In August 1855, 16-year-old Chaloner Alabaster left England for Hong Kong. He would stay for almost 40 years, eventually becoming consul-general of Canton. Alabaster’s early diaries recorded how the Chinese people around him ironed clothes, dried flour and threshed rice; how they gambled, prepared their food and made bean curd; and what opera, new year festivities and the birthday of Mazu – the Heavenly Empress – were like. Edited and introduced by Professor Benjamin Penny, these diaries comprise a unique record of daily life in mid-nineteenth century Hong Kong.
Reassessing the 1937–1943 Volcanic Eruptions at Rabaul
Wally Johnson and Neville Threlfall re-examine the explosive volcanic eruptions that in 1937–43 killed more than 500 people in the Rabaul area of East New Britain, Papua New Guinea. They reassess this disaster in light of the prodigious amount of new scientific and disaster-management work that has been undertaken there since about 1971, when strong tectonic earthquakes shook the area. Comparisons are made in particular with volcanic eruptions in 1994–2014, when half of Rabaul town was destroyed and then abandoned.
The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and ANU Press invite you to join us on Wednesday 18 October 2023 to celebrate the publication of Watershed: The 2022 Australian Federal Election, edited by Anika Gauja, Marian Sawer and Jill Sheppard.
The book will be launched by Professor Frank Bongiorno at Harry Hartog, ANU campus, and will be followed by light refreshments. Copies of the book will be available for sale.
“As Bougainville gets to be known more to the outside world, I wanted to be able to present an accurate picture of what the place was like, deliver a primer on its history, to show the realities of trying to build an administration on such thin soil and the tremendous spirit of its people.”
