Description
For the first time, Hemisphere magazine has produced this annual, with more than four hundred pages of articles covering a range of subjects that even to us on the staff is pretty surprising: the practice of medicine in ancient Persia or current treatment in Arnhem Land, according to age-old remedies; a British novelist who wrote of the cruelest days of the convict system in a book which has become a classic in half a dozen countries; polo how it developed into the sport that we know today; the complex art of the handicapped child or the prehistoric paintings of the Aborigines; dinosaurs stampeding in Queensland; China's Grand Canal, begun two and a half thousand years ago and still in use; the beauty of Australia's desert life today; the million-mile-miracle of the bird migration; a profile of Australian-born actor Keith Michell; an examination of Hong Kong and how it became the place that it is today; the sailing craft of the Indian Ocean, and the difference steam navigation made to that seaway; a world authority writing on the East-India men that made Holland rich, a world expert on Captain Cook explaining that man's personality, brilliance and weaknesses.
These, and many other aspects of the Indian Ocean are dealt with in articles in this volume, for in fact, the annual contains the material from two of Hemisphere's most successful special issues: one on traditional Asian medicine dealing with centuries-old remedies and methods of treatment practised through the three main streams of medicine there: Islamic, Ayurvedic (Indian) and the Chinese. And there are some fascinating insights into the medical practices of the Australian Aborigines millennia-old.
In an interview, Australia's main authority on the archaeology of the Australian Aborigine, Professor Mulvaney, tells of the tremendous movement forward in his field in the last thirty years progress which has meant that the Australian Aborigines were living on this continent between thirty and forty thousand years ago.
For nearly a quarter of a century, Hemisphere has been informing our Asian neighbours about ourselves, and telling Australians how Asians and Pacific Islanders live today, about the histories that made them, and the cultures that enliven them.
