Australia Books

My father, Lieutenant Max Lambe, was in Changi, Sandakan and Kuching camps for three and a half years. He's quoted quite a lot in this book. But that isn't the reason I gave it 5 stars. I've read ALL the books on this tragedy and this is the first one that really tells it from the Officers view. And I think its the first one that gives extensive coverage of the Kuching camp. There's a lot of detail here - a lot of scholarly research and interviews with survivors. Its a horrific tale. I could only read a chapter at a time before being in tears over what these brave men went through. You see...a lot of this stuff remained bottled up for sixty years. Even their families didn't really know what they endured at the hands of the cruel Japanese. The men were told to put it out of their minds - to forget it and get on with their lives. And they did...but with terrible mental scars and physical disabilities...and in the case of the few officers that made it home - terrible guilt over the slaughter of the enlisted men in the Sandakan camp. Shameful really - how the Australian governments neglected them over the years. But one thing it did do for me more than anything else - it made me feel really proud to be an Australian when I read how these men cared and looked after each other - the true spirit of the Aussie Digger and the real meaning of "mateship". Well done Michele Cunningham! Malcolm Lambe, Paris.

After I have read this book it is clear for me the principle that said the strategic mistakes never could be corrected by tactical proficiency.
The authors tell us how to train an infantry unit, in the field, in all weather, day and night, with long foot marches. Sometimes infantry units think that if they have trucks or IFV they don't need foot marches. This is a mistake, especially in Malvinas. The unit training must be focused to develop the offensive attitude in offensive or defensive operations.
The authors describe us the moral status of the argentine forces, more of them, especially the senior officers, thought the conflict could be solve by diplomatic means, no by the war. They thought like diplomats, not like soldiers. Another point is the lack of training of the argentine forces in limited visibility combat. The argentine forces were surprised by the British night operations, but this ability shouldn't have been a surprise, in 1955 the "Biblioteca del Oficial - Circulo Militar - Argentina (Argentine Army Officers library) publicized the "Rommel Memories" where the Marshal said that night attacks were a British's specialty". The authors said that the night vision devices are important, but they're only part of the solution; more important is to develop skills to fight at night.
In the end of the book, they tell us about the fight for Tumbledown hill. They remark the importance of every soldier can request fire support. They add the need to overcome the lack of communications in the middle of the fight. In their opinion, the static defense was the worst tactical mistake of the Argentine Command. It should have kept the initiative with a dynamic defense organized in the deep of battlefield.
To finish the book, Robacio and Hernandez, write some conclusions like that the argentine forces should have attacked the British's logistics and communications more than their front line units. The book stressed the heroism of the argentine soldiers, privates, NCO`s and officers. They added some lessons learned about how to train units and how give them logistical support.
I think it is a very good book. It has a lot of lessons learned with blood but unfortunately forgotten.

This is a great book that reveals the roots of modern design showing how modern design evolved from traditional craft and was as much influenced by industrialization as it was a reaction against the industrial revolution of the victorian era. It is required reading in my History of Design course.

Desperate Voyage takes the reader on a wonderful journey of discovery. This true life adventure takes place at the close of World War II and details the trials and tribulations of the author in his attempt to return to his wife in Austrailia. When he finds there is no transportation available, John decides to sail a small yacht the 8000 miles to Austrailia from Panama. Never mind that he has never sailed a boat before! His challenges are many and John learns many things the hard way. This book, which is hilarious at times and sad at times, keeps the reader always longing to turn the page and see what happens next.

The Book Description in the Editorial Review for this book published on Amazon is incorrect. The aircraft piloted by Capt Smirnoff did not land on an isolated beach in Java, but rather on an isloated beach on the north-west coast of Western Australia.

This book relates an important but relatively unknown event in the history of Western Australia, and is a valuable and very readable addition to other information available on the incident. Importantly it adds to the literature available on the history of Western Australia. The graphic descriptions of the bombing of the flying boats in Broome harbour are also valuable from a historical perspective. Historically valuable, but also a rollicking good read.

A review of the great ones - Mahatma Ghandi to Madonna, Jesus Christ to Jimmy Carter from a Non-American and Non-European veiwpoint. Great bits on Australians as Jones is a great Australian thinker, but includes Asia and the Pacific as well. A great reference tool. Do your best to find it.

Banfield a Newspaper man and his wife escape conventional lifestyle and settle Beautiful Dunk Island off the north Queensland coast (Australia). This is a book for those who work and live in the urban jungle, It leads the imagination to delight in the simple and uncomplicated existence we all at times long for, but haven't the time to discover. Their abode (Dunk Island) is now a millionaire's playground. However, the cottage and surrounds that Banfield established are preserved as part of a National Park. This book is a good read. I am sure all that read it will be tempted to visit the area it portrays. I know I did. It was and is a wonderful tropical paradise.

This story is a testament to a mother who found answers for her children who had been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. Here you will read of her practical journey, the trail and errors in finding what she needed to bring order out of chaos and find a way to live normally as a family.

I read an abstract of this one day in a Doctors waiting room 2-3 years ago and have been waiting for the oportunity to find the full book. Written in the trenches, this is the most graphic depiction anyone could imagine about the harshness of war (Galipolli).
An engrossing read I only put down because I came to the end, unfortunately.

This is a very very interesting piece of work. It integrates a standard archaeological account of an excavation at one of the earliest points of interaction between the Dutch soldiers of the Dutch East India Company with indigenous Khoikhoi herders on the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. It also discusses the ways in which indigenous peoples have been objectified and disempowered by the settler societies that displaced them, and by the anthropologists, historians and anatomists who sought, in their own fumbling ways, to understand them.

Part memoir, part historical reconstruction, part narrative re-imagining, Schrire raises important and unsettling issues regarding archaeology and its place in the contemporary world.

There are many reasons why Schrire's book appears on the reading lists of many of my colleagues who teach historical archaeology and/or about the politics of the past. For one thing, Schrire produces a relatively short and readable discussion of the nature of archaeological investigations and very nicely captures some of the flavor of the field and its minor victories and frustrations.

For another, Schrire's re-imaginings of the thoughts and motivations of the "silenced" of Dutch colonial history at the outpost: common Dutch soldier, Khoikhoi woman, Swedish deserter, frustrated native chief, officious Company functionary, all serve to highlight the laconic prose of the official accounts and together give a much harsher and more emotional rendering to the "facts" she gleans from the historical and archaeological record. We (archaeologists and non-archaoelogists alike) often choose to suppress the emotional when we deal with the past, but this, Schrire argues (and I agree) is something we do at our own peril.

Then too, Schrire also challenges us think very hard about the ways in which archaeologists may (or may not) choose to challenge the convenient founding mythologies of colonial countries. For my part, I'm tempted to interpret the "Darkness" of her title as the empty spaces or silences in colonial histories that enable or justify the casual racism and sense of entitlement that drives colonial regimes and the talented and intelligent people that choose (however unwittingly) to accept and defend that entitlement.

Schrire is also wise enough to place herself inside this matrix. By detailing her childhood and early career in the way she does, she exposes her own complicity in, or tacit agreement with, the same forces of privilege and power. Would that we were all so brave and unsparing of ourselves.

One reads Schrire's frustration and horror at her inheritance, and the land of her birth: the ending anecdote is both chilling and sad. At the same time, one also senses her own deep attachment to South Africa and to the people (Black, Jewish, Colored, English, Afrikaaner) who live there. This kind of emotional honesty and awareness of double-consciousness is what characterizes the best social analysis of our times. Despite (or perhaps even because of) its difficult emotional terrain, this book is a worthy addition to that body of work.

If there are ways beyond the mutual recriminations and hostilities which are the legacies of colonialism, Schrire has outlined one brave attempt to begin to map the path. In the words of my late friend and mentor Professor Rhys Jones (who was one of Schrire's friends and colleagues at Cambridge): Good on yer Carmel.