MARTIN  KERR

Author and publisher operating from the Cairns Highlands,
Far North Queensland, Australia.

Born and raised in New Zealand, Martin Kerr travelled to New Guinea, joined the Australian Trusteeship Administration as a cadet patrol officer and later operated as a crocodile shooter along the West Papua border. Teaching at Sydney High School for three years he settled in Victoria and moved to Far North Queensland in 2002.

Martin’s characters, themes and locations touch on cultural milieux and natural resources.

BRUTNALL’S FOLLIES

ISBN 978-0-9871954-3-2 ebook
ISBN 978-0-9804903-0-5 paperback
Published: 2008

Kindle Price: $6.50

Paperback Price: $20 (152pp) delivered to Australian Postal Address
Sold by: maskimedia, order via email

This is a record of Harry Brutnall’s life as a miner, sailor, diver, shipowner and farmer. He reflects on major events in his long life with modesty and humour.
     Unique for many readers will be his understated comments on people and events seen from the eyes of a country lad who has well and truly served his country.
     His first diving job was to retrieve bodies of his mates from HMAS Kuttabul in 1942. He cleared the propeller of a ship sent urgently to Timor to pick up Australian commandoes, retrieved Japanese aircraft parts in Darwin harbour, built a slipway in Port Moresby, secured spent torpedoes in Pittwater, installed moorings in Cockburn Sound, and blasted away underwater hazards in Fremantle.
     Harry would be Australia’s only navy diver who has spent as many hours underwater. By the time he resigned in 1950 the petty officer had established new methods of diving and underwater demolition.
     Harry went on to have many adventures in Papua New Guinea and a few in Australia as well.

KAPIAK TREE

ISBN 978-0-9808632-9-1 ebook
ISBN 978-0-9804903-1-2 paperback
Published: 2008

Kindle Price: $4.29
Paperback Price: $20 (141pp) delivered to Australian Postal Address.
Sold by: maskimedia, order via email

A tasty panoply of events and characters who passed through or lived on the Sepik River and elsewhere in Papua New Guinea.
     There are observations about kiaps (patrol officers), crocodile shooter and politician John Pasquarelli, traders, anthropologists (even Margaret Mead!) and local people.
     Chu Leong set up business in Marienberg on the Sepik River in 1930. His eldest son was killed by American aircraft fire on the ill-fated internee-packed Dorish Maru in 1944. His daughters and other sons suffered Japanese occupation on the Keram River … Anna ran her father’s trade store, mixed with officers on an idyllic colonial outpost and saw independence in Wewak in 1975. She survived the threats and gunfire of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army in 1989 

A rare memoir by a New Guinea person.

CHALLENGER

ISBN 978-0-980632-3-9 ebook

Kindle Price: $4.39

It was in the late 1960s that a mining boom gripped Australia. Money could be made by knowing where share orders were coming from and slipping quietly onto the band wagon.
     Life was hectic, but in the slums and in the countryside Aborigines began to stir for basic rights and land subject to mining claims.
     Disembarking in Sydney, Thomas Challenger is thrown into a world of fast-made fortunes and even faster women…

Picaresque with haunting truths…

NEW GUINEA PATROL

ISBN 978-0-9808632-8-4 ebook
ISBN 0 7091 3849 0 
First published, Martin D. Kerr (1973) in hardback (189pp), Robert Hale, London.

Kindle Price: $6.29

A cadet’s adventures in the heart of New Guinea in the 1960s, this youthful and zestful account shows Mr Kerr to be a keen observer of human nature describing vividly his own life and the lives of others in conflict with their surroundings.
New Guinea will always remain a mystery to the European, no matter how hard he tries to adapt to the physical conditions of heat and malaria, and the accompanying psychological and mental deterioration caused by loneliness and boredom. As Mr Kerr said in his final chapter, ‘My ancestors were not crocodiles and my face was not that of the tambaran.’
     In the words of well-known historian, Professor Ken Inglis: ‘The book has plenty to say to people in later years… about important matters which are ignored or only touched on very lightly in the published accounts here; especially about the complexities of life within the expatriate community.’

Biography by an exciting and challenging author.

LAST STRAW

ISBN 978-0-9808632-4-6 ebook

Kindle Price: $4.39

Manus Curzon is unemployed, over-experienced and over-aged. He lands a job as a casual relief teacher and ends up assaulting two students. His future is uncertain as his day in court approaches. Throughout this ordeal he considers his limited options, until finally the last straw…

Fiction with honesty and candor…

TAMARIKI AND THE WHALES

ISBN 978-0-9808632-1-5 ebook
ISBN 9780 980 490 329 paperback
Published: 2008

Kindle Price: $4.39

Paperback Price: $20 (141pp) delivered to Australian Postal Address.

This is a story about shore whaling in a fjord region of Aotearoa. Set in the 1950s, Maori and Pakeha are involved with a creative, sometimes destructive partnership with the environment. Roera Nashburn and her brothers; Rangiho and Ansek; adapt to the whalers’ lethal technology and challenge the warnings of the taniwha.

TAMARIKI… a tale of sublime intensity and subtle reality.

DIANSINKAN THE EXILED

ISBN 978-0-9808632-2-2 ebook

Kindle Price: $6.29

The Indonesians take over Dutch New Guinea in 1962. Rudi van der Sloot is determined to stay on and marry his girlfriend. When Narita is taken as a mistress by an Indonesian army colonel he is forced to flee to Papua New Guinea.     
     Spies, missionaries and patrol officers all contribute to the unstable border and diplomatic situation with Indonesia, culminating in an unsuccessful and disastrous raid by Indonesian troops on the Papuan Freedom Movement and their sympathizers at August River in 1974.

Spy fiction thriller at its best…

AMON ONE

ISBN 978-0-890632-5-3 ebook

Kindle Price: $6.99

Identity, romance and colonialism are keystones to Amon Mortlake’s colorful life. He goes to the right school and university: But intriguing characters and opportune moments draw him into the real world. Protesting the Vietnam War, discovering a lost tribe in New Guinea… Our hero thrives in challenging and creative situations.

First of trilogy… A sustained story in tasty morsels and easy bites.

AMON TWO

ISBN 978-0-9808632-6-0 ebook

Kindle Price: $6.49

Amon Mortlake sails across the world for an assignation with the beautiful but practical Nicole Gineste in the Massif Central. She is a wily and sensible equestrienne; he is wet behind the ears. Fêted explorer Gabriel Desforges puts him in contact with a Paris-based mining company.
     Amon returns to Papua New Guinea and, with the help of Jana Kim Foon, sets up a business providing transport and supplies to prospectors. When Sepik River employees rebel prior to independence, Amon’s influence is ruthlessly challenged.

Second of trilogy… self-contained, self-actualizing.

AMON THREE

ISBN 978-0-9808632-7-7 ebook

Kindle Price: $6.60

In the late 1960s the arrival of a professional mining analyst Amon Mortlake on the Sydney stock broking scene is welcomed, as is his knowledge and collection of New Guinea art.
     His student days’ sweetheart agrees to join him from France. They marry and start a family.
With the overheated and corrupt market in nickel shares threatening to destroy him professionally, Amon moves to Melbourne.
     There he becomes involved with the rough and tumble of inner city politics. The Mortlakes withdraw to the country. Fighting bush fires, marriage difficulties and business complications the Mortlake family grows and prospers…

 Last of Trilogy

FIRST FIFTEEN & OTHER STORIES

ISBN 978-0-9871954-0-1 ebook

Kindle Price: $3.49

A collection of twenty-two stimulating and decisive stories with titles including First Kiss, The Road to Remexio, Chance Meeting, Koala’s Tale, The Mining Province and Suburban Industrial Prisoner. This book is a provocative, entertaining and sometimes chilling read.

A second collection is titled No Leg Ropes & Other Stories

NO LEG ROPES & OTHER STORIES

ISBN 978-0-9871954-0-1 ebook

Kindle Price: $3.49

A collection of twenty-three stimulating and decisive stories with titles including Pentathlete, Man in the Moon, Don’s Beach and Containers, Rules of Racing, Tea and Scones and When the Birds Stopped Flying. This book is a provocative, entertaining and sometimes chilling read.

A second collection is titled First Fifteen & Other Stories.