On The Beaten Track
George Ernest Morrison's Quiet Journey Across Southwest China, 1894
By Brodie Burns-Williamson
In 1894, a thirty-two-year-old Australian doctor stepped off a boat at Chongqing on the upper Yangtze and started walking to Burma. By the time he had hired his first pony and his first sedan chair, George Ernest Morrison had fallen into the history, rhythms, and trickery of an overland road that had been moving people and goods through southwest China for a thousand years.
The walk launched the career that would later make Morrison a Times correspondent in Peking and a confidant of Yuan Shikai, the first president of the Republic of China. On The Beaten Track is about the walk itself, stripped back to its essentials: the river, the road, the mountains, and the people Morrison and his support crew met along the way.
Morrison's original account of the journey has been translated into Mandarin four times since 1998. This English retelling is the first to include insights from that ongoing Chinese-language scholarship, and draws on original archival research in Melbourne and Sydney.
ISBN: 978-1-7646790-0-8
On The Beaten Track can be read at the National Library of Australia. If you enjoy it, you can leave a review on Goodreads, The StoryGraph or Open Library.
The Yangtze Was My Darkroom
Isabella Bird's Candid Photos of Southwest China, 1897
By Brodie Burns-Williamson
In 1897, Isabella Bird travelled thousands of kilometres through southwest China with a camera at her side.
Taking advantage of the invention of portable cameras, she photographed river workers, market traders, travellers, villagers and city streets. On the road she caught remarkable moments of everyday life.
More than a century later, these photographs remain windows into a vanished world.
A quiet journey through Sichuan and the upper Yangtze, one image at a time.
ISBN: 978-1-7646790-9-1
The Yangtze Was My Darkroom can be read at the National Library of Australia. If you enjoy it, you can leave a review on Goodreads, The StoryGraph or Open Library.
Give It Your Best Shot!
The Australia-Southwest China Sister-City Photo Competition Book
by Brodie Burns-Williamson
How do you capture a piece of home, and show it to the world?
That's the challenge over 15,000 budding photographers and proud residents of Australia and southwest China accepted when they entered the "Give It Your Best Shot" Sister-City Photo Competition, showcasing to the world what makes their city unique.
Featuring vast grasslands, Sichuan teahouses and high-rise megacities in southwest China, as well as wheat fields, golden beaches and funky cafes in Australia, the book gives a glimpse of everyday life in seventeen sister cities in Australia and China.
ISBN: 978-1-7646790-8-4
Give It Your Best Shot! can be read at the National Library of Australia. If you enjoy it, you can leave a review on Goodreads, The StoryGraph or Open Library.