Tasmania and Van Diemens Land

Battery Point Today and Yesterday – Amy Rowntree – First Edition 1951

Published in 1951 first edition. Still views for the best history of Battery Point and its environs.

Magnificently illustrated with relevant early maps, plans and photographs. Super stuff on the shipyards.

Includes an Appendix on the Anglesea Barracks by Brigadier Dollery and W.H. Hudpseth.

Soft cover, perfect bound, 138 pages, tape marks on title from label removal, otherwise a lovely clean copy.

Impress the Locals with your Local Knowledge

$40.00

Updating cart…

Maria Island Convicts – Brian Rieusset – Signed by Author

First edition signed self published by the author, Hobart 2007.

Large format, softcover, perfect bound, 63 pages, illustrated.

A thoroughly researched and well-presented work on the convict of Maris Island, Tasmania 1825-1832.

The Register of Convicts which contains information on the 1 female and 346 male convicts is held at the Oxfordshire County Records Office in England. Not sure why it stays there of why the solitary female had to endure this rather peculiar imbalance.

The illustrations are special … we love the one of the Bernacchi house where Louis Bernacchi of Antarctic fame was brought up. The appendices with full useful contents from the register are a historian’s delight.

Maria Island Convicts – Great work by Rieusset

$40.00

Updating cart…

James Cook’s Second Voyage – A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Around the World – Fine Large Scale Facsimile in 2 Volumes

Facsimile of James Cook’s Second Voyage – Towards the South Pole – 2 Volumes

A Voyage Towards the South Pole, and Round the World Performed in His Majesty’s Ships the Resolution and Adventure, in the years 1772, 1773, 1774 and 1775. In which is included Captain Furneaux’s Narrative of his Proceedings in the Adventure during the Separation of the Ships: By James Cook Commander of the Resolution.

Illustrated with Maps and Charts, and a Variety of Portraits of Persons and Views of Places, Drawn during the Voyage by Mr. Hodges, and Engraved by the Most Eminent Master.

This is the account of Cook’s second voyage. The success of Cook’s first voyage led the Admiralty to send him on a second expedition to circumnavigate the globe as far south as possible in search of any southern continents. Cook proved that there was no Terra Australis which supposedly lay between New Zealand and South America, but became convinced that there must be land beyond the ice fields. Cook was the first to cross the Antarctic Circle. Further visits were made to New Zealand, and on two great sweeps Cook made an astonishing series of discoveries and rediscoveries including Easter Island, the Marquesas, Tahiti and the Society Islands, Niue, the Tonga Islands, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Norfolk Island, and a number of smaller islands. Rounding Cape Horn, on the last part of the voyage, Cook discovered and charted South Georgia, after which he called at Cape Town. William Hodges was the artist with the expedition. This voyage produced a vast amount of information concerning the Pacific peoples and Islands, proved the value of the chronometer as an aid in finding longitude, and improved techniques for preventing scurvy.

Also, includes the account of Captain Furneaux in the Adventure during his time separated from the Endeavour.

Originally published by Strahan & Cadell, London in 1777. This edition in two volumes by the Libraries Board of South Australia in 1970.

Complete with facsimile images – portrait frontispiece (Basire’s engraving of Cook from the painting by William Hodges) and 63 plates, charts and portraits, many folding. Light beige canvas cloth covered boards, separate title labels to spine. Very clean internally, high quality paper. A super set.

The second Voyage of James Cook to seek out the Great Southern Land – and to do so much more.

$390.00

Updating cart…

Jack Thwaites – Pioneer Tasmanian Bushwalker and Conservationist – Simon Kleinig

Published by Forty Degrees South, Hobart in 2008. A very good copy of a hard to come by book.

Soft cover, perfect bound, 261 pages, illustrated throughout including images from hand drawn maps.

This is a different sort of biography. We have the background of Jack Thwaites born in 1902 at Kendall in the Lake District, England. Arrived in Tasmania with his family at the age of ten. Around 1928 Jack began his ambitious walking trips. He was three years ahead of Bert Nicholls who is famed for cutting the Overland Track between Cradle Mountain and Lake St Clair .. the first genuinely up Frenchman’s Cap and likewise to the mountains in the South West.

This book is partly written around the diaries he kept during these long hikes, often written in pencil at the evening camp fire. Many diaries are missing … such a pity.

Simon Kleinig called on the help of many to produce this intimate and rewarding book not the least Jack’s grand children Anne and Bill Thwaites who also manged to find some memorable images of this pioneering walker.

Jack Thwaites – The First Real Tasmanian Bush Walker.

$50.00

Updating cart…

Shipwreck Archaeology in Australia – Michael Nash

A fine copy of Michael Nash’s all embracing Australian shipwreck book.

Published by the University of Western Australia Press in 2007. Squarish large octavo, 244 pages, very nicely illustrated throughout, end paper illustration of the dreadful goings on at the Batavia camp.

Pulled together by Nash with contributions from a number of other experts in the field, or the water really.

The fifteen wrecks dealt with in detail are presented chronologically starting with the Batavia (1629) .. then a leap to Hunter’s Sirius (1790) .. the Pandora (1791) all the way to the Tasman (1883). We say fifteen but the last is a place for wrecks Garden Island (1906-1945). Notes, glossary etc finish what is a really good reference or stand alone work.

The other dimension with this book is the back history of many of wrecks – First Fleet; Bounty Related; Slavers; Walers etc and for some another aspect such as Experimental Reconstruction (Zanoni 1867); Timber Shipbuilding techniques (Water Witch 1842).

Australian Wrecks – the way in to the subject – no better presentation.

$50.00

Updating cart…

Contested Places – Tasmania’s Northern Districts from Ancient Times to 1900 – Shayne Breen – Signed

A scarce book published in 2001, in limited numbers, by the University of Tasmania the author completed a Doctorate on which this work is based. Regarded as an innovative piece of historical research. Signed by the author.

Octavo, soft cover, perfect bound, 226 pages, illustrated, a fine copy.

Tasmania’s Northern Districts comprises the municipalities Deloraine, Westbury, Evandale and Longford a large agricultural area.

Contested Places refers to the competing groups in the region up to 1900. Starting with the dispossession of the Aboriginal people. Then the conflicts between large landholders and landless labourers and tenant farmers. Specific issues relating to the eradication of pests are dealt with as well as the harder to grasp philosophy of social law and interactions between colonial society and the bush.

A solid scholarly work for those interested in social contest and the impact of people in the natural environment in Tasmania.

$60.00

Updating cart…

Battery Point Today and Yesterday – Amy Rowntree – First Edition 1951

Maria Island Convicts – Brian Rieusset – Signed by Author

James Cook’s Second Voyage – A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Around the World – Fine Large Scale Facsimile in 2 Volumes

Jack Thwaites – Pioneer Tasmanian Bushwalker and Conservationist – Simon Kleinig

Shipwreck Archaeology in Australia – Michael Nash

Contested Places – Tasmania’s Northern Districts from Ancient Times to 1900 – Shayne Breen – Signed

Product Categories