Colonial Settlers on the River Torrens


Book Description

The Kaurna people lived peacefully and productively along the River Torrens, or Karrawirra Parri, for millennia. This book describes their way of life and their displacement by the first generation of European settlers. The outstanding achievement of the settlers on the upper Torrens was the contribution they made to the development of horticulture. They transitioned from grains and livestock to producing huge quantities of melons and an impressive diversity of fruits, vines and vegetables. Roger Irvine details the lives of these settler families, including notables such as Charles Campbell who gave his name to 'Campbell Town', Joseph Ind whose property 'Little Paradise' provided a name for another suburb, and A.J. Murray who chose 'Athelstone' as the name of his farm, for reasons now difficult to trace. The inhabitants of the upper Torrens have witnessed many changes, including both setbacks and successes. Colonial Settlers on the River Torrens reflects on an area that has had many incarnations, and the river that continues to flow through it.




Hotel Paradise


Book Description

A once-fashionable now fading resort hotel. A spinster aunt living in the attic. Dirt roads that lead to dead ends. A house full of secrets and old, dusty furnishings, uninhabited for almost half a century. A twelve-year-old girl with a passion for double-chocolate ice-cream sodas, and decaying lake-fronts, and an obsession with the death by drowning of another young girl, forty years before. Hotel Paradise is a delicate yet excruciating view of the pettiness and cruelty of small town America. It is a look at the difficult decisions a young girl must make on her way to becoming an adult and the choices she must make between right and wrong, between love and truth, between life and death.




In My Mother's Hands


Book Description

Poignant and moving memoir of Elizabeth Ward, known to one and all as Biff, who grew up in the 1950s in a household that tiptoed around her mother's demons and her father's fame. There are secrets in this family. Before Biff and her younger brother, Mark, there was baby Alison, who drowned in her bath because, it was said, her mother was distracted. Biff too, lives in fear of her mother's irrational behaviour and paranoia, and she is always on guard and fears for the safety of her brother. As Biff grows into teenage hood, there develops a conspiratorial relationship between her and her father, who is a famous and gregarious man, trying to keep his wife's problems a family secret. This was a time when the insane were committed and locked up in Dickensian institutions; whatever his problems her father was desperate to save his wife from that fate. But also to protect his children from the effects of living with a tragically disturbed mother. In My Mother's Hands is a beautifully written and emotionally perplexing coming-of-age true story about growing up in an unusual family.




Last Resorts


Book Description

For review see: Peter Hulme, in New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, vol. 71, no. 1 & 2 (1997); p. 107-109; Dennis J. Gayle, in The Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 77, no. 1 (1997); p. 170-171.




The Caribbean


Book Description

The Rough Guides series contain full color photos, three maps in one, and arewaterproof and tearproof. They contain thousands of keyed listings and brightnew graphics.







An Encyclopaedia of World Bridges


Book Description

Bridges are one of the most important artefacts constructed by man, the structures having had an incalculable effect on the development of trade and civilisation throughout the world. Their construction has led to continuing advances in civil engineering technology, leading to bigger spans and the use of new materials. Their failures, too, whether from an inadequate understanding of engineering principles or as a result of natural catastrophes or warfare, have often caused immense hardship as a result of lost lives or broken communications. In this book, a sister publication to his earlier An Encyclopaedia of British Bridges (Pen & Sword 2019), David McFetrich gives brief descriptions of some 1200 bridges from more than 170 countries around the world. They represent a wide range of different types of structure (such as beam, cantilever, stayed and suspension bridges). Although some of the pictures are of extremely well-known structures, many are not so widely recognisable and a separate section of the book includes more than seventy lists of bridges with distinctly unusual characteristics in their design, usage and history.




From Settlement to City


Book Description

Chapter 15 - the Kaurna in the colonial period; observarions of James Cronk, native interpreter and others; violent conflicts; issuance of handouts; reserves.