When Bligh Was Involved

In His Second Mutiny

The facsimile editions of The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser —Australia’s first newspaper, published in the infant colony of Sydney—are now coming from Angus and Robertson at an accelerated rate.

Latest are Vols, VI and VII, bound in one, and covering the period from May 15, 1808, to December 31, 1809.

These facsimiles are a must for Australiana collectors (retail price is $10), but those with Islands interests can’t afford to be without them either.

Among the South Pacific islands listed in the excellent general index are Fiji, Tonga, Tahiti, Norfolk Island, Borabora and New Cale donia, and there is much additional information of Islands interest.

In the general references is a pro clamation ordering that Governor William Bligh (of Bounty fame) be sent home to England, “in the interests of the colony”. Bligh was involved in what became known as the Rum Rebellion, and got his come-uppance.

Military government

This volume covers the period of the colony’s revolutionary military government although there is no con temporary report of the Rum Re bellion itself, which overthrew Bligh on January 26, 1808. The paper had temporarily ceased publication because of the want of paper to print it on.

This is the fifth facsimile edition to be issued.

Other book news: • Merval Hoare’s History of Norfolk Island, which is being pub lished by Queensland University Press, is expected to be available in early August. Mrs. Hoare, a Norfolk Island resident, is the author of the best-selling, pocket Rambler’s Guide to Norfolk Island, which will con tinue to be distributed alongside the larger, definitive work. • Travelling author-photographer Hank Curth, whose colour picture book on New Guinea has been sell ing well (published by Jacaranda, it has a recording of New Guinea sounds, mostly bird calls, inserted in the cover, and sells for $3.95) is currently working on a similar book for Fiji. He has based himself in Sydney to prepare it.

• Rope and Rucksack, edited by John Davis and published by Angus and Robertson at $4.50, is recom mended as an how-to-do-it book on the get-away-from-it-all sports.

Diagrams and photographs give tech niques and practical help on bush walking, rock climbing, canoeing, canyoning, caving, ski-touring and cascading. Greatest stress in the book is on rock climbing techniques.

It’s for both the beginner and the more-experienced.—RDK. • The Pacific Scientific Informa tion Center of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu has recently been publishing lists of all known entomologists working in the Pacific, The latest 96-page booklet lists 949 persons working on, or actively interested in, the insects of the area; it gives the address of each and an

indication of special interests.

The main list of names is alphabetic but two shorter indexes at the back list the names by insects, and another by the country of residence of the people in the main list. The list was compiled by Use M. Koehler, under the direction of Edwin J. Bryan, Jr., manager of the Pacific Scientific Information Center. • Bound sets of the papers read and discussed at the Second Waigani Seminar held at the University of Papua-New Guinea in June last year, on The History of Melanesia, are now available from the university’s History Department, P.O. Box 1144, Boroko, Papua, at $4.50, or $5.00 posted. The transcript, of 675 pages, is divided into sections; Understand ing Pacific History, Administration and the Administrators, German New Guinea, The Christian Missions, Economic History, Non-Documentary Approaches, World War 11, and a collection of general papers.