Let's get this straight - ghosts are everywhere. And they're dangerous. This is why my family has hunted them for hundreds of years. The Marin family run a two-man operation in inner-city Melbourne. Anton has the ghost-sight, but his father does not. Theirs is a gentle approach to ghost hunting. Rani Cross, combat-skilled ghost hunter from the Company of the Righteous, is all about the slashing. Anton and Rani don't see eye to eye - but with a massive spike in violent ghost manifestations, they must find a way to work together. And what with all the blindingly terrifying brushes with death, Anton must use his gap year to decide if he really wants in on the whole ghost-hunting biz . . . Gap Year in Ghost Town is smart, funny and scary - with extra action and attitude. 'FILLED WITH GHOSTLY INTRIGUE AND DELIGHTFUL CHARACTERS, MICHAEL PRYOR'S LATEST NOVEL IS PURE ENTERTAINMENT.' Books + Publishing

This book examines failed new city proposals in Australia to understand the hurdles – environmental, societal, and economic – that have curtailed such visions. The lessons from these relative failures are important because, if projections for Australia’s 21st century population growth are borne out, we will need to build new cities this century. This is particularly the case in northern Australia, where the federal government projects a four-fold increase in population in the next four decades. The book aims that, when we commence 21st century new city dreaming, we have learnt from the mistakes of the past and, are not doomed to repeat them.

Other cultures have lost civilisations, we have ghost towns. Australian landscapes are littered with the half-buried remains of once thriving towns. The renowned pioneering spirit of settler society often faltered under the onslaught of changed circumstances--mine yields that declined, industry that failed and the end of penal colonies. Some towns are in ruins today, while others have become tourist destinations, such as Port Douglas, Port Arthur and Oodnadatta. This extensively researched book delves into the stories of these ghost towns--rich with memories of turmoil, perseverance, resistance and dogged optimism

Digging beneath the sun-baked soil, Shane Thoms uncovers the modern ruins scattered over this arid continent and reveals a series of beautifully broken abodes hiding in the crevices of the Great Southern Land.

Tasmania is Australia's most decentralised State in terms of population living beyond the capital city. There is 'history and heritage' everywhere...around every corner. In many places there remain numerous buildings particularly sandstone buildings and other relics of times past. Many communities still exist in relative isolation even today. but there is more. According to ancestry organisation websites "Based on the records, demographics, birth rates, census data and immigration patterns, the sites estimated 22 per cent of living Australians had a convict ancestor." Around 50% of early convicts arrived via Van Diemen's Land/Tasmania. In other words about 11 per cent of living Australians [or around 5 million] have a Tasmanian family history connection. Tasmania's Vanishing Towns describes hundreds of towns, villages, communities and is deal for the real or virtual traveller to Tasmania. easy to read, comprehensive yet concise with hundreds of illustrations.

"A powerfully doomy debut" (The Guardian), Shaun Prescott’s The Town is a novel of a rural Australian community besieged by modern day anxieties and threatened by a supernatural force seeking to consume the dying town. This is Australia, an unnamed, dead-end town in the heart of the outback—a desolate place of gas stations, fast-food franchises, and labyrinthine streets: flat and nearly abandoned. When a young writer arrives to research just such depressing middles-of-nowhere as they are choked into oblivion, he finds something more sinister than economic depression: the ghost towns of Australia appear to be literally disappearing. An epidemic of mysterious holes is threatening his new home’s very existence, and this discovery plunges the researcher into an abyss of weirdness from which he may never escape. Dark, slippery and unsettling, Shaun Prescott’s debut resurrects the existential novel for the age of sprawl and blight, excavates a nation’s buried history of colonial genocide, and tells a love story that asks if outsiders can ever truly belong anywhere. The result is a disquieting classic that vibrates with an occult power.

This book seeks to deepen readers’ understanding of world history by investigating urbanization and the evolution of urban systems, as well as the urban world, from the perspective of historical analysis. The theoretical framework of the approach stems directly from space-economy, and, more generally, from location theory and the theory of urban systems. The author explores a certain logic to be found in world history, and argues that this logic is spatial (in terms of spatial inertia, spatial trends, attractive and repulsive forces, vector fields, etc.) rather than geographical (in terms of climate, precipitation, hydrography). Accordingly, the book puts forward a truly original vision of urban world history, one that will benefit economists, historians, regional scientists, and anyone with a healthy curiosity.

Australia has a rich history of ghost sightings and spooky tales, from the time of European settlement until today - and they are all here in GREAT AUSTRALIAN GHOST STORIES. From gore-spattered convicts and elegant women out of our colonial past to the mysterious ghost lights of the outback and angry poltergeists that wreak havoc on modern homes, Australia seems to be teeming with the restless spirits of our ancestors. You'll meet a wide cross section of them in this far-reaching collection of stories drawn from all the Australian states and covering two centuries of our nation's history. Some ghosts are vengeful, some aloof, others mysterious, sad, kind, wistful or amusing, but all share one quality - they're scary - and their stories are hair-raising. You'll join a terrified young couple on a Ferris wheel when a spectre appears inside their cage, you'll learn about Australia's most famous ghost and visit Australia's most notorious haunted house where icy hands gripped the throats of unsuspecting visitors. You'll meet a ghost made famous by Henry Lawson, discover what 'the haunted dunny' means to the people of a village in the Barossa Valley and share in the terror of a medical student when a cadaver comes back from the dead and takes up residence in the student's laptop. So, dear reader, if you have the courage, make sure the doors and windows are locked, settle in your favourite chair, keep a blanket handy (for when your blood runs cold) and join Richard Davis on this remarkable journey behind the veil that separates the mortal from the eternal - right here in our own back yard.

Once upon a simpler time, hand-painted and hand-crafted signs brought color and vibrancy to Australian towns and cities -- advertising everything from dining rooms, milk bars, and CWA halls to Peter's ice cream, oatmeal, stout, Chinese restaurants, and Shelley's famous drinks. Now faded and slowly disappearing, they tell the story of life over two centuries, recording a distinctly Australian vernacular language. A keen photographer of the everyday, Brady Michaels has recorded an impressive array of signs from across Australia -- from the earliest ads for household goods and services, to more recent but now defunct video lending libraries and internet cafés. These beautifully composed and nostalgic images are accompanied by brief commentary by Dale Campisi, who ponders the significance of these fading and disappearing signs -- artful, kitsch, and at times hilarious -- lovingly preserved through Brady's lens.

Includes former businesses, services, information, stories, maps, colour and b/w photographs. Colour throughout. Distributed by A.B.C. Maps & Guide Books.