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.
 

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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.

 COMING SOON 

Field Notes in connection with Explorations in British New Guinea. May to October 1891. A. Gibb Maitland. ISBN 978-1-875778-40-9, (New, 2024), A4, 56 pages, illustrated,    grams, $

Sam Hazlett. An Explorer/prospector in the News. Ed by Gary Arcus from the collections of Mark Chambers and Peter J. Bridge. ISBN 978-1-875778-35-5, (New, 2024), 240 x 160, illustrated, indexed, French flaps,     pages,    grams, $

History of Mineral Discoveries [in Western Australia] Revised by A. Gibb Maitland.

ISBN 978-1-875778-26-3, (1904 R 2024), A4, indexed, 27 pages,    grams, $22.00*

A valuable but little known early record.

Killers of the Kimberley. Peter J. Bridge.

ISBN 978-1-875778-57-7, (New, 2025), A4, Indexed,     pages,  grams,  $

Full details of all the pioneers, prospectors, pastoralists, murdered by the local savages up to the 1930s.

The Daybooks and Journals of Yngve Laurell and Rudolf Soderberg of the Swedish Scientific Expedition to Australia 1910-1911. Kim Akerman, Margareta Luotsinen, Gun & Gunnar Syren. ISBN 978-1-875778-46-1, (New, 2024), A4, illustrated, indexed,  pages,   grams,  $

The last of Kim Akerman’s translations of the Swedish journals and another important volume on Kimberley anthropology.

Tommy Stock & Micky Ryan. Aboriginal life, and death, on the fringes.

Collated by Peter J. Bridge. ISBN 978-1-875778-43-0, (New, 2024), A4,    pages,  grams, $22.00*

This collection of descriptions of camp life among the ‘fringe dwellers’ is interesting in the coverage of lives otherwise unrecorded.  While some items are repetitious, each entry by a different reporter reveals new information, such as the descriptions of the Chinese boy Jack Hay and new names and the history of the antagonists. 

‘Arizona Bill’ Adams, General W.T. Bennett, and John Howell. Americans on the Westralian goldfields. Peter J. Bridge & Geoffrey V. Blackburn.

ISBN 978-1-875778-55-3, (New, 2024), A4, illustrated,   pages, grams,  $22.00*

“Matt”. A documentary biography of H.A. Ellis, Government Geologist in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Peter J. Bridge. ISBN 978-1-875778-54-6, (New, 2025), A4,  pages, illustrated,  grams,  $

The Battle of Wyndham. Robert Pierce. With a Foreword by Bruno Jordanoff. ISBN 978-1-875778-49-2, (New, 2024), A4, 10 pages, illustrated,   grams, $22.00*

The Prospector’s Companion. FCB Vosper. ISBN 978-1-875778-   (18**, R 2024), A4

Alfred Gray’s Log. A diary of 89 days on the convict ship Pyrenees, and the slightly puzzling life of its author.
Ed Steve Errington and Peter J. Bridge.
ISBN 978-1-875778-53-9, A4, illustrated, indexed,   pages,   grams,   $   

Australia’s Wild Wonderland. M.P. Greenwood Adams.

ISBN 978-1-875778-45-4, (1923, R 2024), A4, 31 pages, 130 grams, $22.00*

Heavily illustrated story of the 1921 expedition to the Kimberley. 

Big Jim Wilkinson. Pioneer Prospector and principled man of many parts.
Peter J. Bridge.

ISBN 978-1-875778-51-5, (New, 2024), A4, 33 pages, 140 grams, $22.00*

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. 

Hidden Wealth and Hiding People. INDEX. Peter J. Bridge and Gail Dreezens.

ISBN 978-1-875778-44-7, A5, 7 pages,   grams, $10.00*

Longest Fence in the World. INDEX. Comp Peter J. Bridge & Gail Dreezen.

ISBN 978-1-875778-39-3, (2024), A5, 7 pages,    grams, $10.00*

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.  

The Necessity of Increased Police Protection for the Settlers in the Kimberley District from the Aboriginal Natives.

Parl Paper 27/1888.

ISBN 978-1-875778-41-6, (1888, R, 2024), A4, 12 pages, 65 grams, $22.00*

Pioneering Pilbara Prospector. Memoir of Bill Newman. Jennifer Hughes.

ISBN 978-1-875778-48-5, (New, 2024), A4, French flaps, Heavily illustrated, 192pages, 550 grams, $60.00*

Bill Newman spent half of his life in West Australia’s Pilbara region, firstly with a shearing team and then prospecting for gold, tin, tantalite and iron ore, largely for his cousin Lang Hancock.

After six years in the RAAF during the Second World War, Bill established a small farm at Kojonup while bringing up a young family, using his prospecting work to finance the farm development.

This is an account of one man’s remarkable and hardy life as told by him through an extensive letter and diary collection. 

Through Hitherto Impassable Ranges. Exploring the heart of the Kimberley 1884-1906.

Ned Overton.

ISBN 978-1-875778-34-8, (New, 2024), 160 x 220, Case bound, 852 pages, illustrated – colour & B&W, maps, 2.2kg, $280.00*

The second volume of Kimberley exploration. Only 100 copies of this casebound edition have been printed.

The rugged King Leopolds and adjoining ranges encircle WA’s northern Kimberley district. When Alex Forrest traversed from near Geikie Gorge to Collier Bay in 1879, he found the ranges impenetrable.

Following Forrest, pastoralists and government surveyors confined themselves to the southern plains, although pastoral leases covered the entire district. Beginning in 1883, explorers began to find narrow gaps penetrating this barrier, worn by water to plain level; some of them were accessible, bypassing a dangerous climb.

Soon after the northern pastures had been initially explored the discovery of gold to the south-east gave lightly-equipped prospectors high incentive to find more gaps, opening access northwards. Shunning publicity, they made only rudimentary maps. When in 1887 Dr Thomas Lovegrove announced an expedition to investigate a new road through the “hitherto considered impassable Leopold Ranges”, he failed to appreciate the wide extent of recent traverses across the northern Kimberley – mostly initiated through, rather than over, otherwise impassable ranges.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ned Overton spent his first two decades in Sydney, where he gained a BSc Hons in geology from Sydney University. His career in hardrock mineral exploration began in nickel-boom Kalgoorlie, later extending to much of Australia, including the Kimberley. He has managed a gold mine start-up in NSW, helped float several exploration companies and undertaken feasibility studies and project evaluations here and in Canada, the Philippines and Fiji.

Around our Bicentennial, Ned learnt of his relationship to a First Fleeter, which piqued an interest in genealogy and the wartime exploits of several relatives, leading, post retirement, to preparing Australian history books online. He joined WAEDP’s Kimberley project almost ten years ago. The present Volume II follows Closing in on the Kimberley, 1819–1884 (2022). In addition to a third Kimberley volume, he is co-authoring a biography of Harry Stockdale.

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

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