Robert Macklin
The Man Who Planted Canberra: Charles Weston and His Three Million Trees, with Dr John Gray
Charles Weston was one of our most visionary designers of green landscapes and a true founding hero of the nation’s capital. He experimented and planted more than three million trees and shrubs from Australia and around the world to create the horticultural wonder of Canberra.
NLA Publishing, 2025
From humble beginnings, London-born Weston rose through the massive British gardening industry in the second half of the nineteenth century, becoming foreman of the 79 gardeners at the magnificent Drumlanrig Castle in the Scottish borderlands.
Reaching Sydney in 1896, he became Head Gardener at Admiralty House, Kirribilli, and in the wake of Federation in 1901, set his sights on the greatest challenge of all – the new national capital across the ranges on the open Limestone Plains. It was here that, despite the daunting obstacles of government bureaucracy and the Great War, he gave life to his ‘dream city’.
Castaway
Hachette Australia, 2019
The astonishing and unknown story of Narcisse Pelletier - a French cabin boy cast away in 1858 on the coast of Far North Queensland.
In 1858, fourteen-year-old French cabin boy Narcisse Pelletier was aboard the trader Saint-Paul when it was wrecked off the eastern tip of New Guinea.
Scrambling into a longboat, Narcisse and the other survivors crossed almost 1000 kilometres of the Coral Sea before reaching the shores of Far North Queensland. If not for the local Aboriginal people, Narcisse would have perished. For seventeen years he lived with them, growing to manhood and participating fully in their Uutaalnganu world. Then, in 1875, his life was again turned upside down.
Drawing from firsthand interviews with Narcisse after his return to France and other contemporary accounts of exploration and survival, and documenting the spread of European settlement in Queensland and the brutal frontier wars that followed, Robert Macklin weaves an unforgettable tale of a young man caught between two cultures in a time of transformation and upheaval.
About the Author
Robert Macklin was born in Queensland and educated at University of Queensland and the Australian National University. He has worked as a journalist at the Courier Mail, The Age and The Bulletin, and was associate editor of the Canberra Times until 2003. Robert is the author of 29 books, including Dark Paradise, Hamilton Hume and four works focusing on the SAS and Australia's Special Forces. He lives in Canberra.
