Showing titles in Australia, New Zealand & Oceania

Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is the story of the cultural collision between Westerners and the Maoris of New Zealand, told partly as a history of the complex and bloody period of contact between Europeans and the Maoris in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and partly as the story of Christina Thompson's marriage to a Maori man.

The monumental statues of Easter Island, both so magisterial and so forlorn, gazing out in their imposing rows over the island’s barren landscape, have been the source of great mystery ever since the island was first discovered by Europeans on Easter Sunday 1722. How could the ancient people who inhabited this tiny speck of land, the most remote in the vast expanse of the Pacific islands, have built such monumental works?

From its earliest days as an uncertain experiment in the 1950s, the Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) has grown into one of the most respected – and sometimes most controversial – military formations in the world. Headquartered at Campbell Barracks in Perth, this small regiment has carried Australia’s banner into jungles, deserts, mountains, and cities across the globe, carving a reputation for daring, precision, and relentless adaptability.

Colditz Castle was Nazi Germany’s infamous ‘escape-proof’ wartime prison, where hundreds of the most determined and resourceful Allied prisoners were sent. Despite having more guards than inmates, Australian Lieutenant Jack Champ and other prisoners tirelessly carried out their campaign to...

Two husbands, four trials and one bloody execution: Winner of the 2015 Davitt Award for Best Crime Book (Non-fiction) -- the terrible true story of Louisa Collins. In January 1889, Louisa Collins, a 41-year-old mother of ten children, became the first woman hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol and the...

In 1963 – a year of agitation for civil rights worldwide – the Yolŋu of northeast Arnhem Land created the Yirrkala Bark Petitions: Näku Dhäruk. ‘The land grew a tongue’ and the land-rights movement was born. Näku Dhäruk is the story of a founding document in Australian democracy and the trailblazers who made it. It is also a pulsating picture of the ancient and enduring culture of Australia’s first peoples. And it is a masterful, groundbreaking history.

In 1982, Sally Morgan travelled back to her grandmother's birthplace. What started as a tentative search for information about her family, turned into an overwhelming emotional and spiritual pilgrimage. My Place is a moving account of a search for truth into which a whole family is gradually drawn, finally freeing the tongues of the author's mother and grandmother, allowing them to tell their own stories.

This is a richly detailed saga of politics and power in the colonial world – of land seized, fortunes made and lost, and the violence let loose as squatters and their allies fought for possession of the country – a war still unresolved in today's Australia.

On 20 May 1999, the South Australian Police were called to investigate a disused bank in the unassuming town of Snowtown, in connection to the disappearance of multiple missing people. The police were not prepared for the chilling scene that awaited them. The officers found six barrels within the abandoned bank vault, each filled with acid and the remains of eight individuals. The smell from inside the vault was so stifling that the police required breathing equipment.

On the thirtieth anniversary of John Howard coming to power, a searing analysis of the untouchable prime minister: how the ‘great economic manager’ sold our future. John Howard is often revered as one of the great Australian prime ministers (1996–2007): economically prudent, politically...

March 1945. A handful of very young Allied operatives are parachuted into the remote jungled heart of the Japanese-occupied island of Borneo, east of Singapore, there to recruit the island's indigenous Dayak peoples to fight the Japanese. Yet most speak next to no Borneo languages and know...

Soon after Billy Griffiths joins his first archaeological dig as camp manager and cook, he is hooked. Equipped with a historian’s inquiring mind, he embarks on a journey through time, seeking to understand the extraordinary deep history of the Australian continent. Deep Time Dreaming is the passionate product of that journey. It investigates a twin revolution: the reassertion of Aboriginal identity in the second half of the 20th century and the uncovering of the traces of ancient Australia.

Unlike most other World War II accounts, this work covers the South Pacific operations in detail. The audiobook includes many now-forgotten operations that deserve to be well remembered. Significantly, the official Australian history of World War II correctly observed that Australia's part in the Pacific war is barely mentioned in American histories. This volume finally brings the major Australian contribution to the fore.

First there was Girt. Now comes... True Girt. In this side-splitting sequel to his best-selling history, David Hunt takes us to the Australian frontier. This was the Wild South, home to hardy pioneers, gun-slinging bushrangers, directionally challenged explorers, nervous indigenous people, Caroline Chisholm and sheep. Lots of sheep.

The harrowing story of the Allied airmen who experienced the true horrors of Nazism firsthand. It was the summer of 1944 as liberating Allied forces surged towards Paris following the D-Day landings. For a large group of downed airmen being held in that city’s infamous Fresnes Prison, they...

Since the Polynesians (the first humans in New Zealand who would become known as the Māori) were the most modern humans to settle in an uninhabited land, it is no surprise New Zealand has always been ahead of its time. Despite its late settlement, New Zealand has been one of the most rapidly modernizing nations in the world. New Zealand was the first country to introduce full democracy, women’s suffrage, state pensions, and state housing.

Closely related to one of the world's wealthiest families, Mary left her seaside home in England in 1844 to follow her husband, Dr. Christopher Rawson Penfold, to South Australia. Mary and Christopher settled on a farm in the Adelaide Hills, and as Christopher made his rounds visiting patients on horseback, Mary tended grapevines and planted in the garden beside their stone cottage, The Grange. At first, the wines Mary made were used as tonics for patients, but at a time when women were often excluded from commerce, Mary transformed her cottage industry into an empire.

A rich, complex and engaging account of Cook's voyages across the Pacific, from actor and raconteur Sam Neill. Captain James Cook first set sail to the Pacific in 1768, just over 250 years ago. These vast waters, one third of the earth's surface, were uncharted but not unknown. A rich diversity...

In the winter of 1925, a pair of 21-year-old men drove out of Perth in a small second-hand Citroen nicknamed “Bubsie” headed for Darwin. At the time, no motor vehicle had ever drive to Darwin from Perth and their borrowed Citroen had less horsepower than a modern-day lawn mower.

The British Admiralty's telegram arrived at Navy Office in Melbourne, the order to go to all-out war. It was coldly succinct: TOTAL GERMANY . The war at sea had begun. When the Second World War broke out in September 1939, the British asked Australia for help. With some misgivings, the...