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Melanesia. Travels in Black Oceania
With 28 million people and growing, Melanesia is emerging from its colonial past. The region should be of great strategic interest to Australia. The arc of islands to the north and north-east of Australia takes in Papua New Guinea, the Solomons, Vanuatu, Fiji and some of New Caledonia.
Hamish McDonald, a former foreign correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald, takes us through the region as he travels by ferry, fishing boat, car and truck. McDonald provides a brief history of each nation he visits as he meets with politicians and everyday people alike to sketch a fascinating snapshot of our neighbours.
Melanesia. Travels in Black Oceania is enjoyable, readable and a work of considerable scholarship. Highly recommended.
Brendan Atkins
Author of The Naturalist. The remarkable life of Allan Riverstone McCulloch (NewSouth, 2022).
What a comprehensive, well researched expose of our iconic apex predator, the Dingo. So maligned since colonisation and the arrival of pastoralists, thus the target for myth making, bounties, shooting and trapping, Roland explores the fact that Dingoes are now hovering between endangered and in certain areas potential extinction. Will the Dingo become the next Thylacine.
He brings new hope as science is now proving that Dingoes are integral to maintaining ecological balance, partly by keeping, foxes, wild pigs and goats under control and maintaining healthy numbers of kangaroos.
Always embedded in indigenous Dreamtime lore then to a scapegoat and outlaw with a bounty on its head will the Dingo become once again a cultural icon if we allow it the freedom to save our fragile ecosystem
Perfect for a new DM, well made and full of useful stuff
This book was impossible to put down. Equally discomforting and fascinating, the stories within are never fully told, leaving your imagination to fill in the gaps. This book is everything that our ever-increasing AI world is not. Painfully and beautifully human, with no punches pulled.
This book was interesting to see how in the animal kingdom, there is a lot of sexual diversity, and the males and females of each species are cared for equally in the group. I was disappointed that Erna found it necessary to bring in a quote from the bible, Corinthians, to show that women were kept down and in their box in that era. What that verse meant was that women weren't allowed to discuss or argue biblical meanings in the church with the men. That was to be done at home. I think that would have been because the men were educated in the church ways whereas the women weren't. It still shows that the women were not given the same rights as men but what it doesn't show is that women weren't allowed to sing and young men were castrated so they could sing with a boy soprano voice.
I was also disappointed that there weren't so many stories of zoo keeping. I was hoping it would be like a James Harriot of zoo keeping book.
Cultural practices have discriminated against women through the ages and continue to do so but it there has been great headway and continues to be. I thank Erma for being one of the women who fought for the right to be treated respectfully in that all male domain.
