I found this book to be an excellent compilation of the acccessable aboriginal historical sites around the Australian countryside. It is layed out in a logical way beginning in the south west of the continent and following (roughly) a clockwise route finishing in Tasmania. The presentation of the information is both informative and easy to follow and there are good instructions on finding the sites. I found that there are three aboriginal sites of significance within 20 Km of my home that I didn't know exist. I was facinated to visit these and am looking forward to completing the set in the coming years.

Rip Van Australia is a series of short and witty rants (one line to 2 pages), arranged alphabetically, on what's wrong with Oz and/or the world and how to fix it, interspersed with irreverent wisecracks (e.g. `Ballet: why don't they just get taller girls?'), much in the style of Ambrose Bierce's _The Devil's Dictionary_.

Written by John Singleton and Bob Howard during the years of the Fraser government - before Singleton took the ALP's 30 pieces of silver (adjusted for 2000 years of inflation) - some of the specifics are out of date, but many are even more relevant now than they were then. It is an excellent introduction to libertarian issues, and it was in the bibliography of this book that I first discovered Rand and Rothbard.

If you can lay your hands on a copy, I highly recommend it; if you find two, please contact me and I'll take one off your hands :-)

In the film "Wall Street" Gordon Gekko said "Greed is good, greed is right. Greed works!"

Gordon Gekko is unfit to tie the sandals of Alan Bond.

Bond built a $5Billion empire in Australia in the 1980's, starting in 1983 when he won the America's Cup. By the end of the 1990's he was bankrupt with millions of dollars hidden offshore in places that don't like to co-operate with bankrupcy trustees.

Bond performed a miracle - he lost money selling beer to Australians.

Paul Barry writes a rollicking yarn of a scoundrel of the highest order. A must read for the greedy or those who like to watch the greedy get away with it.

Philip Weigall is a long time fly fisher from the New South Wales/ Victorian border area in Australia. His book focuses upon his experiences in fly fishing in this area, and irrespective of whether or not you know the area, the book will quickly bring you under its spell.

The book describes to the reader in a series of stories, how Philip feels about flyfishing - not a sport but a part of life.

The stories are beautifully accompanied by pictures taken by Philip and his partner and add immeasurably to the experience of the book.

Dangerous to leave on the coffee table, this book will be worn out within 12 months. A great book as a gift (My father got a copy last Christmas!) but buy two and keep one on your own bookcase. I did.

I have read this book with the very exciting feelings ,as reading a good scientific novel. The story bigins with the history of scientific novels as well as the history of the observation on Mars. The central portion of the book would de the argument of the experiments about the possibility of life on Mars. This argument is too deatiled to read the book with patience, but may be of considerable scientific importance. After leaving the story of Mars, this book also refers to the future endevour for searching life in the outer space beyond earth. This book may be best dedecating for amature astronomers or students interested in science.

this is a fantastically indepth view of one of the worlds pre-eminent sculptors.

Sometimes I need to stop reading a book for the night but decide to read one more chapter. Then I find myself sliding into the next chapter, and the next, etc. This is one of those books. The Rock is well written and it covers the subject. On occasion it does wax purple as though the author prefers poetry to prose and the theme of the apologetic white man who tries to defend and bond with the aboriginal has become hackneyed, especially given the attitudes of the aboriginals themselves toward other cultures and toward wild animals. Yet this attitude and no other seems to satisfy the demands of today's marketplace.

This book is a very good introduction to the whole notion of democracy taking place within a right-based framework. To do this, Rayner looks extensively at the current Austalian democracy and scrutinises it with regards to its performance on rights and also points out the ideals that they (and the rest of the world, of course) should be moving to. Although focussed on the Australian democracy, it is very well written and will introduce the idea of rights as something that is real - not just something people talk glassy-eyed about.

Writen by the Head of the (Royal) Naval Historical Branch, The Royal Navy and the Falklands War is quite simply the finest account of the naval war yet written. With detailed access to official documents and widely illustrated with photographs form both official and private sources, the book traces the history of the campign from the naval perspective in a day by day, blow by blow account.
The narrative is easy to follow, either as a cover to cover read or a book to dip into for specific information about key events. There is a seperate chapter dealing with ships taken up from trade, (STUFT), and appendices listing all ships from both navies that took part in the war. An excellent read and a "must have" book for the serious reader.

The Rum Rebellion on Australia Day, 1808 was the outcome of the head-on collision between two of the most determined personalities in Australian history. One was Captain William Bligh R.N., Governor of the Penal Colony of New South Wales: the other was John Macarthur, at one time an officer in the infamous New South Wales Corps, and later a very wealthy and influential merchant and pastoralist.

That the penal colony was established on 26 January, 1788 was a direct result of the American War of Independence, for it would thereafter not be possible for people sentenced to penal servitude in Britain to be sent into exile in the Colonies of New England.

The beginnings of the first European settlement in Australia were therefore altogether inauspicious. Those who arrived in the First Fleet were either convicted felons or the soldiers of the New South Wales Corps who were to be their jailers. The King of England and his government were represented in the Colony by the Governor, Captain Arthur Phillip, R.N..

In the absence of any free settlers and in particular of anything resembling a merchant class, the officers of the Corps were able to control the distribution of all kinds of commodities, including food, that were brought into the colony.

Of particular historical importnce among those commodities was rum: rum which was so generally sought after in the colony that the Corps officers, by their illegal trafficking, were able to establish it as a de facto currency.In rum, wages were paid, other goods were bought and sold and contractual obligations discharged.

No one profited from this ruinous commerce more than John Macarthur who, by virtue of his dominant personality, became the acknowledged leader and spokesman of the officers as well as others, including some emancipated convicts, engaged in the rum trade.

It was only natural then that, when Governor William Bligh arrived in the colony in August, 1806 under instructions to pursue a policy favourable to the small farmers of the Hawkesbury Valley and unfavourable to the interests of the rum traffickers in Sydney, these latter should look to Macarthur to lead their challenge against the Governor and lawful authority.

In large part the conflict between the rum traffickers and the proper authority of the governor manifested itself in a series of legal actions brought by Macarthur against anyone who seemed to threaten his previously unfettered monopoly, and found expression in formal reports by the Governor to the Colonial Office in London as well as in less formal despatches from Macarthur to influential members of the English aristocracy whom he considered likely to support his cause.

The crisis came on 26 January, 1808, exactly twenty years after the establishment of the settlement in Sydney Cove. On that day, the officers of the Corps led their soldiers - most of them emboldened be liberal quantities of rum - in a march upon the Governor's residence. It was, as Evatt wrote "... an organised attack, not only in military array, but by officers and soldiers with loaded guns, fixed bayonets and all the panoply of war."

Governor Bligh was arrested and supplanted in executive control of the colony by a junta of military officers and John Macarthur.

It is one of the more bitter ironies of Australian history that this treasonous outrage occurred on the very day upon which, every year since Federation in 1901, Australians celebrate their nationhood.

Bligh has been much maligned by popular history both in Australia and elsewhere, and Evatt's book did much to set the record straight. It brought to bear upon the events and relationships narrated the objectivity of analysis and the fair-mindedness one would hope should characterise an author of such eminence. Dr. Evatt has, in addition, performed the estimable service of making otherwise cloudy legal vistas clear and accessible to any interested lay reader.

A distinguished jurist, Dr. Evatt was, at various times, a Justice of the High Court of Australia, Attorney-General and Foreign Minister and, in 1948-49, the President of the General Assembly of the United Nations Organisation.