One of the most fascinating of the first-hand accounts of life in the islands of the Pacific before the native cultures became influenced and altered by foreign ways is the story of James O{u2019}Connell, first published in Boston in 1836. O{u2019}Connell was born in Ireland about 1810 and at the age of eleven is said to have set out for Australia as cabin-boy on a convict ship. After six years in Australia, he was shipwrecked on Ponape in the Caroline Islands and, by his own account, spent five years there, living with the natives, adopted by one of the chiefs, and marrying a native wife.

On 1 July 1968 the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and some fifty other states signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Australia has not yet signed, and this monograph examines the issues the treaty raises for her. The study is intended as a contribution to the debate on a major issue in foreign policy.

Les A. Murray and Geoffrey Lehmann are two young Australian poets whose work has recently begun attracting attention. Both write enjoyably, preferrring lucidity and clarity of image. Les Murray works from a deep attachment to countryside and the past; his earlier work is concerned largely with imagined situations and modes of existence, especially war, but more recently he has come to explore a more immediate world of his own experience, and his verse has become tenderer and more natural. Geoffrey Lehmann, on the other hand, is a poet of city and sea.

A new and improved strategy for safe disposal of wastes from nuclear reactors is provided by a study of the geochemical means by which natural rocks and minerals retain the same elements that are present in these wastes. Certain natural minerals have demonstrated the capacity to immobilise radwaste elements for periods up to 2000 million years, and the fundamental reasons underlying this capacity are well understood in terms of the basic principles of geochemistry.

Edward Robarts was among other things whaler, beachcomber, Tahitian rum producer, Tuamotuan pearler, butler in Penang, gardener and policeman in Calcutta. He deserted his ship in 1798 in the Marquesas, and lived there as a native, where he was adopted by the chiefly families, married a chief's daughter, and fought in battle as a Marquesan warrior. He spent longer in the islands than did most eighteenth century beachcombers, and got to know more about Polynesian society than did most other early observers.

Since World War II many thousands of Britons have emigrated to Australia, most of them to settle permanently but some to return home or move on elsewhere. Why they decided to emigrate and what changes in beliefs, attitudes and behaviour occurred after their arrival in Australia are the subject of this book.