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.

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.

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.

*** Please note that this book will be republished soon. Follow me or join my mailing list for updates.*** ☆☆☆☆☆ '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 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.

Jennifer Morse is now a successful author who has been required by her publisher to spend a lot of time away from home on book tours. Consequently, her health and relationship with her boyfriend, Chris, has deteriorated. She finds out that he has been in a relationship with another woman and she throws him out of her house. Recovering from her breakup and health issues, she decides to visit her grandparents who are spending several months in in Paris. On a side tri to Monte Carlo, she meets race car driver Jean Luc Bonnet. He becomes smitten with her and, although attracted to him, she is ...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 . . .

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.

When I set off for Australia, I had no idea what I would find. There were moments of pure joy, times of struggle, and situations that, looking back, were downright ridiculous. Through it all, I found something I hadn't even realized I was looking for. As a teenager, I watched Australia's Bicentennial celebrations and felt something click. I didn't just want to visit—I needed to go. Over a decade later, after university and a stressful first job, I finally made it happen. I packed my bags, left everything familiar behind, and entered a year of the unknown. Inside, you'll find: • ...

In Book Two, Nick Kilmer continues south on his ride with Deacon through Arizona and encounters a family that he befriended and helped during their most dire circumstances during their introduction into the United States. Escaping the wrath of Sadaam Hussein's forces that wants to eliminate the Kurds, Fatima's family and is granted asylee status. Nick finds himself influencing the single mother with five teenagers as they navigate into American Society. They disappear for 15 years, an unlikely reunion brings with them despicable Iranian opium smugglers and Mexican Cartel members. A disabled...

The largest structure ever built was not made by humans, but by incredibly tiny organisms known as coral polyps. Over the course of tens of thousands of years, these small organisms have put together a collection of nearly 3,000 reefs, known as the Great Barrier Reef, which form a collective stretching across 130,000 square miles. Scientists have counted about 1,500 different fish species that use the reef, and it's estimated that 1.5 million birds use the site.

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.

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?

Pleasure Atlas is an erotic odyssey across continents and bodies, tracing the story of Tom Fields — a 51-year-old man searching for pleasure and new parts of himself in the lovers he meets. From Amazonian Brazil to the bathhouses of Thailand, to the dark, pulsing alleys of Berlin, each encounter leaves a mark that lingers. Tom's travels map the borders between lust and love, escape and arrival, as he encounters lovers who reveal who he is when no one’s watching, and the man he could become if he indulges in his own raw impulses. Through unfiltered sex and tender longing, Pleasure Atlas ...

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....