Vera + Remembering Melbourne Bundle

CHRISTMAS BUNDLE

Get both books for the special price of $60

What you get:

Vera Deakin and the Red Cross by Carole Woods

PLUS

Remembering Melbourne: 1850-1960 by Richard Broome, Richard Barnden, Don Gibb, Don Garden, Elisabeth Jackson and Judith Smart.

Vera Deakin and the Red Cross by Carole Woods

A beautiful hardcover book with a dust jacket and 66 images.

Vera Deakin, daughter of Prime Minister Alfred Deakin, was motivated by imperial fervour during World War I to sidestep the Australian government’s restrictions on women’s service. On the eve of WWI she was studying music in Budapest but later joined the fledgling Australian Red Cross and sailed to Cairo. There she became founding secretary of the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau, an organisation devoted to finding information on behalf of the relatives of Australian soldiers who had gone missing or been wounded or killed during the war, then focused at Gallipoli.

She was 23 and formidable. A self-styled despot, she welded a disparate group of women into a committed team. Scientist Sir David Rivett said Vera brought ‘an infinity of consolation to so many people’. In 1916 she moved the bureau to London. In 1918, at just 26, she was awarded an OBE for her service to the bureau. She led similar work for the Red Cross in Melbourne during World War II.

In 1920 after a whirlwind romance, Vera married Captain Thomas White, an Australian pilot who had served in the Mesopotamian campaign before being captured by the Turks. She undertook varied welfare work together with lifelong service to the Red Cross.

Vera was honoured during her lifetime but later largely forgotten. The centenary of World War l revived interest in her and the Enquiry Bureau’s 32,000 case files on missing soldiers. Now Carole Woods has captured this significant figure in Australian history through her perceptive and poignant biography. Carole explores Vera’s humanitarian activism within the defining events of the 20th century and shines a light on a woman who defied society’s expectations in order to help those in need.

Carole Woods OAM, is a Fellow and honorary secretary of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. For 7 years she chaired the judges’ panel of the Victorian Community History Awards. Her books include Vision Fugitive. The Story of David Allen and Beechworth. A Titan’s Field. She lives in Camberwell.

Interview with author Carole Woods

Soon after the Governor of Victoria launched Vera Deakin and the Red Cross at the Shrine of Remembrance, the author, Carole Woods recorded this podcast for the Shrine.

REMEMBERING MELBOURNE 1850-1960 by  Richard Broome, Richard Barnden, Don Gibb, Don Garden, Elisabeth Jackson and Judith Smart.

Every house and every business in Melbourne should have a copy of this magnificent homage to a marvellous city. Melbourne has been reshaped since the 1950s, the completion of ICI House in 1958 being symbolic of the glass tower revolution that changed the face of this graceful nineteenth century city. This book captures what has been lost and forgotten, concealed and overlaid, demolished and reborn, in the transformation of a city’s buildings and streetscapes. Each chapter is introduced by a short essay written by an expert, catching the essence of that precinct. These authoritative introductions provide a context for the magnificent photographs to follow. There are also introductory chapters on Aboriginal Melbourne, how the city was shaped, on the city and suburbs as a whole, and on how Melbourne and suburbs were captured by the camera, which was born at the same time as the city.

The first half of this book looks lovingly at Melbourne’s inner city which is examined street by street. The second half goes further afield and there are chapters looking at Brighton, Brunswick, Camberwell-Hawthorn-Balwyn, Canterbury, Carlton, Coburg, Collingwood, East Melbourne, Essendon, Fitzroy, Footscray, Heidelberg, Kew, Malvern, Middle Park, North & West Melbourne, Port Melbourne, Richmond, Sunshine & district and Surrey Hills.

This book is a priceless trove of a city’s memory.

$60.00