❕We will be closed Monday, 27 January for Australia Day Public Holiday!
Shellharbour City Library is excited to be hosting author Ryan Butta, discussing his latest book The Bravest Scout in Gallipoli!
City Library, Thursday April 24th at 6:00pm.
Harry Freame was the first Australian to win the Distinguished Conduct Medal at Gallipoli. Raised as a samurai, he risked his life again and again to scout the beaches and hills of the battlefield, reporting invaluable intelligence back to his officers and relieving stranded soldiers who otherwise would surely have died. Some say he should have got the VC but didn’t because he was half-Japanese, a fact he tried hard to conceal.
After the war, Harry (real name Henry Wykeham Koba Freame) became a soldier settler and champion apple grower. But when Japan emerged as a perceived threat to Australia, Harry was recruited into Australian intelligence to spy on the Japanese community in Sydney. Before Japan’s entry into World War II, Australia opened a diplomatic legation in Tokyo, and Harry was sent as a translator – but his real role was a spy. Extraordinarily, his cover was leaked by the Australian press, and the Japanese secret police tried to assassinate him not long after his arrival in Tokyo in 1941. Harry died back in Australia a few weeks later, but his sacrifice has never been acknowledged by Australia.
Until now. Featuring never-before-seen material, The Bravest Scout at Gallipoli is a fascinating and immersive investigation into a grievous historical wrong.
After starting out life on the opal fields of western NSW, Ryan was raised among the vineyards and horse studs of the Hunter Valley. His first work of historical non-fiction, The Ballad of Abdul Wade, recounted the previously untold story of the Afghan men that came to Australia in the1800s to work in the mining and wool industries. The Ballad of Abdul Wade was longlisted for the Indie Book Awards non-fiction book of the year for 2023. Ryan’s latest work, The Bravest Scout at Gallipoli, retells the remarkable life story of Harry Freame, a Japanese-Australian adventurer, soldier of fortune, Anzac, orchardist and spy.
Ryan’s feature writing has appeared in the Good Weekend Magazine and he is a regular contributor to Galah Press, writing about the people and places of regional Australia. Ryan’s works of historical non-fiction look to reveal and understand the hidden and forgotten stories of Australia and the Australians who, like his own family, came across the seas to make their home here. Ryan believes that only by dismantling the myths of the past can we build the country of the future. Ryan now lives on Dharawal country on the NSW South Coast.
Books available to purchase at the event.
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Shellharbour City Libraries partners with Frasers Property Australia to deliver Toddler Tales, a weekly childhood reading program, at The Waterfront Shell Cove. The libraries have also partnered with Frasers Property Australia to deliver a term of Tech Savvy Seniors at Shell Cove.
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