Custodians of the public safety and champions of the surf — these are the men and women who have served the City of Perth Surf Life Saving Club in the course of its proud history. Reminiscences are skilfully woven into a sparkling narrative, accompanied by more than a hundred stunning photographs.
Co-authored by Andy Collins, A Club For All Seasons is packed with detail and enlivened by anecdotes. It tells the story of a club that was founded on a beach and is now one of Western Australia’s oldest and most successful amateur sporting organisations, with a proud record in cricket, football, basketball and baseball.
In three volumes, Ken Spillman has written the most comprehensive history of any sporting club in Australia. Diehards is sporting history at its best. Carefully researched, delightfully written and lavishly illustrated, it recalls some of the greatest names in Australian football.
The titles are:
Diehards: The story of the Subiaco Football Club 1896-1945 ISBN 0646358340
Diehards: The story of the Subiaco Football Club 1946-2000 ISBN 0957818505
Diehards: The story of the Subiaco Football Club: The Glory Years 2000-2010 ISBN 9780957818514
Edited and compiled by Ken Spillman and Ross Fitzgerald, Australia’s Game is a collection of writing capturing the agony and the ecstasy of a national sport. Contributors include Martin Flanagan, Peter Helliar, Serge Liberman, John Harms, Basil Zempilas, Jon Doust, Don Watson, Barry Oakley, Peter Corris, Peter Schwab, singer/songwriter Paul Kelly, and many more.
Edited and compiled by Ken Spillman and Ross Fitzgerald, this book is widely considered a classic of Australian sports literature. It immortalises the football passions of many luminaries including novelists Frank Hardy and Gerald Murnane; playwrights David Williamson, Jack Hibberd and Barry Dickins; poets Bruce Dawe, Philip Hodgins and Fay Zwicky; historians Manning Clark and Geoffrey Blainey; and broadcasters Ramona Koval, Andrea Stretton and Phillip Adams.
Edited by Ross Fitzgerald, this volume cuts across all divides, including contributions by and about football players, supporters and administrators who are vastly different in politics, religion, class, income, ethnicity, gender, race and sexual preference. Ken Spillman contributes a painfully vivid reminiscence on a famous clash between Leigh Matthews and Barry Cable. He is joined in the collection by Geraldine Doogue, Jeff Kennett, Susan Alberti, Chris Bowen, Amanda Vanstone, Sally Murphy and John Elliott.
Edited by Jim Main, Coach! brings together contributions by some of the best writers on Australian football. Ken Spillman joins Mike Coward, Martin Flanagan, Robert Walls, Michelangelo Rucci and many others.
Love, courage and wisdom enrich this remarkable volume, a collection of personal reflections on fathers and fatherhood compiled by Ken Spillman and Ross Fitzgerald. Contributors include Elizabeth Jolley, Bruce Dawe, Rosie Scott, Susan Hawthorne, Thomas Shapcott, Ouyang Yu, Dale Spender and Glyn Parry.
The story of an eminent US disability rights activist, told in her own voice with Ken Spillman as co-author. The daughter of parents who survived the Holocaust, Susan Sygall was an athletic young woman in college when a car accident changed her plans, but not her course. Intimate, passionate and riveting.
Edited by Ken Spillman, this tribute to a distinguished academic and Governor of Western Australia includes pieces from Elizabeth Jolley, Sir Ninian Stephen, Fred Alexander, Bill Hayden, Geoffrey Bolton, Sir William Heseltine, Clyde Cameron, Bob Hetherington, Michael Wood, Sir Charles Court and Denis Horgan.
With a foreword by Janet Holmes a Court, this book celebrates fifteen remarkable women, lovingly photographed by Mary Doyle as a celebration of positive ageing. Edited by Ken Spillman.
Edited by Ken Spillman, Tapestry is written by participants in workshops he conducted titled ‘Writing your Memoirs’, facilitated by the City of Cockburn. Contributors include Dee Mahuvawalla, Luba Kambourakis, Evanne Fineberg, Vlasta Prpic and Logan Howlett.
Edited by Ken Spillman, this anthology is a celebration of school and community across a century of change.
Ken Spillman’s first book, an enduringly popular work of social history, set a new benchmark in the genre and was the winner of a FAW National Literary Award and a WA Premier’s Award for Non Fiction.
Known for 50 years as the Agricultural Bank, the R&I Bank played a central role in the development of Western Australia’s agricultural industry. Ken Spillman’s history of the institution that became Bankwest is told in immaculate prose and given a human texture through the use of oral history material.
Western Australia is one of the richest mineral provinces in the world. This richly illustrated book offers a thoroughly researched account of mineral discoveries, mining people, and the operation and governance of an industry that is today worth billions.
Life was Meant to be Here: Community and Local Government in the Shire of Mundaring
The picturesque Shire of Mundaring, located to Perth’s east in Western Australia, offers a mix of urban, semi-rural and rural living. In this illuminating book, Ken Spillman reviews a remarkable half century of change.
This is the story of a hospital and its people. Ken Spillman’s account traces the growth of a small chest hospital to its present status as one of the most significant general hospitals in the southern hemisphere.
Ken Spillman’s skills as a historian bring to life the story of ‘Charlies’ and the people who passed through its doors.
— Emeritus Professor G.C. Bolton AO
A lively examination of Australian rural life across six decades, Hands to the Plough reaffirmed Ken Spillman’s reputation as a first-rate chronicler of human endeavour and the resilience afforded by community spirit.
A lavish celebration of one of Australia’s most charming and progressive urban areas. In re-examining an area he first wrote about in Identity Prized, Ken Spillman reveals the struggles behind the metamorphosis of an inner-city area and the redevelopment of derelict industrial land.
Between 1995 and 2005, Edith Cowan University underwent a remarkable transformation. It shed a lamentable public image and won recognition for enterprise and innovation. Ken Spillman’s book stands as a guide for leaders interested in strategic planning, organisational creativity and continuous quality improvement.
Founded in the 1930s, the Australian Pensioners’ League built a tradition of articulating the interests of seniors while facilitating the delivery of much needed services. This book tells the human story, and describes the growth of the league into a 21st Century organisation representing a diverse membership.
Japan’s giant Tokyu Corporation invested in a vast tract of land near Western Australia’s capital city in 1974. For over thirty years it pursued its vision of an idyllic seaside settlement and provided many thousands of people with memories to cherish.
In this book, Ken Spillman, Jasmina Brankovich and John McIlwraith tell the story of a unique statutory authority which has facilitated an enormous diversity of applied research projects, providing a nexus between academic research and mining and energy industry requirements.
Ken Spillman examines dance education in Western Australia through this study of the state’s foremost balllet school across a quarter of a century. The book celebrates the achievements of many international dance performers and teachers.