Australian Quaker Publications
A full list of Quaker publications written in Australia can be found here. Not all of these publications are still in print, but most will be found in a Quaker Meeting House library.
Publications of Australia Yearly Meeting are available from Friends Booksales, PO Box 181, GLEN OSMOND SA 5064.
Pamphlets
Pamphlets suitable for outreach are provided on this website. These can be printed on A4 paper, and then photocopied doublesided and folded into the appropriate shape. Most print shops will take orders by email, and will print and fold pamphlets for collection. ...more
Journals and Newsletters
The Australian Friend is the quarterly journal of Australia Yearly Meeting.
AYM Secretary's Newsletter: The Yearly Meeting Secretary produces a monthly newsletter, which is posted or emailed free on request. View it here
All Regional Meetings produce monthly newsletters. These are usually displayed in the Meeting House, and subscription details are usually inside the cover, or on the back page. If you cannot find these newsletters, contact your Regional Meeting library.
Backhouse Lectures
The Backhouse Lectures are delivered annually at the Australia Yearly Meeting. They cover a wide range of aspects of Quaker life and seek to deeply question how we can grow spiritually.
The 2008 Backhouse Lecture was Faith, hope & doubt in times of uncertainty, by George Ellis, a South African Quaker and cosmologist. Print are available from the Friends Booksales. Audio copies can be ordered from the AYM office, or found on the homepage of this website.
Reference Books
The Dictionary of Australian Quaker Biography
This collection of eight ring-bound volumes includes biographies and the Testimonies to the Grace of God in the lives of Friends who have died since 1900. An annual supplement includes material on Friends who have died during the preceding year.
Price: AU 400.00 in print; AU$50.00 on CD-ROM.
To order, contact Friends Booksales
Handbook of Practice and Procedure, 2004 edition
The fourth edition of the Handbook of Practice and Procedure, with the amendments to July 2004, was accepted at Yearly Meeting 2005. This is available in portable document format (.pdf) on this website, or as a printed document from the Australia Yearly Meeting office.
Price: AU $6.50.
To order, contact Friends Booksales
Selected Books
This We Can Say
An Australian Quaker faith and practice, written over 10 years by contemporary Australian Quakers expressing their faith.
$30.00 soft cover
$40.00 hard cover
$40.00 large print
To order, contact Friends Booksales
Peace Comes Walking:
The life of Donald Groom, Quaker peace worker
by Victoria Rigney
This story of passionate idealism, spiritual strength and unexpected tragedy spans the peace movements of the twentieth century. Donald Groom was born into a family of conscientious objectors during World War I and worked in interesting places at extraordinary times: Spain during the civil war, India before and after Partition, and Australia during the Vietnam War.
About the Author
Victoria Rigney lives in Hobart, where she is a senior consultant in mental health policy. She developed an interest in biographical writing through working with children coming into care of the state. Victoria was awarded the Donald Groom Fellowship by Quakers in Australia to research and write a biography of Donald Groom, and an Arts Tasmania literary grant to continue the work.
To order, email or write to:
Friends Booksales
PO Box 181
GLEN OSMOND SA 5064
Aboriginal Sovereignty
'Aboriginal Sovereignty', a new book in the Emu Feathers series, was launched at Yearly Meeting 2006. It gives an overview of this issue to the present day, and is available from Meeting Houses in all capital cities.
Price AU$6.50 plus postage and packaging
To order, contact the Indigenous Concerns Network
Backhouse and Walker by William Oats
This covers the nine years and five months during which James Backhouse and George Washington Walker travelled in Australia, at times walking 25 to 30 miles a day, observing white settlers' relations with the Aboriginal peoples, and the way the British treated their prisoners in the penal settlements.
Blubber Head Press, 1981.
Price: AU$10.00 plus postage and packaging
To order, contact Friends Booksales
Choose your Dilemma by William Oats
This book is a collection of letters written by William (Bill) Oats to his mother from Europe between 1938 and 1940. The dilemma faced by Bill Oats was how to oppose Fascism by peaceful means. As a young man teaching at the International School in Geneva he had, as he puts it, 'fallen amongst Friends'. Since the founding of the Society men Friends have faced the dilemma of fighting with outward weapons which now takes the form of resistance to conscription.
This book will appeal particularly to those who had personal experience of the times in which it was written. It is also relevant to to those of subsequent generations who are required to make difficult decisions regarding conscientious objection. It is, too, a rattling good read.
Price: AU$15.00 plus postage and packaging
To order, contact Friends Booksales
Quaker Ways ed. Elizabeth Stevenson
Quaker Ways' is a publication addressed especially to young people in the 12 to 16 age group and includes a wide range of articles on Friends' history, faith, experience and practice.
Price: AU$12.00 plus postage and packaging
To order, contact Friends Booksales
Living the Way:
Quaker Spirituality and Community
by Ursula Jane (Janie) O'Shea
Twenty-eighth Backhouse Lecture 1993
To order, contact Friends Booksales