The discovery of a wonderful primary source—the five-year correspondence from Wilson Tong of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force to Edith Harris at Phillip Island—inspired the author to create this rich and unusual memoir, written as she came to terms with a diagnosis of cancer. As the author replies to the long-dead soldier's letters, links and parallels emerge between the young man living with the fear of death and the woman, 80 years later, facing her own death in middle age. She reflects on her life—particularly her childhood on Phillip Island—her work, and her own confrontation with mortality.

Beaches of the Queensland Coast provides the first description of all Queensland's ocean beaches between Cooktown and Coolangatta, including beaches on 18 islands and in several large bays. It is based on the results of the Australian Beach Safety and Management Program, a nationwide assessment of Australian beach systems. This book has two aims. First, to provide the public with general information on the origin and nature of Queensland's beaches, including the contribution of geology, oceanography, climate and biota to the beaches, and information on beach hazards and safety. Second, to provide a description of each beach, including its name(s), location, access, facilities, dimensions and the character of the beach and surf zone. The book comments on the suitability of the beach for bathing, surfing and fishing, with special emphasis on the natural hazards. Based on the physical hazards, all beaches are rated in terms of public safety and scaled from 1 (least hazardous) to 10 (most hazardous).

Although Wake finally fell on 23 December 1941, its garrison made the Japanese pay an embarrassingly high price for a tiny coral outpost.

Compelling evidence that the events of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey took place in the Baltic and not the Mediterranean • Reveals how a climate change forced the migration of a people and their myth to ancient Greece • Identifies the true geographic sites of Troy and Ithaca in the Baltic Sea and Calypso's Isle in the North Atlantic Ocean For years scholars have debated the incongruities in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, given that his descriptions are at odds with the geography of the areas he purportedly describes. Inspired by Plutarch's remark that Calypso's Isle was only five days sailing from Britain, Felice Vinci convincingly argues that Homer's epic tales originated not in the Mediterranean, but in the northern Baltic Sea. Using meticulous geographical analysis, Vinci shows that many Homeric places, such as Troy and Ithaca, can still be identified in the geographic landscape of the Baltic. He explains how the dense, foggy weather described by Ulysses befits northern not Mediterranean climes, and how battles lasting through the night would easily have been possible in the long days of the Baltic summer. Vinci's meteorological analysis reveals how a decline of the "climatic optimum" caused the blond seafarers to migrate south to warmer climates, where they rebuilt their original world in the Mediterranean. Through many generations the memory of the heroic age and the feats performed by their ancestors in their lost homeland was preserved and handed down to the following ages, only later to be codified by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Felice Vinci offers a key to open many doors that allow us to consider the age-old question of the Indo-European diaspora and the origin of the Greek civilization from a new perspective.