Throughout history, gold has been the stuff of legends, fortunes, conflict and change. The discovery of gold in Australia150 years ago precipitated enormous developments in the newly settled land. The population and economy boomed in spontaneous cities. The effects on both the environment and indigenous Aboriginal peoples have been profound and lasting. In this book, a team of prominent historians and curators have collaborated to produce an innovative cultural history of gold and its impact on the development of Australian society.

In contrast to much scholarship on cross-cultural encounters, which focuses primarily on contact between indigenous peoples and ’settlers’ or ’sojourners’, this book is concerned with migrant aspects of this phenomenon – whether migrant-migrant or migrant-host encounters – bringing together studies from a variety of perspectives on cross-cultural encounters, their past, and their resonances across the contemporary Asia-Pacific region. Organised thematically into sections focusing on ’imperial encounters’ of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ’identities’ in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and ’contemporary citizenship’ and the ways in which this is complicated by mobility and cross-cultural encounters, the volume presents studies of New Zealand, Singapore, Australia, Vanuatu, Mauritius and China to highlight key themes of mobility, intimacies, ethnicity and ’race’, heritage and diaspora, through rich evidence such as photographs, census data, the arts and interviews. Demonstrating the importance of multidisciplinary ways of looking at migrant cross-cultural encounters through blending historical and social science methodologies from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, Migrant Cross-Cultural Encounters in Asia and the Pacific will appeal to anthropologists, sociologists, cultural geographers and historians with interests in migration, mobility and cross-cultural encounters.

Once Upon A Hume Volume 2 continues our journey down the ‘Great South Road’, as the Hume Highway was once known. We follow the original route, moving from personality to personality, catching up with some of the intriguing folk who lived near, or preyed upon, or prospered there, from the earliest days. Few of these folk or features are well-known. All have a story to share. The town clocks of Mittagong, Bowral, and Camden, and the fierce Battles of the Chimes ... The concentration camp at Berrima ... Grace Perry, black swan ... The fabulous 'Sally' of Sally's Corner ... Heroic 'Black Bob' of Black Bob's Creek ... The 'Tank Bank', taking Old Hume towns with a bang ... 'Old Bruce' Lewin, wandering yarn-spinner ... The hapless alpacas of Arthursleigh ... The Richter murder mystery ... The Marulan Tiger ... Goulburn's billycart ballyhoo ... … and many other persons and prominences. Once Upon a Hume is a travellers’ companion. Anecdotal, informative, and chatty, it peoples the Hume Highway landscape with vivid characters and occurrences, profiles prominences, explains place-names, and makes an absorbing panorama of the passing show. This is the second of several volumes about the colourful humanity who dwelt Once Upon A Hume.