'A tender, raw and beautiful coming-of-age adventure, that forces Tanya to pivot between the vast freedom of desert life, and the rigid expectations of city boarding school. From start to finish Beyond Alice is beguiling!' Renee McBryde, bestselling author of The House of LiesIn 1975, twelve-year-old Tanya Heaslip leaves her isolated home in outback Australia and is sent sixteen hundred kilometres south to a girls' boarding school for an education the bush can't provide. The freedom of her young life gives way to an unfriendly world of stone and concrete, high walls, small skies, uniforms, harsh words and endless rules that make no sense. In common with many children of the outback, Tanya struggles to adjust to boarding school. Yet, over time, her fellow boarders become her new family and Tanya survives both by writing, and by telling her stories of family, race meetings, gymkhanas, campdrafts and stock camps to her loyal friends.Tanya's pain of losing family and...

I loved it! I laughed and cried and it was very hard to put down.' Fleur McDonald, bestselling author of Where the River Runs'A story of love for country, for home.' Toni Tapp Coutts, author of A Sunburnt ChildhoodIn 1994, with a battered copy of Let's Go Europe stuffed in her backpack, Tanya Heaslip left her safe life as a lawyer in outback Australia and travelled to the post-communist Czech Republic.Dismissing concerns from family and friends that her safety and career were at risk, she arrived with no teaching experience whatsoever, to work at a high school in a town she'd never heard of, where the winters are frigid and plunge to sub-zero temperatures.During her childhood on an isolated cattle station in Central Australia, Tanya had always dreamed of adventure and romance in Europe but the Czech Republic was not the stuff of her dreams. On arrival, however, she falls headlong into misadventures that change her life forever.This land of...

An Alice Girl is Tanya Heaslip's extraordinary story of growing up in the late 1960s and early 70s on a vast and isolated outback cattle property just north of Alice Springs.Tanya's parents, Janice and Grant 'the Boss', were pioneers. They developed the cattle station where water was scarce, where all power was dependent on generators and where a trip to town for supplies usually meant a full day's journey. Grant was determined to teach his children how to survive in this severe and isolated environment and his lessons were often harsh.Tanya and her siblings led a childhood unimaginable to many Australians. Whether working the mobs of cattle with the stockmen, playing cattle-duffing on horseback or singing and doing lessons at their School of the Air desks, the children were always aware of the demands of the land.But while her sister and brothers loved riding and working stock, Tanya's heart longed to be back at the homestead with her books and stories.In a...