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Books > Humanities > History > Australasian & Pacific history > General
Having grown up on the massive Killarney cattle station near
Katherine, NT, Toni Tapp Coutts was well prepared when her husband,
Shaun, took a job at McArthur River Station in the Gulf Country,
600 kilometres away near the Queensland border. Toni became cook,
counsellor, housekeeper and nurse to the host of people who lived
on McArthur River and the constant stream of visitors. She made
firm friends, created the Heartbreak Bush Ball and started riding
campdraft in rodeos all over the Territory, becoming one of the
NT's top riders. In the midst of this busy life she raised three
children and saw them through challenges; she dealt with snakes in
her washing basket; she kept in touch with her large, sprawling
Tapp family, and she fell deeply in love with the Gulf Country.
Filled with the warmth and humour readers will remember from A
SUNBURNT CHILDHOOD, this next chapter in Toni's life is both an
adventure and a heartwarming memoir, and will introduce readers to
a part of Australia few have experienced.
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Miracle at Midway
(Paperback)
Gordon W. Prange, Donald M. Goldstein, Katherine V. Dillon
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R503
Discovery Miles 5 030
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Ships in 18 - 22 working days
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New York Times bestseller: The true story of the WWII naval battle
portrayed in the Roland Emmerich film is "something special among
war histories" (Chicago Sun-Times). Six months after Pearl Harbor,
the seemingly invincible Imperial Japanese Navy prepared a decisive
blow against the United States. After sweeping through Asia and the
South Pacific, Japan's military targeted the tiny atoll of Midway,
an ideal launching pad for the invasion of Hawaii and beyond. But
the US Navy would be waiting for them. Thanks to cutting-edge
code-breaking technology, tactical daring, and a significant stroke
of luck, the Americans under Adm. Chester W. Nimitz dealt Japan's
navy its first major defeat in the war. Three years of hard
fighting remained, but it was at Midway that the tide turned. This
"stirring, even suspenseful narrative" is the first book to tell
the story of the epic battle from both the American and Japanese
sides (Newsday). Miracle at Midway reveals how America won its
first and greatest victory of the Pacific war-and how easily it
could have been a loss.
The marines on the First Fleet refused to sail without it. Convicts
risked their necks to get hold of it. Rum built a hospital and
sparked a revolution, made fortunes and ruined lives. In a society
with few luxuries, liquor was power. It played a crucial role, not
just in the lives of individuals like James Squire - the London
chicken thief who became Australia's first brewer - but in the
transformation of a starving penal outpost into a prosperous
trading port. Drawing on a wealth of contemporary sources, Grog
offers an intoxicating look at the first decades of European
settlement and explores the origins of Australia's fraught love
affair with the hard stuff.
Renowned and much-loved travel writer Jan Morris turns her eye to
Sydney: 'not the best of the cities the British Empire created ...
but the most hyperbolic, the youngest at heart, the shiniest.'
Sydney takes us on the city's journey from penal colony to
world-class metropolis, as lively and charming as the city it
describes. With characteristic exuberance and sparkling prose, Jan
Morris guides us through the history, people and geography of a
fascinating and colourful city. Jan Morris's collection of travel
writing and reportage spans over five decades and includes such
titles as Venice, Hong Kong, Spain, Manhattan '45, A Writer's World
and the Pax Britannica Trilogy. Hav, her novel, was shortlisted for
the Booker Prize and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. 'Sydney should be
flattered. A great portrait painter has chosen it for her recent
subject . . . Few writers - a handful of novelists apart - have got
so far under the city's skin as Morris . . . Few Sydneysiders could
match her knowledge of their city's history and its anecdotes' The
Times 'The writing is, at times, like surfing: sentences rise like
vast waves above which she rides, never overbalancing into gush . .
. Jan Morris convincingly explains modern Sydney through its
history' Observer
Hunters and Collectors is about historical consciousness and
environmental sensibilities in European Australia from the
mid-nineteenth century to the present. It is in part a collective
biography of amateur antiquarians, archaeologists, naturalists,
journalists and historians: people who shaped the Australian
historical imagination. Dr Griffiths illuminates the way these avid
collectors and investigators of the Australian land and of its
indigenous inhabitants contributed a sense of identity at
colony-wide and eventually nationwide level. He also considers the
rise of professional history, anthropology and archaeology in the
universities, which ignored the efforts of the amateurs. Griffiths
shows how the seemingly trivial activities of these hunters and
collectors feed into the political and environmental debates of the
1990s. This book is outstanding in its originality, interpretative
insight and literary flair.
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