Charles Ulm and Charles Kingsford Smith were the original pioneers of Australian aviation. Together they succeeded in a number of record-breaking flights that made them instant celebrities in Australia and around the world: the first east-to-west crossing of the Pacific, the first trans-Tasman flight, Australia to New Zealand, the first flight from New Zealand to Australia. Business ventures followed for them, as they set up Australian National Airways in late 1928. Smithy was the face of the airline, happier in the cockpit or in front of an audience than in the boardroom. Ulm on the other hand was in his element as managing director. Ulm had the tenacity and organisational skills, yet Smithy had the charisma and the public acclaim. In 1932, Kingsford Smith received a knighthood for his services to flying, Ulm did not. Business setbacks and dramas followed, as Ulm tried to develop the embryonic Australian airline industry. ANA fought hard against the young Qantas, already an establishment favourite, but a catastrophic crash on the airline's regular route from Sydney to Melbourne and the increasing bite of the Great Depression forced ANA's bankruptcy in 1933. Desperate to drum up publicity for a new airline venture, Ulm's final flight was meant to demonstrate the potential for a regular trans-Pacific passenger service. Somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii his plane, Stella Australis, disappeared. No trace of the plane or crew were ever found. In the years since his death, attention has focused more and more on Smithy, leaving Ulm neglected and overshadowed. This biography will attempt to rectify that, showing that Ulm was at least Smithy's equal as a flyer, and in many ways his superior as a visionary, as an organiser and as a businessman. His untimely death robbed Australia of a huge talent.

As a journalist, Stewart Cockburn was instinctive and fearless. The 16-year-old copy boy who started at the Adelaide Advertiser in 1938 was to have a career in writing, radio and television that spanned more than 45 years. Restless ambition took him to post-war London with Reuters, to Melbourne with the Herald, to Canberra as Press Secretary to Prime Minister Robert Menzies, and to Washington, DC as Press Attache at the Australian Embassy. On returning to the Advertiser, Cockburn's feature-writing won him a Walkley Award and his opinion columns were ever informative and influential. In 1978 he challenged Premier Don Dunstan's politically charged sacking of Police Commissioner Harold Salisbury. His tenacious journalism also prompted the 1983 Royal Commission into the scientifically questionable murder conviction of Eddie Splatt. His books included The Salisbury Affair and very fine biographies of South Australia's long-serving Premier Sir Thomas Playford and, with David Ellyard, the eminent nuclear scientist Sir Mark Oliphant. In this biography, Stewart Cockburn's daughter Jennifer draws on his many letters and journals, bringing to life the father she knew and the changing times he so closely observed.

On the night of 31 May 1942, Sydney was doing what it does best: partying. The theatres, restaurants, dance halls, illegal gambling dens, clubs and brothels offered plenty of choice to roistering sailors, soldiers and airmen on leave in Australia's most glamorous city. The war seemed far away. Newspapers devoted more pages to horse racing than to Hitler. That Sunday night the party came to a shattering halt when three Japanese midget submarines crept into the harbour, past eight electronic indicator loops, past six patrolling Royal Australian Navy ships, and past an anti-submarine net stretched across the inner harbour entrance. Their arrival triggered a night of mayhem, courage, chaos and high farce which left 27 sailors dead and a city bewildered. The war, it seemed, was no longer confined to distant desert and jungle. It was right here at Australia's front door. Written at the pace of a thriller and based on new first person accounts and previously unpublished official documents, A Very Rude Awakening is a ground-breaking and myth-busting look at one of the most extraordinary stories ever told of Australia at war.

In the century from the death of Captain James Cook in 1779 to the rise of the sugar plantations in the 1870s, thousands of Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) men left Hawai'i to work on ships at sea and in na 'aina 'e (foreign lands)-on the Arctic Ocean and throughout the Pacific Ocean, and in the equatorial islands and California. Beyond Hawai'i tells the stories of these forgotten indigenous workers and how their labor shaped the Pacific World, the global economy, and the environment. Whether harvesting sandalwood or bird guano, hunting whales, or mining gold, these migrant workers were essential to the expansion of transnational capitalism and global ecological change. Bridging American, Chinese, and Pacific historiographies, Beyond Hawai'i is the first book to argue that indigenous labor-more than the movement of ships and spread of diseases-unified the Pacific World.

This history presents an authoritative and comprehensive introduction to the experiences of Pacific islanders from their first settlement of the islands to the present day. It addresses the question of insularity and explores islanders' experiences thematically, covering such topics as early settlement, contact with Europeans, colonialism, politics, commerce, nuclear testing, tradition, ideology, and the role of women. It incorporates material on the Maori, the Irianese in western New Guinea, the settled immigrant communities in Fiji, New Caledonia and the Hawaiian monarchy and follows migrants to New Zealand, Australia and North America.

Pacific Forest explores the use of the forests of the Solomon Islands from the prehistoric period up to the end of 1997, when much of the indigenous commercial forest had been logged. It is the first study of the history of the forest in any Pacific Island; the first analysis of the indigenous and British colonial perceptions of the Melanesian forest; and the first critical analysis for this region, not only of colonial forest policies but of later policies and practices which made the governments of independence exploiters of their own people. Pacific Forest addresses a range of evidence drawn from several disciplines, and is a major contribution to environmental history.

A beautiful and sweeping historical novel that takes the reader from the west coast of New Zealand, to Scotland and Melbourne in the 1870s 'Its portrayal of life in a gold-rush town is vivid, and Rose's story is absorbing' The Times 'Worth reading for its occasional streaks of brilliance and insight' Telegraph India 'A epic read . . . a beautifully written, evocative novel that I anticipate you reading and re-reading for years to come' Woman's Way 'A gripping page-turner' Woman 1866. Will Stewart is one of many who have left their old lives behind to seek their fortunes in New Zealand's last great gold rush. The conditions are hostile and the outlook bleak, but he must push on in his uncertain search for the elusive buried treasure. Rose is about to arrive on the shores of South Island when a storm hits and her ship is wrecked. Just when all seems lost she is snatched from the jaws of death by Will, who risks his life to save her. Drawn together by circumstance, they stay together by choice and for a while it seems that their stars have finally aligned. But after a terrible misunderstanding they are cruelly separated, and their new-found happiness is shattered. As Will chases Rose across oceans and continents, he must come to terms with the possibility that he might never see her again. And if he does, he will have to face the man who took her . . . Readers love Alchemy and Rose: 'A real rollercoaster of emotions' 5* reader review 'One of her best yet' 5* reader review 'Both gripping and romantic (quite a combination!) and keeps you hooked right up to the end' 5* reader review 'One of those books that you need to find out what happened, but at the same time you don't want it to finish' 5* reader review 'Couldn't put it down, a real page turner' 5* reader review

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.