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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 42 | December 1999


In time for the Olympics—A Sporting Nation

This publication will appeal equally to the serious sports enthusiast and mainstream reader. A Sporting Nation celebrates Australia’s sporting history by drawing on the National Library of Australia’s extensive collection of books, journals and newspapers, and its pictorial, manuscript and ephemera holdings. Its main text comprises excerpts from the Library’s oral history recordings, with additional features by Olympian Marlene Mathews, and Eric Rolls and Marion Halligan.

Cover of 'A Sporting Nation'

Following on the Library’s earlier publication in this same series—Acquired Tastes: Celebrating Australia’s Culinary History—this beautifully illustrated, colour compilation presents in 26 dynamic features a broad and popular sweep through the nation’s sporting culture, opening with a recollection of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and a survey of the Sydney 2000 Games by Marlene Mathews. It then moves through such diverse sports as fishing, boxing and wrestling, cricket (with a special focus on the hallowed tradition of England versus Australia Test matches), athletics, the modern pentathlon, rugby union, league and Australian football, horse racing, motor racing, waterskiing, surfboard riding, life saving and beach culture, tennis, wood chopping and cycling. The book closes with a tribute to country sport and a consideration of sports media and promotion.

Commentators, both well and less well known, include Jack Brabham, Margaret Court and Adrian Quist, Bernard ‘Midget’ Farrelly, Bill O’Reilly and Ray Lindwall, Ern McQuillan, ‘Gelignite’ Jack Murray, Hubert Opperman, and pioneering Olympian swimmer Mina Wylie. Other sports identities or events featured include Donald Bradman, Douglas Jardine and the ‘Bodyline’ Test series, Andrew ‘Boy’ Charlton and Kieren Perkins, Norman Brookes, Rod Laver and Evonne Cawley, Heather McKay, Phar Lap and the Melbourne Cup,

Vic Patrick and Tony Mundine, the Redex Road Trials, the Paralympics and disabled sports, and the proud tradition of picnic racing. Together they represent the full texture and sweep of Australian sporting life—how sport defines the way we live, work and enjoy our leisure, and forms a central part of our popular culture.

ISBN 0642 10704 1, pb, 265 x 215 mm, 136 pp, RRP $34.95, plus $5.00 postage and handling if ordered from Sales and Distribution, National Library of Australia CANBERRA ACT 2600; tel. (02) 6262 1646 or 1800 800 100; email nlasales2nla.gov.au; fax (02) 6273 1084

| Contents list for this issue of Gateways |

Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: lkirwan@nla.gov.au

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