Best Australian Yarns

Best Australian Yarns is a substantial and definitive work collected from memory, mates, word of mouth and decades of researching popular Aussie culture and history.

This collection includes oft-told legendary yarns, reminiscences from the shearing shed, tall stories from the bush, sporting yarns, railway yarns, stories from the world of showbusiness, digger yarns from both world wars, convict and bushranger yarns and anecdotes from the colonial days, yarns from shanties and gold rushes, ghost stories, bunyips and yowies, hauntings and weird happenings.

Jim Haynes and many of the best yarn spinners in Australia are close mates and happy to share their material. Many yarns came Jim’s way while collecting stories for his previous books on Aussie railways, trucking stories, drinking stories and working in broadcasting on small radio stations in the bush and for the ABC radio program ‘Australia All Over’.

While the stories range from poignant to hilarious many simply describe unusual coincidences and strange occurrences with a refreshing understatement that vividly evokes a vanishing Australia where looking for a good laugh was a key component of a cheekier national character.