Australia Discovery

It was the autumn of 1628, and the Batavia, the Dutch East India Company's flagship, was loaded with a king's ransom in gold, silver, and gems for her maiden voyage to Java. The Batavia was the pride of the company's fleet, a tangible symbol of the world's richest and most powerful commercial monopoly. She set sail with great fanfare, but the Batavia and her gold would never reach Java.

Officer Lucy is panty-melting hot, but I can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t right. Can I really trust her? When Sarah follows her best friend to live in the big city away from the small outback down they had both called home their entire lives, Sarah quickly learns about the perils of city living. Her first night she witnesses a police drug operation that will change the course of her life forever. Officer Lucy attends her colleague Officer Daisy’s (of Protecting Her fame) house party to find herself face-to-face with the gorgeous femme witness of a crime she has been ...

A thrilling, intellectual detective story that looks deep into the past to uncover who first settled the islands of the remote Pacific, where they came from, how they got there, and how we know.

America's first frontier was not the West; it was the sea, and no one writes more eloquently about that watery wilderness than Nathaniel Philbrick. In his best-selling In the Heart of the Sea, Philbrick probed the nightmarish dangers of the vast Pacific. Now, in an epic sea adventure, he writes about one of the most ambitious voyages of discovery the Western world has ever seen - the US Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842.

The mysterious disappearance of Michael Rockefeller in remote New Guinea in 1961 has kept the world, and even Michael's powerful, influential family, guessing for years. Now, Carl Hoffman uncovers startling new evidence that finally tells the full, astonishing story.

On May 13, 1945, 24 American servicemen and WACs boarded a transport plane for a sightseeing trip over “Shangri-La,” a beautiful and mysterious valley deep within the jungle-covered mountains of Dutch New Guinea. Unlike the peaceful Tibetan monks of James Hilton’s best-selling novel Lost Horizon, this Shangri-La was home to spear-carrying tribesmen, warriors rumored to be cannibals. But the pleasure tour became an unforgettable battle for survival when the plane crashed. Miraculously, three passengers pulled through.

Dutch explorers discovered for Europe many of the major island groups in the Pacific, while meting out immense brutality and privation. Some set out as pirates and privateers, others as traders seeking a new route to the Spice Islands. The voyagers left men in Hawai`i and the Tuamotus, and described for the first time the appearance and habits of many of the cultures of Polynesian islands as well those near Australia. They were the first Europeans to visit Australia, Easter Island, Fiji, Hawai`i, New Zealand, Samoa Tasmania, Tonga and many other islands.

When Bridget Hustwaite blew out her thirtieth birthday candles, she had no idea of the profound changes that awaited her in this new decade. Instead of ticking off the traditional expectations (buy a house, get married, start a family), Bridget's list of early thirties life moments looked wildly different to what she anticipated. Her long-term relationship of five years had just ended, she said goodbye to her dream job, was diagnosed with ADHD and became a lockdown dog mum. And that was just the beginning . . .

Four passports are found of girls missing in Australia. The one who found them has vanished too. Who are these girls? Where have they gone? Are they dead? Could any be still alive? A dead man's diary and a search across the world give tiny glimpses. But their stories remain elusive. Police search, friends and families search. But the five girls remain gone, their fates unknown.

The islands of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia stretch across a huge expanse of ocean and encompass a multitude of different peoples. Starting with Captain James Cook, the earliest European explorers to visit the Pacific were astounded and perplexed to find populations thriving thousands of miles from continents. Who were these people? From where did they come? And how were they able to reach islands dispersed over such vast tracts of ocean?

An unexpected trip to a beautiful and exotic land leaves one young woman questioning her life and loyalties. At 30, Australian Danni Pollard seems to have it all; a husband she loves, a successful career, a nice home and supportive family. The annual pilgrimage to Bali was supposed to be a time for rest and relaxation until a chance meeting and an unexpected chain of events leads her on an adventure of a lifetime to wild Borneo. It’s here in this beautiful and exotic land, away from everything that is familiar that Danni begins to question her life. New friendships are formed, including ...

In 1768 Captain James Cook and his crew set out on a small British naval vessel in search of a missing continent. 2020 marks the 250th anniversary of that voyage, and Cook's 'discovery' of Australia. Captain Cook's Epic Voyage reveals the hardships and adventure of this remarkable quest, and the euphoria of discovering new lands.

Although many denied it, a giant ocean liner was dying. The superstitious nodded their heads, knowing her fate had already been sealed. The freezing Atlantic crept up to the forecastle head as the massive vessel, with all her lights aglow, slowly, almost imperceptibly, sank at the bow.

☆☆☆☆☆ 'Satisfying, brilliant, thrilling and funny!' (Marcia, Goodreads) Crikey mate! It’s 1983. Wham! are top of the charts. Two besties are on their Big O.E. in London. Then one of them meets a bloke and things turn to shit. Jafa, Jennie Agatha Frances Arthur, is a bit pissed off, to say the least. She can’t understand it. It’s not like he, the bloke – Nigel - is George Michael, or anything. Not even close. Jennie and Evie had planned this trip of a lifetime since the school production of Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat, for heaven’s sake. And now Evie tells her ...

Almost a century ago, the first flights to Hawaii required a nerve-racking and uncertain 26-hour journey to isolated and elusive islands located in the middle of the world's largest ocean. Pilots prayed they would encounter land after flying a full day and night across 2,400 miles of the open Pacific. Race to Hawaii chronicles the thrilling first flights to Hawaii in the 1920s, during the Golden Age of Aviation.

In Voyagers, the distinguished anthropologist Nick Thomas charts the course of the seaborne migrations that populated the islands between the Americas and the western coast of Asia from late prehistory onwards: firstly the colonization by speakers of Austronesian languages of the western Pacific littoral, from around 3000 BC, of the Philippines, Indonesia, Micronesia and Melanesia; followed by the later settlement, by Polynesian peoples, of Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Easter Island and eventually New Zealand, up to AD 1250.

Celebrated historian Diana Preston presents betrayals, escapes, and survival at sea in her account of the mutiny of the Bounty and the flight of convicts from the Australian penal colony. The story of the mutiny of the Bounty and William Bligh and his men's survival on the open ocean for 48 days and 3,618 miles has become the stuff of legend. But few realize that Bligh's escape across the seas was not the only open-boat journey in that era of British exploration and colonization.

Maelstrom (noun): A powerful whirlpool often hazardous to approach. Any state of affairs signified by turmoil, disorder, confusion, chaos or upheaval. The romance between Erin Johnson and Drew Bradley. After years focusing on her career, Erin Johnson surprised everyone including herself when she turned her back on Sydney and headed north to start a new life. Everything was going great with the exception of her prickly new boss who was determined to think the worst of her one minute and was kissing her senseless the next. Drew Bradley recognized trouble when he saw it and his sexy new ...

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. Born a poor black tobacco farmer, her cancer cells - taken without her knowledge - became a multimillion-dollar industry and one of the most important tools in medicine. Yet Henrietta's family did not learn of her 'immortality' until more than 20 years after her death, with devastating consequences....

For many, the colonial story of Australia starts with Captain Cook's discovery of the east coast in 1770, but it was some 164 years before his historic voyage that European mariners began their romance with the immensity of the Australian continent. Between 1606 and 1688, while the British had their hands full with the Gunpowder Plot and the English Civil War, it was highly skilled Dutch seafarers who discovered and mapped the majority of the vast, unknown waters and land masses in the Indian and Southern Oceans.