Why order in when you can make it? Why replace something that can be mended? Why buy a plant when you can propagate? And why take another’s path when you can carve your own?

Read on for our top Father’s Day recommendations for the the busy souls who relish a project or outing.

For the dedicated home cook:

COOK by Karen Martini

In COOK, acclaimed chef Karen Martini shares a lifetime of cooking, eating and learning about food. This is an essential collection of more than 1000 recipes, from old favourites to brilliant new dishes.

Karen has inspired generations of home cooks, and with this milestone book she brings us a generous breadth of cuisines and ingredients, celebrating vibrant flavours from a uniquely Australian perspective. Karen won’t just show you what to cook, she will teach you how to cook, with everything you need to prepare effortlessly delicious meals.

Around the Table by Julia Busuttil Nishimura

Beloved home cook Julia Busuttil Nishimura always knows the right dish for the occasion, weather or time of day. She also understands the power food has to bring people together, whether that’s to prepare a meal or enjoy the delicious results.

With recipes ranging from quick, flavourful meals for busy weeknights to simple indulgences for summer feasts, Around the Table perfectly matches dishes to time and place.

More Fish, More Veg by Tom Walton

Tom Walton is renowned for his low-fuss, max-flavour, family-friendly food. More Fish, More Veg is a collection of his go-to recipes that helps you put meals featuring sustainable seafood and seasonal veg on high rotation at your place.

Some people are a little nervous about cooking fish, but with a few super simple techniques in your toolkit you’ll be confident to give it a go. Tom walks you through these key cooking methods step-by-step, plus he provides pointers on sustainability and seasonality that will take the guesswork out of what fish to buy.

For the green thumb:

Costa’s World by Costa Georgiadis

Bringing together all of Costa’s gardening and sustainability knowledge, this is a book for the whole family that reflects Costa’s philosophy and quirky sense of fun.

Costa’s World is a generous, joyous, fully illustrated gardening book that celebrates the life-changing joy of chooks; kids in the garden; big ideas for small spaces; Costa’s favourite plants; growing the right plants for your conditions; biodiversity in the soil and garden; the power of community; the brilliance of bees and pollinators; easy-peasy permaculture; and much, much more.

The Kitchen Garden by Lucy Mora

Focusing on plants destined for the dinner plate, The Kitchen Garden is an illustrated guide to growing edible plants from sowing to harvesting. Learn when to sow, what to grow and how to make your delicious harvest into a meal. The book features fifty-five plant profiles ranging from the everyday to the utterly unique. Each profile has a hero illustration and an easy-to-comprehend table detailing the most important information: when to sow and harvest; growing time; space needed between plants; optimal soil pH; whether the plant will tolerate pots and frost; and each plant’s companions and dislikes.

Grounded by Alisa Bryce

Life on land could not exist without soil. Almost everything we need can be traced to the soil: food, fibre, medicines - even oxygen produced by plants. What would we be without it? Certainly not a planet worthy of the name Earth. There are already plenty of books about agriculture, ecology or how to grow tomatoes. This book is about the other stuff.

Topics include: the ingredients that make a Test cricket pitch, how the soil affects the taste of your favourite wine, the soil microbes that could be the next wonder drug, how to be ecofriendly when you’re dead, and many more.

For the day-tripper:

Explore Australia 2023: Australia’s Essential Travel Guide

Explore Australia 2023 is the latest edition of the country’s longest-running and most trusted travel guide. Now in its 39th edition, this bestselling guidebook has been completely revised and updated to reflect the way we travel across the continent, making it more user-friendly than ever!

Organised into chapters by state or territory, each region section covers everything you need to know, including a cheat sheet with practical travel tips, a handy map and information on major towns, attractions, nearby sites, festivals and events

Ultimate Cycling Trips: Australia by Andrew Bain

Journey across Australia on two wheels with these hand-picked bike rides that range from gentle rail trails with a gourmet edge, to multi-day cycle tours, to blasts on the country’s best mountain-bike trail networks.

With detailed descriptions, suggested itineraries, images, maps and a swag of Australia’s finest natural features along the way, this is the book to inspire you to hit the road, track or rail trail.

The Compact Australian Bird Guide by Peter Menkhorst, Danny Rogers, Rohan Clarke, Jeff Davies, and Kim Franklin

The Compact Australian Bird Guide is an easy-to-use and beautifully illustrated quick identification guide to all bird species regularly occurring in Australia. The content has been carefully designed to provide the reader with key information to enable rapid identification of a bird, in a convenient form.

Based on the award-winning The Australian Bird Guide, this compact format features over 700 bird species that are residents of or regular visitors to the Australian mainland and Tasmania, and surrounding seas.

For the maker:

Vintage Knits from the National Library of Australia

People of the past knew the magic of a handmade garment - the uniqueness, the custom fit, the time and care taken by the knitter. Vintage Knits presents a curated selection of vintage patterns from Australian publications of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, tested and updated to make them practical for today’s knitter.

The book features vintage material from the original publications with contemporary full-colour photographs of the garments as they have been recreated today. Interwoven throughout the book are sections reflecting on the social and cultural history of knitting in Australia.

Sew It Yourself by Daisy Braid

When Daisy Braid started sewing, patterns were out of her budget so she just started DIYing! Sew It Yourself is a colourful, size-inclusive and inspiring book for sewers of all stages and abilities, beginners included.

It includes guides on everything you need to get started (including equipment, materials and basic techniques) and step-by-step projects with clear instructions, photographs and illustrations that will take the scary out of sewing.