Australia Books

"Given a Wantiya mother, a knockabout miner father and a Warlpuju foster mob, it wasn't exactly surprising that I often thought of geological formations as having lives of their own. I imagined them as enormous creatures, crawling through time..." That's Emily Tempest thinking to herself. She's a small, clever, confident and often headstrong young woman who is about to find herself hunted down by murderers in the bleak, dry Australian outback. To her sometimes confusion, she and those who know her usually think of her as a black woman misplaced in a white world or as a white woman misplaced in a black world. She's as much at home in both as she's not at home in either. When she decides to visit the extended family group she grew up with, who now have been given official title to their ancestral land, the Moonlight Downs, she finds herself at cross purposes with just about everyone she knows or meets. There are the people -- the Moonlight mob -- she ran with as a child while her father worked. They include probably the two most important people in her life...Lincoln Flinders, the aging leader of the Moonlight mob, and his daughter, Hazel. Then there are the whitefellers, especially those who center around Bluebush, the nearest town to Moonlight. Bluebush is one of the worst Australian outback towns you'll hope never to be stuck in...drunks, cast-offs, opportunists, manipulative government officials and up-from-the-bootstraps bullies. Some are pleasant enough, some aren't. Some are wealthy landowners, most are not.

When Lincoln Flinders is found dead, killed in a gruesome manner that might make some think the murderer is a blackfeller, Emily decides it couldn't have been that way. Her decision to investigate is complicated by the plans some of the whites in Bluebush have to develop Moonlight Downs whether the aboriginal owners like it or not. Emily eventually figures things out, but not before the author, Adrian Hyland, has given us a straightforward and engrossing look at life in the outback, both among the aboriginal groups and the whites. He manages this with clear and even evocative language that doesn't fall back on poetic descriptions of aboriginal life or rugged outback beauty. Dreams and Diamond Doves play a part, but with a casual and unromantic acceptance of how people believe in things.

Adrian Hyland is a first-rate writer. He brings us into Emily Tempest's life and times with a minimum of fuss. His descriptions are vivid but restrained. This works because he knows what he's talking about and because he knows how to create characters we can imagine for ourselves. Emily Tempest, somewhere in her late twenties, has been drifting around for several years. She drinks, she rolls her own and her mouth sparks out with casual obscenities. She knows how to live in the bush, identify rocks and how to keep drunks in line while she serves booze at her temporary job in town. She can take care of herself. She's also thoughtful, sometimes impetuous and likes to read. Her bonded relationship with Hazel Flinders is complex.

As much as Moonlight Downs is a fascinating look at outback life amongst the blackfellers and the whitefellers, and as much as Hyland has created an intriguing lead character in Emily Tempest, more than anything else Hyland has written a fine mystery. You need to pay attention while reading this book. There's a lot going on with more than one or two plausible theories behind the murder of Lincoln Flinders. And Hyland keeps the plot honest. Most of what we learn either drives to the solution or creates reasonable alternatives. As with enjoying any good mystery, it pays to be a bit suspicious of reasonable explanations. Hyland also handles the need for a solid flash finish. The last six fairly short chapters place Emily and then Emily and Hazel in the middle of brutal killings, mistaken assumptions, desperate chases and a stand-up resolve by Emily not to give the killer an ounce of satisfaction...all in the heat and rocky outcrops of the outback. It's quite a scene, and leads to an entirely satisfying conclusion. I'm looking forward to Emily Tempest's next appearance.

An exciting new author creating an unusual persona by way of a native Australian detective.

After several years of seeing the world, half-aboriginal Emily Tempest returns home to the Moonlight Downs camp in Australia's Outback. Emily struggles to readapt to living in the "Blackfeller" camp, but is getting there thanks in part due to a warm welcome home from her friend Lincoln Flinders although his daughter, her former best friend Hazel, makes her feel like an outsider.

She is stunned when Lincoln is found dead, a strangulation victim. Even more shocking is the killer carved out his kidney. The locals assume sorcerer Blakie Japanangka murdered and then mutilated the body of the camp's leader. Emily assists police sergeant Tom McGillivray in trying to find Blakie, who has vanished. When information surfaces that makes the prime suspect look innocent, Emily looks into a land dispute as the motive for killing Lincoln with the organ removal used to throw blame on the aborigine sorcerer.

This is an interesting look at the aborigine culture from the perspective of a person who had one foot in that and one in the white Australian society before she became a globetrotter. Emily is the strength of the story line as her relationship with Hazel seems to be a microcosm of the two groups. Although the whodunit especially when it detours into an avarice land deal seems a stretch and lacks suspense, readers will enjoy this insightful visit to the Outback.

Harriet Klausner

The author, Adrian Hyland, spent many years living and working with indigenous people in the Northern Territory; MOONLIGHT DOWNS is a story told with a great deal of affection for the people. Their spiritual connection to the land and its native animals is particularly well described. He makes no attempt to gloss over the dysfunctional aspects of life in the remoter areas of the Northern Territory, both European and Aboriginal.Emily regards her community with a mixture of deep love and exasperation at the destructiveness of some of the behaviour she witnesses.

There are other issues raised in the book. The inevitable clash of cultures and lack of understanding that results. Conflicting interests of farming, mining and aboriginal land claims, the politicization of these interests and the odd mix of people who seem to be attracted to such remote areas. The real achievement that Hyland has managed to pull off is the fact that he vividly portrays all these aspects of life in the outback without making any judgements and without trying to push the reader down the path towards a particular opinion. He leaves that entirely up to the individual.

Hyland has also injected a wonderful dry humour into the book. Expressions such as "rough as emus knees", "he belonged to the von Ribbentrop school of negotiation" and "been taking deportment lessons from a Rottweiler" are genuinely funny. The author also has a gift for description; " Gladys herself was a battleship on stilts. She wasn't much older than me, but she'd exploded in every direction. She was immensely tall, immensely fat, wearing a green dress and a coiffure that looked like it had been fashioned with a splitting axe."

I'm noticing this book was a popular item at public libraries. I too checked this book out many times when I visited the city library as a kid. The story is funny and teaches a good lesson about moderation that has always stuck with me. The illustrations are cute and memorable as well. I hope to pass this story on to my kids someday so that the circle of pigs and ketchup can be complete.

This book is about ten little piglets called SORROL,BENJAMIN,SARAH,CINDY BRYONY,HILARY ,TOBY,ALUN,WILLIAM AND GARATH. Now these little piglets were addicted to tomato ketchup. How their mother cures them of their addiction is hilarious, and will put you off ketchup for life!

This is one of the books I recommend to the children who come in to the library where I work. I have even recommended it to a mother in a restaurant who was having trouble convincing her young son not to use so much ketchup on everything he ate. While it may not change anyone's eating habits, it may lessen any mealtime conflict over using too much of the red stuff. Ketchup and cereal? Pu- Leeze.

Mrs. Pig's Bulk Buy is a delightful children's story about little pigs that just love ketchup. It presents Mrs. Pig's solution to every mother's problem of what to do with kids that want to eat the same thing all the time. I love Mary Rayner's style of writing and the delightful illustrations. I discovered this book at the city library when my children were young and now am sharing it with grandchildren and great-neices.

This beautifully illustrated book set in Australia's outback has the most interesting animals I've ever seen! The multicultural theme can be used in classrooms and at home to promote an understanding of native animals of Australia, relationships with elders, women of independence, and travel. The story is beautifully written in prose and the illustrations are patterned in pencil/charcoal and brilliant pictures.

This is definitely the best picture i have ever read to my children and i would recomend it to all parents and children alike. It makes you smile and feel so content and happy as you reach the last page. The illustrations, superb, the story, edge of your seat stuff.

Recommend t for everyone, young and old.

My kids really enjoy this book. It was a gift from Grandma for my oldest son because he likes to say funny words. This book is full of funny words and names that all three of our kids love. At the end of the book, my daughter always wants to know "what happend to Grandma", so we come up with all kinds of possibilities. This is a wonderful book and is read often as our bedtime routine.

My Grandma lived in Gooligulch,
Near Bandywallop East,
A fair way north of Murrumbum
(Five hundred miles at least)...

In Sydney and in Melbourne Town,
They all knew Grandma's name,
And all about the animals,
That Grandma used to tame.

THe Australian place names and the premise of the Grandma taming exotic animals (exotic to most non-Australians kids) is as colorful as Grame Base's 11 2-page spreads. The story concerns Grandma (while we're told that everyone "knew her name," we're never told what it is), her taming, training, and befriending of wombats, kangaroos, dingos, goannas and local birds, including kookaburras, galahs, magpies, and coots. The color pictures are beautiful and often wonderfully improbable: A goanna (some kind of reptile) is shown in an easy cair, quaffing some type of drink (Foster's?), while he and a dingo (wild dog) watch a rat balance an Australian coin.

After introducing the animals who overrun Grandma's house, Base's brief plot concerns Grandma's journey (via pelican) over the desert sands and mountins, "until at dusk they reached a place, Where giant tree-ferns grew. There's a lush picture of this riverbank oasis, followed by a dark, fun/scary night illustration of the wombats--their eyes open in fear--"looking nervously around...for a wombat-eating snake." Grandma and pelican journey to next to the sea, where she dons "frilly bathing gear," and rides the waves on a blowup sea-dragon.

HOwever, things take an unexpected turn when Base decides that Grandma will be taken by the tide: "ANnd no-one's seen my Grandma/Even to this very day." This sudden disappearance is tempered by the narrator's speculation that Grandma probably landed on an island and thence to England , Spain, San Francisco, or Tingoor, or (her best bet), that Grandma's "back in Gooligulch, just like before." While the fantasy elements of the book make Grandma's fate less important, and the narrator's speculation more plausible, this turn of events may make the book somewhat unsettling for toddlers, restricting the book's audience to those around the ages 4-9 or so. You'll have to use your judgement. There's no hint that Grandma had a disaster, she pictured (in the narrator's fantasy taming animals "in thejungles of Tingoor" an d heading to San Francisco "On a Western Union train." Still, you might want to consider whrther the ambiguity of what happened to Grandma will be upsetting to your readers. Still, in keeping with the light, silly narrative poem (which is very imaginative and well-written), I think a zanier, more explicit conclusion would have been a better fit.

The other non-color picture are a monochromatic dark brown, made interesting by Base's lined shadings. Unfortunately, these are sometimes too dense, his most effective picture leave more "white space." In addition, Base introduces some of the animals without a nearby reference illustration: You have to go to the inside of the front cover to get the key to the two-page illustration of all the animals located inside the back cover! This is a little inconvenient. Overall, a very good book, with excellent color illustrations, and a clever poetic narrative that will draw engage individuals kids or in group reading.

I read this book for the first and second times last night.

It was my second time, because I had read the book when first published. But because I lived in Hawaii back then, perhaps I could not fully absorb the stunning setting and the author's many insights about island life.

I lived in Hawaii for 25 years, and in my second reading Ms. Nelson captured and returned me to 1970s Hawaii. At the same time, I learned a great deal from her book that I did not discern during my time in Hawaii.

The book is about much more than Hawaii. Anyone who has ever been young will identify with this memoir, and will come away richer for the author's uncanny powers of observation about universal themes.

I read this book for the first and second times last night.

It was my second time, because I had read the book when first published. But because I lived in Hawaii back then, perhaps I could not fully absorb the stunning setting and the author's many insights about island life.

I lived in Hawaii for 25 years, and in my second reading Ms. Nelson captured and returned me to 1970s Hawaii. At the same time, I learned a great deal from her book that I did not discern during my time in Hawaii.

The book is about much more than Hawaii. Anyone who has ever been young will identify with this memoir, and will come away richer for the author's uncanny powers of observation about universal themes.

A great book that captures the feel of Hawaii. Victoria's Hawaii is gone but the 'feel' of the place is timeless. Her description of Hawaiian music,plate lunches and hundreds of other details of island life are right on target. If you've been captivated by the idea of island life...read this book. You'll be on the beach,breathing in plumerias as long as your eyes cross the words.

I was introduced to this book by a writer who had lived in Hawaii for most of the '70s, and she felt that it was one of the best personal memoirs of living in Hawaii that she had read. Nelson taught at the University of Hawaii in the '70s, and traveled throughout the islands. She captures the beauty, the sadness, the cultural tensions and improbable harmonies of a people and a setting that is so much more than a Waikiki Beach tourist-trap destination. Her description of the people of Moloka'i was one my motivations to find the true meaning of **Aloha** and visit what may be the friendliest place in Hawai'i. St. Martin's should at least bring it back in trade paperback - the travel sections of most bookstores are dying for a distinctly different look at one of the most fascinating and spiritual places in the world

I have struggled through four biographies and numerous short stories to discover the "meaning" of Ned Kelly. This small time cattle rustler with vague notions of greater things inhabits a place in the mind of Australiana like no other historical figure. He is in fact one figure most widely cited and identified with in Australian popular media, press and the mind of the common bloke.

Every society has its outlaw heros: usually interpreted as victims of some unjust authority, champion of downtrodden rights and the oracle of some uncommon wisdom despite humble beginnings. The US has Jesse James and a whole slew of other cutthroats, Canada has a tortured half-blood religious maniac Louis Riel, and New Zealand has a few quaint highwaymen who are usually more famous when they head to Australia to become bushrangers. In Australia Ned Kelly appears as a sort of national zeitgeist -- the embodiment of everything virtuous and civilised -- a sort of pride in the uncivilised nature of the Oz national character -- the veritable well spring of the spirit of justice and national consciousness.

Writers typically take the above tact with Kelly. No one I have read cites Ned as a common criminal worthy of death because of actions he pursued -- people he killed. It was not axiomatic that the forces who be needed to put him to death, that the unjust imperial English system of law was fated to opress the offspring of Irish transportees, or that Ned had "no choice" but to commit crimes including cold-blooded murder. Ned had choices and made bad ones.

Jones does the best of describing the details of Ned's life. Laying the story bare for all to see. Jones sees Neds as making several bad choices in his life, and he is historically honest in the sympathetic telling of a noteable life.

Yet there are several points in the book that need to be addressed lest Jones fall headlong into the ranks of blind Kelly idolisers.

1)The fact remains that Kelly killed a man during a planned hold up to obtain arms. Both Kelly's excuse that he had "no choice" because the man decided to fire on Ned after Ned bailed him up, is no excuse for murder. And that is precisely what Ned was hanged for. Jones and Kelly sympahtisers attempts to focus on the fact of some wierd "self-defence" argument is extreme and could only be undertaken by a writer, indeed a whole nation of people blinded to the crimes of Ned.

2) There is always a vauge strain to link Ned with a true republican movement in Australia. I was waiting for this to come out all through the book. I wanted to know Ned's thinking and actions on this. Jones even has one chapter called "A Republic." But I read on and on and except for some vague reference in "Jerelderie Letter" (which was not authored by Ned), there is not single reference or utterance to Ned articulating a republican vision.

3) There is a comment about in the picture section of the book about the magistrate whom Jones says "some of his rulings seem absolutely insane when viewed in modern terms" (or something to that effect). Yet in the entire narrative we are not given any reference to any action of this magistrate that would indicate anthing other than fairness and cool reasoning. There is a vague intonation that because he was of Protestant Ulster roots that this court case was a microcosm of Irish oppression. But other than not allowing the defence enough time to prepare (as much a cause of the defence lawyers as the magistrate) there is nothing to impeach this person. Moreover the dialogue between him and Ned is electric at the end of the book and betrays nothing of an anger of the traditional English powerbrokers to rid the land of Ned. Ned was guilty of murder plain and simple and under the laws of the land he had to hang.

Jones, despite his empirical fairness, comes down basically on the standardised allegorical Ned of popular Australian Mythology. Ned is seen as almost inevitably a product of the forces around him. Yet in credit to Jones, reading his prose, one finds it hard to reach the conclusion that Ned was little more than a petty criminal with bad planning and execution skills, a poor judge of people and, most significantly, a cold-blooded murder.

Jones agrees with Ned's assertion that at Stringybark Creek he was driven to shoot when one Constable suddenly drew down on him after Ned had surrounded the camp of the constables intent upon stealing their weapons. He even blows in the head of another wounded constable in the same engagement after the constable pleads with him for his life and represents no threat to either Ned or the Gang.

At many places Ned had the choice to either engage in a life of brigandange and bail up everyone in NSW and Victoria or try to make it straight. His reasons for turning to a life of horse thievery and murder were ones consciously chosen after careful dilberation. Moreover despite Jones' narrative we really do not know what triggered the flight into crime: there are numerous allusions to "protecting the honour of his sister" from predatory constables, but we really do not know the specifics, everything is asserted, from a constable trying to steal a kiss, to more insidious things.

Though tales of Ned still may make for blustery tales of derring do for flush-faced Aussies full of beer intimidating unrepentent Brits, Ned evinces no common ethic that one would willingly want to embue personally or nationally. That Jones or anyone would hold Ned accountable for his actions would benefit biographers of Kelly and maybe the Nation that so blindly embraces him.

Ian Jones offers a sympathetic look at the life and times of Ned Kelly, one of the last and the most successful of the Australian bushrangers (roughly the equivalent of highwaymen).

From his early days as troubled youth to his end in Melbourne Gaol, and all the details of the time between. This is complete look at Ned, how his world view evolved, and how he closely he came to sparking a full-fledged revolt against the British Crown.

Although Jones is sympathetic to Ned, he does not try to hide unseemly details about Ned, his gang or his family -- which simply adds to the value of book. This is a complete portrait of the man, and it makes for riveting reading.

Ned Kelly is one of those figures where the solid accretion of legend and myth has made getting to the real man a difficult task in all. Kelly is both near-worshiped as a hero and reviled as a criminal who got what he deserved at the end of a rope in 1880. The recent film "Ned Kelly", starring Heath Ledger, portrayed him as a largely innocent victim of police harrassment and injustice. There are plenty who would label him a vicious, callous and murderous villain. Most likely, the truth is somewhere in between.

"Ned Kelly: A Short Life" by Ian Jones is a book about "somewhere in the middle". Jones looks at the evidence, the speculation and the hearsay, and presents as accurate a picture of the real Ned Kelly as you will probably get. Jones is openly candid about what is uncertain, and where different testimonies differ and how. A good case in point is the so-called Fitzgerald incident in the Kelly home, after which Alexander Fitzgerald claimed Kelly had tried to shoot him. Jones quite honestly states that no one really knows what actually happened, as testimony differs. However, Jones is also not shy about giving what he sees as the most plausible explanation.

The mindless hero-worship and the bitter revulsion that is given Kelly tend to over-simplify him. Jones presents a very complex man, and presents elements that add to that complexity. Kelly was a man of contradictions. Ian Jones brings that out, and delves deeply into the surroundings and motivations of what made Kelly "tick".

In the Kelly story, there are also a host of other colourful characters from among Kelly's associates as well as among the Police and the government of the day. Jones covers these people as well, in so far as they impacted on Kelly and company.

This is a very thorough book, and one certainly worth the read. If you only have one book on Kelly, then make it this one. Great as an introduction to the man and his times, Ian Jones has written a fantastic book. I would advise reading it before watching any movies on Kelly, such as Ned Kelly, starring Heath Ledger and Orlando Bloom.

125 years after he was executed for murder, Ned Kelly is still reviled, revered and remembered.
Ian Jones writes about Kelly with the authority of an historian, the style of a stortyteller and the reflection of a sociologist.
The context of Kelly's reign (of terror?) is as important as its content, and Jones goes beyond chronology to take us into Kelly's world - a raw, growing nation, struggling with its identity, its mores, its weather and its ethnicity.
Anyone who has heard of the Kelly legend, and wants to explore it, will love and value this book
After reading Jones' account (and having a couple of months' break), I turned to Peter Carey's novel, "True Story of the Kelly Gang." The juxtaposition of fact and fiction is an interesting one, and I was glad I read both.

This book helps the kids learn numbers and also how to search for animals/birds in a picture. The artwork in this book is beautiful.

Both my kids love this book. My 18 month old son wants us to read this book several times during the day. I am going to buy several copies of this book to give as gifts to other kids.

This is, by far, the most beautifully illustrated childrens book I have ever owned! As a preschool teacher, I have read and re-read this book to hundreds of children. They all love to find the hidden animals. Some childrens books have illustrations that, to me, say, "I'll just scribble anything on the paper...it's just a kids book." Atsuko treats this book as artwork....and that is truly what it is!!! It is a pleasure to look at all of the beautiful scenes on every page.

If so, then you must see this book. It is just absolutely beautiful, and can be enjoyed by both children and adults. I have an extensive collection of children's books featuring gorillas, and this is by far my favorite for very young readers. Ms. Morozumi obviously loves her subject matter as much as I do.

The art work in this lovely book is incredible. It also lends itself to reading and re-reading. For the youngest children, you can point at different parts of the lovely pictures (they are set in different seasons and environments), and as they mature, you can "hunt" for the different animals in each picture. (one gorilla, two budgerigars,...nine cats...). A true gem!

One Woolly Wombat certainly has no complicated storyline or even a basic one for that matter. Similar in style to say the 12 days of Christmas song but in numerical order the reader visits one woolly wombat sunning by the sea along with increasing numbers of other Australian wildlife with every even numbered group doing something that rhymes with the activity the odd number before it was doing.

The friends the reader will meet to help them count along with a wombat are, koalas, magpies, kangaroos, platypuses, possums, emus, echidnas. goannas, kookaburras, dingos, cockatoos, hopping mice and seals. Illustrations of these animals (with the exception of the wombat) are very realistic looking as well.

If more of an actual story you were after other great Australian wildlife fiction picture book classics that kids all over the world will love are out there. The best are Possum Magic and Hunwick's Egg by Mem Fox. Sebastian Lives in a Hat by Thelma Catterwell, Wombat Stew by Marcia Vaughan, the entire Steve Parish story book collection by Rebecca Johnson such as The Cranky Crocodile are also great reads. Olga the Brolga and Edward the Emu although not the best stories have some greatest drawn colourful illustrations of Australian wildlife you will ever see.

This book has been a favourite of my cousins. It is witty, colourful and incorporates Australian animals, which children always love. Lots of pictures, and easily read or sung.

one woolly wombat sunning by the sea two cuddly koalas sipping gumnut tea

and so on to fourteen A now-classic Australian counting book, featuring native animals and other features of the Australian landscape and lifestyle (bush, lamingtons, and some flora)

A good choice for a counting book (also going beyond the traditional 10) for Aussie and non-Aussie kids alike.

Learning to count has never been this fun (or colorful!) My niece couldn't stop talking about wombats and magpies and koalas. The illustrations are vibrant, sometimes silly. You just can't go wrong with nine hungry goannas (look like alligators) in aprons and chefs hats.

Take a Trip.....through the eyes of a 17 year old into The Outback. Enjoy the heartaches, calm, and priceless stories of a young man living three years in Australia and "The Bush". Join the fun and excitement of a street musician, a hunter of opals. Live your childhood fantasy of being a part of a Carnival traveling from town to town. Join in a corrboree with the Aborigine's and spend some time in the Dreamtime Mates.

My husband, Jon Provost, directed a stage version of Outback years ago. He insisted I read it and I am so lucky he did. It is brilliant. It's a grand adventure, inspiring, exhausting, spiritual, full of humor and wisdom. If you've ever dreamed of visiting Australia, or you've been lucky enough to go, or you just long to be transported to another land without ever leaving your chair -- Outback is for you.

Through Outback I entered a world that has existed past memory - an ancient race that has wisdom which all the centuries have only added to. I stepped out of the modern world as being my only reality and into a deeper reality. It reminded me of what has always mattered most - the integrity of the human spirit and its harmony with Nature. Anyone who enters the Dreamtime with the author will be challenged emotionally to find that harmony again in their lives. It is a tender work of love for a people shrouded in mystery and legend - and a tender love letter to our Mother Earth. I fell more in love with the planet and the life upon it through Outback - and I don't think there is any higher goal a work can achieve.

Dal is a master story-teller. He brings the adventure and emotions of his journey right to the listener. It has given me the desire to go on my own walkabout! I would highly recommend it!

Excellent, exciting story of what happened AFTER the Mutiny on the Bounty. The author, using original source material, did extraordinary detective work to draw conclusions from limited sources about how the mutineers ended up slaughtering one another, as well as a few sympathetic natives who escaped with them to the miniscule island of Pitcairn--not even on the map at that time. Only one of the original white men survived (having killed or watched the killing of all the others).

It's a sordid story of swapping "wives," drunkenness on home brew, murder, rape and the survival of the fittest--here the most devious and cunning. That did not include the famous Mr. Christian who was among the first to go. Gripping story and a good read.

Most readers would have a reasonably good knowledge of the events that took place on HMS Bounty in 1789 and they might even know the details of why the Bounty sailed and what happened to Bligh after he and those of the crew that didn't mutiny were set adrift in the Bounty's long boat. I would guess however that only a handful of people anywhere in the world would have an idea of what happened to the mutineers after they landed on Pitcairn and burnt their only means of escape-the Bounty herself. Trevor Lummis has done a tremendous job of research by stringing together all the odd bits of scattered information in order to present the whole bloody, sordid story of the events that ultimately left only one male alive on the island plus a number of Polynesian women who were part of the original group. What happened to the mutineers and the Polynesian men that went with them to Pitcairn is the subject of this book and what an extraordinary story it is! Hollywood missed it by building a movie around the mutiny-they should have filmed the story of the events after the mutiny. Anybody with even a miniscule curiosity about the incidents on Pitcairn owe it to themselves to savor this wonderfuly readable story.

Funnily enough the really interesting story of the Bounty begins after most movies have 'faded into the sunset' and the credits start to roll. This is what Lummis has picked up - and this book "Pitcairn Island, Life and Death in Eden" is the story of just that. What happened to the Bounty mutineers. It is an awful lot more interesting, bloodthirsty and downright fascinating than the story of the Bounty mutiny itself.

Lummis seems to have done his research too. He has tracked down all the accounts available, and compared them with one another. He clearly points out the strengths and weaknesses in each account and how he has reached his own conclusions about the actual story. In this way he makes his deductions, and the story far more transparent for us - and makes it all the more believable.

As most people know the mutiny on the bounty as about the uprising of a group of sailors led by acting Lieutenant, Fletcher Christian against their captain, Bligh. Lummis discusses the mutiny and the events which lead up to it, putting it perspective of the times and the problems which Bligh had had to deal with before hand (especially through the incompetency of the admiralty in delaying his sailing to Tahiti in the first place.) There is also a brief history of the English encounters in Tahiti prior to the arrival of the Bounty.

The most interesting part is really what happened to the Bounty muntineers once they sailed away from the Bligh. Some went reluctantly and stayed in Tahiti when the Bounty returned there. However Christian and a few others knew that they would never be safe unless they stayed out of range of the long arm of the British Navy. They therefore found the most remote island possible - Pitcairn - and settled there.

Then followed almost 20 years in which there was no contact with the outside world, just a handful of bounty mutineers, 6 tahitian men and a handful of Tahitian women. At the end of those 20 years just one of the men was left, John Adams. His story of what happened to the other men was at first straightforward. However as more people visited the Island his story started to become more complicated and even contradicted itself. It seemed that there must have been at least one catastrophic massacre of some sort. Yet they were all living in this peaceful and ideal society.

Lummis gleans the truth of the fate of the men of Pitcairn through the various accounts Adam's gave, as well as accounts given by one of the women, Jenny, and one of the eldest sons after Adam's died. In fact it seemed that Adam's himself had triggered the entire debacle. This I found the most fascinating part of the book - the careful unravelling of various stories by comparing them with others, and with logical progression.

Lummis completes the book with the fate of the islanders up until recent years. The gradual deterioration of the island, the move to Norfolk and the return of some of them to Pitcairn.

This book is well worth reading if you enjoy the story of the mutineers. It is also an interesting insight into pre-European Pacific culture, and it proves to be a darn good mystery as well....

Imagine being stranded on a remote small South Pacific tropical island with 20 or so others, with no police, no laws to follow and no food, water or shelter other than that what you have built or can get by yourselves, no means to go anywhere else and little chance of being rescued (indeed being found would mean execution). Add to this the fact that your fellow castaways are a mixture of Europeans (all men) and Tahitians (men and women) and the fact that some of the Tahitians were taken to the island against their wishes. This is the position the Bounty mutineers found themselves in 1789 on Pitcairn island and what follows is a true life (adult) version of lord of the flies ending in the death of all but one of the original mutineers.

The authors style is to tell the story of the settlers of Pitcairn in mainly chronological order from the original mutiny through to settlement, the subsequent murders, rediscovery by the rest of the world, abandonment followed by resettlement o fhte island. The main body of the book is only 150 pages and written in clear and easy to read text - I personally finished it in a couple of days.

The most interesting part of the book is the mystery of what happened to most of the original settlers and why. The only male survivor of the originals who came to Pitcairn was an English sailor called John Adams. He eventually established a little stable community from the descendants and it is version of the events is the one most often told. He retold several different versions of events but always he paints himself as the good guy. On the other hand, the stories of some of the native women who the mutineers took with them differ from Adams'. The author uses logic, his own judgement and circumstantial evidence based on the reports to make his own conclusion. He also points out other possible scenarios for what happened, and at the end we are left with a true whodunit where the reader is left to make up their own mind.

There are few illustrations but the book has no large maps or family trees (of the islanders) which would have made things a little clearer as the story and characters involved is very complex. I personally book marked page 51, which gives the list of main characters and which I needed to refer back to as the book progressed.

This book was written in 1988, well before the recent rape and sex scandals, which have given a higher profile to the island in the last year or so. The book stops around the late 19th century and portrays the society they have created as very moral almost puritanical. Whether this was the reality or the society always has always had unacceptable sexual behaviour commonplace I guess is a matter for another book.

Peter Dallman, a retired pediatric doctor and docent at Strybing Aboretum in San Francisco, California, spent many years
studying plants and traveling the world to see them where they grow in the Mediterranean climate areas of the world. Prof. Robert Ornduff, the late director of the Univ. of California Botanical Garden, encouraged him to write about these
plants and his travels. The result is a book giving the reader the best armchair picture of the vegetation of a very special part of the world.

This book falls into a category somewhere between botany, climatology, and geography; it looks at several different types of "mediterranean climate" around the world, and describes the different vegetational types within each region, explaining (in a scholarly but accessible way) why these plant communities look the way they do.

It's beautifully produced, with both climate maps and full-color illustrations of plants and plant communities. I know of no other book that explains the relationship between geography and botanical ecology this elegantly; it's a lot of fun to browse, and I would recommend it *very* highly to armchair travellers with botanical inclinations.

This book is great. It has plenty of pictures, diagrams and drawings. Most of the pictures are not in color, however, which is its biggest downfall. It is not a detailed evaluation of mediterranean climates nor is it a good plant ID book, but provides an excellent overview for both the layman and scientist. It provides informatin on the plants that make the mediterranean climate unique and the typical plant communities that are found in them. It is great for someone who doesn't want to get bogged down with individual species and wants to see how all the parts fit together. I first checked this book out of my local library and felt it would be such a good reference book for work, play and travel that I had to have it. The book uses the most scientific and inclusive use of the term Mediterranean which means you are going to get descriptions of plant communities from San Diego to Sacramento to San Francisco. For those of us that prefer the more exclusive definitions it may come as a shock that San Francisco and Sacramento could be considered mediterranean so I'm warning you now. I am currently using this book to help plan a trip to Australia as a supplement to Lonely Planet's travel guides. This book has inspired me to visit all the world's mediterranean climates at some point in my life and I'm not even a plant lover.

Peter Dallman's Plant Life In The World's Mediterranean Climates covers plants of California, Australia, South Africa and the Mediterranean, and will prove more accessible to general audiences studying plants. Here are photos, charts, and a host of details on plant communities and plant life common to this climate, with chapters providing both individual regional details and links between plants of each area. This is a highly recommended pick not just for specialty libraries, but for general collections.