Showing 1–12 of 882 results
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On Red Earth Walking: The Pilbara Aboriginal Strike, Western Australia 1946–1949
Artist/Author: Scrimgeour, Anne$42.00 Add to cartIn 1946 Aboriginal people walked off pastoral stations in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, withdrawing their labour from the economically-important wool industry to demand improvements in wages and conditions. Their strike lasted three years. On Red Earth Walking is the first comprehensive account of this significant, unique, and understudied episode of Australian history. Using extensive and previously unsourced archival evidence, Anne Scrimgeour interrogates earlier historical accounts of the strike, delving beneath the strike’s mythology to uncover the rich complexity of its history. The use of Aboriginal oral history places Aboriginal actors at the centre of these events, foregrounding their agency and their experiences. Scrimgeour provides a lucid examination of the system of colonial control that existed in the Pilbara prior to the strike, and a fascinating and detailed account of how these mechanisms were gradually broken down by three years of striker activism. Amid Cold-war fears of communist subversion in the north, the prominence of communists among southern supporters and the involvement of a non-Aboriginal activist, Don McLeod, complicated settler responses to the strike. This history raises provocative ideas around racial tensions in a pastoral settler economy, and examines political concerns that influenced settler responses to the strike, to create a nuanced and engaging account of this pivotal event in Australian Indigenous and labour histories.
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The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief and Compassion: Surprising Observations of a Hidden World
Artist/Author: Wohlleben, Peter$32.00 Add to cartMother deer that grieve? Horses that feel shame? Squirrels that adopt their grandchildren? We humans tend to assume that we are the only living things able to experience feelings intensely and consciously. But have you ever wondered what?s going on in an animal’s head? More and more researchers are realising that animals in fact experience a rich emotional life. Acting as our interpreter of the animal world and of the fascinating science, Peter Wohlleben brings this new research to life with his own observations of his favourite creatures. From the leafy forest floor to the inside of a bee hive, The Inner Life of Animals shows us microscopic levels of observation as well as forcing us to confront the big philosophical, ethical and scientific questions. We hear the stories of a grateful humpback whale, of a hedgehog who has nightmares, and of a magpie who commits adultery; we meet bees that plan for the future, pigs who learn their own names and crows that go tobogganing for fun. And at last we find out why wasps exist. Our fellow creatures are not mindless automatons driven by an inflexible genetic code, but individuals with personality and feeling. The Inner Life of Animals will show you these living things in a new light and will open up the animal kingdom like never before.
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The Original Australians: The Story of the Aboriginal People (Revised Edition)
Artist/Author: Flood, Josephine$36.00 Add to cartThe Original Australians tells the story of Australian Aboriginal history and society from its distant beginnings to the present day. From the wisdom and paintings of the Dreamtime to the first contact between Europeans and Indigenous Australians, through to the Uluru Statement, it offers an insight into the life and experiences of the world’s oldest surviving culture. The resilience and adaptability of Aboriginal people over millennia is one of the great human stories of all time.
Josephine Flood answers the questions that Australians and visitors often ask about Aboriginal Australia: Where did the Aboriginal people come from and when? How did they survive in Australia’s harsh environment? What was the traditional role of indigenous women? What are land rights? How do Aboriginal people maintain their culture today? And many more.
This bestselling account has been updated and is fascinating reading for anyone who wants to discover Aboriginal Australia.
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The Mornington Peninsula to Wilsons Promontory: Including The Bass Coast, French Island & Phillip Island
Artist/Author: Freeman, Kornelia, Ulo Pukk$40.00 Add to cartThe Mornington Peninsula, Bass Coast and Wilsons Promontory, with picturesque beaches and a myriad of attractions, continues to attract crowds of daytrippers and holiday-makers. The Mornington Peninsula’s pristine sandy beaches and magnificent coastal views, spectacular golf courses, foreshore camping, surfing, sailing and some of the best art galleries, restaurants and wineries in Victoria, leave visitors with cherished and unforgettable memories.
The world-renowned Penguin Parade at Phillip Island, the intriguing rock formations at Cape Liptrap, strawberry and cherry farms, hedge mazes, hot springs, seal and dolphin tours, and historic homesteads, all are waiting to be discovered!
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Atmosphere of Hope: Searching for Solutions to the Climate Crisis
Artist/Author: Flannery, Tim$26.00 Add to cartA decade after his internationally bestselling The Weather Makers, acclaimed scientist and author Tim Flannery argues that Earth’s climate system is approaching a crisis. Catastrophe is not inevitable, but time is fast running out. Atmosphere of Hope provides both a snapshot of the trouble we are in and an up-to-the-minute analysis of some of the new possibilities for mitigating climate change that are emerging now.
From atmospheric carbon capture through extensive seaweed farming, CO2 snow production in Antarctica and the manufacture of carbon-rich biochar to reflecting the sun’s rays by releasing sulphur into the atmosphere and painting landscapes and cities white, Flannery outlines an array of innovative technologies that give cause for hope.
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Kinglake-350
Artist/Author: Hyland, Adrian$25.00 Add to cartKinglake-350 is a masterpiece of writing about family, community, country life and what happens when a day of ultimate terror arrives.
Adrian Hyland takes a dramatic and compelling sequence of events on that day and weaves them into a picture of universal significance and deep fascination.
On 7 February 2009 Roger Wood was the police officer in charge of Kinglake, at the epicentre of the worst bushfire disaster in Australia’s history, Black Saturday. As the firestorm engulfed the community, he risked his life, again and again, to try and save people.With the fire raging all around, he phoned home to warn his wife what was coming. She screamed that the fire had already hit their property. Then the line went dead.
Black Saturday was a many-headed monster in whose wake stories of grief, heroism and desolation erupted all over the state of Victoria. This is a book about the monster—and the heroism of those who confronted it.
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Black Saturday: Not the End of the Story
Artist/Author: Fraser, Peg$32.00 Add to cartThe Victorian bushfires of February 2009 captured the attention of all Australians and made headlines around the world. One hundred and seventy-three people lost their lives, the greatest number from any bushfire event in this nation’s history.
In the wake of this tragedy much media and public commentary emphasised recovery, resilience, community, self-sufficiency and renewed determination. Peg Fraser, working as a Museum Victoria curator with survivors in the small settlement of Strathewen, listened to these stories but also to other, more challenging narratives.
The memories and thoughts that Fraser heard, and gives voice to in this book, complicate much of what we thought we knew about the experience of catastrophic natural events. Although all members of the same community, Strathewen’s survivors lived through Black Saturday and its aftermath in ways that were often very different from each other.
Beginning each chapter with an object from the bushfires – among them a Trewhella jack, a burned mobile phone, a knitted chook and a brick chimney – Fraser explores and reveals how each person’s identity, including as a man or a woman with a particular social position in the town, impacted upon experiences and understandings of loss, survival and even the future.
This is historical truth of the most vital, affecting and powerful kind.
Shortlisted for the Victorian Community History Awards 2019
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Conservation Behavior: Applying Behavioral Ecology to Wildlife
Artist/Author: Berger-Tal, Oded, David Saltz (Editors)$70.00 Add to cartConservation behaviour assists the investigation of species endangerment associated with managing animals impacted by anthropogenic activities. It employs a theoretical framework that examines the mechanisms, development, function and phylogeny of behaviour variation in order to develop practical tools for preventing biodiversity loss and extinction. Developed from a symposium held at the International Congress on Conservation Biology in 2011, this is the first book to offer an in-depth, logical framework that identifies three vital areas for understanding conservation behaviour: anthropogenic threats to wildlife, conservation and management protocols, and indicators of anthropogenic threats. Bridging the gap between behavioural ecology and conservation biology, Conservation Behavior ascertains key links between the fields, explores the theoretical foundations of these linkages, and connects them to practical wildlife management tools and concise applicable advice. Adopting a simplistic, structured approach throughout, Conservation Behavior is a vital resource for graduate students, academic researchers and wildlife managers.
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Evolution in Minutes: The Origins and Story of Life Explained and Illustrated
Artist/Author: Naish, Darren$22.00 Add to cartHow did life begin? What is the theory of evolution and is it proven? Are we really descended from apes? And has evolution stalled or is humanity just a step on the way to more advanced forms of life? Through 200 mini-essays, expert palaeontologist Darren Naish answers these and many other fundamental questions on the most controversial topic of all. From the theories of Charles Darwin and the Survival of the Fittest to cutting-edge research on consciousness and artificial life, he explains where we came from, how we became human, and what might happen to us next. Immense in scope, and with 200 informative images and diagrams, Evolution in Minutes concisely covers the concepts, rival theories, history and politics of evolution, as well as explaining the development of life across deep time as revealed by the fossil record, from the earliest bacteria via dinosaurs and Neanderthals to humankind – and beyond.
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Nikulinsky Naturally: An Artist’s Life
Artist/Author: Snell, Ted (Editor), Nikulinsky, Philippa (Artist)$43.00 Add to cartArtist Philippa Nikulinsky, AM, is a nationally and internationally recognised botanical illustrator. This book celebrates Philippa’s extraordinary career from the mid-1970s to today. Specialising in plants from harsh environments, especially the Great Sandy Desert, Philippa’s magnificent illustrations have been included in many books and magazines. Her career focuses on a lifetime fascination with the flora and fauna of the arid lands of Western Australia. For nearly 50 years she has travelled throughout the state to record, draw and paint its phenomenal natural history. She has shared her gift for watercolour painting through teaching, exhibitions, commissioned works and publications, most recently Cape Arid, (stock ID 13666) published in 2012.
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Meeting the Waylo: Aboriginal Encounters in the Archipelago
Artist/Author: Shellam, Tiffany$30.00 Add to cartThis book explores the experiences of Indigenous Australians who participated in Australian exploration enterprises in the early nineteenth century. These Indigenous travellers, often referred to as ‘guide’s’, ‘native aides’, or ‘intermediaries’ have already been cast in a variety of ways by historians: earlier historiographies represented them as passive side-players in European heroic efforts of Discovery, while scholarship in the 1980s, led by Henry Reynolds, re-cast these individuals as ‘black pioneers’. Historians now acknowledge that Aborigines ‘provided information about the customs and languages of contiguous tribes, and acted as diplomats and couriers arranging in advance for the safe passage of European parties’.
More recently, Indigenous scholars Keith Vincent Smith and Lynnette Russell describe such Aboriginal travellers as being entrepreneurial ‘agents of their own destiny’.
While historiography has made up some ground in this area Aboriginal motivations in exploring parties, while difficult to discern, are often obscured or ignored under the title ‘guide’ or ‘intermediary’. Despite the different ways in which they have been cast, the mobility of these travellers, their motivations for travel and experience of it have not been thoroughly analysed.
Some recent studies have begun to open up this narrative, revealing instead the ways in which colonisation enabled and encouraged entrepreneurial mobility, bringing about ‘new patterns of mobility for colonised peoples’.
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Europe: The First 100 Million Years
Artist/Author: Flannery, Tim$25.00 Add to cartIt is hard to overstate just how unusual Europe was towards the end of the age of the dinosaurs. It was a dynamic island arc whose individual landmasses were made up of diverse geological types, including ancient continental fragments, raised segments of oceanic crust, and land newly minted by volcanic activity. Yet even at this early stage Europe was exerting a disproportionate influence on the world.
About 100 million years ago, the interaction of three continents—Asia, North America and Africa—formed the tropical island archipelago that would become the Europe of today, a place of exceptional diversity, rapid change and high energy.
Europe: The First 100 Million Years is full of surprises. Over the millennia Europe has received countless immigrant species and transformed them. It is where the first coral reefs formed. It was once home to some of the world’s largest elephants. And it played a vital role in the evolution of our own species.
When the first modern humans arrived in Europe 40,000 years ago, they began to exert an astonishing influence on the continent’s flora and fauna, and now, Europeans lead the way in wildlife restoration—there are more wolves in Europe today than in the USA. This enthralling ecological history is more than the story of Europe and the Europeans, it will change our understanding of life itself.
