Showing titles in Australia & Oceania

Tim Flannery is one of the world's most influential scientists, credited with discovering more species than Darwin. In Among the Islands, Flannery recounts a series of expeditions he made at the dawn of his career to the strange tropical islands of the South Pacific, a great arc stretching nearly 4,000 miles from the postcard perfection of Polynesia to some of the largest, highest, most ancient, and most rugged islands on Earth.

New Zealand—Culture Smart! helps you get to the heart of this diverse and multicultural nation. It examines the impact of history, religion, and politics, while tips and vital insights into Kiwi attitudes, customs, and social life will help deepen your experience of this country and its fair-minded people.

Girt by Dirt: An Australian Adventure will take you on a light-hearted and informative 35,000-kilometre journey around Australia. It follows the travels of two mates from Sydney, Australia, Phil and Glen, who spent five months on a trip of a lifetime in a four-wheel-drive. The trip started in Sydney and followed a clockwise route around the country. While a lot of thought went into the general route, most of our planning was on the fly, depending on advice from fellow travelers, last minute research, local knowledge or just how we felt at the time. We didn’t go too far off the beaten ...

Tony James Slater knew nothing about Australia. Except for the fact that he'd just arrived there. The stage is set for an outrageous adventure: three people, one van, on an epic, 20,000-mile road trip around Australia. They're crisscrossing the continent through some of the most inhospitable land on the planet - the infamous Aussie Outback. Unprepared, underqualified, and hopelessly inept, Tony battles gigantic pumpkins, mechanical mishaps, and suicidal kangaroos, armed only with a thong and a sense of humor.

An enthralling journey, showcasing Watson's trademark literary gift and sardonic wit, through the Australian landscape and character. While most Australians live in cities clinging to the coastal fringe, our sense of what an Australian is, or should be, is drawn from the vast and varied inland called the bush. But what do we mean by 'the bush', and how has it shaped us?

What would you do if you only had five years left to live? For some, this is a tragic reality, for most, it’s a question they will never be forced to answer. Luke Richmond asks this question often, not from morbid curiosity, but to ensure he is filling his days with value and living life with no regrets. The awareness of a finite reality has taken Luke from a small town in rural Australia, into the harshest and most challenging environments on Earth.

Lovers of fine travel and adventure relish Scott Smith’s rich tale as a Peace Corps volunteer. Smith’s keen observations never sag in human interest as he confronts living on the edge of Pacific island paradise. It is a must listen for island lovers and anyone considering a journey to change the world or themselves.

Not a postcard. Not a pipe dream. Just the truth. This isn’t a book about how to ship your furniture to Hawai‘i or find a moving company. It’s about something bigger: deciding if life on the Big Island is really for you. Moving to Big Island Hawai‘i: Life on the East Side offers practical insight, personal stories, and straight-up advice for people thinking about leaving the mainland behind and starting fresh. If you're drawn to slower days, meaningful work, and the wild, untamed beauty of Hawai‘i Island’s east side, this book will help you think it through—clearly and ...

Culinary tourism is an important aspect of any travel experience. Food has the ability to tell you a story of a destination, its landscapes, and culture on a single plate. Most food guides tell you how to eat like a tourist. Although there is nothing wrong with that, as part of the Eat Like a Local series, this book will give you a food guide from someone who has lived at your next culinary destination.

New Zealand is a country of stunning and diverse natural beauty: jagged mountains, rolling pasture land, steep fjords, pristine trout-filled lakes, raging rivers, scenic beaches, and active volcanic zones. These islands are one of Earth's most peculiar bioregions, inhabited by flightless birds seen nowhere else such as a nocturnal, burrowing parrot called the kakapo, and kiwi. Kiwi are not only one of the national symbols but also the name New Zealanders usually call themselves.

Welcome to the Travel Enrichment Series, the perfect companion for travelers wishing to understand more about the history of the regions they visit. Scattered across the world’s largest and deepest ocean, the remote and beautiful South Pacific Islands have been enticing explorers, travelers, and settlers to their shores for more than six thousand years. In twelve lively essays, South Pacific charts the history of this vibrant region, from the intrepid Polynesians who relied on constellations and stick charts to navigate its isolated archipelagos, to the stranded mutineers of HMS Bounty ...

Australian Adventure Awaits...Shunning the well-trodden tourists traps, John Dwyer chooses the road less travelled and explores unknown Australia. From abandoned mining towns in Western Australia to the ancient rainforest of Tasmania, this book brings you on an epic journey through the land Down Under. Whether being stalked by sharks on stunning coral reefs, watching for deadly crocodiles while camping, avoiding suicidal kangaroos on the lonely roads or trying his luck with beautiful backpackers, the author delivers his keen observations on life Down Under as well as highly entertaining ...

In New Guinea pidgin, "throwim way leg" means to kick out your leg on the first step of a long journey. Full of adventure, wit, and natural wonders, Flannery's narrative is just such a spectacular trip - a tour de force of travel, anthropology, and natural history.

Having been warned of an imminent attack on Taiwan by the mainland Chinese Echo II, the oceanographic vessel often used by MI6 and the CIA is on its way to New Zealand to meet with a Taiwanese delegation in hopes of staving off the attack. In addition Taiwan has its own plan for overthrowing the mainland communist regime. Once more those on board the Echo II were in for danger and adventure.

Tahiti is one of the Society Islands which, with the Gambiers, the Tuamotus, the Australs, and the Marquesas, make up French Polynesia. This archipelago spread out over several million square miles of the south central Pacific is a mixture of high volcanic islands and low coral atolls. All the detail you will need about these Pacific islands is in the guide - the hotels, restaurants, what to see and do, how to get around, the history and the culture.

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is the only country that has a whole continent to itself. Although it is world-famous for its natural wonders and wide open spaces, its beaches, deserts, "the bush", and "the Outback", Australia is actually one of the world's most highly urbanised countries with vibrant, cosmopolitan cities such as Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, and Perth.

In 1999, Larry McMurtry, whose wanderlust had been previously restricted to the roads of America, set off for a trip to the paradise of Tahiti and the South Sea Islands in an old-fashioned tub of a cruise boat, at a time when his mother was slipping toward a paradise of her own. Opening up to...

No visit to Sydney is complete without a trip to the historic Rocks district on the harbour foreshore. And no visit to the Rocks would be complete without this self-guided audio walk. The Rocks is the enclave where European Sydney had its beginnings. Here the first convicts were ordered to build their huts and here they worked the sandstone that made Australia's first buildings. This self-guided walk will take you to the places they lived and tell you their stories.

Australia is different - a vast island continent with distances so great that the capital of Western Australia is closer to Singapore than it is to Sydney. The landscape embraces magnificent tropical rainforests and deserts the size of several European states; temperate areas that sustain a flourishing wine industry, making Australia the world's fourth largest wine exporter; and a 16,000-mile coastline of breathtaking beaches. Plus its unique fauna is testament to the country's down-underness.

After half a century of travel, from Ethiopia to Tibet, from Belfast to Jerusalem, Pico Iyer asks himself what kind of paradise can ever be found in a world of unceasing conflict. In a spectacular journey, both inward and outward, Iyer roams from crowded mosques in Iran to a film studio in North Korea, from a holy mountain in Japan to the sometimes spooky emptiness of the Australian outback.