Indra publishing

Motivation, persistence and perseverance are the distinct traits of determined and dedicated individuals who can make things happen. It’s always possible, even when the task is awesome – transforming the mindset of human beings.

Located in India’s capital, New Delhi, Tihar is one of the largest prisons in the world. Within a prison complex of over 200 acres are housed over 9,700 inmates – men, women, adolescents, children; Indians and foreigners. They comprise unconvicted alleged offenders, convicts and remandees. Tihar was a limping, languishing institution, condemned by the media, and its inmates were isolated from the community, exploited, used and abused, yet ‘housed’.

Dr Kiran Bedi was appointed Inspector General of Tihar Prison in 1993. She brought about fundamental changes, giving a human face to the administrative structure and creating an exemplary system covering every possible aspect of prison management. The whole objective was to collectively and individually manage the transition from a moribund system to a responsive and sensitive administration. Hence her efforts unfolded the process of reformation involving prison administration, prisoners and the community, toward one common goal – Correction through a collective approach.

Dr Bedi’s account is enhanced by input from the prisoners themselves, expressing their feelings in letters and sketches, in petitions and poetry. This book is a graphic portrayal of an holistic process of conversion, a metamorphosis from criminality to humanity, achieved within a restrictive legal framework.

Oct 1999, 400pp
Paperback, 231 x 155 mm
Non-fiction
ISBN 0 9585805 3 7
RRP $aud 27.95
ISBN-13 9780958580533

The Author
Dr Kiran Bedi was the first woman police officer in India to become Inspector General of Prisons, when she was put in charge of Tihar, to administer the predominantly male prison, the largest prison in the Asia-Pacific region. Her experience and expertise as a police officer include 26 years of tough yet responsive and interactive policing in different functions throughout India – District policing, Police administration, Traffic control, Narcotics control, and Anti-terrorist operations. Subsequently, she was central to the radical reforms in Tihar, where the focus before she took control, had been merely keeping people locked away from society. She achieved the reforms through her radically humanitarian approach to managing such an institution.

Having earned the reputation of a police officer with a difference, she has represented India at the United Nations, in USA, European and Asian forums on drug abuse, drug trafficking, prison reform, and women’s issues. Recipient of various awards and honours, she has received the Police Medal for Gallantry; the Norway-based Asia Region Award for Work in Prevention of Drug Abuse; the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1994, referred to as the Asian Nobel Prize, and in 1997, the Swiss-German Joseph Beuys Award for Holistic and Innovative Management.

When mining magnate, pioneer photographer and public benefactor, Bernhardt Holtermann died prematurely at the height of his success, the speculation and rumours started.

Some who knew Bernhardt closely had guessed the true nature of his relationship with Victoria, his children’s beautiful governess. They enjoyed the lavish parties and genteel soirées given by Harriet – Mrs Holtermmann, but some believed they detected an edge of tension under the formal cordiality between herself and Bernhardt.

Had she tired of being patient with her husband’s attentions to Victoria, or had Victoria tired of waiting for the divorce which would release her lover to become her husband?

Holtermann’s Nugget is an historical novel based on the life of the successful 19th century miner and businessman, the pioneer photographer, Bernhardt Holtermann. Bernhardt came to Sydney as a young man, to avoid conscription and the restrictive life of Hamburg in the 1850s.

Having made his fortune in gold mining at Hill End, Holtermann became famous as one of the most successful businessmen in Sydney during the early 1880s. His tireless drive for building his new country and showing Australia off to the world with magnificent panoramic photographs took him to international trade fairs in Philadelphia and Paris.

Bernhardt’s untimely death on his 47th birthday adds romance and intrigue to this novel of an adventurous life. Holtermann’s main bequest to the nation are his magnificent photographs which won for him international acclaim, and for Australia, international recognition.

2000, 168pp
Paperback, 216 x 138 mm
ISBN 0 9585805 5 3
Historical fiction, 1st Edition
RRP $aud 20.85
ISBN-13 978 0958580557

The Author
Gunter Schaule was born in Germany and, like his hero Bernhardt Holtermann, migrated to Australia to live a different life and make his career in a new country. Gunter has travelled widely, and maintains close friendships with people in all continents. He still manages his own successful business, but allows time for writing and enjoying his life.

Gunter’s previous books, all non-fiction, are all selling successfully internationally. Holtermann’s Nugget is his first novel, and the first of his books to be published by Indra. Gunter lives in Sydney with his wife, Marianne.

“Tony’s wife was on the phone, ringing from their interstate home. My husband’s face drained to ashen. Tony had totally castrated himself. He had lost a lot of blood and was now in surgery.”

A shocking phone call from their distraught daughter-in-law was how Lynda and Richard Langley learnt that their son had started his transition from a man to a woman.

The mad rush to their son’s hospital bedside, anguish and fear for his physical health, shock from the nature of his injury, and the dread of the challenges to be faced in the coming months and years…

Lynda’s account of how she adjusted to the reality that her eldest son had decided to physically become a woman is the story of a family. Tears and laughter, support and withdrawal, accompany Toni – now the eldest daughter – as she maps out her new life.

And with her all the time is Lynda, her mother. Helping to select her wardrobe, guiding her in the subtleties of speech and behaviour, and supporting her, especially in the early stages of her new life as a woman.

A mother’s story of losing a son and gaining a daughter – a transgender transition and a mother’s love.

While there have been some accounts of transgender transition published on the web, this is the first account from a parent’s perspective, and the first to be published in book form.

September 2002, 168 pp
Paperback, 216 x 138 mm
ISBN: 0 9578735 5 7
Non fiction, First Edition
RRP $aud 21.95
ISBN-13 9780957873551

The Author
Lynda Langley started taking writing lessons because she thought it would be a good thing to do. Little did she realise that in a couple of years, she would have a story to tell and her writing lessons would provide her with the means of telling it.

An ordinary middle class couple in an Australian capital city, with adult children, young grandchildren and a satisfying career life, the Langleys were coasting comfortably toward retirement. Still a long time to go, they were in no hurry, and life was fulfilling enough.

This book is Lynda’s account of how she and her husband, Richard, experienced their son’s transgender transition.

A powerful love story that moves recklessly back and forth through time to the most intimate meetings of cultures, histories and bodies. Nicholas Jose

Gillian Hindmarsh is an Australian researcher, investigating architectural history in Penang, Malaysia. From a city archive, she souvenirs a photograph of Rose, a young English woman from the 1940s. In Gillian’s imagination, Rose is a black and white romantic fantasy taken from an old forties movie.

Rose, however, was real. She has no family name to identify her. Her ghost is seen from time to time by fisherman in the waters off Georgetown, and in 1982, when disturbed by dredging for a bridge to the mainland, she looks for a body into which to reincarnate. And she wants her lover, Li-tsieng to reincarnate also.

Wang Li-tsieng, the dissolute son of a wealthy Straits Chinese family, returned from the safety of exile in Chile, to be with his English Rose. Shortly after his return, they were killed by a bomb, as they danced in the underwater dining hall of one of the Wang family mansions in Georgetown.

Patrick Dreher, Gillian’s lover, is a dredging engineer who rents a house on Jalan Dunn, where he is disturbed by Rose’s spectral presence. Rose makes a significant choice by allowing herself to be seen by Gillian, in Patrick’s house.fishlips weaves together issues of history and memory, east and west, body and spirit, coloniser and colonised in a fiction that interrogates the ways we order both individual and collective histories to make sense of our own worlds.

In this dark romance, loss and madness hover just below the surface.

September 2001, 200 pp
Paperback, 216 x 138 mm
ISBN 0 9585805 9 6
Literary fiction; First Edition
RRP $aud 22-95
ISBN-13 978 0958580595

The Author
Carolyn van Langenberg grew up in the rural hinterland of the Far North Coast of New South Wales. She has travelled in Southeast Asia and Europe.

Carolyn’s books reflect her background in Australian and English literature, Asian history and creative writing. She lives with her husband in the Blue Mountains.

The fish lips trilogy, set in Malaysia and Australia from the 1940s to the 21st century, looks at three angles on love: heterosexual, homosexual and tortured.

In fish lips, Rose, Li-tsieng’s paramour, becomes a ghost when the Japanese bombed Penang in 1941. Was she ever real?

Fiona Hindmarsh in The Teetotaller’s Wake longs to be back with her new girlfriend during the family ceremonies that follow her mother’s death.

In Blue Moon, urban conservationist Badul Mukhapadai tries to save Penang, Malaysia, from developers and falls in love with the clean air of Byron Bay, Australia, where he consummates his passion for the prickly historian, Gillian Hindmarsh.

The Fish Lips Trilogy…by Carolyn van Langenberg

Fish Lips, 2001
$aud22.95
ISBN: 0 95858059 6

The Teetotaller’s Wake, 2003
$aud22.95
ISBN: 0 95787358 1

Blue Moon, 2004
$aud27.95
ISBN: 1 92078710 0

The History of Catholic Education in the Ballarat Diocese

Published by: Catholic Education Office, Ballarat & Indra Publishing
Distributed by: Rainbow Book Agencies Tel: 03 9481 6611 Fax: 03 9481 2371
Over 80 illustrations Footnotes & Bibliography Index

Published to celebrate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Catholic Education in the Diocese of Ballarat, this book presents the history of the Catholic education system in the Diocese from early settlement to the present day. It also provides particular insight into the history of settlement by a large proportion of the early population of western Victoria.The history traces the development of the Catholic school system, achieved through the collaboration of bishops and priests, members of religious orders and the laity.

The passing years brought new opportunities and new challenges, which were met with the same cooperative effort, so necessary in the early days of development and which ensures that Catholic education continues to flourish throughout the Diocese. While the overall picture presented is one of success through hard work, this transparent well-researched history also presents the pitfalls and disappointments, the disputes and failures, which are only to be expected in such a challenging enterprise.

May 2004, 184pp
Hardcover, 260 x 210 mm
ISBN: 1 92078709 7
Non-fiction: First Edition
RRP $aud 49-95
ISBN-13 9781920787097

The Author,Jill Blee, has a BA and an MA in history from Macquarie University, an MA in writing from the University of Western Sydney, and a PhD in History from the University of Ballarat. Her interests are principally in Irish and Irish-Australian history and literature and both have featured in her own writing. Over many years her attention has been focussed on Ballarat and the Irish migrants who settled there during and after the goldrushes of the 1850s.

Jill’s three novels published by Indra all have an Irish flavour – The Pines Hold Their Secrets, Brigid and The Liberator’s Birthday. The first concerns an Irish convict wrongly banished to Norfolk Island; the second is set in Ireland during the Irish Potato Famine, and the third focuses on a day in the life of an Irish family on the Ballarat goldfields. Jill’s From the Murray to the Sea, Indra, 2004, is a comprehensive history of the Catholic education system in the Diocese of Ballarat, Australia.

This book brings to life for many Australians, the close connection between Australia and East Timor.

In 1941 – 42, Archie Campbell was a lieutenant in the “Sparrow Force” the 300 men of the 2/2nd Independent Company in a 14-month campaign of ambushes and hit-and-run tactics which effectively pinned down more than 15,000 Japanese troops in East Timor.

This book recounts the bloodless Australian landing in Portuguese East Timor, military actions against the Japanese, and eventual evacuation to Darwin. Central to Campbell’s experience is the ambush and execution of a section from his platoon, shortly after the Japanese landing in Dili.

In 1973, Archie returned to East Timor to meet Barana, the East Timorese man who, as a 12-year-old boy, helped and protected him during the campaign. Each Timorese boy who helped a commando and guarded him while he slept, was called that commando’s criado.

Ken White accompanied Archie in the 1973 journey to East Timor to find Barana. He has used excerpts from Archie’s own diary to tell the heart-warming story of their first meeting after 30 years.

Historical background on the centuries of Portuguese rule, the Japanese occupation and the more recent Indonesian invasion and incorporation add to the value of this book as another chapter in the Australia-East Timor story.

November 2002, 176pp
Paperback, 216 x 138 mm
ISBN: 0 9578735 4 9
Non-fiction category: War & revolution
1st Edition; RRP $aud 21-95
ISBN-13: 9780957873544

The Author,Ken White, is a senior journalist with wide experience in Northern Australia and the neighbouring region. He worked in Darwin during the 1970s and 1980s, covering some of the most significant events in recent Australian history.

While in Darwin, Ken covered the events of the Indonesian invasion and annexation of East Timor, establishing close links with some of the main participants in East Timor’s resistance. It was during this time that he joined Archie Campbell and Don Turton, on their journey to East Timor.

Ken’s second book published by Indra, True Stories of the Top End, includes previously unpublished material on significant events in the Northern Territory.

Following his time in Darwin, Ken moved to Adelaide, and now lives in Melbourne.