The mutiny on HMS Bounty, in the South Pacific on 28 April 1789, is one of history's truly great stories - a tale of human drama, intrigue and adventure of the highest order - and in the hands of Peter FitzSimons it comes to life as never before.Commissioned by the Royal Navy to collect breadfruit plants from Tahiti and take them to the West Indies, the Bounty's crew found themselves in a tropical paradise. Five months later, they did not want to leave. Under the ...

'They have left here today!' he calls to the others. When King puts his hand down above the ashes of the fire, it is to find it still hot. There is even a tiny flame flickering from the end of one log. They must have left just hours ago.MELBOURNE, 20 AUGUST 1860. In an ambitious quest to be the first Europeans to cross the harsh Australian continent, the Victorian Exploring Expedition sets off, farewelled by 15,000 cheering well-wishers. Led by Robert O'Hara Burke,...

The Battle of Le Hamel on 4 July 1918 was an Allied triumph, and strategically very important in the closing stages of WWI. A largely Australian force, commanded by the brilliant Sir John Monash, fought what has been described as the first modern battle - where infantry, tanks, artillery and planes operated together as a coordinated force.Monash planned every detail meticulously, with nothing left to chance. Integrated use of tanks, planes, infantry, wireless (and even carrier pige...

In 1858, 14-year-old Narcisse Pelletier sailed from Marseilles in the French trader Saint-Paul. With a cargo of Bordeaux wine, they stopped in Bombay, then Hong Kong, and from there they set sail with more than 300 Chinese prospectors bound for the goldfields of Ballarat and Bendigo. Around the eastern tip of New Guinea, however, the ship became engulfed in fog, struck reefs and ran aground.Scrambling aboard a longboat, the survivors undertook a perilous voyage, crossing a...

Christopher Wilder was about as bad as they get.A predator and serial killer, he first came to the attention of police in Sydney, when as a teenager in 1963 he was charged with rape. A good behaviour bond was not a deterrent and over the years his crimes escalated.After moving to the USA in his early twenties, Wilder continued to perfect his vile and deadly trade. He was a chameleon with a modus operandi refined over the decades, luring young teenage girls with the promise ...

¡El libro que salvará tu vida y sanará la Tierra!2da edición: reescrita, ampliada y actualizada, y con casi 50 imágenes en color de alta resolución, Creación de un mundo hermoso nos enseña porqué y como un camino hacia el Frugívorismo del Edén tiene la capacidad de transformar éste mundo en un paraíso utópico terrenal. Nos muestra que con actos de compasión y amor, podemos sanarnos a nosotros mismos, vivir en armonía unos con otros y con la naturaleza, y crear comunidades de cuidado y bond...

Historic True CrimeThe long forgotten true story of two convict "assigned" servant girls, Sarah 18 y/o & Mary 20 y/o, tried in colonial Australia for the murder of their “master”. All the people are real. All court testimonies are real. The blatant unfairness of the trial was also very true. The deceased, Captain Waldron, was a retired army Captain, then gentleman farmer and magistrate. The police investigator, Capt. Allman, was Capt. Waldron's friend, also an ex-army officer from t...

"We are the people our parents warned us about" is the motto of the Bandidos, one of the world’s most feared outlaw motorcycle gangs. For ten years, Steve Utah was a Bandidos insider. He arranged the security of their clubhouses. He ‘cooked’ ecstasy and ice for them. He was at meetings where interstate and overseas drug and weapons smuggling was planned. He saw stolen military weapons being sold. He witnessed vicious beatings, helped dump corpses. He saw men executed in front of him. It al...

Ethnographic perspectives are often used by archaeologists to study cultures both past and present - but what happens when the ethnographic gaze is turned back onto archaeological practices themselves? That is the question posed by this book, challenging conventional ideas about the relationship between the subject and the object, the observer and the observed, and the explainers and the explained. This book explores the production of archaeological knowledge from a range of ethnographic p...

The world's most successful criminal empire is now being operated on a massive scale by outlaw motorcycle gangs – an empire that is growing in power, reach and ruthlessness by the day. Their international empire is both sophisticated and brutal. It is also both strategic and opportunistic - where they cannot dominate, they broker alliances. Above the Law investigates how it all started: the turf wars that were fought, the deals that were done, and how the sea of cash that was earned is now...

Jock Wallace was pumped. It was the start of Operation Anaconda, the US-led military offensive to flush out al Qaeda and the Taliban from their last stronghold in the Shahi Kot Valley in Afghanistan. If intelligence reports were correct, there were between 100 and 250 enemy fighters holed up in the extensive cave systems in the mountain ridges around the beautiful valley. But reports can be wrong. Minutes after the combat-ready troops stormed down the back ramps of the Chinook helicopters,...

Aged six, Robert Drewe moved with his family from Melbourne to Perth, the world's most isolated city - and proud of it. This sun-baked coast was innocently proud, too, of its tranquillity and friendliness. Then a man he knew murdered a boy he also knew. The murderer randomly killed eight strangers - variously shooting, strangling, stabbing, bludgeoning and hacking his victims and running them down with cars - and an innocent Perth was changed forever. In the middle-class waterside suburbs ...