Showing titles in Australia & Oceania

The photographs stop you in your tracks. Five children and their grandmother sheltering under an old wooden jetty as the air around them burns a fierce orange. Seen around the world, these were the images from the heart of the inferno that showed the Tasmanian township of Dunalley fighting for survival. On the morning of 4 January 2013, the people of Dunalley had watched with caution as a bush fire burned slowly on top of the hill. It was not an unusual occurrence - fires are a part of Australian life - and Dunalley had never been troubled before.

This is the most comprehensive guide to these islands. Where to stay, where to eat, how to get around, what to see and do. All of the practical information you need is spelled out in detail. And hundreds of color photos bring the islands alive!

Ed Stafford - adventurer extraordinaire and Guinness World Record holder for walking the length of the Amazon River - likes a challenge. Casting about for an adventure that would top the extraordinary feat he recounts in Walking the Amazon, Stafford decides to maroon himself on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific. His mission: to survive for 60 days equipped with nothing - no food, water, or even clothing - except the video cameras he would use to document his time.

Nature is excessive, lovely, and ominous in the Solomons and the Melanesians who live there, often blond or redheaded, are the blackest of all people. Before World War II such names as Guadalcanal, Savo, Munda were rarely heard. Guadalcanal, over 100 miles long by 30 miles wide, is the largest island. Then in descending order there's Malaita, San Cristobal, Choiseul, New Georgia, and Santa Ysabel. All of them are mountainous, covered with rain forest, and laced with rivers.

At middle age, Herb and Nancy Payson decided they needed a change. Why not give up life on shore, quit their jobs in the smoky nightclubs of Los Angeles, and take up the cruising life? In Sea Foam, their 36-foot ketch, the Paysons and their large brood of teenage children cruised the Pacific for six and a half years. They experienced a certain amount of stark terror, but their delights far outbalanced the drawbacks. This special 35th anniversary edition is enhanced with a foreword by Lin Pardey, plus Herb's reflections on how cruising affected his children and his relationship with his determined, lifelong partner/wife Nancy.

Guam is a special place for a number of reasons. At 212 square miles, it's the largest island in Micronesia, and its status as a territory of the U.S. makes it our most westerly possession. It is 6,000 miles west of San Francisco, and is truly where America's day begins. The geology of this apostrophe-shaped island, which is 30 miles long and four to 12 miles wide, is volcanic. Much of the northern part has cliffs along the coast that drop sharply to the sea, as well as a few mountains that range up to 600 feet.

One month into our stay, we'd managed to dispatch most of our charges. We executed the chickens. One of the cats disappeared, clearly disgusted with our urban ways. And Lucky [the cow] was escaping almost daily. It seemed we didn't have much of a talent for farming. And we still had eleven months to go." Antonia Murphy, you might say, is an unlikely farmer. Born and bred in San Francisco, she spent much of her life as a liberal urban cliché, and her interactions with the animal kingdom rarely extended past dinner.

A follow-up to Tim Bowden's highly successful Penelope Goes West, this time covering the intriguing adventures of Tim, Ros, Penelope (the car), and The Manor (the caravan) as they travel across remote north western Australia. Tim and Ros Bowden explore the Kimberley by land and sea, where dramatic 12-metre tides guard coastal locations unchanged by time - still as 17th century buccaneer William Dampier first described them.

Walking Australia describes the way Americans Charlie and Sally Hull most enjoy seeing the country, meeting the people along the way. From the streets of Sydney, over to the desert of Alice Springs, and on down to Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road, the old mining town of Ballarat and up into the Blue Mountains, the Hulls talk and laugh with Australians and visitors alike as they enjoy the culture differences and beauty of Australia.

Tasmania to London. One end of the globe to the other. Eight hundred hitchhiking rides. Eighteen thousand miles. Four seasons. Three continents. Nineteen countries. How many rides does it take to hitch from Tasmania to London? Rogue wanderer Jamie Maslin decides to find out, propelling him into a high-stakes adventure of a lifetime that sees him tackle searing desert, freezing mountains, tropical jungle, and barren steppes on little more than a thumb and a prayer.

When Tim Bowden went back to Tasmania to explore his state of origin for the first time in many years, he was reminded of his adolescent assertion that "Tasmania is the testicle of Australia, suffusing the mainland with strength and vigour. What a pity there is only one of them".

In New Guinea pidgin, "throwim way leg" means to kick out your leg on the first step of a long journey. Full of adventure, wit, and natural wonders, Flannery's narrative is just such a spectacular trip - a tour de force of travel, anthropology, and natural history.

Tim Flannery is one of the world's most influential scientists, credited with discovering more species than Darwin. In Among the Islands, Flannery recounts a series of expeditions he made at the dawn of his career to the strange tropical islands of the South Pacific, a great arc stretching nearly 4,000 miles from the postcard perfection of Polynesia to some of the largest, highest, most ancient, and most rugged islands on Earth.

This short piece outlines the adventures I had both in the air and on the sea. My travels took me on a flying safari across Australia and cruising around the coasts of Tasmania and New Zealand's South Island. Both spectacular, breathtaking places in their own rights. Let me tell you, the rewards outstripped the risks by a long way.

Australien fasziniert mit vielfältigen Landschaften: Bizarre Felsformationen, der weltberühmte Ayers Rock, zauberhafte Koralleninseln, tropische Regenwälder, das Outback... Ebenso einzigartig ist die australische Tierwelt mit Koalas und Kängurus. Aber auch die australischen Städte, mit kulturellen Höhepunkten wie dem Opernhaus von Sydney, lohnen den Besuch.

The Cook Islands, named after the British Captain who seems to have been everywhere in the Pacific, are scattered like tiny jewels over a large stretch of sea between Tahiti and Samoa. Rarotonga, the principal island, is 2,500 miles due south of Honolulu - as far south of the equator as Honolulu is north of it - a similarity that provides both places with ideal climates. But that's as far as the similarity goes, for in spite of their recently built international airport, the Cooks remain off the beaten path.

Tim Bowden takes us on one of the world's greatest road trips, from Australia's east coast to the Top End and into the heart of the outback. Told with wry humor, an infectious enthusiasm for history, and a nose for finding great stories, Tim lays bare the hardships of bush life and celebrates the joys and freedoms of being on the road.

Written and read by best-selling Australian author and much-loved actor William McInnes, this is a story about our love affair with holidays. It's about going away and staying at home. It's about the relaxing times you had as a kid, escapes you have with your children and the stories you hear from your friends. It can be about a romantic sunset, the spare seat at breakfast being taken by an attractive stranger, a miraculous airline upgrade....

Patrick, Meg and their family had built a happy, sustainable life in regional Victoria. But in late 2013, they found themselves craving an adventure: a road trip. But theirs was a road trip with a difference. With Zephyr (10), Woody (1) and Zero, their Jack Russell, they set off on an epic 6,000km yearlong cycling journey along Australia’s east coast, from Daylesford to Cape York and back.

The Marshall Islands, named after a British sea captain who explored the group in 1788, are scattered like flung necklaces over about 750,000 square miles of Pacific Ocean. Positioned 2,200 miles southwest of Hawaii, they occupy an area between four and 20 degrees north of the equator. The islands are aligned in two groups. Those to the west are the Ralik Chain; to the east, they're in the Ratak Chain. Altogether they total 34 islands and 850 sea-washed reefs.