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This book challenges the common assumption that little or nothing of scientific value was achieved during the Burke and Wills expedition. The Royal Society of Victoria initiated the Victorian Exploring Expedition as a serious scientific exploration of hitherto unexplored regions of inland and northern Australia. Members of the expedition were issued with detailed instructions on scientific measurements and observations to be carried out, covering about a dozen areas of science. The tragic ending of the expedition meant that most of the results of the scientific investigations were not reported or published. Burke and Wills: The Scientific Legacy of the Victorian Exploring Expedition rectifies this historic omission. It includes the original instructions as well as numerous paintings and drawings, documents the actual science undertaken as recorded in notebooks and diaries, and analyses the outcomes. It reveals for the first time the true extent and limits of the scientific achievements of both the Burke and Wills expedition and the various relief expeditions which followed. Importantly, this new book has led to a re-appraisal of the shortcomings and the successes of the journey. It will be a compelling read for all those interested in the history of exploration, science and natural history, as well as Australian history and heritage.

Sven Lindqvist is one of our most original writers on race, colonialism, and genocide, and his signature approach--uniting travelogues with powerful acts of historical excavation--renders his books devastating and unforgettable. Now, for the first time, Lindqvist's most beloved works are available in one beautiful and affordable volume with a new introduction by Adam Hochschild. The Dead Do Not Die includes the full unabridged text of \"Exterminate All the Brutes\", called \"a book of stunning range and near genius\" by David Levering Lewis. In this work, Lindqvist uses Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness as a point of departure for a haunting tour through the colonial past, retracing the steps of Europeans in Africa from the late eighteenth century onward and thus exposing the roots of genocide via his own journey through the Saharan desert. The full text of Terra Nullius is also included, for which Lindqvist traveled 7,000 miles through Australia in search of the lands the British had claimed as their own because it was inhabited by \"lower races,\" the native Aborigines--nearly nine-tenths of whom were annihilated by whites. The shocking story of how \"no man's land\" became the province of the white man was called \"the most original work on Australia and its treatment of Aboriginals I have ever read . . . marvelous\" by Phillip Knightley, author of Australia.

Emil Bessels was chief scientist and medical officer on George Francis Hall's ill-fated American North Pole Expedition of 1871-73 on board the ship Polaris. Bessels' book, translated from the German in its entirety for the first time, is one of only two first-hand accounts of the voyage, and it is the only first-hand account of the experiences of the group which stayed with the ship after it ran afoul of arctic ice, leaving some of its crew stranded on an ice floe. Bessels and the others spent a second winter on shore in Northwest Greenland, where the drifting, disabled ship ran aground. Hall died suspiciously during the first winter, and Bessels is widely suspected of having poisoned him. Bill Barr has uncovered new evidence of a possible motive. Essential reading for researchers and students of arctic exploration history, this book is also a compelling read for the interested general reader.

\"This edited collection focuses on Aboriginal and Māori travel in colonial contexts. Authors in this collection examine the ways that Indigenous people moved and their motivations for doing so. Chapters consider the cultural aspects of travel for Indigenous communities on both sides of the Tasman. Contributors examine Indigenous purposes for mobility, including for community and individual economic wellbeing, to meet other Indigenous or non-Indigenous peoples and experience different cultures, and to gather knowledge or experience, or to escape from colonial intrusion. ‘This volume is the first to take up three challenges in histories of Indigenous mobilities. First, it analyses both mobility and emplacement. Challenging stereotypes of Indigenous people as either fixed or mobile, chapters deconstruct issues with ramifications for contemporary politics and analyses of Indigenous society and of rural and national histories. As such, it is a welcome intervention in a wide range of urgent issues. Second, by examining Indigenous peoples in both Australia and New Zealand, this volume is an innovative step in removing the artificial divisions that have arisen from “national” histories. Third, the collection connects the experiences of colonised Indigenous peoples with those of their colonisers, shifting the long-held stereotypes of Indigenous powerlessness. Chapters then convincingly demonstrate the agency of colonised peoples in shaping the actions and the mobility itself of the colonisers. While the volume overall is aimed at opening up new research questions, and so invites later and even more innovative work, this volume will stand as an important guide to the directions such future work might take.’ — Heather Goodall, Professor Emerita, UTS\"

In \"Great Central State\", Jack Cross tells the story of South Australia's ambitious - or foolhardy - plan to become the premier colony of Australia using its own unique experience in planned colonisation, and its bid to develop the north coast as an integral part of South-East Asia.

Part of a series in which leading Australian authors write about their hometowns, this unique and evocative exploration is part memoir and part guide to Australia's Brisbane. Intertwining personal stories with the city's historical past, this account paints a portrait of the contemporary transformation of the city.

A longtime resident of Kings Cross, celebrated Australian author, playwright, and screenwriter Louis Lowra, in an ode to the neighborhood, cajoles readers into reimagining the most infamous and misunderstood place in Australia, a magnet for bohemianism, cosmopolitanism, and organized crime. In a wildly energetic book that walks the streets, sits in bars, chats with locals, and spends time in clubs and apartments where the walls, if they could talk, would tell a story or two, Nowra traverses the history and the future of his beloved neighborhood. He burrows beneath the sensationalist narrative of an underbelly of sex and sin to reveal stories and a cast of characters too astonishing to be fictitious. Backpackers, prostitutes, strippers, chefs, poets, beggars, booksellers, doctors, gangsters, judges, artists, and others live side-by-side in Kings Cross, and eyewitness, historian, and man-about-town Louis Nowra is the perfect guide to a no-holds-barred place that is as much physical as it is a state of mind.

In 1984, on his way to a major exhibition opening, celebrated New Zealand painter Colin McCahon went missing for 24 hours in Sydney, Australia. He was discovered by police the next day on a bench in Centennial Park with no identification and suffering from amnesia; by all accounts, McCahon was never quite the same from this night until his death three years later. This work of creative nonfiction underscores the life and work of Colin McCahon and traces a possible McCahon route across Sydney, wandering through bars and flop houses, streets and churches. Exploring key issues, such as the attractions of the bottle, the role of faith and religion, the illuminating power of the imagination, and the hold of family relationships, this record chronicles not only a mysterious incident but also the life and art of the man who lived it.

Peter Timms leads us on a journey through his adopted city of Hobart, Australia’s smallest, most southerly, least prosperous, but arguably most beautiful state capital. He reveals a city in transition, shaking off its dark and troubled past to claim its special place in the contemporary world: ‘going boutique, nice and slow’, as one overseas visitor notes. From Hobart’s convict legacy, its spectacular natural setting, heritage architecture and climate, to crime-rates, economic hardship and the recent disfigurements of the developers, Timms brings a wealth of fresh insights, exploring the city with a mixture of affection, admiration, frustration and sadness, interviewing a wide range of residents along the way. Those who have experienced Hobart as tourists will be surprised and intrigued by the lively, complex society this book reveals. Those who live here will surely discover their city anew.