Meet us @ Children's Book Council of Australia conference - Sunday 4 May 2008

Kevin Patrick and Doug Holgate, the dynamic duo behind the Amazing Australia book series, will be appearing at the Children's Book Council of Australia's (CBCA) 9th national conference and expo, to sign copies of their books, Prehistoric Australia and Airborne Australia.

This year's event, held under the banner, All the Wild Wonders, will "explore the various dimensions of children’s books from the craft of the writing, to the illustrator’s art, to the importance of the publisher’s final production."

The CBCA conference, is being held at the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre, 2 Clarendon Street, Southbank.

Kevin and Doug will be appearing between 1.30pm-2.00pm inside the You Yangs Exhibition Hall on Sunday 4 May to meet people attending the trade fair component of the conference, and sign copies of their books. So, be there, or be...umm....perpendicular?

Return of the Nomad?

The April - June 2008 edition of Aero Australia magazine contained an intriguing news item, which claimed that Gippsland Aeronautics was seeking to purchase the manufacturing rights to the Nomad STOL (short take-off and landing) aircraft from Boeing Australia.

The Nomad was a controversial, although some say needlessly maligned, aircraft designed and built by the Government Aircraft Factory (GAF) in Australia. Design work on the aircraft commenced in the mid-1960s, with the first prototypes taking flight in 1971.

Intended for use by military and commercial operators, the Nomad was built to operate successfully from rugged environments, and could even be flown as a seaplane. However, the aircraft's history was plagued by a series of fatal accidents, and was subject to ongoing criticism about its allegedly major design flaws.

Despite being sold to several military services and civilian operators throughout Asia and Australia, eventually only 170 Nomad aircraft were built, before production ceased in the early 1980s. In 1985, the Government Aircraft Factory was renamed Aerospace Technologies of Australia (ASTA), and continued to operate under that name for a decade, until it was sold off by the Australian government in 1995 to Rockwell Systems Australia which, in turn, was purchased by Boeing Australia in 1996.

Both the GAF Nomad and the Gippsland Aeronautics GA8 Airvan are featured in Airborne Australia. It will be fascinating to see if this news story, as reported in Aero Australia, develops further. Who knows? If a follow-up edition of our book appears down the track, we might need to make space for a new, improved 21st century Nomad!

Interested readers should check their local library to see if they have a copy of Aero Australia Issue 2 (April - June 2004), which has an excellent article, 'Nomad: The Unwanted Child', written by the magazine's editor, Stewart Wilson, that charts the aircraft's troubled history. (Image courtesy of the Aeroplane Art Company)

We accept the Premier's Reading Challenge!

We were tickled pink to learn that Airborne Australia was one of the new book titles to be included for the Victorian Premier's Reading Challenge for 2008. The book was even featured in the special lift-out which appeared in The Age newspaper on Monday 7 April.

This event, now in its fourth year, is open to all Victorian school students from Prep to Year 10, and is designed to encourage schoolkids to broaden their reading horizons.

So, for example, school students from Years 3 to 10 must read 15 books between 30 January - 31 August 2008, with at least 10 of those books to be chosen from the Reading Challenge booklist. (Just make sure that Airborne Australia is one of the titles you choose, okay? Heh, heh, heh...)

You'll need to be a registered user at the Premier's Reading Challenge website, and log-in regularly to keep an online record of your reading throughout the event. and everyone who successfully completes the Challenge will receive a certificate of achievement from the Victorian State Premier, John Brumby (pictured above).

If you haven't already signed up, then get onto it straight away. And start re-reading Airborne Australia as a form of pre-Challenge training. Harrumph!

In space, no one can hear your boomerang return

One of the earliest sections appearing in Airborne Australia is devoted to the boomerang, the uniquely Australian device whose surface resembles that of modern-day aircraft wings, which allows it to fly through the air - and, in the case of specially-designed boomerangs, return to the person who threw it!

Now, one of the most intriguing aeronautical experiments ever to be conducted was successfully completed on Tuesday 18 March 2008, by Japanese astronaut Takao Doi (pictured) who, while serving aboard the International Space Station, threw a boomerang out into space - and saw it return, just as it would have on Earth!

He carried out this offbeat mission (conducted during his free time, so he wasn't goofing off, alright?) at the request of Yasuhiro Togai, a resident of Osaka, Japan, who won an international boomerang-throwing competition in 2006.

While it might be some time before you, too, can enjoy the thrills of deep-space boomerang throwing, you can visit the Boomerang Association of Australia to learn more about this unique sport. No space suit required - just a good, strong throwing arm.

You've read the book - now, download the study guide!

Well, it's official - as of today, copies of Airborne Australia are being parachuted into bookstores across the country. (Well, okay, they were probably wheeled into bookshops on a trolley by a courier, but "parachuted" sounds a lot more exciting, right?)

Anyhow...um, where were we? Oh yes, that's right, the book. Well, it's out now in bookshops everywhere. But, if you're a teacher or librarian who's got a copy proudly displayed on your shelf, you might be interested to know that Random House Australia has prepared a study guide to accompany Airborne Australia, which you can use as the basis for lesson plans or group activities.

Just visit Kids @ Random Reading Guides, then scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the 'download' link next to Airborne Australia. It's that simple!

Take-off with Airborne Australia!

Okay, we'll be the first to admit that things have, well, been a little quiet here at Amazing Australia headquarters for the last month or so. But we have a very good excuse - and, no, it wasn't because we spent the whole summer sipping cold drinks by the pool.

Instead, we've been hunched over our keyboard (or, in Doug's case, his drawing board), busily putting the finishing touches to the next book in the Amazing Australia series - Airborne Australia!

In case you haven't guessed by now, Airborne Australia is all about the history of aviation in Australia, from the pioneering days of hot-air balloons and box kites, to the modern era of supersonic fighter jets and unmanned aerial vehicles.

Like its predecessor, Prehistoric Australia, this new book is packed to the rafters with puzzles, activities, thrilling stories and true tales of aerial daring. And there's an action-packed, full colour comic strip, documenting the devastating Japanese bombing raid on Darwin in 1942!

Airborne Australia will be published by Random House Australia on 1 April 2008 and will be available at all good bookstores across the country.

And remember - keep watching the skies!

Cape Otway's Cretaceous Christmas Present!

Christmas Eve delivered an unexpected surprise to Australian palaeontologists and dinosaur enthusiasts alike, with the revelation that researchers have uncovered the partial skeleton of a plant-eating ornithopod at Cape Otway, Victoria.

The discovery, which was first made in 2005, but was only formally announced on 24 December 2007, marks the first dinosaur skeleton to have been unearthed in nearly two decades. Previous fossil discoveries, such as those made at the nearby 'Dinosaur Cove' site, have largely consisted of bones and teeth.

According to Doctor Thomas Rich, vertebrate palaeontologist with Museum Victoria, the skeleton (estimated to be over 100 million years old) may have been intact as 'recently' as 500 years ago, when its head, along with much of its body, could have been washed away.

Full details of the discovery can be read here.