This is the inspirational story of how an older Australian couple, Trish Clark and Iain Finlay...both authors in their seventies... built a proper road to a remote and impoverished village in Northern Laos. While working on an internet project of their own in Luang Prabang, the World Heritage-Listed former Royal Capital of Laos, they befriended a young waiter, Chanthy, who was studying at night school. They began helping him, first with his English, then with his college fees and accommodation. His parents, relatively poor subsistence rice famers, pleased at this unexpected boost for their son, asked Trish and Iain to visit their village, NaLin, about three hours south of Luang Prabang, down the Mekong River, or four hours by dirt road. After a brief weekend stay in the village, during which they were treated to a traditional baci ceremony in their honor, they came away wondering what they could do to help the villagers, whose average daily earnings were little more than three dollars. At the time there was no electricity, no running water...except for that from a mountain stream to three or four outlets in the village, no health facilities, no proper sewerage system and a fairly under-resourced primary school. But worst of all, a shocking five kilometer quagmire of a track was all that provided the only connection to the outside world in the rainy season, either to the Mekong River, or to another dirt road in slightly better condition, leading to the District Center of Muang Nan. So Trish and Iain decided to try to tackle something in which they had absolutely no knowledge or expertise. They decided to build a proper road to the village of NaLin. This book traces more than two years of the trials and tribulations experienced in their efforts to raise funds in Australia and elsewhere in order to build the road...of the setbacks and disappointments as expected sources of funding did not eventuate or dropped away...of elation when generous donors came up with substantial, no-strings-attached contributions...of optimism as they engaged a Lao senior Roads Engineer to carry out a preliminary GPS-based assessment and a survey of the road...but also of caution as they made first contact with Lao government bureaucracy in the form of the Department of Public Works and Transportation, as well as with a road building contractor who undertook to build the road into, through and beyond NaLin village. Throughout all of this, as Trish and Iain shuttled back and forth between Australia and Laos, the young Chanthy, now working as a salesmen in a Luang Prabang handicraft shop...his English improving all the while...became the linch-pin of the whole project, working with his father, as well as the village headmen...not only of NaLin village but of two other even poorer villages, Houayhe and Phujong, further up the track, which were keen to benefit from the planned improvements to the road. Then, in early May 2013, they finally had enough money in their fund to do the job, and a contractor who could do it. So on May 9th, after a flight to Laos and an all-day session signing contracts in the Department of Public Works in Muang Nan, the big equipment; an excavator, a grader, two 10-ton trucks and a water truck rolled out on to the road to NaLin and began work. But there was drama developing, as a replacement for a broken part on another piece of equipment, the heavy roller, did not arrive and all the work done on the road was threatened by the fast approaching wet season rains. But when a replacement roller is found and leased from another company, the work resumes and the road is finished on time, just before the rains set in. With a traditional baci ceremony to thank the spirits of the netherworld, there are celebrations all round, as smiling villagers take in their new road and the changes it will bring for them. A small project... a world of difference.

A fascinating mix of adventure travel, ancient history, 21st century geopolitics and people. Veteran journalists Iain Finlay and Trish Clark set out to travel 21,000 kilometers from Singapore to Venice, hopping on and off trains up through South East Asia, across China and the sprawling steppes and deserts of Central Asia to the Caucasus, Turkey and the Balkans. Their route covers territory along which ancient Silk Road trails have wound their way over the past two thousand years. The rail lines they follow form part of an embryonic, UN-backed Trans-Asian Rail Network, that will eventually create unbroken freight and passenger corridors all the way from China's far-eastern seaboard, to Europe. While visiting some of the great historic sites of China and Central Asia, among them: Xi'an, Dunhaung, Samarkand and Bukhara, they also become aware of the changing dynamics of Big-Power politics across the vast expanse of Central Asia, once the stamping grounds of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. The territory now includes the trouble spots and ethnic flashpoints in China's western province of Xingiang, the newly independent countries of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and politically unstable Kyrgyzstan, as well as a Georgia, facing continued hostility from Russia. On the way, Iain and Trish very quickly realise that, by far the greatest items of trade along the modern equivalents of the Silk Road, are now oil and natural gas. 'Oil is the new Silk'. It is the new trans-national currency of the Silk Road, with China and its voracious, seemingly insatiable appetite for energy, emerging as the most significant factor in the political and economic arena of Central and South East Asia and another indication of how vital the world's dwindling energy resources have become. A classic story of independent travel through the once inaccessible republics of the former Soviet Union.

'So your grandchild will be raised by two lesbians. How do you feel about that?' Cathy Connolly, a high-powered senior executive in the education department, is revelling in the new-found joys of being Sam's grandmother. Suddenly, within the space of two weeks, her life plunges into disarray. A colleague at work is trying to push her out of her job, her architect husband, Steve, says he wants to head for the Kimberleys in a 4-wheel drive, her daughter has given her boyfriend the boot: 'Its hard to find the right man nowadays. They're all either married, losers, or gay ' Her brother is leaving his wife and two daughters for a woman twenty-five years younger: 'He's not thinking about anything. He's just thinking with his dick ' And her son is planning to donate sperm to a lesbian couple: 'A Turkey baster Dear God As if life isn't difficult enough already. Do they do it with the lights off as well?' But worst of all, Cathy finds she has cervical cancer: 'It's a bugger. I don't want to die. Not yet. I feel as if I'm only just beginning to live.' A fascinating and witty slice of Australian life in the 21st century, An Immaculate Conception highlights the dramatically changing standards, morals and attitudes, not only of the inhabitants of Sydney's beach suburbs, where it is set, but of the whole country.

When Iain Finlay and Trish Clark arrive in Hanoi on a one-year work assignment for the English language service of the communist government-run radio network, they can hardly foresee the intense and exceptional experiences that await them. Coming to Vietnam for an Australian aid agency, their intended role is to coach and instruct, or at least to share their knowledge, with a small group of young reporters. But they find that they learn more than they teach. As friendships with their colleagues grow, Iain and Trish are involved in developing and presenting a daily radio program - the first run by Westerners on a regular basis - and they become immersed in the stimulating life of one of Asia's most enchanting cities. In the process, they gain fascinating insights into Vietnamese society and culture, as well as a greater understanding and respect for the new Vietnam. Good Morning Hanoi also illuminates the lives of a group of people dwelling in crowded conditions around a small courtyard in central Hanoi where Iain and Trish find a house to rent, and who become like an extended family living in the heart of the city. In Good Morning Hanoi, Iain and Trish, two of the founders and producers of the international television program Beyond 2000, return to a country from which they had reported during the Vietnam War. They find an extraordinarily friendly people whose resilience and irrepressible good nature enable them to put the past behind them and move into the future with confidence.

Causing a storm of controversy on first publication, Children of Blindness, a powerful drama set in the small, fictional, but archetypal outback country town of Woongarra, depicts with stunning force, the violent interaction of a small group of people; black and white, over a period of little more than a week, in which three of them die. Based on actual events at the time, this searing novel opens with Dougo Foster returning from six months in prison to find his children taken into care because of gross neglect by his drunken, pregnant wife, Flo. Dougo's furious, spontaneous attack leaves Flo hospitalised and the baby in danger. His efforts to regain his children from indigenous guardian George Davies' communal home are the central thread along which the story unfolds. Dougo's angry brother, Allan, runs the Aboriginal Legal Service, and is involved with Lesley, a white schoolteacher, who as an outsider, is horrified by conditions in the town. Allan's offsider Pete Mathews sees his boss as going soft on whitefellows as a result of his friendship with Lesley. But he has taken advantage of Dougo's prison term to fornicate with his wife, Flo. Harry Fletcher runs the segregated pub and doesn't care who buys the booze or the effect it has; even an alcohol-fuelled, violent gang-bang in the back yard. Then there's Fred Pepper, the sly grog merchant who sells illegal alcohol and deadly methylated spirits to the Aboriginal community. And Jim Dargan, a fourth-generation white landowner who savagely attacks Allan Foster, unaware that they share a common great-grandfather. Grappling with all this are a compassionate cop, Constable Ed Vickers who finds he can't stomach the daily mayhem and his colleague, red-neck Sergeant Ron Evans who, hardened by experience, regards all Aborigine as hopeless, bloody boongs. But there is little even they can do when a series of events combine to tip the teetering township over the edge, into a night of unremitting horror.