Oceania Books

This is one of the most readable personal accounts of the Falkland and Gulf wars that I have encountered.Chris Craig commanded the frigate HMS Alacrity during the Falkalnds war. Alacrity was in the thick of action - searching for blockage runners (sinking one), was near-missed by an Argentine submarine, and carried out many fire support missions. Naval operations during the Gulf war have been overshadowed by the land campaign, even though it is unlikely that Desert Storm would have been possible without command of the sea. This book partly redresses that inbalance. Craig commanded the royal navy squadron during the conflict and this book provides much insight into naval operations.

In the usual way of the Cambridge Encyclopedias, this is a well-produced and useful guide. Being encyclopedic, it covers all the usual range of bases - the physical nature - climate, soils, water, vegetation etc, history, including a section on Aboriginal heritage, the nature of government, the economy, society, science and technology and culture and the arts. The contributors are an eminent group of mainly boffins from various universities. Unlike some older, and similar comprehensive surveys of Australia, this volume does include a section on Aboriginal-European relations, from first contact to the early 1990s and the Mabo judgement affecting land rights. There is a small section on child removal, a major issue in Australia since the inquiry into this. Generously illustrated in full colour. A worthy general, single volume addition to the home or school reference library.

In this fascinating account, we see that Australian republicanism keep recurring. Brought forth by new generations of activists. Often with grandiose claims of a promised land, if only we could rid ourselves of those benighted royalists and their foreign sovereign.

From the very inception of Sydney colony, there was a republican movement. Perhaps not unsurprising, if you recall that one reason for the colony's being was that Britain could no longer send convicts to the Carolinas, as the US had won its independence. Hence many in the early Sydney of convict origin or descent had little love of royal rule.

In later years, the book shows how other factors caused new republican movements to arise. Culminating in the recent kerfuffle about abolishing the Governor General's post and replacing him with an elected or appointed president. While republicanism has broad sentiment, it tends to fall apart on the details of the transitioning to a republic. Something that John Howard gleefully exploited to defeat the latest republican push. Though keep in mind that this latest event was after the book's timeframe.

What is also interesting is how in the post World War 2 period, waves of migrants arrived from outside Britain. This diminishing of a British cultural heritage might have been expected to drive a demand for a republic. Yet any such trend appears minimal, from book's discussion. Australians from other backgrounds tend to be content with the Crown and the current arrangement.

Kate Walsh, curator of the Migration Musuem in Adelaide, South Australia, has assembled a remarkable photgraphic record of Australian migration history over the last hundred years. Over five hundred photographs are accompanied by very informative narratives which convey the rich and varied history of migration to this land where four in ten persons today are either born overseas or from foreign born parents.

The highlights of an often chequered history of Australian immigration are vividly brought home by some very personal stories drawn from family albums, community organizations,and library archives. A group of Italian settlers from the Aeolian islands pose for the first annual picnic for Melbourne frutierrs in 1906. In another photo, six young Australians of German ancestry are photographed in a detention camp in Germany where they were held during the First World War together with British prsioners. There is the snapshot of one Australian solider from Darwin's Chinese commnity who was shot several times in New Guinea by fellow Australian soldiers during World War Two who mistook him for a Japanese. A photo from the 1960s shows the generational differences between adult members of a Spanish commnity in Whyalla singing and dancing to flamenco music and the younger Spanish girls who were kept in pants and never owned a flamenco dress. Photos of Malays and of Greeks show the diverse specialist skills which were attracted into Australia's pearling industry. The chronicle of the 1970s and 1980s reveal the changing composition of immigrants, with Asian and African faces increasingly showing up in the photos.

This book is a remarkable and informative piece of historical research judiciously combined with a rich portfolio of images of a nation which has become vastly transformed in a hundred years.

Here is an excellent documentation of the continuing stories regarding the plight and fight of Australian indigenous peoples that have seen the light of publication since the 1970s. This, like so many, highlights the resilience, flexibilty and pragmatism of a band of Martu desert dwellers who have adapted to survive the settler society. Their stories historic importance is relative to the development of the atomic testings in their homelands immediately after the Second World War. Readers might well extend their understanding by referring to Yami Lester's account which was published by IAD Press nearly a decade ago. The book is attractively presented with ample photographs, which amongst other things, demonstrates that the material well-being of the surviving Martu has changed little since the 1950s. Melbourne museum's Philip Batty has curated a poignant exhibition, currently touring Australia, which also touches on some of this book's themes.

for me, but with my gf's help, this should be a really great resource for planning our trip.

This first hand account comprised of journal entries with commentary is a fascinating read and provides tremendous detail of Capt. Cook's voyages. I think that for the general reader with an interest in Cook I would recommend Hough's biography as a primary source with this volume as a supplementary text. The two together will provide an excellent view of the accomplishments and adventures of Cook and his crews.

A well written and easy to read tale of the first packhorse trip down the Bicentennial Trail - the spidery path that runs along the spine of Australia. No mean feat, a journey equivalent to Seattle to Mexico City through some of the most remote of Downunder's extensive wilderness. Told with humour and an eye on frailties both equine and human it details the courage and perseverance of a young Sharon Roberts and husband Ken as they confront everything from crocodile infested rainforests to baking waterless plains, while managing a sometimes reluctant but always bold group of horses. But more than a horse story it's a dashing good read, which the armchair traveller and the non-horse enthusiast can enjoy alike. For horse lovers it is a how-to guide to modern packhorse travel. Highly recommended.

In the Foreword, English anthropologist Peter Worsley says that `critical evaluation of Margaret Mead's work is long overdue, particularly in the United States, where I have frequently found it difficult to engage in discussion about Mead, since the slightest breath of criticism commonly evokes a passionate-and to my mind quite uncritical-defense of the entire corpus of her very uneven writings and of her life-career'. Worsley should know, for he wrote a review of Mead's `anthropology' of the Manus, published as _New Lives for Old_, that deemed it shoddy enough to be styled `science fiction'. _New Lives for Old_ was a typical Meadean message of hope. It's about the people of Manus who, she says, have formed a mass movement (the Paliau movement) to transform their culture from its pre-war primitiveness to integration with modern life-government, economic, educational, cultural. According to Worsley, endorsed by Lenora Foerstel in her contribution, Mead got the Paliau movement exactly back to front: it was an indigenous movement AGAINST entanglement in western (or asian for that matter) owned plantations and business. Mead was furious about Worsley's review. She would be furious about this book too. Why? Because it gives those `natives' a platform to talk back to the anthropologist(s).

One indigenous contributor, Nahau Rooney from Manus, notes that anthropologists set up shop without any local consultation whatever. The subjects of `research' were not told what information was being gathered, to what ends, and what use would be made of it. From the anthropologists' point of view, this wasn't relevant because, well, savages are illiterate, aren't they? But the published depictions had a way of getting back to the natives, and when they did, some got angry. One angry soul is Warilea Iamo, the first Papuan to be awarded an anthropology PhD. In his contribution he blisters Mead for turning his and other Pacific cultures into consumer items for western readers keen to know about the exotics in the imperial domain. This `objectification' (description without any native input or right of correction) is yet another manifestation of racist condescension, in his view. A number of contributors fault anthropologists as the main source of racist western ideas of the primitive. Mead in particular is roasted for her consistent identification with American imperialism in the Pacific. She never protested nuclear testing in the Pacific and the removal of peoples from their islands to make way for tests. She never participated in anti-war protests (to the puzzlement and consternation of her colleagues). She even denounced US labor unions and others who opposed testing.

Worsley's contribution is an example of the low opinion that some anthropologists had of Mead's slap-dash anthropology, but this collection wants an essay expressly devoted to that theme. Alas, it isn't. Here's an example. Douglas Oliver, a leader in Pacific anthropology and professor at Harvard, wrote in 1991 that `when I took courses in anthropology at Harvard, in the early Thirties, the only use made of Coming of Age [in Samoa] was as an example of how not to do field work, and how not to leap to universal conclusion about human behavior'. He goes on to mention that John Whiting, who was once a Mead fan, `has come to express something like contempt for Mead (within my hearing, that is)'. Mead's long term collaborator and friend, Lola Romanucci-Ross said in 1985, `It might be worth making the point that many, if not all, of Margaret's recent public defenders, attacked her brutally and gave her credit for nothing for many years. For many years I was accosted by some of these same defenders who ... wanted me to give up some terrible secrets about her 'incompetence', or 'dishonesty', etc.' Westin LaBarre, a leading anthropologist, stated in 1983: "When I was a graduate student in anthropology at Yale in the late '30's, Mead's Sex and Temperament came out. Puzzled that even a big island like New Guinea should have had three tribes waiting to be discovered to prove her point about the non-biological nature of gender, I went to Edward Sapir with my puzzlement. He said laconically, "She's a pathological liar." I was startled as much by what he said, as by the fact that an eminent anthropologist and chairman of a department should say this to a mere graduate student. But over the years, I have come to believe that this is literally the case."

Given such negativity in high places, you might think that anthropologists would have jumped for joy when Derek Freeman published his refutation of Mead's Samoan ethnography. The opposite happened, as everyone knows. Eleanor Leacock takes up this theme in the first chapter of the book. Basically she repeats what others have said, and in the process ignores the comprehensive assembly of pro and contra critical opinion published in _The Samoa Reader: Anthropologists Take Stock_.

Interesting snippets and factoids about all sorts of natural and human phenomena in Australia. Want to know the deepest gorge in each State/Territory? Height of some well-known waterfalls? Longest road ascents? All the answers are here.

Nothing terribly profound, and it is not hard to imaging how much of a crashing dinner-party bore you could become if you start to recite 'interesting snippets. On the other hand, if you are a Quiz night afficianado, or compiler of questions, this is one of the tomes to have at hand! It could also be a useful addition to the primary or high school reference library.