The Power of Geography by Tim Marshall (2021)

 I wrote this post in 2021 when this book was first published:

The Power of Geography: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World was published this year (2021) and is a sequel to Prisoners of Geography which I wrote about here.
In that book Tim Marshall focused on the fact that geography has played a major role in history. In this new book he explores ten different regions and the power they hold in the shaping of our future.
These regions are: Australia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, The United Kingdom, Greece, Turkey, The Sahel (a region I was totally ignorant of), Ethiopia, Spain and Space.

The Power of Geography covers some very diverse countries with complicated histories – a whole book could be written about just Iran alone when you consider the upheaval and changes there even in recent times. There’s a lot of ground to cover and I think that’s the reason I found this book generally wasn’t as tightly written as the previous one. There are some chapters where this wasn’t the case – Turkey and Ethiopia, for instance, which were more compact. In spite of the sense of overwhelm at times (I’m thinking of you, Saudia Arabia), The Power of Geography is an interesting and informative book.

Some highlights:

Australia

We tend to think of China and Australia being relatively close to each other, but Tim Marshall points out that the map most of us use, the Mercator, distorts our view of the world. He suggests the different perspective to be had from the use of a Waterman map, noting the fact that Beijing is as close to Warsaw as it is to Canberra, but it is China that is regarded as our close neighbour.
I learned that Australia, along with New Zealand, the USA, the UK and Canada is a member of what is probably the world’s most efficient intelligence-gathering network: ‘Five Eyes.’ I asked my husband if he knew about this and he did. He also knows where the Sahel is, which shouldn’t have surprised me – he has a mind like a steel trap on more modern history.

Iran

I know a little bit about Iran from teaching ESL to a couple who left that country and resettled here. Apparently it was not until 1935 that the land of Persia became known as Iran but everyone I’ve met from Iran (and all of them were born decades after the name change) describe themselves as Persian.

Saudi Arabia

What a complicated and confusing history! Saudi Arabia was created in the twentieth century. Its population then was about two million, and most of them were nomads. Now there are 34 million people living there.
Marshall describes the rise of Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden and the various members of the royal family, notably, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who is reigning now.

United Kingdom

The chapter starts with a quick overview of the UK’s history, beginning with the Greek explorer Pytheas, through the Roman occupation, Viking invasions, the Battle of Hastings, the rise of the British Empire, the two World Wars, up to the present and Brexit.
He considers the question of Scottish independence and the complications that would result – for example, if Scotland insisted that the Royal Navy remove its nuclear-armed submarines from their base at Faslane on the west coast.

Sea power underpinned an empire based on the usual power-building common to all countries, but also the racist assumptions of colonialism. There was, however, one bright point of moral light in the navy's role. In 1807, having played prominent role in the slave trade, Britain outlawed it. For the next few decades the Royal Navy actively pursued slave traders, liberating about 150,000 people, while the government paid subsidies to African chiefs to persuade them to end the practice.

Life in these Royal Navy ships is depicted as almost equally harsh and dangerous for the British sailors;
‘Between 1830 – 1865, approximately 1587 men died on the West Africa Squadron, from a variety of causes: disease, killed in action and accidental deaths…’

One of the most fascinating countries represented in this book is Turkey. General Kemal Atatürk was the first president of the Republic of Turkey which was established in 1923. Known as ‘Father of the Turks, he ruled for fifteen years and implemented radical reforms which transformed and modernised the country.

Atatürk understood that language is culture. He was in the business of forming a new culture based not on the multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic Ottoman Empire, but on Turkishness.

In recent times Turkey has turned to the past in order to shape the future. The author describes Erdoğan, Turkey’s Prime Minister, as a ‘neo-Ottoman’ who believes that Turkey is destined to be a global superpower as the West declines.

Ethiopia and Spain are two other very interesting places to delve into – in fact, all of countries covered in this book are, but there is so much detail and changes in their history, not to mention their geographical complexities, to enable a reader without too much background information to take it all in. It’s a book I’d be more than happy to read again in order to digest all the details, or to dip into as a reference when any of the countries are mentioned in the news or current affairs.

 

In The Steps of the Master by H.V. Morton (1934)

H.V. Morton’s In the Steps of the Master is a wonderful mix of travelogue, history, archaeology, and adventure. He wrote the book in an attempt to express the thoughts and the encounters that a traveller through Palestine ‘with the New Testament in his hands’ would have experienced.

At the time the book was written in 1934, Palestine and the neighbouring territory of Trans-Jordan was administered by Great Britain after they had been taken from the Turks in WWI. The country was divided into provinces headed by Commissioners and under them were the village headmen. A British Inspector General of Police commanded a highly respected police force that was made up of British, Jews and Arabs. 

The country and its way of life had remained remarkably unchanged over the centuries and even the law of the land was a modified form of Ottoman Law. In the time of Christ three official languages were recognised - Latin, Greek and Hebrew. In 1934 the Mandate for Palestine stated that the official languages of Palestine were English, Arabic and Hebrew.

The book begins with the author boarding a boat on the Suez Canal in Egypt. From there he crossed to El Kantara where the railway that was constructed by Allenby’s troops during the War followed an ancient route through Gaza, Lydda, Jaffa, and into the mountains of Judea. 

‘As the train climbs and winds into the hills towards the mountain capital of Jerusalem, you are aware of something fierce and cruel in the air. You have the same feeling in Spain when the train crosses the Sierra de Guadarrama towards the mountain capital of Madrid. But Judea is fiercer than anything in Europe. It us a striped, tigerish country, crouched in the sun, tense with a terrific vitality and sullen and dispassionate with age.’

Morton visited many different places mentioned in the New Testament such as Galilee, the Mount of Olives, Golgotha, Samaria, Bethany, the Dead Sea, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Jerusalem:

‘My first thought was amazement that Jerusalem should ever have been built. A more unlikely place for a famous city cannot be imagined...There is a splendid defiance about the situation of Jerusalem, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that no people who did not believe themselves to be in the special care of God would have dared to have built a city in defiance of all the laws of prudence.’

Everywhere he went he saw around him people unconsciously illustrating the Bible and he often delved into aspects of the Bible that a person who had never been to Palestine would overlook. From his travelling experiences he was able to make interesting connections and comparisons. For example, having seen the ruins of Ypres after WWI he likened them to what the Christians would have faced upon their return to Jerusalem after the siege of Titus in 70 A.D. 

Herod the Great, Saladin, the Emperor Julian, Pontius Pilate, Tiberias, and the Crusades, besides many other lesser known people and events, were vividly described. Lady Hester Stanhope was one of these. She makes an appearance in Alexander Kinglake’s Eothen and Morton gives us a sympathetic cameo of her life and her tragic end.

The artist William Holman Hunt also gets a mention. He painted one of his best known paintings, The Scapegoat, while living in Palestine.

These cultural insights and the exploration of history and archaeology are extremely helpful in understanding the background of the New Testament.

‘The Gospel accounts...are always meticulously accurate.’

‘The hideous instability of mind which the Passover mob shared with all mobs in history is clearly seen in the Gospels when the people one say cried, “Hosanna!” And the next “Crucify Him!”

We are using In the Steps of the Master this year for Geography (Ambleside Online Year 11) but it covers so much more than geography. It is beautifully written and captures Palestine very much like it would have been when at the time of Christ.

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall (2015) Non-Fiction

Tim Marshall is a British journalist and author who has been on the front line in the Balkans, Syria and Afghanistan. He witnessed close hand how international conflicts and civil wars have arisen out of past decisions. He has seen how history has shaped the future events of a country and the role geography has had in that shaping.

In Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Global Politics, Marshall gives some very interesting insights into the major factors that determine world history. He examines the international affairs of ten regions of the world to show that geographical factors - the physical landscape, climate, demographics, culture and the availability of natural resources -  have an important impact on civilisations. He considers that these geopolitical factors are often overlooked.

‘Seeing geography as a decisive factor in the course of human history can be construed as a bleak view of the world, which is why it is disliked in some intellectual circles. It suggests that nature is more powerful than man, and that we can only go so far in determining our own fate.’

Marshall discusses the following areas in this book:

Russia, China, USA, Western Europe, Africa, The Middle East, India & Pakistan, Korea and Japan, Latin America, and The Arctic.

I borrowed this book from my eldest son who recommended it. He reads mostly nonfiction, especially politics and current affairs. I don’t read much of this genre and expected it would be a little dry and heavy going. It definitely isn’t like that at all. I found it hard to put it aside at times - unlike a lot of nonfiction titles that I have had to read in small doses. 

If you enjoy history, I expect that you would enjoy this book. 

I liked it enough to include it in our  Australian version of Ambleside Online Year 11 which  covers the 20th Century. It would fit well into not only geography and history but also current affairs especially for those implementing a Charlotte Mason High School. Most of the issues the author discusses are still being worked out.  

Here are some extracts from the book that I found interesting and helpful:

Russia - the Arctic and the fact that Russia has never had a warm-water port, limits Russia’s ability to be a truly global power. Its most powerful weapon is gas and oil, where it is only second to the USA. Russia has a hold on Europe’s energy needs and the better a country’s relationship with Russia , the cheaper its energy costs. The closer a country is to Moscow, the more dependent it is on Russia. This plays into foreign policy - for example, Russia supplies about half of Germany’s gas needs so German politicians are slower to criticise the Kremlin for aggressive behaviour. 

China - although it has always been a land power, in wasn't until the 1980’s that China began to be major trading power. Until recently the country has been limited due to its lack of a global navy. With its huge population, lack of arable land and the affects of pollution, it is looking to expand. The author believes that the Chinese are not looking for conflict or seeking to spread Communism (not sure I agree with this??) but are concerned with keeping ocean access open as they depend upon imported resources. Recent maps published in China show almost the whole of the South China Sea as theirs and they have been building deep sea ports around the world as they seek to establish a ‘blue water’ (ocean going) navy.

USA - due to the shrewd decisions it made in the past to expand its territory in key regions, the USA became a two ocean superpower and is now close to being self sufficient in energy. This will change its policies in the Middle East as it will no longer need to rely on their oil.

Europe -  flat land and rivers that can be navigated have been key factors for Europe’s place on the global scene. The UK has been advantaged by its location with access to the North Sea and the North Atlantic. Its relative isolation has provided protection from European wars and unrest. 65 years of relative peace due to Europe’s unity may be threatened due to the financial crises they have been going through.

Africa - this continent is an example of the effects of isolation. Maps are deceptive and don’t allow for the hugeness of Africa. It is three times bigger than the USA!

‘Africa’s coastline? Great beaches, really, really lovely beaches, but terrible natural harbours. Rivers? Amazing rivers, but most of them are rubbish for actually transporting anything, given that every few miles you go over a waterfall. These are just two in a long list of problems which help explain why Africa isn’t technologically or politically as successful as Western Europe or North America.’

In the 15th and 16th centuries, at the height of the Ottoman Empire, thousands of Africans, mostly from Sudan were taken cross the Arab world as slaves. The Europeans did the same to a greater degree later on. 

In European cities artificial borders were drawn with new countries created on maps. The same was done for the Middle East, and India/Pakistan (Partition!) - artificial borders on paper, drawing lines on maps & disregarding cultural distinctions & topography. This led inevitably to ethnic conflicts.

Japan and Korea - although they don’t have the ethnic problems of some other countries there are other problems. Japan is an island with basically no natural resources. Korea's division into North and South was a decision made in the USA by two clueless junior officers in the White House. It left Seoul, South Korea's capital, very vulnerable and only 35 miles south of their unstable Communist neighbours. 

Latin America begins at the Mexican border and stretches all the way down to Cape Horn. None of its coastal area has many deep harbours so trading is limited. South America is cut off geographically from just about everywhere else with mountains and the Amazon jungle. Bitter relations between countries such as Bolivia and Chile and border disputes add to their problems.

Arctic - as the ice in this region melts, new energy deposits have been found, but it’s a dark and dangerous place: ‘It’s not a good place to be without friends. They know that for anyone to succeed in the region they may need to cooperate...’

Modern technology and air power is helping to break down geographical barriers; ‘bending the iron rules of geography,' as the author puts it, but it is still a major factor for many countries.

Marshall has written a follow up book that looks at other countries, such as Australia, that I’d be interested in reading. I appreciated the author’s very readable, conversational style, and his knowledge of history and international affairs, and highly recommend this book.

'On the Edge of a Precipice'

I posted this on Instagram last week:

'The war (virus) creates no absolutely new situation; it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun.' 

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

One of our iconic beaches was closed on the weekend after it was packed with people enjoying  Friday's warm weather. Further beach closures were added when the social-distancing rules put in place earlier in the week by the NSW Government were flouted.

It seems that on the one hand there is selfish panic buying of what started off as toilet paper madness which progressed to the hoarding of pasta, flour, tinned food, hand sanitiser, disinfectant, disposable gloves...While on the other hand there are those who don't seem to understand (or care) that they could put others at risk.

Today, all non-essential services are closing in our state, as are most of the state borders. Schools are not open unless parents need to work but attendance rates were already dropping last week.

Universities courses have gone on-line and many people are working from home, including my husband. We've had a few Internet issues and if he's on a conference call no one else can be online. Apparently even my Fisher & Paykel electronic washing machine interferes with the Internet so I have to switch it off during the calls.

So since last week we've stopped swimming, orchestra rehearsals, cello lessons (although we'll probably do those via face-time next week), university (for my son) as well as his casual work & as of this week, I won't be looking after my two grandchildren on Tuesdays so we'll be face-timing them to catch up.

Today I was looking through this book by Marguerite Patten who worked for The Ministry of Food as a food adviser during the second world war. Food rationing was introduced gradually in Britain from January, 1940 and continued until 1954! 

While we have shelf shortages of food, we're not on rations by any stretch of the imagination:

This was meant to be my son's 21st birthday present but I only finished it on Saturday - five years later (!!) - while we were driving to the park for his and my husband's combined birthdays before everything shuts down. I don't know how many one and a half inch hexagons I sewed here but it felt never ending. I had it professionally quilted and got it back from the quilters on Friday, just in time to sew the binding around the edges.

Apart from our outside activities being curtailed, Moozle and I have continued with our usual homeschooling routine. We've had a bit more time to go out walking and the other day we found an eel in our local creek. Last week I started reading 'Notes From a Small Island'  by Bill Bryson as a distraction from all the frenzied news that's washing over us. I bought it while we were in London last September to remember some of the places we visited. It requires a bit of editing for younger people but it's a fun read. When we went through the Roman Baths in the city of Bath in Somerset, England, Bryson was one of the main narrators on their audio guides.

We're setting our alarm for 8pm each evening as a 'call to prayer' to pray for protection over the vulnerable people we know and for an end to this virus.

AmblesideOnline Year 8, Term 1, Australian Geography: The Bight by Colin Thiele & Mike McKelvey

The Bight is one of seven titles in the Australian Conservation Series. Three other books in the series were also written by Colin Thiele: Coroong, Range Without Man, and The Little Desert.
It is is a unique book that was published in 1976, just after the new highway across the Nullarbor was completed, and it looks at a magnificent part of Australia, the Great Australian Bight, which straddles the coasts of South Australia and Western Australia.

Although there are only 56 pages in this book, including photographs, it manages to convey the history, the geography, and the wonder of this magnificent area.
Thiele points out that this part of Australia has a very striking history. From Pieter Nuyts’ voyage in the Gulde Zeepaert along the coastline in 1627, followed 160 years later by Vancouver, D’Entrecasteaux, and then Matthew Flinders who completed the map of the South Land in the 19th Century. It was Flinders who named a prominent cliff face Point Culver which was to be Edward John Eyre’s goal forty years later when he decided to force a passage to the Head of the Bight.

Of the sagas of the Bight Eyre’s dominates all the others. There is a poetic quality about its magnitude and starkness and seeming futility and grandeur. Though taken from real life there are elements in it that are larger than life - the unwavering hostility of the land, the vastness of distance, the enormity of the task, the obduracy of the human will. It is a story that deserved its happy ending.

About twenty to thirty kilometres north of the coast is the Nullarbor, which Thiele describes as ‘a level sea of limestone.’ The explorer Alfred Delisser dubbed it “Nullus-Arbor” on account if its treelessness - a Latin title and not an Aboriginal one as it is often believed to be. Some parts of the Nullarbor are riddled with vast hollow chambers and sinkholes that provide homes and a respite from the heat of summer for a variety of creatures such as cave owls, swallows and kestrels.





In the 1870’s and 1880’s, surveyors, telegraph linesmen and prospectors made their mark in the area, followed by men who built their sheep stations in places like Yalata and Koonalda. Now there are only a handful of sheep, solitude and distance.
The inland area of the Nullarbor was opened up by the Railway and then in the mid-1970’s the Eyre Highway was bituminised all the way from Western Australia to South Australia.
My parents made the trip from Whyalla in South Australia to Perth in Western Australia with five kids, my granny, and various household appliances crammed into a van in the early 1970’s when a good part of the road was still unsealed. I have memories of a very long, straight drive across the Nullarbor Plain, a vast blue sky and not much else. There was very little traffic and when we did see any other travellers it was very exciting and there was a great deal of tooting & waving. We’d stop for the night by the side of the road, light a fire and spend the night there. There were kangaroos and other animals that came out after dark to make night driving too hazardous.
We felt like pioneers.

The completion of the highway was hailed as the dawn of a new era. It was more than that. It was the end of something as deep and old as the roots of the nation; the end of challenge, demand, discomfort, and the stimulus of the unexpected. It was symbolic of conformity and uniformity...
With the old road there was still the possibility of the unexpected; of delay, breakdown, and improvisation; of ambush by bull dust; of plans frustrated and timetables destroyed...

There was opportunity for humility and succour and gratitude and imagination, of being forced to camp out under the stars, of having to make plans about food and fuel and water, of thinking ahead, developing self-reliance, appreciating distance, and doing all those things that are good fair the soul and character of man.

There is something very humbling about getting out of your puny vehicle, standing in the red dust, looking around at 360 degrees of low saltbush, seeing no other humans for a space of time and realizing your absolute smallness in the scheme of things. I've been thinking about this quite a lot lately as it's been a while since I've experienced this and I'm feeling a desire to do so again.

Yet there should also be cause for hope, not merely in the value of the highway for trade or travel or defence, but because, coming close to the cliffs of the Bight in isolated places, it gives scope for the human spirit. For who could stand on those ramparts and not be aware of what has gone before, of humanity's diminutiveness in the scheme of things. Who, in his mind’s eye, could not see again the 350-Year-old temerity of the Gulde Zeepaert, the meticulousness of Flinders, the incredible tenacity of Eyre...this is still the untamed country. Move the traveller a kilometre or two away from the highway, and the age-old verities of the region hold him fast.

This is a beautifully written Australian living book that I’m using in Term 1 of the Ambleside Online Year 8 curriculum in place of the Christopher Columbus selection. It also covers some Australian history of exploration and natural history as well as geography.
It's out of print but available for a reasonable price second-hand.

An Australian Classic & a Living Book - My Love Must Wait: The Story of Matthew Flinders by Ernestine Hill (1941)

'If the plan of a voyage of discovery were to be read over my grave, 

I would rise up, awakened from the dead.'

 

Matthew Flinders (1774-1814)

My Love Must Wait is a book I've known about for years and if it had been published under a more auspicious title I might have read it long before now. The title just doesn't represent the contents well enough. Yes, it is a poignant love story and this thread is woven throughout but it is so much more than that. It is also a wonderful account of the early life and influences of Matthew Flinders, the man who circumnavigated, mapped and named Australia, the fifth continent, and it details his driving ambition, his engaging personality and his great navigational skill. It is an account of a great tragedy, where a young man's life's work was cut short, his achievements forgotten for a century. A young man who gave his all and lost everything.

In the early 1930's, Ernestine Hill's knowledge of Matthew Flinders was on par with the average Australian. Everyone knew that Bass and Flinders sailed along the coast of New South Wales in a little tub boat called Tom Thumb, that Bass discovered Bass Strait and that Flinders made other explorations that were important but vague, but that was about the extent of common knowledge.
In the 1930's, the author sailed a thousand miles in a lugger from Thursday Island to Arnhem Land with a Torres Strait Islander as skipper, and was amazed to discover that the chart Matthew Flinders made of the area in 1802 was still in use.
Poring over that chart by the light of a hurricane lamp in the evenings, and later in library research, Ernestine Hill came to know Matthew Flinders as a friend as she pieced together fragments of his life. One day she hoped to write his forgotten story, a living book, that would speak to Australians and bring this 'most exact and accomplished of the cartographers of all time, a genius in navigation' to life.
The author certainly did this. My Love Must Wait is a superb achievement using scenes and situations created from written records: logs, journals, letters and private diaries, to present an accurate portrayal of the man, the lover, and his considerable accomplishments.
Flinders left an immense amount of detail about his work, his friends, his impressions, the surroundings he found himself in, and his associations, but it was in his passionate, poetic letters to his wife, Ann, that he revealed his heart.
Matthew and Ann had known each other from childhood, and were married in 1801. Ann had been prepared to travel to Australia with Matthew and stay with friends in Sydney while he did his explorations of the coast, but this was the era of Napoleon and Nelson, and the Admiralty had recently clamped down on women aboard ship due to Lord Nelson's indiscretions which had made the Navy a laughing stock.
Matthew was forced to choose to sail without Ann, or forfeit his voyage of discovery.
Ann was supportive of his going even though he would be away for four years and he was willing to leave her to undertake his great task. He told Sir Joseph Banks:

'I will give up the wife for the voyage of discovery.'

Pretty harsh! Although Ann was severely disappointed she made no complaint. She must have been an unusually selfless type of woman to have done this as graciously as she did. It wouldn't have been my response!
Matthew completed his work but a cruel twist of fate made him a prisoner on the Ilse-de-France (now known as Mauritius) for over six years as he was on his way back to England. By the time he returned home he was a broken man, almost destitute, and forgotten, or worse, pitied.
He had been separated from his wife for nearly ten years and was to die only four years after his return to England, a direct result of the conditions he endured in captivity. Only forty years of age, he died just a day after the book he wrote about his explorations was published, leaving behind his faithful and loving wife and an infant daughter they had named Anne.

 Flinders chose to title his book 'A Voyage to Australia,' but Sir Joseph Banks changed it to 'A Voyage to Terra Australis. However, Flinders' choice was later vindicated: 

 

Although Matthew Flinders only lived for forty years, he accomplished so much and lived through a time of great upheaval and change. My Love Must Wait reflects this and so the book encompasses a significant amount of history, culture and geography.
There is a lively account of Flinders' early life and influences and his developing love for the sea and exploration. We see his friendship with George Bass, a surgeon, who was to go exploring with Flinders later on; his budding relationship with Ann, his childhood friend; his father's opposition to his going to sea and his later acquiescence.
Matthew joined the Navy at a time of national fervour but he chose exploration over war and one of his first journeys was with Captain Bligh (of Mutiny on the Bounty fame) to Terra Australis. This was a lively account of life at sea and displays Flinders' personality so well. He was a skilful communicator and showed wisdom and humour in his encounters with the Aboriginal people, once diffusing a potentially explosive situation by giving the natives haircuts.
Their return to England coincided with England's war with France and Flinders took part in what was to become known as the the Glorious First of June, the first great naval engagement of the French Revolutionary Wars, fought between the French and the British in the Atlantic.
After this Flinders departed on a voyage to the new colony at Sydney with Captain John Hunter and while there he and Bass did their exploring in Tom Thumb. This was a very enjoyable and interesting part of the book. It was upon his return to England after this trip that he and Ann were married.
About a quarter of the book details Flinders' stay on the Ile-de-France where he was held on house arrest and it has quite a different feel from the rest of the book, sombre and introspective with less action. His six and a half years on this island gave him much time for reflection and he was tortured with thoughts of his wife, wondering if she were still alive, and whether others such as Nicolas Baudin, the French explorer, would take credit for the work he had done.
Later when the war between England and France ended, he was released by the French and was reunited with Ann in England:

The woman covered her face with her hands.
He went forward swiftly, and put his arms about her - sombre brown against the faded blue. With cold hands he lifted her face to his.
This sober little body his lovely, laughing Ann. They kissed, and the kiss seemed formal, empty.
Then in long shivering sobs she clung to him, the helpless tears staining the shoulder of his frayed uniform coat. Haggard eyes looking out on the grey, he might gave been a man of fifty years.

All through that dreary forenoon they sat there, clasped in their joy and sorrow, now and again to find dear remembered caresses of reawakening love, telling the sad litany of their loneliness, feeling their way, as a blind man feels, back across the years.

This is a warm, lively, enjoyable, but an ultimately sad look at the life of Matthew Flinders and Ernestine Hill's writing style is lyrical and descriptive. There are so many connections with historical figures and the early days of colonial life in Australia, such a broad sweep of characters: Sir Joseph Banks, Captain William Bligh, Captain Hunter, John Macarthur (the pioneer of the Australian wool industry), Lord Nelson, and Nicholas Baudin, for example. I learnt so much about Australian History and what was happening elsewhere at the time.
The only disappointing part of this book is that it didn't contain any maps! I used the maps in a book we used in Year 4 to follow along with Flinders' journeys but there are online maps showing the places he navigated and charted.

I  highly recommend this book for high school history and geography or as a biography for about ages 14 and up, even if you're not Australian, as it features worldwide events and high profile characters. Chronologically it fits well into AmblesideOnline Year 9 (1800's) and would be enjoyed by both boys and girls. Flinders is certainly someone a young person could admire.

'All the time Matthew could spare from his nautical  and mathematical studies he spent in reading discovery, "peering in maps and charts", chasing the evolution of exploration from Ptolemy again down to Cook. He took the soundings, in fancy, of a myriad islands sprawled in seas of unruffled blue. He kept imaginary journals with scrupulous exactness, assimilated the various styles of the great English navigators, and grieved that he did not know Dutch.

For light relief, propped beside him at mess, or beneath a ship's lamp in his hammock at night, he read Dampier's Voyages...finding within those yellowed pages entertainment and inspiration.
This William Dampier was a man after his own heart, a farmer's boy who loved he blue furrows of the sea better than the brown of earth, and became a pilgrim of the winds and high adventure.'
Matthew Flinders was honourable, a man of his word, and he had an ability to get on with crusty personalities such as William Bligh. Here he comments to a fellow-midshipman as they were going to report to 'Bully Bligh' for duty on his ship:

'"I think we need have no fear. Lightening never strikes in the same place twice. Bligh knows that all England is watching him this time. To please him may be impossible, but a record of no complaints with such a man is worth more than the praise of others. Our commanders hold our future in their hands. Let's try, Bob, just for the fun of it, to see if we can make him smile upon us. Let's draw the old serpent's fangs, and tame the lion."

After they met Bligh he said to his friend, "I think I like him...A lot of pepper, but good red meat beneath." He was to like old Bligh, with the usual reservations, to the end of his days.'



My Love Must Wait is my choice for the Back to the Classics 2017, Romance Classic. It was re-printed by Angus & Robertson in 2013; the copy pictured above is an out of print hardback I've had for some time. The cover is taken from a painting "The Battle of the Glorious First of June," 1794 by P.J. de Loutherbourg. 

AusRead Month 2016: Magpie Island by Colin Thiele; Illustrated by Roger Haldane

Magpie lived in the open countryside of the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. He would fly high into the early morning air and swoop down the sky like a jet plane and then invigorated by his downward rush, he would stand upon a high branch and pour out his joy in song. Looking to the south west, Magpie could see where the trees dwindled away and the Nullarbor Plain began.
One day Magpie and his fellow magpies saw a giant bird come sailing out of the Nullarbor, and as it cast its dark shadow over the land, Magpie joined his companions as they gave chase to the proud wedge-tailed eagle who just kept flying higher and higher.

One by one the other birds gave up the pursuit - all except Magpie, who continued squawking and snapping and following the great bird, the north wind speeding him along. When at last he stopped chasing the eagle and looked below to the earth, he found the wind had carried him to the coastline and soon he would be out over the sea. He began to panic and tried to turn back into the wind but before long he was exhausted. As he began to lose ground, the wind took him and carried him far out to sea.

Magpies are land birds and are not built for roaming across the sea, but the Magpie in this story reaches an island and finds himself marooned with penguins, bull seals and ferocious terns - a Robinson Crusoe Magpie.
Sad and lonely, Magpie didn't have it in him to sing his lovely songs. The island was no place for a land bird. But one day a young boy on a fishing trip with his father saw Magpie, and a year later the fishing vessel returned bringing a mate for the lonely bird.

Colin Thiele (1921-2006) was a wonderful Aussie author who wrote mostly for children. If I were to ask any of my children to name the book that they liked best out of the hundreds we've read to them over the course of twenty plus years, they would all agree it would be Thiele's book, Sun on the Stubble. His books are realistic and unsentimental, but he had an ability to inspire sympathy for the people and the animals he wrote about. After reading Magpie Island you come away with a love and appreciation for these garrulous, dive-bombing birds that can be so aggressive during their breeding season.





Magpie Island was written for a younger audience than Storm Boy, but like Storm Boy, it is sad in places (Magpie's mate is killed when she flies into a plane). The book fits well into a term of Year 1 or 2 of AmblesideOnline (my daughter was 7 when we did Year 1) and it offers an opportunity to learn not only about the South Australian Magpie, but also the geography of the region.

'He lived high and free in the open countryside in South Australia where a big triangle of land called Eyre Peninsula pushes out into the sea. He was young and happy. He had been hatched in a wide scraggy nest made of sticks that were as hard and knotty as knuckles. His mother had laid two eggs in it; beautiful eggs they were, with spots on them, and touches of lovely colour - blue and grey and lilac. Magpie hatched out in three weeks.'

58 pages, including illustrations in colour and black and white.

Points of interest:

*  Magpie Island could have been one of the many islands off the South Australian coast.

*  The Australian Magpie has one of the world's most complex bird songs and a lifespan of about 20 years.

*  The white-backed magpie (Gymnorhina tibien hypoleuca) is on the official emblem of the State of South Australia. It is a close relative of the black-backed magpie found mostly in eastern Australia.

*  Over 15 whaling sites have been identified in coastal South Australia. The author briefly mentions previous whaling activities in the book.

*  The book's illustrator, Roger Haldane, had a background in commercial fishing and his family pioneered the tuna fishing industry at Port Lincoln. He drew on his broad knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Eyre Peninsula's for his illustrations.

 The Eyre Peninsula is the triangle of land on whose point Port Lincoln is found:

Reading Europe: The Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. Kelly (1928)

According to legend, in the thirteenth century Tartars from the east descended upon the Polish city of Kraków. The young trumpeter of the Church of Our Lady Mary had taken a solemn oath to play the Heynal each hour of the day and night from the church tower, and this he did even as the Tartars below were setting fire to the town and the other inhabitants had fled into the Wawel fortress. As he played the hymn, a Tartar below shot an arrow,  killing him before he could finish the hymn.
One hundred and twenty years later, Andrew Charnetski, his wife, and their son, Joseph, arrived in Kraków seeking refuge after they were driven out of the Ukraine. In their possession was the Great Tarnov Crystal, a rare jewel that had been in the Charnetski family for over two hundred years, and which they had sworn to guard.
Befriended by Jan Kanty, a renowned priest, theologian and scholar of the times, the family was provided with lodgings and Andrew, a skilful trumpeter, was given the night shift in the church tower. Before long, however, a Tartar chief from the Ukraine had discovered their whereabouts and made plans to get his hands on the jewel. He would stop at nothing to achieve his ends.

The Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. Kelly won the Newbery Medal in 1929 for this story of medieval Poland and wrote the book while he was teaching and studying at the University of Krakow. Krakow was not the tourist destination it is today, and before the book was published in 1928, it had never even been mentioned in a book for children. The Trumpeter of Krakow is an unusual book in many ways, with its focus being a little known city in Poland at the time of its publication. Although it is an adventure story of sorts, the author focuses on some of the interplay of the scientific thought and superstitious beliefs prevalent at the time - alchemists, hypnotism and a brief mention of the future work of Nicholas Copernicus. This adds some interesting angles, so that although the book is recommended for ages 8 to 12, it would probably interest older children as well.

The prestige of the various colleges and the reputation of the men who taught there had drawn to Kraków not only genuine students but also many of the craft that live by their wits in all societies, in all ages - fortune tellers, necromancers, and fly-by-nights who were forever eluding the authorities of the law...

Against the machinations of these men the influence of the university was ever working, and the first great blow that many of these magic crafts and black art received was struck by Nicholas Kopernik, better known as Copernicus, many years later, when Joseph Charnetski was a very old man; Copernicus, working with rough implements, even before the telescope had been invented, proved to men for the first time that the heavenly bodies, stars and planets, move in the skies according to well-fixed and definitely determined laws, subject only to the will of he Creator of the universe, and that they have nothing to do with the destinies of individuals. 


Some interesting bits & pieces


The Heynal and St. Mary's Tower





Historical figures in the book include:

Jan Kanty (also known as St John Cantius) who was much revered in Poland for his wisdom, humility and generosity.
Kazimir Jagiello, King of Poland.


Historical places mentioned in the story:

View of Wawel near the end of the 16th century

The Wawel Castle and Cathedral (on the left) in Kraków, Poland

 St. Mary's Church in Kraków, Poland

For a second the woman's heart quailed before the fresh difficulties, but she forgot self at the look in her husband's face. Her quiet reply, "We will wait, for God is in the waiting," filled him with courage again.

Now of all the creatures that God has put in the world a dog is the most curious, and sometimes, one might think, the most discerning. For when this same animal had broken loose in the morning, his first impulse, which he had followed, had been that of flight. His second impulse was to look for a friend, since no dog can live without a friend.

These are dark days when men look with suspicion upon all who engage in investigation whether it be honest or dishonorable, godly or selfish.

Relationships, Connections and Making Memories

When a short window of opportunity to have a holiday opened up two weeks ago, we headed off to New Zealand to visit family with our youngest two who hadn't been there before.
A flight to Auckland in the North Island and a drive south to Hamilton where we stayed with my husband's aunt. From there we did some day trips...

 Middle Earth

I really wanted to buy one of these but we wouldn't all fit... 

Aunty B used to be a history teacher and has interests in lots of other things: embroidery, poetry, botany, genealogy, to name just a few. Her house is filled with books & I drooled over them all. I read her copy of 'Cover Her Face' by P.D. James while we were there. I don't have a copy and have wanted to read it for awhile (it's James's first novel) and I also found this poem in one of her poetry compilations and thought it was lovely:

Idle Fame

I would not wish the burning blaze
Of fame around a restless world,
The thunder and the storm of praise
In crowded tumults heard and hurled.
I would not be a flower to stand
The stare of every passer-bye;
But in some nook of fairyland,
Seen in the praise of beauty's eye. 

by John Clare (1793-1864)

Aunty B's had her spinning wheel set up in the lounge room, so Moozle had some spinning lessons. I've had a spinning wheel since before we had children but it has been in the garage for quite a few years & I hadn't got around to teaching anyone how to use it yet.

On our way to Rotorua we stopped at Huka Falls - this is where the Waikato River, which drains Lake Taupo and is one of New Zealand's longest rivers, squeezes through a narrow gorge...just magnificent!

We arrived in Rotorua where Benj & Moozle experienced first-hand the unique aroma of sulphur fumes (like rotten eggs) and the geothermal activity in the area. A look around Taupo, dinner with second cousins and a tour through their organic gardens. Everyone we know in N.Z has a decent vegetable garden! Up to the lookout to star gaze and take some photos of the moon - I haven't seen those yet - Benj took them using his go-pro. It's late and we drive back to Hamilton.

We visited the children's Great Grandma most days. She is 95 years old and before she fell and broke her femur late last year, was living independently, growing her own veges, going to aerobics and doing her patchwork, knitting etc. An amazing lady who until recently had never missed any of our birthdays - and she has numerous other grandchildren, great-grandchildren & great-greats who were always remembered too. We've been so blessed to have her in our lives.

The kiwi - they're nocturnal and we saw one being fed in a special enclosure where photography was not allowed. It was hilarious. They are quite aggressive, this one was about the size of a large cat and  kept attacking his feeder with his beak. Fortunately the man wore long boots & just patiently endured the offense. This one was stuffed & on a display:

Off to Tauranga ...

On the way we visited the Waitomo Caves to see the glow-worms. They looked like multitudes of little LED lights on a ceiling. I don't have any photos as they are prohibited in the caves but it was very interesting. These glow-worms are unique to New Zealand and are the larvae (Arachnocampa luminosa) of a wingless insect. I'll be doing some research to find out more about them.

Waimungu Vocanic Valley

We came here on our honeymoon and when we were talking about what we should do when we were in NZ on this visit, this was on the top of my list. It is so unique and there is nothing like it in Australia.

In the mid to late 1800's, the Pink and White Terraces bordering old Lake Rotomahana were a unique tourist attraction, but in 1886, Mt. Tarawera erupted triggering a massive explosion of the hydrothermal system, burying everything under metres of mud. About 120 people died and all plant and animal life in the area was destroyed. The Lost Pink & White Terraces shows some paintings and old photographs of this area before the eruption.

Since the eruption, Lake Rotomahana has increased about twenty times in surface area...

Inferno Crater

Waimangu and Rotomahana are located in the New Zealand part of the Pacific 'Ring of Fire' where two tectonic plates meet. It's the world's youngest geothermal system - its surface activities all commenced within recent times and were the result of a volcanic eruption which can be precisely dated.

Tauranga, on the slopes of Mt. Maunganui. A visit to other members of our large family. Lots of walking and climbing on this trip...

View from the top of Mt. Maunganui. A stiff climb but rewarded afterwards by an ice-cream each.

A visit to the rifle range where their Great Uncle gave them some target practice - a first for Moozle & very excited she was!

"Education is the Science of Relations"; that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts...(and people!)

Charlotte Mason