very personal book, Looking for Lionel, focusses less on disease and loss than on changing relationships–how to communicate with and care for a loved one as they move through the stages of dementia. Not all readers will embrace Snir’s assertions that ‘dementia is the opportunity to move from conditional to unconditional love’ or ‘a transition from being attached to the material world to reconnecting to their soul’. However, Snir’s approach is also hugely practical, advising readers on how to enter their loved one’s new world where the present time is all, to communicate within boundaries that the dementia sufferer can understand and enjoy, and how, on a good day, to have fun together. Looking for Lionel will be useful for practitioners and staff working with dementia patients, as well as friends and family. Snir’s simple but incisive prose is both accessible and touching; she clearly understands the illness, and reminds readers that love has many faces.
Proving that ‘spice’ doesn’t just mean ‘hot’, this book offers recipes that utilise a wide variety of different herbs and spices, and provides something of a tutorial into spice origins, uses, storage, flavours and blends. The recipes included-all of which are easily accessible to the home cook–are very meat-heavy, so vegetarians be warned! But the dessert section contains some tasty-looking recipes, such as the dukkah and date sandwich, or the rockmelon and lemon myrtle sorbet, which would be divine on a hot day. The beginning and end of the book are possibly the most interesting, with Lyndey Milan and Ian ‘Herbie’ Hemphill sharing some of their knowledge about spices and, in the back, wine. The latter feels a bit tacked on, and doesn’t seem to have much to do with the rest of the book, but is interesting for those of us who like wine but don’t know terribly much about it. With everything from fast food to slow food to ‘not-so-slow food’, and some interesting ideas for transforming simple desserts into something more exotic, Just Add Spice provides a quite in-depth look at a simple idea–spice certainly spices things up!
Hard to say whether this book belongs in the business or self-help section-it contains over 20 interviews with self-made Australian millionaires, who tell how they turned brainwaves into big bucks, and offer their golden rules for business success. The author, Nick Gardner, is finance editor of Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph, where these interviews first appeared. Accordingly, the book is as accessible (and occasionally as cornball) as a tabloid newspaper-an easy read that is more inspirational than instructional. Gardner’s subjects include the founders of Pubboy, Mandala Financial Group, Fastflowers.com, ModelCo, Just Cuts, Ecowash and Elite Introductions. Some are on the way up, some well-established, some have lost fortunes only to earn more–all have a story to tell about surviving the 2008/09 credit crunch, providing a pleasingly contemporary context. No big secrets are spilled; rather, each piece is like a mini-motivational seminar. Overall, the book promotes hard work, plus Australian Mrs Field cookie brand owner Andrew Benefield’s notion that ‘Money is just an idea backed by confidence.’ How I Made My First Million will give readers the grunt to push through another day of wageslavery- and, some days, that’s all you can ask for.
