Most of these books are Oztalgia reprints of the more respectable and desirable kind, but three are original works, two of them by senior men of letters of the kind that any country is fortunate to have a corps d’elite of: I mean of course Howard and Pearl. Cyril Pearl, in Five Men Vanished, relates in 128 pages the facts relating to the disappearance of five men at Bermagui in 1880. One was the well-connected Lamont Young, 29-years-old and a government geological surveyor. Another was Maximilian Schneider, a young German assistant to Young, whose foreign accent and facial scar appear to have been enough to make him a prime suspect. The other three were fishermen. It was their boat which was found, stove in, on a beach some nine miles north of Bermagui. The boat contained articles belonging to Young and Schneider, though there was no reason why these two should have been in the boat.
Australian Pioneers and Reminiscences 1849-1894 by Nehemiah Bartley
John Ferguson, Sydney, in association with the Royal Australian Historical Society, $15.95, 0 909134 11 1
The Vine…and how to make Wine from Victorian Grapes by John Belperroud and David Louis Pettavel
Casuarina Press, PO Box 137, Surrey Hills, Victoria, $9.95
Sketches of New South Wales by William Romaine Govett
Gaston Renard, Publisher, Melbourne, $85, 0 9599899 1 9
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