Discover the captivating world of the echidnaThere are few animals more unusual than the echidna – a spiky, egg-laying mammal that eats ants. But some of the most striking things about echidnas are things most of us don't know. That they use their snout like a snorkel when they swim, that they can sense electromagnetic fields, that they have intriguingly complex brains, startling physical strength and 'backwards' back feet. That they go into torpor when conditions are poor and ca...

Fire has shaped the Australian landscape and the lives of Australians for thousands of years—and will continue to do so as the climate changes. For all our advances in prevention and prediction, planning and communication, bushfires keep claiming our lives and our homes. How can we avoid another Ash Wednesday or Black Saturday?Danielle Clode has lived in the bushfire danger zone and studied the past and recent history of fire management and fire-fighting. Here she tells the complex...

While British soldiers and settlers colonised Australia, French scientists continued to explore its coastlines and study its strange flora and fauna.Lapérouse and Labillardière, Baudin and Bougainville and others left their own, lighter marks on the country in the name of human knowledge.This is their story—deeply researched and richly imagined by zoologist and award-winning science writer Danielle Clode.Winner of the Victorian Premier's Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-...

An immersive, entertaining journey into the hidden life of the koala, revealing what life is really like up in the trees‘Clode is a master at popularising science and making the complex understandable … An important book that focuses on the koala but is really an impassioned and informed plea for the conservation of Australia’s flora, fauna, and wild places. This is natural history and science writing at its best.’ —Peter Menkhorst, Australian Book Review

What is it about Australia that makes it so prone to fires? Have humans made things worse, or better? Is it possible to live in the Australian bush but be safe from fire?No other continent on earth is as susceptible to bushfires, over such a large area, as Australia. Fires are a constant and ongoing part of our history, ecology and culture. Yet despite repeated disasters, across all states throughout the last two centuries, we seem to be no better at surviving bushfires today than ...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY AWARD 2019'Have you met Mrs Edith Coleman? If not you must - I am sure you will like her - she's just A1 and a splendid naturalist.'In 1922, a 48-year-old housewife from Blackburn delivered her first paper, on native Australian orchids, to the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria. Over the next thirty years, Edith Coleman would write over 300 articles on Australian nature for newspapers, magazines and scientific...

A voyage of discovery, nature and untold histories - in the vein of Clare Wright, Edmund de Waal and Helen Macdonald.When the first woman to circumnavigate the world completed her journey in 1775, she returned home without any fanfare at all.Jeanne Barret, an impoverished peasant from Burgundy, disguised herself as a man and sailed on the 1766 Bougainville voyage as the naturalist's assistant. For over two centuries, the story of who this young woman was, w...

Age range 9+John Albert Long is an Australian paleontologist who is currently Strategic Professor in Palaeontology at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia. He was previously the Vice President of Research and Collections at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. He is also an author of popular science books. His main area of research is on the fossil fish of the Late Devonian Gogo Formation from northern Western Australia. It has yielded many...

« C’est là une approche originale et plaisante de l’histoire des sciences, et indiscutablement une belle réussite. »—Prof Eric Buffetaut, Pour la ScienceAu moment où soldats et colons britanniques occupent l’Australie, les savants français continuent d’en explorer les côtes et d’y étudier la faune et la flore.La Pérouse et Labillardière, Baudin et Bougainville et bien d’autres encore y laissèrent leurs traces de chercheurs.Ce livre est leur histoire ...

An immersive, entertaining journey into the hidden life of the koala, revealing what life is really like up in the treesDespite their iconic status and celebrity, koalas remain something of a mystery. Often affectionate in captivity, they seek out human assistance when in need of water or care yet can also be fierce and belligerent. They are beloved worldwide and feature in popular children’s stories, but are also plagued by sexually transmitted diseases and maligned for a lack of i...

The voyage of Rose de Freycinet, the stowaway who defied the French for love.In 1814, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, nineteen-year-old Rose Pinon married handsome naval officer Louis de Freycinet, fifteen years her senior. Three years later, unable to bear parting from her husband, she dressed in men's clothing and slipped secretly aboard his ship the day before it sailed on a voyage of scientific discovery to the South Seas. Living for three years as the sole female am...

A uniquely woven story encompassing three separate centuries and three different lives. Captain Cook, best known for his heroic voyages through the Pacific Ocean, is brought to life in vivid detail. We follow his humble beginnings as the son of a farm labourer, through his convention-shattering treatment of the indigenous groups he met on his travels, and then onto his final tragic voyage which signalled the end of his revered reputation.One hundred years on from the death of Cook,...