Andrew Piper

Alan Atkinson

Iain Davidson

JS Ryan

High Lean Country captures the rich history and haunting character of the New England region of northern New South Wales. The authors explore how memory - of land, of family, of patterns of life on the other side of the world - has influenced the identity of New England. They also consider how the high country itself has shaped its people and their sense of regional uniqueness. In doing so, this book sets a new direction for understanding Australia as a whole. Weaving together the histories of human settlement, economic, social and cultural development, as well as interactions with the environment, High Lean Country shows how colonial settlers strived for decades to literally create a new England. It traces the story of the graduates of Oxford and Cambridge who turned their hands to sheep husbandry and developed a squattocracy, the establishment of schools and other institutions, and the cultivation of traditional arts. It also examines the early colonial bushranging period, and a history of not always friendly relations between white settlers and the local Aboriginal population. A project of the Heritage Futures Research Centre at the University of New England, High Lean Country is a fascinating study of this distinctive Australian high country.

Land, people and memory in New England

High Lean Country

Among the ancient stories told by people of the Australian north coast is one of the Shark that left its ocean home to make its mark on the shore. The ocean-borne power of the first Europeans in Australia, in and after 1788, had some of the savage mystery of the Ancestral Shark.In this major new multi-volume history of Australia, the award-winning historian Alan Atkinson explores the imagery and technique of European power as it made its first impact on Australia. He urges that the Europeans were not simply conquerors motivated by brutal or short-term colonizingimperatives. Their own culture was ancient and infinitely complex, thickly woven with ideas about spirituality, authority, self and land, all of which influenced the development of Australia.Among the Europeans art and weapons none was more remarkable than writing: pens, paper, printing presses and books. The Shark which came ashore in 1788 enforced its will mainly through the written word. And yet poorer Europeans, like the Aborigines, were still a people largely unfamiliar withliteracy in their daily lives. Theirs was an oral world a world of speaking and listening.The possession of land, the conflict with the Aborigines, were at issue, but so were the ancient habits of Europeans themselves. This first volume tells how homes were made and souls reshaped during the first 25 years of the Europeans in Australia.

The Europeans in Australia: The beginning

As a gay superhero in the deep South, Jericho Hansen wants to go professional, but knows he doesn't have the public awareness to do this in Savannah, Georgia. So when his application to join Force Majeure (America's most prestigious superhero team) is answered with an invitation to an interview, it seems his dreams have come true. But this is only the beginning. It's bad enough that his boyfriend doesn't want him to go, but once he gets to Utopia City (an ultra-tech metropolis in the middle of Kansas, and home of Force Majeure) events spiral rapidly out of control. He must deal with pain and suffering, loss and betrayal. Are his new allies actually on his side, or are they furthering their own agendas? Does he, in the end, really want to join Force Majeure? Welcome to Utopia, where the first thing you learn is that nothing is truly as it seems.

Book One of the Utopian Dreams Series

Welcome to Utopia

Utopia City. Rebuilt from the ashes of America's most horrific terror attack and transformed into a paragon of technological advancement, this city stands as a beacon of possibility where almost anything can happen. Jericho Hansen certainly hopes so; as a gay superhero in the deep South, his ambition is to achieve lifelong recognition by joining Force Majeure, America's best-known superhero team. But to do that, he must first travel to Utopia and learn the hard way if he's got what it takes. The events that transpire when he gets there will turn his entire world upside down. He will experience love and loss, triumph and tragedy. Mysteries will be solved and fresh inquiries opened. Welcome to Utopia, where the most important lesson is that nothing is truly as it seems.

Book One of the UTOPIAN DREAMS Series

This is the third and final volume of the landmark, award-winning series The Europeans in Australia that gives an account of settlement by Britain. It tells of the various ways in which that experience shaped imagination and belief among the settler people from the eighteenth century to the end of World War I.Volume Three, Nation, tells the story of Australian Federation and the war with a focus, as ever on ordinary habits of thought and feeling. In this period, for the first time the settler people began to grasp the vastness of the continent, and to think of it as their own. There was a massive funding of education, and the intellectual reach of men and women was suddenly expanded, to an extent that seemed dazzling to many at the time. Women began to shape public imagination as they had not done before. At the same time, the worship of mere ideas had its victims, most obviously the Aboriginal people, and the war itself proved what vast tragedies it could unleash.The culmination of an extraordinary career in the writing and teaching of Australian history, The Europeans in Australia grapples with the Australian historical experience as a whole from the point of view of the settlers from Europe. Ambitious and unique, it is the first such large, single-author account since Manning Clark’s A History of Australia.

Volume Three: Nation

The Europeans in Australia

Utopia City.Rebuilt from the ashes of America's most horrific terror attack and transformed into a paragon of technological advancement, this city stands as a beacon of possibility where almost anything can happen.Jericho Hansen certainly hopes so; as a gay superhero in the deep South, his ambition is to achieve lifelong recognition by joining Force Majeure, America's best-known superhero team. But to do that, he must first travel to Utopia and learn the hard way if he's got what it takes. The events that transpire when he gets there will turn his entire world upside down. He will experience love and loss, triumph and tragedy. Mysteries will be solved and fresh inquiries opened.Welcome to Utopia, where the most important lesson is that nothing is truly as it seems.

Alan Atkinson

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