Hesperian Press

Murder at Maylands

Executed under an alias

W.C. Charnley & Peter J. Bridge

ISBN 978-0-85905-670-0, (New, 2017), 22 pages, illustrated, A4, 70 grams

$15.00* + POST

For 90 years the true identity and fate of a murderer has been hidden.

Old Time Memories and Adventures

by Charles Edward Gaunt

ISBN 978-0-85905-643-4, (1930s R 2016), A4, indexed, 148 pages, 410 grams

$35.00* + POST

Charlie Gaunt arrived in the Northern Territory in 1878 as a young teenager. His adventurous life there and in NQ is detailed with many bloody meetings with the tribesmen. Pearling, prospecting, soldiering, tall ships, dog musher, hobo, ranch manager, customs officer were some of the occupations of an adventurous life in the Boer War, Alaska, Nevada & USA generally, Mexico, China, Trinidad, British Guiana, Burma., etc. He died in Brisbane in 1938.

Paediatric Passport

by Michael Gracey

ISBN 978-0-85905-649-6, (New 2016), A4, Illustrated, 103 pages, 300 grams

$25.00*+ POST

Michael Gracey AO is a paediatrician who has worked in many countries, particularly with socially disadvantaged populations where childhood malnutrition and infections are rife. After medical training in Australia, Papua New Guinea and Britain, he was a consultant at Princess Margaret Children’s Hospital in Perth for many years and worked as a doctor among Aboriginal communities around WA, especially in the Kimberley, for decades.

Photographs from the Frontier

Kimberley 1910-1911

by the Swedish Scientific Expedition, Ed. Kim Akerman.

ISBN 978-0-85905-661-8, (2017, New), 240 x 165, French flaps, 163pp, 450 grams

$55.00* + POST

153 B&W photos taken on the expedition, of Aboriginals, landscapes, settlers, expedition members.

Never before released photos of the Mjoberg expedition and an important collection that will create interest in camps on both sides of the creek.

Prisoners of the Past

Compiled by Calliope Bridge, Celene Bridge, Angela Teague, Mark Chambers & Tom Hogarth

ISBN978-0-85905-657-1, (New, 2017), A4, fully illustrated and indexed, 329 pages, 900 grams

$60.00* + POST

All the mugshots of prisoners released from Fremantle Gaol from 1899 to 1919, over 3850, and fully indexed. A unique picture of the past showing the features of those who had transgressed. Interestingly, non-Europeans, apart from the obligatory Aboriginals, form a far larger proportion of the prisoners than their kind would represent as a percentage of the whole population.

Producer Gas Plants

Hoskins Foundry

ISBN 978-0-85905-664-9, (New, 2017), 55 pages, illustrated, A4, 150 grams

$25.00* + POST

Reprint of ultra-rare catalogue of industrial downdraft gas producers from over a century ago.

Return to Majaddin

A Kimberley Homecoming

Eddie Bear & Robert Hoskin

ISBN 978-0-85905-674-8, (New, 2017), 181 pages, A4, Illustrated, 500 grams

$40.00* + POST

Ngarinyin Elder and community leader, Eddie Bear shares his family story with Dr Robert Hoskin, researcher and retired minister of the Uniting Church. The story begins with life in the remote land of Majaddin in the West Kimberley and continues through colonialist incursions as Eddie's family took refuge at the Munja Aboriginal feeding station on the Kimberley Coast. Following Munja's demise, the family joined with other Ngarinyin families working on pastoral stations (Kimberley Downs and Napier). Eddie and his siblings grew up on these stations and would later seek work in this developing industry.

Ruby Yen

ISBN 978-0-85905-659-5, (New, 2017), A5, 16pp, llust, 40 grams

$10.00 + POST

The controversial murder of a Chinese girl in Perth in 1925.  Another of our series on the joys of multiculturalism.

The Six-Mile Murder

Rifles and Rotgut, Mary Jane Wain and James Conley

Peter J Bridge

ISBN 978-0-85905-669-4, (New, 2017), 41 pages, illustrated, A4, 115 grams

$22.00* + POST

The murder and trial that created a sensation in WA in 1897.

Stealing by the Mile

by W. C. Charnley

ISBN 978-0-85905-644-1, (1920s, R, 2016), A4, facsimile, illustrated, 100 pages, 290 grams

$25.00* + POST

The real life adventures of gold stealing on the Golden Mile told via his mate, 'Slippery Wiley.' Close escapes, Mafia Black Hand gangs, telluride, illicit gold buying, underground mazes, gold smugglers, and the real old Boulder-Kalgoorlie.

Touch Me Not

by Pat Studdy-Clift

ISBN 978-0-85905-654-0, (New, 2017), A4, 86 pages, well illustrated, 255 grams.

$30.00* + POST

This is an historical novel, based on fact and brimful of the adventures, trials and triumphs of one pioneering family – the Gadens. In 1923 with two small babies, aboard the lugger "Chantress", their adventurous father and his brave-hearted wife headed into the uncivilised part of Australia now known as Kakadu National Park, only to find themselves living in "bough sheds" at the mercy of tropical cyclones, buffalo bulls, fierce snakes and primeval crocodiles, to mention a few of their hazards.  Add to this a daughter Madge, who was not only a gifted pianist, but also a "darling".  She touched the hearts of many, world-wide, when leprosy struck both her and her father.  Top this with the inferno of World War Two as Madge, the mixed-race patients and their carers on Channel Island in Darwin Harbour faced the bombing of Darwin.  History leads us through a record of man's inhumanity, but also man's humanity to man.

Xantho and the Broadhursts

M. McCarthy

ISBN 978-0-85905-676-2, (New, 2017), 129 pages, A4, Illustrated, 400 grams

$30.00* + POST

From steamships to suffragettes: In attempting to understand the strange wreck of Western Australia's first colonial steamship SS Xantho, maritime archaeologist M. (Mac) McCarthy needed to get into the mind of its owner and operator Charles Broadhurst. Reviled and dismissed by his peers and most historians, Broadhurst was found to be Western Australia's first and foremost colonial entrepreneur, fore-runner to the famous, and in some cases equally controversial, Claude de Bernales, Laurie Connell, Alan Bond and Robert Holmes à Court.

The Yelma Station diary of Arthur C. Ashwin for 1928

Arthur C. Ashwin

ISBN 978-0-85905-663-2, (New, 2017),   40 pages,, A4,   120 grams

$22.00* + POST