Oceania Books

This is a splendid book that I would love to use as the core text in a new course on the Indian Ocean. To paraphrase Alfred Doolittle, "I'm willing to use it, I'm wanting to use it, I'm waiting to use it." But I will not ask my students to pay $100 for it: in the absence of expensive color plates or other kinds of graphics, I have a hard time seeing why a 300-plus page book costs so much. I have been hoping for a paperback issue but see no indications that such might be forthcoming.

Rob Wilson and Vilsoni Hereniko are the editors of a book that provides probing insight to the politics of identity and creativity across the Pacific. Highly theoretical but more than worth it, the sometimes post-modernist essays elucidate the complex realm of contradictions which are the meat of Pacific consciousness and literature. With a chapter by Hawaiian soveriegnty leader Haunani-Kay Trask and an insightful interview with acclaimed author Albert Wendt (of Samoa), this book will open your mind to the depth and humanity of Pacific issues. Especially stimulating is the chapter on Gaugain's NuaNua, in which Gilbertese/African American poet Teresia Teaiwa critically analyzes the role of his work in "shaping...the Polynesian body." All of the contributors to this groundbreaking work offer a fresh re-thinking of even the most ingrained Pacific archetypes, while openly challenging the reader to engage new modes of analysis with respect to post-colonial (and in many cases, neo-colonial) art and literature. More penetratingly, the contributors look to the dynamic between this body of work and the Pacific "self"--how art and literature have shaped, and been shaped by indigenous and settler Pacific peoples' perceptions of themselves. This book, like the Field Symposia's "Poet's Reading", is an anthology of anthologies. A dense read with a lot of knowledge therein, and not for the faint of heart. Truly the "inside" story on the politics of identity in Pacific art and literature.

Very well organized anbd beautifully illustrated, this guide provides information on just about anything you wish to see in southwestern Australia. Maps ar a big plus!

Although I own and sell this book*, I've only browsed it quickly, but since there were no reviews up thought I'd at least tell you this much: this is a beautiful book, chock full of really great photos and the info seems totally up to date. I got a bunch by accident and thus can offer such a great deal.
Enjoy mate!
*(see "More Buying Choices" i.e. the used/new section from nonAmazon sellers for "such a deal"--truly perfect condition for less)

I purchased several Melbourne tour guides. Including Lonely Planet, Fodor's guide. Insight Guide Melbourne is the best of them. It is full of pictures, good categorized information. Of course other books have advantages too, but the best is definitely the Insight Guide.

this was my second read. he finds the thread in everyday, modern life that connects us to the epics. i can't wait to see what he (and we) will discover next.

An outstanding travel guide to an area in the Pacific. I used this guide for my vacation to Guam. Everything was as the book says. Outstanding!

This is one of the most recent books published about the history/fate of West Papua under Indonesia rule.
It covers events mostly from the Indonesian takeover till late 1999, with a short preface summarizing events and trends up to 2001. After a short overview of the history of Papua, particular attention is paid to the early history of the OPM guerilla movement, to the economic importance of the province to Indonesia (based on local government statistics), the Freeport mine, and events between 1995-1999.
While individual cases of human rights abuses are mentioned, the major focus of the book is the impact of Indonesian economic development and the accompanying demographic changes and environmental damage on the life and future of the Papuans.
Its conclusion, that independence is the only way the native Papuan people can survive, is hopefully incorrect as in view of recent political developments in Papua independence seems an even less likely outcome today than it did when much of this book was written.

The Irish in Australia is a general history of the contribution of people of Irish birth to Australian national life and character first published in 1986 by New South Wales University professor of history, Patrick O'Farrell. The fifth paperback edition published in 1993 contains 362 pages with two prefaces, eight chapters - the eighth a new one on the "The New Irish - an updated bibliography, 21 useful pages of additional reading sources and an index.

The book is a rich chronicle based on primary and archival material noteworthy for its geographic scope as well as its leverage of study the author has done for other work he has published on Irish migration. He describes his sources as small, no doubt one of the reasons he pursued his research on a global basis at several points in Australia and at others in Belfast, Dublin and Rome.

Caution is recommended to readers who might infer too broad a meaning to the book's title, assuming it suggests the Irish in Australia were a homogenous community. On the contrary, O'Farrell weaves a complicated saga of people from Gaelic-Catholic, Anglo-Irish and Ulster Protestant traditions - seasoned with a few Irish Jews and Quakers - engaged in three areas of almost constant conflict.

* Conflict between distinct, separate and essentially poor Irish-Australian cultural factions;
* Conflict, "often bitter, sometimes violent," between Australians of Irish birth and the Australian establishment;
* Conflict, "often hostile and sometimes most indignant in its refusal to accept the Irish as true and proper Australians" between the Australian Irish and non-Irish communities.

The parameters of Australia's early foundation were marked by English and Irish extremes. Of the two national ancestral groups, O'Farrell claims the Irish have been the more dynamic force in the evolution of Australian national character.

O'Farrell uses extensive data to explain Australia's foundation as a British penal colony. He reports just over 40,000 mostly Catholic convicts were sent to Australia directly from Ireland by 1853, 26 percent of them women. Of the convicts sent from England, he cites estimates suggesting perhaps 8,000 were Irish-born and a similar number were of Irish ancestries. Irish social rebels, those convicted of crimes of protest against poverty and landlordism, were about 20 percent of the total. The rest can be described properly as ordinary criminals, mostly thieves. O'Farrell undoubtedly offends select conventional wisdom that upholds Irish convicts as honorable victims of gross injustice, social oppression and national persecution, or as heroic rebels. "The facts," he writes, "seem otherwise."

One of the strongest personalities in the formation of the Australian-Irish community was Cardinal Patrick Francis Moran, Archbishop of Sydney from 1884 to 1911. Known for his discipline, dignity and pride in Irish identity, Moran advocated inclusion of the Australian-Irish into the British-run colonial society as themselves, not as imitation Anglo-Saxons. Careful to avoid any appearance of Irish nationalism, Moran stood for the richness of Irish culture, making no apologies for what was Irish. Polished and refined, Moran made it clear, "Australia must swallow the Irish potion neat." Moran's stance framed one side of the continuously simmering conflict between the English colonial administration and the new Australian-Irish population. On the other, the establishment insisted de facto membership in society was dependent on the Irish abandoning their identity. The Australian-Irish would have none of it.

Along with Cardinal Moran, about 2,000 mostly Irish Catholic priests arrived in Australia in the 19th Century and waged a holy war to capture the Australian wilderness of indifference, neglect, heresy and sin. Precisely because the Australian-Irish Catholic laity was so dominated by their exuberant, sometimes belligerent clergy, they were saved from the political tribalism and clannishness into which the American Irish fell. The immigrant priests established Irish Catholic symbols everywhere by building hundreds of churches, schools and convents throughout the country. Their presence and impact was ubiquitous.

Perhaps because of the strong emotion in much Irish poetry and song as well as the long economic and political struggle against Britain, there are several theories for the genesis of free Irish emigration to Australia. O'Farrell acknowledges many, but cuts to the chase with a thesis of common sense. He says the best left Ireland for Australia, not the worst. "It took initiative, resourcefulness, capacity and also, obviously, money."

The first free Irish in Australia built their image in the outback. Many experienced farmers arrived from Ireland between 1860 and 1880, finding immediate opportunity in affordable, plentiful land. Many originally non-farming Irish immigrants gravitated to these quickly successful Australian-Irish agrarian communities, investing their wages from first jobs as common laborers and miners into farms of their own. This combination of real and nouveau Irish immigrant farmers built sizeable Irish communities around the major cities in New South Wales, Victoria and the other colonies.

As time passed, Irish migrants gravitated more to Australia's cities, grouping together beneath the structures of neighborhood, parish church and school, workplace / work role, political party and sports. However, O'Farrell makes it clear the urban Irish in Australia did not retreat into ghettos like many of their emigrant countrymen in the U.S. and England. They maintained their communities, but considered themselves Australian-Irish, not just Irish, and strove to function as fully bona fide members of Australian society.

Useful data are plentiful in this book. We read that 342,842 Irish "free" immigrants arrived in Australia and New Zealand between 1851 and 1921, with 101,000 landing in the Victorian gold rush decade of 1851-60. This compares to nearly four million Irish who left the Old Sod for North America. Very few Famine refugees went to Australia, mainly because of the distance and greater expense of the journey. O'Farrell maintains the Irish people who went to Australia and New Zealand were "a much more accomplished, venturesome and happy lot than those the Famine had dumped on America." It is also true, however, that the Irish arrived relatively late in America, a country already settled and an environment more closed to them than was the case in Australia. Ironically, Australia was seen by many Irish as offering greater opportunity than America, where the urban ghetto - much like what they knew at home - awaited them.

O'Farrell refers to the celebration of St. Patrick's Day in Australia several times, explaining its various forms as a religious saint's feast day, a political statement, a social holiday and a boozy down-market street party. Occasionally it was all four, but most often it balanced precariously between an excuse for a drink-up and a lightning rod of both general public and Irish-Australian disapproval for its divisive, irrelevant rowdiness. Cardinal Moran took control of St. Patrick's Day observances during his tenure, trying to bring a sense of balance, sobriety and respectful Australian-Irish character to it. Sadly the celebration remains most famous for excessive drinking, brawling and otherwise objectionable behavior of many participants.

Several lay individuals played prominent roles in sustaining the Australian-Irish community. J.G. O'Connor, who had arrived in Australia from Ireland in 1841 at the age of two, became Sydney's premier Irish social chairman for over 40 years in the last half of the century. He acted under the mantle of the Hibernian Australasian Catholic Benefit Society, founded in Victoria in 1871 and spread rapidly throughout Australia and New Zealand in the 1880s. Neither a nationalist radical nor a man of great means, O'Connor was the quintessential hale hearty, well met Irishman, always promoting an Australian-Irish cause to raise money. The Hibernians continue their preservation of Irish heritage, loyal support of the Catholic Church and good works for the less fortunate today.

The Australian Irish, then and now, take great pride in their sporting life. Sport allowed them to create instant heroes to help fill their needs for self-esteem. One of the most famous was Australian-born boxer Les Darcy who came to fame in Sydney in 1914. O'Farrell describes Darcy as "a pure and simple hero, a good boy who loved and looked after his mother, went to daily Mass, said the rosary - and won: the power in his fists came straight from God." At his death in 1917 at age 21, Darcy was discussed by some as a potential nominee for canonization as Australia's first saint.

O'Farrell explains how single Irish women immigrants often outnumbered Irish men in Australian cities. Bachelor Irish men in the cities tended to work at inferior jobs with low status and realized their inability to offer a woman much more than a life of drudgery and poverty. Their alternatives were to defer marriage until they accumulated sufficient wealth or not marry at all. As a result, many Irish female immigrants as well as first generation Irish-Australian women never wed.

This resulted in substantial age differentials between husbands and wives in the early Australian-Irish community. It also meant Irish-Australian widows of means as well as spinsters were not uncommon in Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Irish immigrants didn't carry nearly as much of their homeland to Australia as one might assume. The Catholic school system where many Australian Irish sent their children competed with public schools in examinations. The priests and nuns who ran the schools were thus forced to load their syllabi with state-mandated classes on top of religious instruction, attendance at Mass and various other church events. "There was no room in the school day for Irish culture," O'Farrell writes. In addition, Irish Catholic Australians didn't want their children studying and embracing Irish culture. Most regarded the study of Ireland as irrelevant in their new situation as Australians.

"The Irish in Australia" by Patrick O'Farrell is a well-researched, comprehensive work written in a pleasant style describing the conflicts faced by people of Irish birth who emigrated to Australia. It bridges the great distance between Ireland and Australia with well-documented demographics as well as numerous stories of colorful Australian-Irish personalities from all corners of society. It includes numerous comparisons of the Australian-Irish immigrant experience with that of the much larger group of Irish emigrants to the United States. It provides entertaining and informative insight into Australia's rich Irish character and must be considered a premier source on Irish migration.

"The Irish in Australia" has been honored with the New South Wales Premier's Award for non-fiction and the Ernest Scott Prize for Australian history.

This book is by far the most comprehensive Irish - Australian historical book I have ever come across. If you can get your hands on one of these books you will not be disappointed. It covers every aspect of Irish history in Australia. Patrick O'Farrell has done a great job in researching and compiling this book.