Welcome to Hesperian Press
Hesperian Press has been publishing Real Australian Books since 1969 when its principal, Peter Bridge, first published technical material. The current program commenced in 1979 and Hesperian Press has now published well over 1000 titles, with up to 20 works in progress at any time.
Western Australian Exploration Diaries' Project.
We are currently working on the second Kimberley volume and the Central Desert volumes.
A subset of this is the bio of Sam Hazlett.
IMPORTANT NOTICE!
ROAD CLOSURE
WE ARE STILL OPEN
2-4pm Tues + Fri New Summer Hours from Nov 1
Metronet, not satisfied with wrecking the rail and roads for some 2+ years, have announced the closing of the area of Oats Street outside our office.
Parking must be on Rutland Ave or around.
NEW OPENING TIMES + APPOINTMENTS
From the start of November through summer we are shortening our opening hours to, from 2 PM to 4 PM, Tuesdays and Fridays.
This will channel erratic customer service to a concentrated period. And save us all from hot boredom.
The majority of phone queries can be conducted via email to the satisfaction of all.
Discussions re publishing must be commenced with emails detailing the content of the manuscript.
Please note that those seeking to talk long will be placed at the end of the que.
Ditto for those bringing in manuscripts without an appointment.
At 81 time is short and our backlog great.
EMAIL WARNING
We have had several queries from overseas translators checking whether we are advertising for translators.
Criminally inclined Chinese operators are using a close adaption of our name in a @gmail account to solicit such work.
We have observed Chinese gangsters trying it on for our name in the past.
In the past we have noted Chinese criminals involved in book stealing rackets in Western Australia.
They were just in advance of the criminally destructive policies of the State Library.
If the book is on the website and booklist it is in print and in stock.
PLEASE NOTE: Any book title starting with "The" - the second word of the title is used to list by.
All prices quoted are in Australian currency and include GST. * Short trade discount.
If you are unsure of a title use the search facility on the left hand side of this page.
This Home Page list is the new releases.
See the Main Booklist for full details.
We have rarely changed the prices upwards on our books. Plenty have been discounted.
However, with a combination of declining sales, declining stocks, and greatly increased production costs some changes are necessary.
Reprinting of many core titles has generally not been viable. But when we do this the runs are much smaller.
So costs per copy are higher. So usually these will have reduced trade discounts, marked with a * on the listed price.
We are on the tail end of the following titles, Black and white, Yammaji, Youanme.
The prices of the remaining stock are now raised to fit in with the new pricing if/when we reprint. All are now rrp $40.00*
Most of our titles will not be reprinted when they become out of print. Then the rare book sellers will have a field day.
Geological Library of Geoff Blackburn.
Retired geologist Geoff Blackburn’s international geological library is now for sale.
Some 266 + shelving feet of books and journals are now available for inspection at the Hesperian Press warehouse.
Highlights are a very large section on Africa/Middle East and substantial collections on South America and SE Asia.
Preference given to the sale of each of these sections complete. Offers for the full collection solicited from corporate or individual buyers.
Contains many rare and very difficult to obtain items.
Further gems in consideration for sale are a beautifully bound set of WA Geological Survey Bulletins, a well bound set of Mines Department Annual Reports, a bound set of the Aerial Geological and Geophysical Survey of Northern Australia, and also an unbound set.
Minerals of Western Australia, 1935 to present.
Project. To collect all information on the distribution of mineral species in Western Australia post-Dr. E. S. Simpson's Minerals of Western Australia. (but also to incorporate material that Dr Simpson missed).
Dr. Simpson died in 1939 and the work was finished by Dr Dorothy Hill. The three volumes were published in 1948, 1951, and 1952.
No other state has anything like MWA. Queensland has a Mineral Index published in 1912. Several checklists of minerals were published in Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. Few nations have such collations except France, Madagascar and a few American states.
MWA proved invaluable to generations of researchers, geologists, prospectors and collectors. It is no exaggeration to say that millions of dollars have been made from the included data. As a scientific resource it is unparalleled.
Very few mining companies were helpful in adding to the state collections in the time I was there, from 1961 to 1978. But many made use of the information provided. Fewer mining companies were prepared to cooperate in the initial updating proposal of 2010, and there was a dearth of collectors that were serious enough to be prepared to knuckle down to the long and systematic work involved. I term this problem the ‘Henny Penny Syndrome.’ http://goodsensibilities.blogspot.com/2008/11/henny-penny.html - not the Wikipedia filth!
Now collectors abound and a few even read the literature beyond the infantile ‘grabs’ on the internet.
It is proposed that checking will go back to 1935 to ensure little is missed, due to time lags in publishing and accessibility of journals when Dr Simpson was collating his manuscript.
This data is in :‑
Journals and published reports, including older newspapers.
Company reports held by the GSWA
Files of the Government Chemical Laboratories archives.
Files of the Geological Survey of WA
Files of the Minerals Division of the CSIRO
Files of the Bureau of Mineral Resources
Specimens held in the collections of the WA Museum, WA School of Mines, University of WA Geology Department, private collections.
Of necessity this is a multi-volume affair. It must be approached systematically, and not ‘cherry picked.’ Hit and run attitudes are not wanted. For the first stage of this project only the journals, published reports and newspapers are to be systematically covered, but scattered material from private collections will also be considered.
The literature must be systematically checked to find all references to papers published on WA minerals and mineralogy. While this may appear to conflict with GSWA publications on mineral resources, it will not, as the emphasis is different, but there will be a minor overlap.
For those who will become involved each will have identifying initials attached to their para as per the Mineralogical Abstracts, a companion to the Mineralogical Magazine of London. This ensures that claims to expertise and competence are backed by evidence and contributors acknowledged.
The abstracting of the new MWA entries will be done by competent persons. Those searching the journals/files will not necessarily be the final abstracters. All, however, will be acknowledged.
The work was started by the indexing of Government Chemical Laboratories Annual Reports in 1970 as Mineral and Locality Index to the Publications of the WA Government Chemical Laboratories 1922-1970. Peter J Bridge. Hesperian Press.1972. Unfortunately the then more accessible GCLARs were used. These are now rare. The same data with different pagination is in the digitized Mines Department Annual Reports.
This was later followed by the indexing of the GCL Mineral Division collections by PJB in the 1970s and the production of a computer index. This was said to be published, unacknowledged, in the late 1980s but I have never seen a copy. So perhaps my master copy is now the sole copy. The GCL was corporatized and computer records may no longer exist.
A systematic reading of all early goldfields newspapers has uncovered many previously unknown mineral finds, such as the discovery of nickel on the goldfields in the 1890s.
Further work was started in the early 2000s by the systematic sifting of Mineralogical Abstracts for references using the resources of the Mines Department Library. It is this latter referencing which shall be the centre of the first stage of this work. However it is essential to check all the journals as certain editors of MA were a little too selective. From these references the full paper will be p/copied to match all references. By 2010 I was well ahead but then other realities intruded. I have substantial files already compiled. It is proposed that the final set of these documents eventually be placed in the GSWA Library or in the WA Museum Library.
This is not a project which needs money, at this stage. It is to be volunteer run. Once compiled discussions can take place as to the style of dissemination of the results.
The entries may of necessity be briefer than those styled in the original MWA.
Later each locality will have to be plotted to give a grid of the 1:100,000 sheet which can then be indexed automatically on completion.
Descriptive details will be restricted to a formula. Formulas can be perhaps based on those in Fleischer’s Glossary of Mineral Species, if still produced. Detailed mineral descriptions would not be included as there are many textbooks now available, in print or on-line, and inclusion would measurably conflict with the energy required to complete the index.
The formulation of a spreadsheet to enable all this data to be sorted will be done at the same time as the references are collected.
This proposal is now being published for consideration by those interested. Personally, I may not be able to be involved due to age and other commitments. But I am happy to guide such if the right personnel become involved. Several other proposals have been made over the years but all were unworkable. This proposal will be on record as the only practical way to collate the information to produce an acceptable outcome.
Having created (with Kim Epton) the Western Australian Explorers Diaries’ Project Inc. (an incorporated body) and produced over 20 large volumes of such diaries I can claim some knowledge of preparing and completing a major research operation. In this we had to weed those who were onlookers, parasites, or saboteurs. There are many that take but do not give.
Peter J. Bridge
9 November 2024.
Obituary
Kim Akerman
5 November 1947 - 19 September 2024.
I first met Kim in the late 1950s at the Perth Wildlife Show, held by the WA Naturalists Club in the Perth Town Hall. I was a volunteer and later represented the WA Speleological Group.
Kim, then a high school student, had a display of spectacular native dancing masks from New Guinea and I was a little concerned that the dirty fingered public might be detrimental to them. Kim’s father, Dr. John Akerman had been a medico in PNG, where these items were collected. His mother, Eve, was a journalist. While I only met Dr Akerman that once at the WLS, I kept up a social contact with Eve, then living in Thomas Street, Subiaco. My wife and I called in occasionally to hear the latest of Kim’s wanderings in the Wilds. His elder brother, an oil man, introduced me to Asian antiquities by showing me an exquisite marble head of a Chinese girl, found in Malacca.
Later I remember Kim at the Uni. He was, I think, staying at one of the colleges and his fascination with the material culture of the Aboriginals was paralleled with my interest in mineralogy. I was mucking about with part time mature age studies, a total disaster, but an interesting introduction to the ‘system’. I developed my own system and bypassed the degree beast. Kim developed a combination, but followed his own maps.
Outside Kingswood College at the bus stop Kim was practicing spear throwing skills. “Stand behind that tree and I will aim at it” His aim at that stage was inexpert, and it ricocheted off another tree and nearly speared me.
I ran into Kim on and off over the years. He, Mike Archer, and myself, with our wives had some great dinners. Later all three of us, for greatly varying reasons, divested ourselves of, or were divested by, our partners.
Kim worked in the Kimberley, learning from the old men their secrets, and being initiated into their philosophies. ‘Kakerman,’ as he was known to some, was already becoming a legend.
Years later, and multiple changes in life and self-made careers, I joined again with Kim in publishing his original anthropological works and translations from the Swedish and German masters.
All these are listed on the Hesperian Press website, with the exception of the last. That was being edited and typeset by my daughter Celene when the news came of his passing came from Kim’s wife, Val.
Kim’s health had been precarious for some years, and it was only his will power and determination to finish his self-set tasks, and the care by Val, that kept him going.
We had discussed his unique records and their disposal. He was very disturbed by the closing of anthropological records by many wokey institutions. I believe he countered this with digitisation of his photographs and distribution of hard drives among multiple institutions. He freely gave advice on the importance and value of ethnographic collections, countering the insanity of the communist state of Victoria, in their arbitrary and criminal cases of confiscation.
His carefully curated collections of ethnographica, developed in his field work, and his keen eye for the displaced items in auction houses and online, made his collections a joy to behold by those looking at the old days and old ways.
His most recent book, Scales of the Serpent, on the Aboriginal use of pearl shell, will become a great classic and the contents will resonate among tribals and collectors for generations to come.
A year ago Kimberley men visited him to be taught how to make traditional spear and flaked stone points. They took along a cameraman to record the lost art so as to train a new generation in the making of such beautiful objects.
Kim was also an artist, hand carving countless objects and figures since he was a teenager. Animals, fantastic scenes and motifs were created from mammoth ivory, whale teeth or bone and inlaid with shell, horn or amber, as well as scrimshaw on bone and whale teeth. He made his own carving and engraving tools, including the intricately carved handles.
So passes the last of the great ethnographers of Aboriginal culture. His like will not be seen again.
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Peter J. Bridge
22 September 2024
Dick Kimber
13 December 1939 – 16 September 2024
Writing this morning, 1 November, to a customer who appreciated our obituary of Kim Akerman, (d.19 Sept 2024) I said “I seem to be writing too many obits. A sign of my time” This afternoon a ‘singer of the bush’ mentioned the death of a mutual friend, Dick Kimber. I was a little shocked as this was the first I had heard of his passing.
While memory has its fair clouds, my first meeting with Dick was relating to his book Man From Arltunga which we published in 1986. He had come to Hesperian because of our interest in NT history. We were immediately taken by this expression of the REAL Australia, which fitted so well into our programme of bush history. At that time the multinats were both ignorant and antagonistic to such bush history. They still are. The combination of Dick’s writing, our determination, a few good reviewers and of course, Iris Harvey of the Arunta bookshop in Alice Springs, gave the book its christening, and long life. A reprint with further material, published jointly with the Arltunga Hotel (1996), continues to be well received. It has become a classic of the bush.
Dick’s balanced views of the oft times contentious relationships of black and white in the centre was greatly appreciated. While powerful entities were fulminating against Constable Willshire, Dick was supportive of our publishing his collected works and biography. The vast majority of antagonistic opinions came from those who had never read any of the rare original materials. But the world goes round.
I visited Dick and Marg in Alice Springs and a large correspondence ensued over the years. We were working towards another volume of his desert histories but his chronic illness finally caused that to be shelved. Then Sanghee and I visited Marge and Dick in August last year. It was good.
Dick received many honours for his dedication and work on the Territory and its people. He was happy to hear that we were working on the history of the exploration of the Central Deserts of Australia, which covers the travails of many of the people in which he was so greatly interested.
Peter J. Bridge
1 November 2024.
Three new ancestors added to
Tasmanian tiger’s storyline
Nimbacinus peterbridgei
Etymology— The species name peterbridgei honors mineralogist Peter Bridge OAM who has dedicated his life to bringing the past of Australia’s natural and cultural history into the present by supporting our paleontological field expeditions and publishing as well as authoring via Hesperian Press hundreds of books about Australia’s extraordinary human and natural history.
Timothy J. Churchill, Michael Archer & Suzanne J. Hand (06 Sep 2024): Three new thylacinids (Marsupialia, Thylacinidae) from late Oligocene deposits of the Riversleigh World Heritage Area, northwestern Queensland, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, DOI:
10.1080/02724634.2024.2384595
The Battle of Harvey.
Pat Trembath.
ISBN 978-1-875778-05-8, A5, 5 pages, $10.00.
A battle in a good war (ie no white men were killed). An otherwise unrecorded native fight with the usual slaughter, sometime in the mid? 1800s.
8 Battery. An Enduring Force.
Major Ronald Cutten RFD.
ISBN 978-0-85905-990-9, (New, 2023), A4, french flaps, well illustrated, 276 pages, ~800 grams, $66.00*
The first artillery unit in Western Australia was formed in 1872 with the formation of the WA Troop of Horse Artillery (formerly the Union Troop of Mounted Volunteers). This was followed by frequent name and equipment changes, even after Federation in 1901. At the outbreak of war in 1914, Western Australia was allocated a field artillery battery. From August 1914, the existing 37 Battery militia became 8 Battery AIF.
This book tells the story of 8 Battery, a unit that made its name in World War 1 but whose influence was felt long after the cessation of this conflict.
8 Battery served from Gallipoli on through to the Western Front. While the official unit war diaries and other sources give detailed descriptions of action on the war front it is thanks to the letters and diaries left behind by two remarkable soldiers, namely Hector Roy McLarty and William (Bill) Lyall that the author has been able to capture personal stories of victories and losses, of tragedies and heroic acts, and of comradeship and service to country.
8 Battery’s influence did not end at the finish of the Great War. After World War 1 it was the basis of the continuing service of artillery in Western Australia, Members of 8 Battery also served in World War 2 units, in particular 6 Battery of 2/3 Australian Field Artillery (Greece) and in the 14thBattery of 2/7th Australian Field Regiment (Middle East). Soldiers who had been leaders in World War 1 continued their leadership in the Second World War.
The 8th Battery Association continued the strong bonds formed on the battlefield and was active right up until the 1950s.
8 Battery’s example of continuing service is reflected in today’s former and currently serving gunners. 8 Battery’s story is one that deserves to be told.
The Forgotten Art of Flash Jack Barrymore.
Works on Paper, Painted Pearl Shells and Engraved Boab Nuts, from the first half of the 20th Century.
Kim Akerman with Bruno Jordanoff.
ISBN 978-0-85905-993-0, (New, 2023), A4, Illustrated in colour, french flaps, 86 pages, 390 grams, $52.00*
In the first half of the 20th century Flash Jack was a well-known and respected artist who primarily catered for the crews and passengers of steam ships that serviced the coastal towns of Western Australia and sailed north to Singapore.
Working on paper, boab nuts and small pearl shells, Jack created images of Aboriginal life in the Kimberley. Sadly, by the 1970s his name had disappeared from the story of Kimberley indigenous art history. In The Forgotten Art of ‘Flash Jack’ Barrymore, Kim Akerman with Bruno Jordanoff examine Jack’s life and art, bringing together nearly a hundred works of art which had, until recently, been forgotten and place this extraordinary man as a crusader for Aboriginal contemporary art in the Kimberley.
Gold! Gold! Gold! Poetry to Prospect By.
Ed. Peter J. Bridge
ISBN 978-0-85905-919-0, [New, 2021], A5, 14 pages. grams $10.00*
An erratically acquired collection of verse and worse on the subject of man’s second greatest obsession.
Hidden Wealth and Hiding People.
by Michael Terry.
ISBN 978-1-875778-33-1, (1931 R 2024), 240 x 160, 402 pages, illustrated, French flap cover, 1kg, $75.00*
Our third volume of Terry’s central Australian expeditions in the 1920s-30s. This details his work in the Kimberley and central Australia.
These volumes of exploration and prospecting are some of the best reads on Central Australia.
Locked Up In Fremantle 1829-1856. Prisoners and Patients on the Marquis of Anglesea and in the Round House.
by Steve Errington.
ISBN 978-0-85905-999-2, (New, 2023), 266 pages, 240 x 160, French flap soft cover, 460 grams, $70.00.
This book is a vital addition to both Steve’s recent book on the Roundhouse and the earlier collections of the WA Dictionary of Biography series.
McLean Bros & Rigg Ltd, General hardware electrical and machinery merchants, Catalogue No. 3 1950.
ISBN 978-1-875778-36-2, (1950, R 2024) A4, 340 pages, French flaps, highly illustrated, 980 grams, $80.00*
This magnificent catalogue with thousands of illustrations of items will become as essential reference for collectors of a wide range of Australiana items, dealers, ebayers, and those involved in all manner of heritage studies.
A lucky find in the crowded shelves of a junk shop. The only known copy now reproduced for the benefit of all.
My father worked for McLeans as a shipping clerk before the war and was helpfully advised by the Customs officer son of Pilmer of Northern Patrol in customs clearances. Nearby was his father’s business, Bridge Built Tinware & Sheetmetal Work based in Wellington Street, Perth, and started in his Carlisle backyard during the Great Depression. Wartime work was on the submarine fleet at Fremantle. Later it became Bridge and Wilson, which again later became Jason Industries at Welshpool. The plant in the old Government Munitions Factory grew into the large factories in Pilbara Street. This unfortunately was stripped of people, land and assets by the banksters and a flourishing business employing hundreds of West Australians was thrown to the wolves, if not of Wall Street, their close relatives, and just as savage.
The pages of this wonderful catalogue display the Model Maid and Cinderella kitchen products as well as the Fasta bath heater, all produced by Jason Industries. My youthful visits to the anodising and plating operations and forced work on the metal spinning lathes (to keep an eye on me after a thwarted adventure) are still fresh in my mind. I admired the work of the toolmakers, the 100 ton press and the hard working machine operators.
The destruction of so much of Australian industry by the Whitlam and following Labor and other governments, with the Lima Agreement, globalism and free trade have been a disaster for the nation. Some of the blood sucking scum of the underworld became billionaires and with others cannibalised the assets of a once highly productive and creative nation. We all know who they are but their faecal families may object to being named.
This process, ongoing in the Western world, has delivered us into the hands of the crass commercialism of China and elsewhere. Our once almost self-sufficient nation has been ‘consumerised’. There is currently no way out of this mess. It is going to get bad, very, very bad.
The once most advanced political economy in the world has been reduced to beggar status and we are now just a colony of international capital. Our so-called allies (All Lies) are merely those closer to our dinner plate, with us as the dinner. The swamps of the ruling political parties must be drained and the poison of those beholden to alien interests defanged.
While few understand the processes of destruction that have gone on we all have some nostalgia for the past and this is expressed in the growing interest in the relics of our past. Collector’s, historical societies, and vintage shops flourish, albeit as adjuncts to pawn shops, a sign of our sad times.
The republication of this magnificent catalogue will enable collectors and dealers to identify and place the significance of items. It will bring to light many lost memories. Perhaps it will also act as a reviver for those whose autarkic ideas may regenerate industry and a natural nationalism.
McLean Brothers and Rigg’s Perth operations were serially cannibalised and eventually closed sometime in the early 2000s.
Old Scarborough. A Destiny fulfilled.
by Chris Holyday.
ISBN 978-1-875778-29-4. (New, 2024), 166 pages, A4, french flaps, heavily illustrated, B&W and colour, Personal names indexed, 700 grams, $40.00*
Old Scarborough describes in words, and many never seen before photos, ‘the way we were’ when the Scarborough beachfront sands were much wider; life was much simpler; the buildings were basic; the community spirit was strong, and Scarborough was regarded as a ‘fun place’ to go. It is also the story of a much stronger community emerging after WWII, and Scarborough becoming a premier beach location, with icons such as Luna Park, the Scarborough Hotel, the Snake Pit and Kool Korner Kafe.
It is still seen as a great place to live following major State Government and City of Stirling investment in its future. It will still be a fun place to go in years to come, with its many new attractions, its shops and wide range of restaurants. Its community clubs, such as the long-serving Scarboro’ Surf Life Saving Club, and the Scarborough District Sportsmen’s Club, still flourish, and that old Scarborough community vibe is still alive.
This book, in chronicling the people and places that have defined Scarborough, will ensure their stories are preserved, and can be enjoyed by future generations.
Sand and Sun. Two gold-hunting expeditions with camels in the dry lands of Central Australia.
Michael Terry.
ISBN 978-0-85905-996-1, 294 pages, 160 x 240, illustrated, French flap cover, indexed, 680 grams, $70.00.
Michael Terry led many expeditions into Central Australia in the 1920s and 1930s. His companions were the best bushmen of their time. His books have become rare and expensive. This is the second volume we have reprinted of his famous desert travels.
Scales of the Serpent. Kimberley Pearlshell in Aboriginal Australia.
by Kim Akerman.
ISBN 978-0-85905-987-9, (New, 2023), A4, Fully colour illustrated, french flap soft cover, section sewn, 190 pages, 750 grams, $110.00* Postage
A magnificent volume presenting a detailed study of the Aboriginal use of pearl shell in both the traditional and contemporary worlds. This is already a classic. The jaded and faux art of the desert drawings is already rolling over with the freshness and strictly limited availability of pearl shell art.
To obtain the trade price, and hence for resale, there is a minimum order of 3 books. If a single copy is purchased then there is no trade discount. This does not apply to our regular trade customers. Postage will be advised on ordering. Do not pay until you receive our invoice.
The Sands of Time. Austin, Nuffield, BMC Leyland in regional Western Australia.
By Gary Mentiplay.
ISBN 978-1-875778-27-0, (New, 2024), A4, 298 pages, illustrated- B&W & colour, indexed, 1.3kg. $70.00. No trade discount. Small run.
This book is an in-depth account of the Western Australian Regional motor dealers and garages that held the agencies for the Austin Motor Company (Australia); and also the garages that represented the marques of Morris, Wolseley, Riley, MG, Morris-Commercial, Nuffield Tractors.
The British Motor Corporation was formed by the merger of Austin and Morris (Nuffield) in 1953 in Britain, and their combined interests in Australia were merged and reorganized. The two separate national dealer networks of Austin and Nuffield remained separate until a National Dealer Rationalisation commenced in 1959 and continued in some states until1963. Up until then, there were generally two separate dealers in some suburbs and country towns, one for Austin and one for Nuffield.
This changed to one local BMC dealer selling the full BMC range of vehicles (Austin, Morris, Wolseley, MG). Which meant of course in most locations there was now only one dealer, not two (there were exceptions however). In Australia, this meant the end of "badge-engineering" with the smaller models being labelled as Morris, and the larger models badged as Austin. This only occurred in Australia - the British and New Zealand dealer networks were maintained as separate entities (Austin / Morris) for a long number of years after 1963.
The book features the dealers in their regional areas - this is a major focus of "The Sands of Time." There are 28 personal accounts from dealers ranging from Busselton to Kalgoorlie, with a history on dealers from earlier times. There is also a comprehensive account on the annual numbers of Austin and Morris dealers in WA from 1908 to 1980.
Owners and enthusiasts of Austin, Morris, Wolseley, BMC and Leyland vehicles should have a copy of "The Sands of Time" in their home library.
The Tanami Goldrush, the Laurie brothers, fellow prospectors, and the Toll of the Bush.
Peter J. Bridge.
ISBN 978-0-85905-989-3, (New, 2023), A4, 148 pages, illustrated, indexed, 400 grams, $40.00*
The great NT desert rush of around 1910 which led to the loss of many lives from thirst, starvation, accident, and attacks from the savages. Lost stories and lost lives for gold ill spent.
On the road to Tanami,
Tramp the men who do – or die;
Pioneers, the land they spy
‘Neath a leaden load o’ Care.
Ah! The heartaches Stouthearts know
Scrapin’ for the golden show!
On the road to Tanami.
Untold Miles. Three gold-hunting expeditions amongst the picturesque borderland ranges of Central Australia.
by Michael Terry.
ISBN 978-0-85905-995-4, (2023R, 1932), 316 pages, 240 x 160, french flap soft cover, illustrated, maps, indexed, 720 grams, $75.00*
Long out of print. The great 1930s expeditions into the Central Australian wilds. Terry led many expeditions with camels and early desert vehicles and recorded the land and the lives, black and white, of the inhabitants. His works are classics of the bush.
Western Australian Ghost Mining towns, Business & Residence Areas, and Mining Camps.
Ian Murray OAM.
ISBN 978-0-85905-827-8, (New, 2023), A4, french flaps, 427 pages, 270+ maps, 1.2kg, $110.00*
This volume is recommended to be used in conjunction with the two volume West Australian Gold Towns and Settlements, published in 2011, as many of the maps are applicable to both titles.
All Hesperian Press books are prepared, printed and published in Perth.
We do not subscribe to printing overseas. Localisation, not globalisation.
We believe that one must support the nation that breeds you and feeds you, both physically and spiritually.
Exporting our jobs is like exporting our raw minerals, it only benefits parasites.
The 2023 Premiers Book Awards short list is out. It would be better termed a shit list.
Recently we asked the ministerial maggot for consideration of a grant from the Arts Department for a large and important book on the use of pearl shell by Aboriginals. A month later came the short reply that they do not consider non-fiction books. (We expected & knew this but having it on record is useful…).
Interestingly they are so addled that they failed to see that this book could have fitted their Aboriginal cultural promotions. But knife, nose, face.
In their desperation to impose their Wokeshevic communist agenda, when the local subsidised presses failed to produce anything worth boasting about, they cut out any consideration of non-fiction books in case some literate judge with an independent streak decided that a Hesperian book might be considered.
The poor showing made them open the WA ‘awards’ – propaganda bribes – to t’othersiders.
Even that has failed to produce anything worthwhile. The lists plainly show the cultural bankruptcy of the left loonies in the West, and elsewhere.
Meanwhile…. Back in the Land of Light the presses at Hesperian are churning out high quality cultural and historical works as fast as our small and dedicated team and authors can research, write, and print (and pay for).
Readers and patriots. You have supported Hesperian for many decades. We could not have kept going without you. We are totally on the outer for state and federal grants as we will not produce porn of any stripe. But we have survived and shortly our thousandth book will be out.
Now just imagine if we had a true Australian leadership with the traitor class permanently rotting in one of their high security ‘covid’ camps that they built for us. What wonderful things could be done. It is not the money but the spirit. But sadly our Western Christian Civilisation, based on Truth and Beauty, has been subverted by the imported termites, and we are well on the way to a bolshevic dictatorship decaying in the corruption that only such alien haters could devise.
Just look at the features of the unlovely and you will know who are the perpetrators and their minions.
And remember their revolutionary rhetoric.
“The issue is never the issue.
The issue is always the Revolution.”
And my axiom, “the more bullshit there is, the more it is bullshit.”
Bullshit will rot your socks and you can’t enter the house with it on your shoes.
Get rid of it.
Editorial and Proofreading Services for Real Australian Writers of Non-Fiction
Assistance with preparing your writing for publication. Services include editing, indexing and proofreading. No job too modest or too academic.
The Australian Government Publishing Service standard used for normal editing work.
Qualifications and experience: PhD, BA Hons (Geography). Over 16 years as a proof reader and editor with the Western Australian Explorers' Diaries Project.
Marion Hercock
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
0404 036 109
WAM BAM.
April 2022
Visiting the new WA Museum in October last, I was surprised by the flurry of flunkys cockroaching around.
The building is of that brutalist design which is the mark of many recent vomitous buildings in Western Australia and bears the same relationship to spiritually uplifting architecture as does sodomite fancy to heterosexual love.
The exhibits, without rational planning, are higgledy piggledy, or more precisely like a pig sty of dead cultural leftovers without any connectivity for anyone whose interest rises above the evanescent pages of twatter and faecesbook.
Since a fleeting visit some months ago the minerals exhibit has had a partial relabelling, so someone must have finally realised that 'pickabox' is not very educational and utterly irrational. There is an immense distance to go from the current choose a colour/shape and find out what it is, to a display that is both mentally stimulating and aesthetically attractive. Just like in the gallery of irrelevancies juxtaposed in an insoluble snakes and ladders puzzle the part time conceptualists and full time sodomites have no idea who or what is on the other side of the glory hole.
One notes that, appropriately, the Hoax of the Twentieth Century gets several windows of its own among the all-pervading stench of local tribalism. The glorification of 50,000 years of devolution to give social misfits and ring-ins an antipodean sense of 'we wuz kangs' has little attraction for the rest of us.
We had all hoped that the new WAM might be a priceless ornament to both our history and culture. Few realised that underneath the government hype the core was as rotten as it could ever be.
Just as the destructive rampage of the 'Dr' D&C through the National Museum and other once high cultural centres ended in tears, of rage, this abomination will go the same way. In the meantime the potential intellectual growth and enjoyment of thousands of children will be thwarted. Hopefully some of those will wake from the wokes imposed upon them and take a sword and noose to the fleeing destructionists.
The Museum had/has immense collections of interest which have been secreted away. Or have they been destroyed as politically unsuitable, like the hundreds of thousands of rare books that once adorned the State Library? The mineral displays are ridiculous for a state which owes its wealth to its mineral resources. Those displays of ~70 years ago educated and lifted me to greater things. What has happened to the world class antique arms collections? What a drawcard they would be. I covered some of these problems in The Ontology of Book Burning.
We need answers to these questions. We need a stocktake to discover where the collections have gone and a public enquiry into the burying and stealing of our patrimony. Could the WAM survive a stocktake by independent auditors? In preparation they have been rewriting the catalogues via digitisation so that all will look clean.
Life is not long enough to waste more than a quick spin to receive an unwanted visual emetic that is the WAM displays. This is cultural pornography and as it targets children, it is actually culturally paedophilic to its core. I give the internal 'structure' about 12 months before its collapse, as citizens awake to the waste of hard earned dollars and the poison that it unleashes on the defenceless schoolchildren that are herded through this Molochian horror, on the way to the immolation of their capacity to think and derive knowledge useful to their future.
The current government of culturally ignorant parvenus will bitterly regret allowing the pretentious scum of the new weaponised pseudo-social 'sciences' to control the agenda and waste near billions of the citizen's assets in their sick abusive propaganda exercise. Generosity (with the taxpayers $) towards those southland gypsies, who like their relations, have no interest in principles, only the principal; and it never stops.
I delayed publishing this critique while I corresponded with the Museum Director, or more correctly, the CEO. Responsible Directors with appropriate training in science and administration have not been seen in the WAM for many years.
Many of our readers have queried as to why our books are not on sale in the WAM toyshop as they were in the earlier State Library Bookshop. Possibly under the rubric of saving the shekels for the building programme, all our books were removed from all WA Museum outlets in WA. That in Kalgoorlie had once flourished. A long and somewhat acrimonious tit for tat led nowhere. The intensity of pissy fits in the WAM indicate that there is more than mere economics to our boycott and that a psychosexual imbalance corrodes their world view. It appears that somewhere in that cannibal food chain is a cabal of creatures whose company I would like to both avoid, but see, at a distance, impaled on a stake. That would satisfy forever their anal instincts.
Recently we published a book by an ex WAM staff member. He was told that if the book had been published by anyone other than Hesperian they would have stocked it. When the CEO was informed of this he 'lost his cool.' He objects to my use of the term 'boycott', but he just smells it differently. Attempts to get to the real reasons behind the boycott have not succeeded. Perhaps my earlier writings have impacted on the sorry set of vicious and vocal degenerates that seem to emerge everywhere lately. Suffice to say, again, that something is very rotten in the WA Museum and its parent body, the Arts Department.
The government agenda is that of a flowering of the 'long march through the institutions' and placing the wokes and wackos into positions of power which cannot be removed except by extensive cauterisation. This sickness of Mc$hit has corrupted the entire Western world and the smell of burning flesh in the chastisements to come will be all pervading.
The following essay, creative writing, but not fantasy, reveals the sickness and suggests a cause. Germs rarely affect a healthy organism. With un-healthy there is only death, and that is incurable.
A Dead Man's Land on the Highway of Death.
By Peter the Painter.
September 2021.
The cultural and architectural chimera that is the new WA Museum – Boola Bardip – Place of Lies – is a place cursed for both whites and blacks.
Built on a hill overshadowing the city, on top of the old Perth Gaol and its gallows where dozens of men, and women, were executed between 1851 and 1887, it is also where some of the aboriginal dead were dumped instead of being carted to the East Perth Cemetery.
Cursed now for the white man as it is a direct cultural attack on those who built the nation.
Cursed twice as it is the place of death and non-sacralised burial of ancient bulya men.
Thrice cursed as a haunting place for the teratophiliac degenerates who planned, designed and built such an 'abomination of desolation.'
I forecast, or is it a prediction, that it will be devoid of patrons by the end of the year, 2022. Once the Old Museum invigorated by multiple visits. Now one visit is enough the last a lifetime, of regret, at having wasted a precious hour.
Our dictatorial governments of ignorant upstarts think that $ and diktats alone can run a nation.
But they have destroyed the cohesiveness of our culture, throwing us all to the dingos on the death path.
When bones were found during the excavations for the foundations they were quickly and quietly spirited away, never to be seen or discussed again.
When, in 2021, answers were demanded from both the state pathologist and the coroner, the researcher was told that it was none of his business.
This, protecting an institution which has secreted the skull of Pigeon, a vicious cannibal killer who was bulleted in 1897. A cult heroicising this foul creature has infested the lower levels of the anthropology and land rights bowel movements. It is identical to that of Yagan, another killer & cannibal who met his bullet long ago.
The cover up is on – the bones were human and aboriginal.
The Museum, despite all the crowing and promotions, is built on the Bones of Dead Men.
My ancestors, both white and black, would look with distaste upon the thrice cursed hill of death, our colonial Golgotha.
My white convict ancestors would have known some of those whites hung to death there.
My black ancestress was related by blood to natives hung on the bloody gallows.
The gallows on the hill overlooked the city centre, where is the omphalos of our city, directly down to the river, along a highway of death, our own El Camino de la Muerte (Don Quixote).
All traditional cultures have a knowledge of spirituality, of spirits good and bad, and despite the trappings of modernity they are still there, rumbling away beneath the surface like the fires of dormant volcanoes.
We can only measure the baleful aspects of these influences as a whole, individually they can be dismissed, but the effects of accumulation, never.
The Chinese call their understanding of this, feng shui. Paradoxically we are more familiar with this concept than we are of the almost lost divinatory arts of our own Celtic ancestors and that of the little studied aboriginal boolya and kaidatcha men.
These emanations curse the activities and well-being of all who venture to live or work where they are in force.
The death spirits flow directly downhill along Beaufort and Barrack Streets where they are bottled up in that canyon of death and ricochet among the buildings down to Barrack Square on the river.
They also flow westwards along James and Francis Street to encompass the double-hexagoned Art Gallery of poisonous 'degenerate art' and the State Library, which specialises in burning books, and then to the coven of brothels, opium dens, gambling and clip joints that made up Northbridge. Now a scene of tribal feuding and maiming. Yagan Square, another nomenclatural fetish, has collapsed as a harbinger of all associated with the imposition of cannibal culture. Right among this was the shop of the Chinese merchant whose daughter was horribly murdered in 1926 and dumped in the river. Northbridge has always been a hell-hole of vice and death. Nothing really changes, just that we do not see the hidden history or sense the planned puerility of a sick society.
Directly opposite the Old Gaol/Museum is a 'glory hole' of the denizens of Sodom and all that entails. Several years ago the Museum accepted, with some alacrity, as a 'valuable cultural object', an old filth stained toilet door. It had a hole at a 'convenient height' through which deviants could entertain each other anonymously. When the Museum opened they positioned an isolated solitary door, with a large hole in the middle, in the centre of the 5 metre wide Beaufort Street entrance, conveniently located directly opposite the glory hole, as a hidden sign of community between the two cesspools. The connection of degeneracy and the Museum is marked. Just a few years ago the pink and green neon signs on the Beaufort street wall openly promoted such. Given the intense direct relationship of faggotism with paedophilia it would be most unwise for parents to let their children freely wander around the Museum buildings and grounds.
Next there was the Canterbury Court carpark, an architectural eyesore of rotting concrete, now demolished and replaced with the equally financially disastrous Northbridge Centre collapsed into another car park. These are opposite the old Police Courts and cells where generations of unfortunates were initiated into the realities of the system before final incarceration at Fremantle Gaol or Rottnest.
Over the rail bridge on the east is the proto-'Godzilla' of Western Power. In Barrack Street, near the corner, is the hotel destroyed by the local mafia, now with a rebuilt facade disguising that cultural crime.
Next the site on the SW corner of Murray street of the old State Taxation bank that was robbed of £11,000 in about 1962, by a rising star of political and underworld crime, Ray O'Connor, best friend of 'Daphne' Court, gunman and military intelligence operator of the nearby Beehive Tearooms, and later brothel operator, disgraced former Premier of WA, and a suspect in the murder of fellow whoremongerer Shirley Finn.
All along here seedy untenanted shops exist in an economic shadow with little of the wealth of the lateral byways sticking to them. Such places, abandoned by the locals, become the habitat of dozens of culturally alien eating places, existing only by selling to each other.
On the next corner is the convict built Town Hall, now merely a remnant figurehead of our cohesiveness, almost abandoned. No life exists there. Opposite, the underground Alhambra Bar, remembered only for the unfortunate death on the stairs of one of our foremost song men, the poet 'Crosscut' Wilson.
Next the site of the old R & I bank, creator of the closest got by this state to economic sovereignty, killed off by a creature of Canberra operating for alien financial interests.
Outside this a bronze plaque marks the spot where the city was proclaimed by the ritual execution of a gum tree, the harbinger of the destruction to follow.
Then the old Treasury, now whored out at high prices to international interests. On this corner is the hidden & unrecognized omphalous of the City.
Directly over the Terrace stands a bronze statue of Alexander Forrest, a smart financial operator, and if one carefully examines the gun over his shoulder the metaphysical notches indicate the number of natives shot on his expeditions.
The highway then encompasses the Perth City Council offices, headquarters of our own home grown mafia and destroyers of life in the city. Also once, and possibly now, the Pentagon of the South, operating the North West Cape electronic antennas controlling the nuclear submarines patrolling the oceans with atomic death. Hidden in the nearby jungle is the Supreme Court where for many life was destroyed by costumed cabalists. Opposite, the great greenness has been replaced by the sterile establishment of the black castles of Elizabeth Quay, where few dare to traverse their courts.
The Bell Tower, a southern neo-Gothic edifice, with reflections of Gaudi, whose great bells are silenced by the overwhelming encroachment, now appears as a sad and lonely monument, like a long meaningless menhir of old Europe.
The end of the Canyon is the development of Barrack Square, fingering into the river, where life is one disaster after another for the hoodwinked tenants.
Here the spirits are finally thwarted from their attempts to escape down river to fly to their final resting place of Kurannup, and so echo back, shattering any possible peace and stability on the Highway of Death.
Museums Make an Exhibition of Themselves - Quadrant Online.
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/education/2024/02/museums-make-an-exhibition-of-themselves/