0
products in your shopping cart
Total:   $0.00 details
There are no products in your shopping cart!
We hope it's not for long.

Visit the shop

Prestige Items

list view
  • The First Fleet: The Record of the Foundation of Australia from Its Conception to the Settlement of Sydney Cove. Compiled from the original documents in the Public Record Office, with extracts from the Log-Books of H.M.S. Sirius – Owen Rutter with engravings by Barker – Mill, Peter – 1937

    The First Fleet: The Record of the Foundation of Australia from Its Conception to the Settlement of Sydney Cove. Compiled from the original documents in the Public Record Office, with extracts from the Log-Books of H.M.S. Sirius – Owen Rutter with engravings by Barker – Mill, Peter – 1937

    Published by the distinguished The Golden Cockerel Press, London, 1937. Very good condition. Peter Barker-Mill (illustrator). Limited edition, one of 375 copies.

    Tristan Buesst’s copy with his bookplate. Buesst, a legal eagle, was the first President of the Friends of La Trobe Library.

    Folio 15 inches. Foreword by the Hon. B.S.B. Stevens, M.L.A., Premier of New South Wales. Five Engravings by Peter Barker-Mill. Four pages of facsimiles between pp. 8 and 9 (not included in pagination). “printed & published by Christopher and Anthony Sandford and Owen Rutter at the Golden Cockerel Press. Printed on Arnold’s hand-made paper in “Perpetua” type.

    Original Blue Cloth. Front cover with cream-coloured cloth label decoratively stamped in gilt. Spine decoratively stamped and lettered in gilt. Top edge trimmed, others uncut. A simply beautiful production.

    Published to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Foundation of Australia. The Editor has provided a judicious selection of the original documents and created a connected narrative. The Times Literary Supplement referred to the distinction of the printing and binding, adding that it was certainly a volume which all interested in Australia would care to possess and at the same time paying high tribute to Peter Barker-Mill’s imaginative engravings.

    $490.00

    Loading Updating cart…
  • The Mutineer – A Romance of Pitcairn Island – Louis Becke and Walter Jeffrey – First Colonial (Australian) Edition 1898.

    Likely technically the first edition is the London issue of that year. The first and this issue the first Colonial issue by Angus & Robertson both extremely scarce.

    Octavo, 298 pages plus Publishers catalogue. Original dark green cloth covered binding, gilt title to spine. The odd mark to the boards, missing front free end paper and occasional light ageing. Otherwise really not bad and, try to find another one.

    George Lewis Becke (1855-1913) was born at Port Macquarie and must be regarded as the best Australian author of the period in the genre adventure … South Seas … historical based fiction. He has been compared with Robert Louis Stevenson, Melville, Kipling, Conrad etc exalted company indeed.

    Becke had the pedigree – from an early age he escaped to the South Pacific … ferried vessels to Bully Hayes, was tried (and acquitted) as a pirate at Brisbane at the age of 19 etc etc.

    Prolific writer once he settled down. This Bounty Mutiny based story one of the later works and a collaboration. Didn’t get into print in the USA as a relationship between different races didn’t fit the then standards.

    With a novel we at Voyager always like a good short helpful first sentence. We have the first paragraph here just to get you into the mood.

    “It was night at Tahiti, in the Society Islands. The trade-wind had died away, and a bright flood of shimmering moonlight poured down upon the slumbering waters of a little harbour a few miles distant from Matavia Bay, and the white curve of beach that fringed the darkened line of palms shone and glistened like a belt of ivory under the effulgence of its rays. For nearly half a mile the broad sweep of dazzling sand showed no interruption nor break upon its surface save at one spot; there it ran out into a long narrow point, on which, under a small cluster of graceful cocos, growing almost at the water’s edge, a canoe was drawn up”.

    Louis Becke’s scarce and somewhat controversial South Seas story.

    $120.00

    Loading Updating cart…
  • Robert O’Hara Burke and the Australian Exploring Expedition – Andrew Jackson 1860

    Robert O’Hara Burke and the Australian Exploring Expedition – Andrew Jackson 1860

    Scarce first edition of this essential Burke and Wills book published by Smith and Elder in 1862.

    Octavo, xxi, 229 pages with woodcut portrait of Burke and folding map, extensive Publishers Catalogue at the rear. Original green cloth covered binding, some internal foxing particularly the map and adjacent pages as usual. Very good original embossed green cloth covered binding, gilt title to spine bright and fresh. Unusual for a usually distressed book.

    Andrew Jackson may have known Burke personally, he was certainly an acquaintance of Burke’s father, they were officers in the same Regiment. The first chapter give an interesting account of the family military history and background on Robert O’Hara Burke.

    Written from papers, journals, letters, reports, interviews etc associated with the expedition. Nicely written carefully compiled.

    An important “companion work” to the Bentley published book based on Wills’s journal and letters.

    Scarce Burke and Wills contemporary reference

    $690.00

    Loading Updating cart…
  • The Voyage of HMS Galatea – Visit to Australia – Prince Alfred – 1867

    The Voyage of HMS Galatea – Visit to Australia – Prince Alfred – 1867

    Medal commemorating the Australian visit of the then Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Alfred, to Australia.

    Created and cast by Thomas Stokes of Melbourne. There are two slightly different forms, with differing decorative borders.

    On the obverse the Duke’s bust in naval dress uniform with Ribbon and Star of the Garter. Legend HRH Duke of Edinburgh. Surrounded by an ornamental border. Reverse with a starboard broadside view of the “Galatea” under steam and sail, the top gallant sails in the act of being taken in. Legend … to Commemorate the Visit of HRH Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh KG to Australia – HMS Galatea 1867.

    See the Greenwich National Maritime museum for an example – reference MEC1362.

    47mm in diameter, 40 gm white metal. Holed for a loop as usual, a couple of scratches, negligible edge bumps, a pretty good example.

    HMS Galatea circumnavigated the World and spent six months in Australia. During his stay the Prince was subject to an assassination attempt by an Irishman – he was shot but the bullet actually glanced off his ribs and he survived.

    Historical Maritime Medal – HMS Galatea in Australia 1867.

    $125.00

    Loading Updating cart…
  • Armorial Book-Plates. Their Romantic Origin and Artistic Development – Signed limited edition of 300 this number 218 by the expert of all experts Neville Barnett – published in 1932

    Armorial Book-Plates. Their Romantic Origin and Artistic Development – Signed limited edition of 300 this number 218 by the expert of all experts Neville Barnett – published in 1932

    Unusual faux snake-skin binding. Excellent condition 172 pages.

    With numerous book-plate illustrations with 17 tipped in originals from those of great fame (our favourite being that of Polar Explorer Douglas Mawson).

    Chapters on the Origins of Armory; the Age of Chivalry; the Pageant of Heraldry; the Romance of Arms; German, French and British Book-plates the latter extensive and importantly Australian and New Zealand Armorial Book-plates.

    Collectable work from the doyen of Australian Bookplates – Neville Barnett – Numbered Limited Signed edition with Mawsons bookplate.

    $290.00

    Loading Updating cart…
  • Northmost Australia – Logan Jack   2 Volumes First Australian Edition – 1922

    Northmost Australia – Logan Jack 2 Volumes First Australian Edition – 1922

    … Three Centuries of Exploration, Discovery, and adventure in and around the Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. A first edition the Australian edition published by George Robertson, Melbourne in 1922. Two volumes with all 17 separate folding maps.

    Robert Logan Jack was the senior Government Geologist for Queensland for 20 years. He replaced Richard Daintree who was the first to hold that position. The best work of its type by far and with a number of unique aspects. Completed in Logan Jack’s final year as he passed away November 1921.

    Large, royal octavo, very good condition, nice clean covers, some foxing to page edges and near the ends as usual due to the thick spongy paper. Maps in great condition.

    Volume 1 commences with early exploration – Maghelen, Quiros and Torres and the Duyfken at Cape York followed by the Pera and Aernemdealt. Tasman arrives in 1644 and then pre-Cook the voyages of the Buijs and Rijder in 1756 with Van Asschens and Gonzal. And then we have the Endeavour and Cook’s discovery from the South and East and soon after in 1789 Bligh in the Bounty launch. Flinders with the Investigator and the after “Wreck Reef” the Cumberland and captivity. Philip Parker King in the Mermaid fills the gaps in 1819 and then in the Bathurst a year later. The wreck of the Charles Eaton in 1834. Wickham and Stokes in 1839 to the Normanton and Albert Rivers and Burketown. Blackwood and Yule and the “Fly” and their mark on the Straits.

    Then Logan Jack takes us to the interior and much on the great Leichhardt and Kennedy and that other fateful expedition. Back to the coast and Owen Stanley and the Rattlesnake. And then Burke and Wills up the centre and the searching parties … Landsbourough, Walker and McKinley. Closing with good content on the Jardine Brothers up the Cape, the special efforts of first geologist Daintree and then Captain John Moresby (jnr) into the Torres Straits.

    Whilst volume I contains hard to find narrative such as the Jardines and Daintree Volume II is a masterclass. After opening comments on Aboriginal and Polynesian labour we commence our explorations with the elusive William Hann and the Palmer River followed by Mulligan and 150 pages of Logan Jack’s own extensive explorations. Ending with explorations gems with Donald Laing, Embley, William Baird, John Dickie, William Lakeland and William Bowden.

    We have gone on a bit but fell justified in attempting to describe the effort put into this book and the scarcity of the accounts. The whole wonderfully illustrated by images of the explorers often from family sources and at the rear separate indexes by persons, localities and subjects.

    The Further North you go the better it gets in these Volumes.

    $640.00

    Loading Updating cart…
LoadingUpdating…

Product Categories