Australia Oceania category: 2401 books

Old soldiers never tell their war stories? This one did: "General Johnstone tried to compliment us on our 'work' but was cut up too much when he heard of our losses. He was visibly affected. We marched to Mametz Wood and there Col. Plugge also tried to address us but he could not control his feelings...

In a country where land disputes were the chief cause of conflict between the coloniser and the colonised, surveying could never be a neutral, depoliticised pastime.In a groundbreaking piece of scholarship, Giselle Byrnes examines the way surveyors became figuratively and literally ‘the cutting edge...

This is the story of a quest I began three decades ago the search for my Chinese identity. The path I travelled was not linear, and the years brought pain as well as joy. But, while this is a narrative about being Chinese and also a New Zealander, I know that the search for purpose and meaning in life...

"I recall meeting Lewis on a number of occasions in company with Tony Murphy. I recall conversation getting around to payments of money with Murphy and Lewis. Lewis thanked me on several occasions and said 'Little fish are sweet." —Jack 'The Bagman' Herbert in evidence to the Fitzgerald...

An earthy, entertaining collection of yarns about twenty larger-than-life outback characters. Meet Ron Canlin, who one day began sculpting the sandstone walls of his opal mine. Ten years later, every drive and tunnel in Ron's claim is full of wonderful sculptures - the eighth wonder of the world....

After living abroad for years, novelist Peter Carey returns home to Sydney and attempts to capture its character with the help of his old friends, drawing the reader into a wild and wonderful journey of discovery and rediscovery as bracing as the southerly buster that sometimes batters Sydney's shores....

The 30 stories in this book describe some of the most extraordinary events in New Zealand history. Who knew that a fire killed 39 people at Seacliff Mental Hospital in 1942? That 10 people died in a lahar on White Island in 1914? That a yacht race between Lyttelton and Wellington in 1951 resulted in...

Well crafted and piercingly insightful, this collection of Steve Braunias’s 2007 interviews of New Zealand's famous and infamous-both publicity-seekers and those desperate to hide from the spotlight-is a humorous and biting survey of the national psyche. Ranging from the disturbingly naïve to the...

New Zealand's past has been a rollercoaster ride of hopes, dreams, wars and peace. In his fully revised Illustrated History, noted historian Matthew Wright brings New Zealand's turbulent, exciting past to life, tracing our journey from the arrival of Polynesians over 800 years ago, to the present day....

In this innovative study Michael Bassett, historian and former politician, explores how and why the state became such an active and interventionist player in New Zealand life, developing, subsidising and regulating the economy and protecting citizens from the cradle to the grave. He looks in detail...

The Unmaking of Gough is the story of the most dramatic and extraordinary eighteen months in Australian political history. Paul Kelly draws upon his personal conversations with the main players at the time to tell this compelling story. Kelly deals with the loans affair, the Cairns sacking, Malcolm...

Examining the development of a sense of national identity in a British colony, this highly authoritative work is a valuable addition to the literature in New Zealand. By looking at the onset of home-grown shipping, railway, and telegraph networks as well as at the Maori and kiwi experiences, not to...

The economic reforms launched by the 1984 David Lange–led Labour government changed New Zealand forever. Agriculture bore the brunt of those changes and Rogernomics, the name by which the era came to be known, became an historical reference point for the primary sector: a defining and pivotal moment...

In 2009, Kirsty Gunn returned to spend the winter in her hometown of Wellington, New Zealand, also the place where Katherine Mansfield grew up. In this exquisitely written “notebook,” which blends memoir, biography, and essay, Gunn records that winter-long experience and the unparalleled insight...