Cirrus@Austlit

'From its earliest years, South Australia was the most German of the Australian colonies.

'As they contributed to the founding and consolidation of a British colony, Germans observed the processes of dispossession and subjugation that changed the lives of First Nations peoples around them forever. More than that, they participated in those profound and tragic changes. Importantly, German settlers and visitors left behind records of the events they witnessed.

'This volume collects those precious records and makes them available - most for the first time in English - to a modern Australian readership. It charts the course of German-Australian encounters from first contacts, through the ruptures and violence of a relentlessly expanding European presence and into the twentieth century. As it documents the astounding cultural wealth and complexity of Indigenous peoples under siege, it also lays bare the grim logic of the forces driving their world towards destruction.' (Publication summary)

'This publication of an internee's personal diaries will expand our understanding of the civilian internment experience in Australia during World War II, through the words of a Japanese internee who spent four years behind the barbed wire at Loveday.

'The title of this book refers to the dyed red coats that were provided to Japanese and other internees in Australia.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The never-before-told story of World War II escape artist extraordinaire, Johnny Peck. In August 1941, an eighteen-year-old Australian soldier made his first prison break - an audacious night-time escape from a German prisoner-of-war camp in Crete. Astoundingly, this was only the first of many escapes. An infantryman in the 2/7 Battalion, Johnny Peck was first thrown into battle against Italian forces in the Western Desert. Campaigns against Hitler's Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe in Greece and Crete followed. When Crete fell to the Germans at the end of May 1941, Peck was trapped on the island with hundreds of other men. 

'On the run, they depended on their wits, the kindness of strangers, and sheer good luck. When Peck's luck ran out, he was taken captive by the Germans, then the Italians. Later, after his release from a Piedmontese jail following the Italian Armistice of 1943, and at immense risk to his own life, Peck devoted himself to helping POWs cross the Alps to safety. Captured once more, Peck was sentenced to death and detained in Milan's notorious, Gestapo-run San Vittore prison - until escaping again, this time into Switzerland.
'Historian Peter Monteath reveals the action-packed tale of one young Australian soldier and his remarkable war.' (Publication summary)

'Friedrich Gerstäcker, the most illustrious and prolific of German travel writers, set foot in Australia in March 1851, having walked across the Andes, traipsed the goldfields of California, and sailed over the Pacific in search of new adventures.

'Gerstäcker found adventures aplenty in Australia. He rowed and trekked down the Murray, absorbed the excitement triggered by the discovery of gold, visited his countrymen in South Australia, and trained his outsider's eyes on a colonial society gripped by profound change.

'In this translated edition of Gerstäcker's book Australien, his lively travelogue is made available for the first time in English. Rarely has Australia's colonial past been presented with such insight, humour and entertainment.' (Publication summary : Australia : A German Traveller in the Age of Gold)

'Fred Rose's life takes us through rip-roaring tales from Australia's northern frontier to enthralling intellectual tussles over kinship systems and political dramas as he runs rings around his Petrov inquisitors.

'More than any other injustice, the abuse of Aborigines leads him into the Communist Party in 1942. His move to academic life in what he insisted on calling the German Democratic Republic made him a dissident against anthropological orthodoxies in the Soviet Bloc as he had been in Australia. Those final three decades also see his informing on his children to his Stasi handlers.

'Out of relentless research, Peter Monteath and Valerie Munt present an engrossing portrait of the short twentieth century from Rose's birth during the Great War to his death in Berlin shortly after the Wall comes down. The result is unputdownable for its sweep of events while causing us to reflect on how someone can be heroic and horrendous, appalling and admirable.' (Publication summary)

'A collection of essays that "explore the multiple origins, experiences and contributions of Germans in South Australia over some 175 years. Part celebration and part sober assessment, this book helps make sense of South Australia today.' (Source: Back cover)