Category: Non Fiction

Australian True Crime- non fiction

Library Ebook Copy- 2019

I had a hold on this book from the library and it finally popped up on my Libby app as I was about to fly home from Morocco to Tasmania.  I was happy to see it as I find movies on flights are notoriously hard to hear with engine noise and flight attendant interruptions so I settled down for the long haul and finished this book in record time.

In 2010 Dirt Bike riders came across a body in the Belanglo State Forest in New South Wales. As most Australian people will remember this was the state park that serial killer Ivan Millat buried the backpacker victims that he was convicted of killing and now serves terms of life in prison.  It was determined that the victim discovered in 2010 was not a part of this crime.

Five years later a young child was found in South Australia, in a suitcase alongside a highway near Adelaide.  Australians may also remember the “body in a suitcase” case at that time.

The author follows this crime from the beginning of the discovery of the woman’s body in 2010 until the end of 2018. The crime is uncovered early in the book. The story is not so much about the crime but about how people’s lives can change in an instant or over time due to the experiences they have  in life or the people they meet and worse, might fall in love with.  I found the psychology behind the characters in this story to be fascinating. Of course drug abuse enters the picture and makes it even worse.

Domestic violence, jealousy, loyalty, betrayal, poverty are all themes in this book. As a result of these issues and how they combine equals a very tragic tale indeed.

The journalistic writing of this story and the lives of these two people is excellent. The story is revealed in a very straight forward way without sensationalism.  The author and the reader really cares about these people. It is interesting to see how a murderer is made in this instance. It begins with negligent parents and abuse of a small boy and leads to tragedy and misery that involves many families over the course of a couple of generations.

I kept thinking as I read it, “What if the parents had been loving and understanding” to this young boy….. Would it have happened?  Many people do suffer traumatic childhoods and never go near committing a murder but it isn’t unreasonable to see how the various experiences of all the characters in this book end up with the results of their lives.

The book doesn’t go into gory detail over the cases until the wrap up at the end during the trial. Of course all the details must be revealed during the trial.  This is not a book for those who don’t want to know specific details.  The first 90% of the book is about the lives of everyone around the victims in this case. But the last 10% does bring it all into focus as the conclusion and repercussions are reached.

When we often hear so many stories of corrupt police officers and justice gone astray because of it, the story is also a tribute to the officers who did their job and the really good communication between authorities in four states that culminated in the solving of this case.

If this is a genre you find interesting then I can recommend it. If you prefer a more gentle read don’t pick it up. I must say though I barely noticed the extreme turbulence of my flight while this book was in my hand. I read and read and read. I could not put it down.

My favourite genre of books has always been travel writing. I enjoy reading books and blogs and looking at Instagram photos of people who travel a lot.  With my added interest in photography and street photography in particular, I can never indulge in too many of these books.

I am almost finished with an audible book I’ve been listening to by a young American, Christian, gay man (in his 30s) named Jedidiah Jenkins. The title of the book is To Shake the Sleeping Self.

He and a good mate ride their bicycles from Seattle, Washington to Patagonia in South America.  I am really enjoying their story.  He paces himself well with his writing and there are interesting conversations between the two friends about faith, gayness and being Catholic and the conflict that involves while also sorting his relationship to other family members. He grew up in Tennessee but moved to California once he became an adult.

His parents divorced and he was raised by his devoutly Christian mother who lived her life by the teachings of the bible.  His mother believes being gay is a choice and she does not understand why he would choose the lifestyle. She believes he can change if he puts his mind to it and will not accept her son’s truth.

He comes out more and more as he has time on his long rides through endless deserts to really get to know himself and think about all the issues that are raised. He has a strong Christian faith and his thoughts are interesting.

He also describes his mate, Weston well. Weston doesn’t have much money, worries

about nothing but is a really deep thinker about the world and the purpose of life. He has cycled through being born again Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, and is now an atheist. He also loves weed, mushrooms and tries cocaine once they get to Columbia.  He decides he doesn’t care for coke. He embraces life experiences completely and nothing seems to upset him on this journey. Their experiences with the local people, the hostels and camping they do off road in hammocks hidden from view, their illnesses and the beautiful places they visit really keep me interested in the story.

The audible copy I have is narrated by the author and he is a good writer and a great reader. I feel like I’m really in their heads as they experience this trip.  They took this trip around 2013 or 2014. They were on the road for more than a year and I’m currently in Ecuador with them.  I am assuming they make it to Patagonia but I have not finished the book yet so I don’t know if they’ll get there or not.

There are parts where I think he’s a bit self indulgent but I imagine if this were my trip I would be too,  simply because you’d have so much time to think. Some of the stretches of road they ride really do seem unending and writing about it and the thoughts that go through one’s head do tend to go on.

I remember in 2010 when I rode my 250 cc Scooter on a charity ride from Hobart to Longreach, Qld then to Rockhampton and back down the coast to Hobart. I rode 7300 kms in three and a half weeks.  There are very long stretches of very straight roads in Queensland that go on forever and I only had my own thoughts in my helmet.  I would sing songs from childhood I remembered, I relived lots of memories, I had creative ideas for future plans. You just don’t know what you’re going to think when on these long trips with only yourself for company.

I can recommend this book if you are interested in these topics.

Speaking of which….. I leave for Europe Friday week so stay tuned as I hopefully will have enough energy to write at the end of some days.  I should have time to write as I’ll be in a room by myself each evening as Mr. Penguin is staying home taking care of our menagerie and I’ll be with two girlfriends. We’ll see.  I will post some photos up on Instagram here and there but hopefully I can get a blog post or two together.

Until then….

This past couple of weeks I’ve been reading a fair bit but the books I want to share with you today are in the subject of photography.

The first one is the Autobiography of Ansel Adams. This book presents the life story of one of America’s best known and most popular photographers and environmentalists of the 20th century. Adams was also a teacher, musician and crusader over the last six decades. He was born in 1902 and lived until 1984. This autobiography came out the year following his death in 1985.

I am in the middle of this book now and am loving it. He was an excellent writer and there doesn’t seem to be a lot he leaves out.  I am also finding the history of California (he grew up in the San Francisco area) fascinating. He talked about the big earthquake and fire of 1905. There is so much that happened during the first 2/3 of the 20th century and he describes it through his eyes.

That alone is interesting enough but then he goes on to describe his love of music and studying to be a concert pianist.  The art scene in San Francisco in early 1900s was just brilliant and very energetic.  He hung out with artists, poets and the people who started the Sierra Club. He got to know Yosemite National Park like the back of his hand, long before it was recognised as a national park. He had strong ties to the southwest of the United States.

Some of his descriptions of climbing the rockiest areas in Yosemite carrying his camera and all the gear back in the 1920’s is exhausting. Photography back then was very different than it is now. He studied shapes and lighting more than colour as colour wasn’t possible back then.  The work that was completed in the dark rooms was interesting and difficult.

The reader learns of his wife, friends and parents as the years go by.  It is a well written biography and I would recommend it for anyone who loves photography, music, the arts or American history of the western states.

 

 

The second book I’d like to share is one by (still living) Joel Myerowitz. The book is called Aftermath.  It is a compilation of photographs from the terrorist attack of the World Trade Towers of New York City of 9/11. The book is a huge, coffee table sized tome that takes two hands to carry it. You need to set it on a table to read it. I don’t usually read anything about that day but this book is important for one reason.  After the attacks happened, New York City officials completely surrounded the site in high fences and secrecy. No photos were allowed.  This day was going to go completely unrecorded photographically.  Mr. Myerowitz spent days making friends with some of the officials

onsite, especially a group of police officers.  Many of those working the site thought the pictures should be shared. It was almost as if it was being covered up. Eventually as he stalked the area daily, making himself known he began getting into the site and taking the photos of the cleanup that continued for a long time. He donned a hard hat he found, dressed the part, found various pieces of things he could wear from the workers and started photographing various angles of this disaster. He was thrown off the site several times but he kept going back. The photos are amazing and one feels as though they are penetrating all angles of the destruction of so many buildings. There are also quite a few photos of the surrounding buildings with all their windows blown out and missing walls. One can see into all the offices with the missing walls.  The portrait photography of the workers is also very interesting to look at. He captures so much emotion in his photography. Many stories are being told within the site.
This book has made me think quite a bit. Had this single photographer not persevered to such an extent the whole incident would have been visually lost. The bureaucracy around the cleanup was quite interesting and I paused many times not believing what I was reading. 

Mr. Myerowitz was born in 1938 in the Bronx, New York and there is a wonderful short biography of his achievements here.  He continues to teach photography. He is well known for his street photography especially and he is on Instagram (here)  if anyone is interested in seeing what he is doing currently.  There is a vast store of knowledge and photographs that can also be searched on google under his name.

I always think I enjoy reading fiction the most but it seems the older I get the more I enjoy reading non-fiction, especially in learning what so many amazing people, both alive and now gone have given to the world. It is probably a way of distracting myself from the horrible world leaders we seem to have now in so many countries. I wish the good people of the earth got as much media coverage as the awful ones. The world would be a more inspiring place.