DEREK PUGH BOOKS
Darwin is 150!
Her sesquicentenary fell on Feb 5, 2019.
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Derek Pugh Books
Bio: Derek Pugh is an award-winning author based in Darwin in Australia's Northern Territory. His career in education in several countries has set him up well to write history, science and stories in a wide range of genres. Pugh’s fourth book, Tambora, won the Best Non-Fiction Award in the Territory Read Book Awards in 2016.
His interest in Fort Dundas was piqued during three years spent living at Pirlangimpi / Garden Point just across the bay from the site. Writing its history was a natural progression, and so too the further history of early Northern Territory settlements at Escape Cliffs and Port Darwin. Pugh lives in Darwin and can be contacted on derekpugh1@gmail.com or via www.derekpugh.com.au.
Awards: Winner: Territory Read Best Non-Fiction Book 2016 for Tambora: Travels to Sumbawa and the Mountain of Change
Finalist: Chief Minister's Book of the Year, 2016 for Tambora
COMING SOON IN 2019
DARWIN 1870 and the first ten years
The first settlers arrived in January 1870 to find very little other than surveyed blocks of land sold to distant investors. It was a colony made from scratch with little tangible reason for its existence until the overland telegraph line came through from London to join Australia to the rest of the world. Then gold was discovered, and hopeful miners rushed to Darwin from all over the country. Most went home disappointed; if they survived the privations of the bush. Then the government imported Chinese workers – and they kept coming; gold dust shining in their eyes. By the end of the decade there were ten times as many Chinese as European settlers, and Chinatown was the most vibrant part of the settlement.
DARWIN, 1869: The Second Northern Territory Expedition.
George Woodroffe Goyder was the man for the job. The Adelaide media pushed and pushed and he finally agreed to lead the Second Northern Territory Expedition. Within 8 months, 1000 square miles of the Northern Territory of South Australia was surveyed and ready for the new colony of Palmerston. This is the story of Goyder's expedition, and the men who at last cut a city out of the bush, against tremendous odds, and at a furious speed.
Out NOW in shops or click to purchase on line
DARWIN 1869: The first year in Photographs.
Darwin is the only Australian pre-Federation capital young enough to be photographed from the beginning. These precious photographs are a celebration of the work of the surveyors establishing the city, then called 'Palmerston', 150 years ago.
Out NOW in shops or click to purchase on line.
ESCAPE CLIFFS: The First Northern Territory Expedition, 1864-66.
March 2018:
This is a story of colonisation of the Northern Territory. It is a story of courage, exploration, murder, wasted efforts, life and death struggles, insubordination, incredible seamanship and extraordinary bushmanship, amid government bungling and Aboriginal resistance.
Escape Cliffs was an attempt by South Australia to become the premier state of the country. It would open up a trading route across the country to Asia and exploit the agricultural and mining opportunities of the interior. It would be at no cost to the state as the land was sold unsurveyed and unseen to investors prior to the First Northern Territory Expedition even setting out. But then, as the saying goes, the fight really started…
Included are the first photographs taken in the Northern Territory.
In bookshops now
FORT DUNDAS: The British in North Australia 1824-29.
Fort Dundas was the first outpost of Europeans in Australia’s north. It was a British fortification manned by soldiers, marines and convicts, and built by them on remote Melville Island in 1824. It lasted until February, 1829, when it was abandoned and left to the termites.
The fort’s purpose was twofold. First, it was a physical demonstration of Britain’s claim to the New Holland continent as far as longitude 129°E, which excluded the Dutch and the French from starting similar colonies (it was the first of a series of fortified locations around the coast). Second, it was promoted as the start of a British trading post that would become a second Singapore and compete with Batavia.
The settlement was named in a ceremony on 21 October 1824, but it was not a success. In its short existence we have tales of great privation, survival, greed, piracy, slavery, murder, kidnapping, scurvy, and battles with the Indigenous inhabitants of the islands, the Tiwi. It was also the site of the first European wedding and the birth of the first European children in northern Australia.
None of the three military commandants who managed the outpost wanted to be there and all were gratefully relieved after their posting. They left behind thirty-four dead - victims of disease, poor diet and Tiwi spears. Others died when the crews of the fort’s supply ships were slaughtered and beheaded by Malay pirates on islands to the north. Two cabin boys from one of them, the Stedcombe, were enslaved by the pirates.
What happened at Fort Dundas and why it was abandoned has been largely untold. Nevertheless, it is one of the most engaging stories of nineteenth century Australia.
ISBN paperback 9780992355869 $29.95
eBook 9780992355876
TAMBORA: Travels to Sumbawa and the Mountain that Changed the Earth.
Winner: Territory Read Best Non-Fiction Book 2016
Finalist: Chief Minister's Book of the Year, 2016
Launched on May 10 2015 to celebrate the bicentenary, Tambora erupted in 1815 in an explosion that was the biggest for at least 10,000 years. The eruption was ten times the size of Krakatoa's famous 1873 eruption. Tambora killed or affected millions, it can be linked to the start of a religion, the first bicycles, the birth of science fiction and the first Irish potato famine. Why then, have so few heard of it? Order through on-line booksellers, your local shop or directly from me at email: derekpugh1@gmail.com
Turn Left at the Devil Tree.
This a history and memoir of life in central Arnhem Land in Australia's Northern Territory. Contact me and I can send you one directly. Read a review at http://reviews.waterstones.com. email: derekpugh1@gmail.com
The Owner's Guide to the Teenage Brain, a book for teenagers, teachers and all parents (see also articles on the subject).In 2017 a second edition of this popular book is now released. Order at $24.95 +p&h. email: derekpugh1@gmail.com
Tammy Damulkurra is a negotiated text novel written with the ‘Sunshine Girls of Maningrida’. Now in its second edition, it was selected to be on The Indigenous Literacy Foundation Reading List in 2016. email: derekpugh1@gmail.com
Book and eBook Distribution:
Darwin 1869: The Second Northern Territory Expedition - https://www.woodslane.com.au/Book/9780648142126/Darwin-1869
Darwin 1869: The First Year in Photographs - https://www.woodslane.com.au/Book/9780648142133/Darwin-1869-The-First-Year-in-Photographs
Escape Cliffs: The First Northern Territory Expedition - https://www.woodslane.com.au/Book/9780648142102/Escape-Cliffs
Fort Dundas - The British in North Australia 1824-29. https://www.woodslane.com.au/Book/9780992355869/Fort-Dundas
Tambora - email: derekpugh1@gmail.com
Tammy Damulkurra - email: derekpugh1@gmail.com
Turn Left at the Devil Tree - email: derekpugh1@gmail.com
The Owner's Guide to the Teenage Brain:email: derekpugh1@gmail.com
