Showing titles in Australia, New Zealand & Oceania

Just after Christmas 1803, convict William Buckley fled an embryonic settlement in the land of the Kulin nation (now the Port Phillip area), to take his chances in the wilderness. A few months later, the local Aboriginal people found the six-foot-five former soldier near death. Believing he was a lost kinsman returned from the dead, they took him in, and for 32 years Buckley lived as a Wadawurrung man, learning his adopted tribe's language, skills and methods to survive.

In March 1797, five British sailors and 12 Bengali seamen struggled ashore after their longboat broke apart in a storm. Their fellow-survivors from the wreck of the Sydney Cove were stranded more than 500 kilometres southeast in Bass Strait. To rescue their mates and to save themselves the 19 men must walk 700 kilometres north to Sydney. That remarkable walk is a story of endurance but also of unexpected Aboriginal help.

Great Pioneer Women of the Outback profiles 10 female pioneers, from Jeannie Gunn, author of We of the Never Never, to equally remarkable but lesser known women, such as Emma Withnell in Western Australia and Evelyn Maunsell in Queensland. Building on the women's records and her own knowledge of Australian history, Susanna de Vries documents the grit and determination it took to build what many today would consider an extraordinary life.

Like it or not, 26 January in Australia has become a significant day of both celebration and mourning. Most countries, if not all, have a national day. The reasons to celebrate a national day include independence from a colonial power, the signing of a treaty, or an act by a monarch, political leader or patron saint. Australia is the only country whose national day celebrates the colonisation of an already occupied territory. Controversially, it continues to do this despite most of its citizens both acknowledging this and the devastating impact upon its original inhabitants.

When Campbell & Clark, Scottish merchants based in India, dispatched an Indian ship hurriedly renamed the Sydney Cove to the colony of NSW in 1797, they were hoping to make their fortune. The ship's 'speculative' cargo included all kinds of products to entice the new colony's inhabitants, including 7,000 gallons of rum intended to be sold to the Rum Corp. But when the ship went down north of Van Diemen's Land, cargo master William Campbell and 16 other crew members decided to walk the 600 miles to Sydney Town to get help and rescue crew and cargo.

From Simpson’s donkey and the Emu War to Vietnam and Ben Roberts-Smith, Australian military history is full of events that didn’t happen the way most people think they did. In his inimitable style, award-winning author Mark Dapin sets the record straight. Australia has many stories and...

In 1769, Captain James Cook’s historic expedition in the region would lead to an English claim on Australia, but before he reached Australia, he sailed near New Zealand and spent weeks mapping part of New Zealand’s coast. Thus, he was also one of the first to observe and take note of the indigenous peoples of the two islands.

In Voyagers, the distinguished anthropologist Nick Thomas charts the course of the seaborne migrations that populated the islands between the Americas and the western coast of Asia from late prehistory onwards: firstly the colonization by speakers of Austronesian languages of the western Pacific littoral, from around 3000 BC, of the Philippines, Indonesia, Micronesia and Melanesia; followed by the later settlement, by Polynesian peoples, of Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Easter Island and eventually New Zealand, up to AD 1250.

Monsoon is a journey into the hearts and memories of those caught in a certain time in a particular place. Sandy Donaldson has been working for a volunteer organisation in Vietnam for the past four years. As her contract nears its end, she is reluctant to leave so she invites her oldest friend, Anna, to come for a holiday and discover its beautiful tourist destinations. Both girls have unexplored links to this country.

The Buxtons are one of only a few families that were successful in the gold rush era and are still prominent today. They have survived and prospered through two world wars, two calamitous depressions, numerous recessions, and any number of political and economic crises. In The Buxtons, Peter Yule brings their story to life, tracing how this one family left a distinctive mark on Melbourne’s landscape.

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.

We Should Be So Lucky, the first book to be released under the Prospect Editions imprint, delves into the secrets behind Australia's remarkable success and why its relative prosperity and good living is not just luck. Australia is often referred to as the 'Lucky Country' where good fortune has delivered people greater wealth, longer lives and better healthcare. But as Andrew argues, the country's relative prosperity and longevity is not just luck – it stems from a unique blend of political, social and economic institutions and values.

In March 1945 Reg Cleworth, a navigator on PBY Catalina seaplanes flying out of Darwin, went missing in action. No details were ever given about the incident that took his life, nor the reason his plane went down. For Reg’s younger brother, Robert, the news came as a prophecy fulfilled. The last time they saw each other, Reg confided in Robert, ‘I don’t think I’m coming back’.

Am 20. Mai 1999 wurde die südaustralische Polizei gerufen, um eine stillgelegte Bank in der bescheidenen Stadt Snowtown im Zusammenhang mit dem Verschwinden mehrerer vermisster Personen zu untersuchen. Die Beamten waren nicht auf die schreckliche Szene vorbereitet, die sie erwartete.

The Hawaiian kingdom existed for about a century, from the early 1790s to 1893, starting when King Kamehameha finally united the islands and lasting until American planters and businessmen staged a coup and forced Queen Lili’uokulani to abdicate. During the century of its existence, the kingdom offered its native peoples considerable protection. For example, in the later 1800s, several thousands of Pacific islanders were, in effect, kidnapped and forced to serve as indentured laborers in places like the Guano Islands in Peru and plantations in Queensland.

In the history of Australian diplomacy, the Jakarta post between 2004 and 2007 looms larger than any other. In the span of just a few years, a terrorist bomb attack partially destroyed the Embassy compound, killing eleven; the Boxing Day tsunami wreaked havoc on an almost incomprehensible scale; a bombing in Bali killed twenty, including four Australians; Schapelle Corby divided public opinion; members of the Bali Nine were executed; and a Garuda flight crashed and exploded in Yogyakarta, killing twenty, including members of the Australian diplomatic corps.

An entertaining collection of insider yarns by an Aussie Test cricket legend. 'In the Test arena, Dennis Lillee was never beaten. West Indian champion Viv Richards had taken the sword to all the international bowlers of his era. But when he came up against Lillee, it was a heavyweight fight between unrelenting combatants. Their contests were always take-no-prisoners affairs.'

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE OCKHAM NZ BOOK AWARD BEST ILLUSTRATED BOOK OF NONFICTION** An illuminating tour through the native sea creatures of Aotearoa, by the bestselling author of The Meaning of Trees Secrets of the Sea is a fascinating introduction to New Zealand's fish and shellfish, weaving...

With all the skills of the master storyteller that he is, Jim Haynes exposes some of the great myths of Australian history. Did you know that Portuguese and Spanish explorers probably found the east coast of Australia before Captain Cook, and that the Rum Rebellion was not caused by rum? And what about Banjo Patterson writing ‘Waltzing Matilda’? As for Ned Kelly being a brave freedom-fighting rebel, in truth he was a thief, a thug and a murderer.

Three Crooked Kings is the shocking true story of Queensland and how a society was shaped by almost half a century of corruption. At its core is Terence Murray Lewis, deposed and jailed former police commissioner. From his entry into the force in 1949, Lewis rose through the ranks, becoming part of the so-called Rat Pack with detectives Glendon Patrick Hallahan and Tony Murphy under the guiding influence of Commissioner Frank Bischof.