New Zealand Books

This is an extraodinary story. It is based on fact and is one of the most powerful children's stories I have read. It is one of those books that can easily cross over from children to adult fiction.

Elsie Locke was a New Zealand author based in Christchurch, this is her most famous and best book. She had read about the Phipps/Small family in some books about early New Zealand Settlers and decided to follow up the story. She found out what she could from the grandchildren of the original settlers and checked up on records. It has been fictionalised what she didn't know, but the detail in it is superb. You really feel like you know and understand early New Zealand in general and Christchurch in particular.

It is about a family, a mother, four sons and two daughters who make the decision to escape from an abusive father in Australia. They wait until he has gone on a droving trip for 7 days and make their way to Sydney where they hide out with a secret friend for a few days while they find passage somewhere else, anywhere else. They change their name and finally get passage on a boat to New Zealand. Only the eldest child, a daughter, cannot get passage and must remain with the friends.

The rest of the family escape to New Zealand, to Christchurch where the eldest two boys are set to work draining swamps and cutting flax to pay their passage. The mother manages to settle a small farm house in Governers Bay on the Cracroft Wilsons land with her youngest three where she establishs a small farm growing lots of fresh produce which she uses to better the family.

The trials and tribulations make sobering reading. Suriving on damper and oats for weeks on end, living in a single room in a thatched cob cottage. Young teenages having to alk 7 miles with produce to sell in Lyttelton, having only squares of greased calico over openings in the wall to make windows. The most incredible of it was the droving trip she took to the west coast going hundreds of miles with 30 odd cattle to sell on the gold fields, just the mother and teenage son. The hardship and responsibility of it all is sobering.

Elsie Locke has invested this story with a wealth of detail so you can understand the times much better. The detail never gets in the way of the story though. Pwerful, compelling and a great read.

This book details the history of Australian Mining, but don't be put off by the seemingly dry subject-it is anything but dry. Stories are told of the romantic gold rushes, the lucky, the unlucky, the schemes, plots, the deceptions, the clouded histories, the despair of the many, and the fortune of the few. For students of both human nature and history it has interesting insights, such as how plain luck plays a significant part in human events, and how apparently small innocuous irrelevancies can lead to profound outcomes.

An interesting example is that of the Mount Morgan Mine in Queensland. Black boulders, which cattle shied from, formed a low hill in the ranges. There was a gold rush a few miles away, but nobody thought to test the black hill, as the rocks were all wrong. Farmers sold the useless land the cattle didn't like. A lazy miner was sacked from his job, his wife pleaded for his re-employment, in return for the locale of a "silver mine" in the hills. A few savvy mine managers wandered into a black innocuous hill. They chipped away, took out leases over the whole hill (a wise move), kept it very quiet (another wise move). When samples were broken, there was more gold than black earth-it was assumed it wasn't gold but something else. They began to mine quietly away until a local newspaper noticed there was a phenomenal amount of gold leaving a nearby town. The word was out. Mount Morgan -the "freak lode" as described by geologists at the time-became one of the richest and mightiest gold mines on earth. It defied virtually everything known about gold mines at the time. Geologists were perplexed, but as long as shares repaid 413,000% of their value, the owners didn't care. The copper that got "in the way" of gold processing eventually amounted to about 250,000t of copper. It was mined for around 100 years, and money that came from the mine was used to find oil in the Middle East, which eventually formed the company BP. Mine owners declared in World War 1, that Mount Morgan money was used to fight the Germans. In the 1950s over half of Great Britain's revenue came from oil discoveries that were originally financed by one small black hill in the outback of Australia.

The world's largest resource of lead and zinc-the Broken Hill Lode-is another case in point. For some years in the 1800s a large, jagged hill of black boulders more than a mile long and 500 feet wide was ignored by local prospectors at the nearby silver rushes at Silverton. A surveyor's fence was put across it. A trig station crowned the summit. Samples were chipped which came back high in uninteresting lead, but little else. It wasn't near any main thoroughfares. The owner of the land wasn't interested in prospectors. It was too big to be a lode. A good lode was said to be five feet wide, Broken Hill was over 500 feet wide. The rocks were wrong. So numerous hopefuls mined the molehills, whilst the mountain was ignored.

When people finally got around to examining it, a few speculators bought and sold shares, making a few bucks, as the hill guarded its riches. Finally, when a shaft was sunk on the wrong rock type-white kaolin-bonanza silver assays came back and the hill was born. The first 48 tons produced about 36,000oz of silver, which in the 1880s, was a lot of dough. The ensuing stock market mania and mining development transformed Australian history. Over $AUS 70 billion has been taken from the hill to the 1990s.

There are many other similar tales, twists and turns- the vagaries and tides of history. Curiously and well written, it is recommended for those interested in history, particularly Australian, or those simply interested in curious human anecdotes of life.

Inglis took 15 years to write this book. The book has been written in easy to read non-academic style that makes for easy access by the casual reader. I read this book with ease finding it full of useful and interesting facts. Inglis does not attempt to analyse the theory behind memory or memory representation but does allow enough material for the investigative reader to develop his or her own thesis.

In short it is a long book, but a good book and certainly one that helps to remind us that there are those that we should not forget.

I am impressed with the way the author has set out the drama scripts - the storyline itself, followed by an inside look into the characters, and then a suggested play format to follow. What I also like is that it gives the ability for students to amend and adjust the storyline as they wish - in order to accentuate any aspect they make like to. I like the fact that the drama pieces are short - it leads to lots of possible development and support activities - particularly in the younger classes. The opportunity to add Maori language script alongside to enhance what's already provided is another bonus.

The additional parts at the back of the book (the cultural and pronunciation guides and the glossary) provide some valuable support information for teachers and learners.

When did Australia first show a distinctive foreign policy? This is the question that has troubled historians for some time. Meaney's book, however, appears to have settled the issue. The book is chronological in style and sets out the history of Australian defence and foreign policy, from the colonial administrations of the late 19th Century, through to the start of the First World War. It appears to be the first of a series of three which, if the first is anything to go by, will be the definitive account of Australia's foreign relations and defence planning in the early 20th century. Meaney's scholarship is meticulous, and the book is written in a style that will satisfy both the scholar and the lay reader with an interest in the history of this formative period. I highly recommend the work as a valuable (almost invaluable) contibution to our understanding of Australia and its place in the world.

An unprecedented story - a comprehensive dissection of an anti-environmental PR campaign based on an almost complete set of leaked public relations files. The tactics exposed are in common use - especially in North America, but rarely see the light of day until many years have passed. Shandwick, one of the top 10 environmental "greenwashers" helped Shell manage bad publicity over it's role in Nigeria. They were hired in 1997 to build support for Timberlands, a state-owned logging company in New Zealand. For two years 5 full time employees ran a comprehensive campaign to discredit the environmentalists, who initially had majority support, and build a positive picture of their logging plans in the eyes of the public. The exposure of these plans, by the initial publication of this book in the fall of 1999 , led in part to the downfall of the NZ government and the cancellation of the Timberlands old growth logging plans.

The book makes use of the leaked documents to illustrate how environmental groups were infiltrated, and attempts made to neutralize them. Details of how sources of funding were targeted, and the use of legal threats or "SLAPP suits". It documents the people who actively assisted the company, as well as those who were unknowingly recruited in support. The setting up and methods of control of supposedly independent front groups is revealed in the leaked PR documents. In North America the "wise use" groups fit this model. The manipulation of the media is detailed. Friendly press were given all-expense paid tours of model logging areas, for which positive publicity was expected. Complaints were sent to the employers of journalists who wrote stories unfavorable to logging.

"Dirty tricks" are exposed. The planting of a fake bomb and the destruction of a tree-sitting platform with a log slung from a helicopter are exposed through subsequent cover ups and attempts to influence an investigation by aviation authorities.

I rate this book highly because of the unique portrait of an anti-environmental campaign, and it's relevance to campaigns in North America.

Almost impossible to find. This book tells how to build everything you need to set up a pottery studio including detailed plans for a treadle wheel and kilns. It tells how to make your equipment on a budget -- an important consideration these days.

I checked this book out of the library years ago. Since then, someone has stolen the library's copy. I have been looking for a copy for years. If you find a copy, I strongly urge you to buy it.

This book is the first of its kind to focus on the identity of Scots migrating to colonial Western Australia between 1829 and 1850.
It is captivating, informative and is a great contribution to Scottish and Australian history, especially in its focus on individual, migrant histories.
The author has captured the true essence of the Westralian Scots, and illustrates that whilst they were small group of migrants, their passionate and strong sense of Scottish idenity was not lost or absorbed, but rather, celebrated. Whilst the book focuses on personal histories, it also has a sense of fun, delving into the lives these Scots with excerpts relating to their songs, drinking and reading. This book is perfect for anyone with any Scottish roots or an interest in Scottish migration. It's well developed, alluring, and the best history book I have ever read.
I highly recommend this book.

This is the first book about the alien "Oppy" who comes to Earth to study its "primitive" species and takes up residence in Alfred Brown's head. Gaelyn employed all her wonderful story-telling skills and the quirky humour that was her special stamp in this book, which should be enjoyed by children the world over.

It is not often that a book, especially a work of non-fiction, moves and excites me enough to make me want to send its author fan mail. While reading Jennifer Deger's Shimmering Screens, I had to resist the urge to do so at the conclusion of each chapter; only the rush to discover what insights and delights awaited me in the next installment kept my fingers from the keyboard. Deger, who is a research fellow in anthropology at Macquarie University in Sydney, has written a brilliant book that offers an analysis of the ways in which one man, Bangana Wunungmurra, took up the challenge of making video from the community of Gapuwiyak in Arnhem Land in order to reinvigorate Yolngu rom (Law) and to pursue a personal redemption. It is a study of the impact of Western technology in (and not necessarily on) a remote community, a memoir of how fieldwork changes the anthropologist, and a meditation on the ways in which Yolngu and whitefellas can interpenetrate each other's worlds. If anthropology in recent years has questioned the possibility of continuing to write conventional ethnography along the lines of Lloyd Warner's classic study of the Yolngu,A Black Civilization: A Study of an Australian Tribe, then Deger's Shimmering Screens achieves a new model for ethnography in the 21st century.