To the Isles of Spice – Frank Clune (1948)

S$58.00

To the Isles of Spice – Frank Clune (1948)

S$58.00

Title: To The Isles of Spices: A Vagabond Voyage by Air from Botany Bay to Darwin Bathurst Island, Timor, Java, Borneo, Celebes and French Indo-China

Author: Frank Clune

Publisher: Angus and Robertson, 1948

Condition: Hardcover, no dust jacket. Good. Slight wear to cover, inscription to ffep. Pages 24-29 miscut and misaligned (printer’s defect). With numerous black-and-white plates. 327pp., app 9″ by 6″.

SKU: isles-spices Categories: , ,

Contents:

Sydney to Darwin
Dutch Discoveries in North Australia
The Map Makers
Melville Island and Raffles bay
Port Essington
The Fiasco of Palmerston City
Darwin, A Port with a Past
A Paradise of Bathurst Island
All Roads Lead to Timor
Flying Low to Batavia
A Trip to the Stratosphere
Bandoeng, the City of Science
Death Comes to the Soesoehonan
A Jaunt Through Java
Borneo – Land of Wild Men
Surabaya, The Strategic Seaport
Celebes Idyll
Macassar Interlude
Buitenzorg, A Botanists’ Paradise
We’re Off to Indo-China
The Temples of Angkor
Pnom Penh – A Cambodian Cameo
Back to Batavia
Bali-Belles, Cocks and Monkey
Rolling Home

About the author (from Wikipedia):

Francis Patrick Clune, OBE, (27 November 1893 – 11 March 1971) was a best-selling Australian author, travel writer and popular historian.

Clune was born in Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst, Sydney in 1893, and grew up in Redfern. He left home at 15 and for five years lived the life of an adventurer, claiming to have had twenty-five different jobs by the age of 17, and enlisting with the US Army in Kansas 26 October 1911, deserting and going to sea.

Clune joined the AIF in 1915 during World War I and was soon with the 16th Battalion at Gallipoli. He was wounded in action and repatriated a year after being wounded in both legs.

He married Maud Roy in 1916; they divorced in 1920. He married again in 1923 to artist and sculptor Thelma Cecily Smith (1900–1992), established himself as a tax consultant and by 1930 had settled in Vaucluse. His first book was published in 1933 : Try Anything Once, an account of his adventures. Some of his subsequent books were written in collaboration with P R ‘Inky’ Stephensen, notably The Viking of Van Diemen’s Land and The Pirates of the Brig ‘Cyprus’.

He was fascinated by the ‘outsiders’ of Australian history such as Captain Melville, Captain Starlight, Martin Cash, Edward Hargraves, Bully Hayes, Jørgen Jørgensen, “Chinese” Morrison, Ben Hall, Ned Kelly, Frederick Bailey Deeming and Louis de Rougemont.

Clune also wrote for magazines such as Smith’s Weekly and ABC Weekly. He broadcast “Roaming Round Australia” regularly on The ABC from 1945–1957.