Today while the workmen outside banged and drilled, I had to escape the house for a little while. I decided to go to the local strip of shops in our suburb and peruse the opp shops. Opportunity (‘Opp’) shops are places where people bring in their old clothes, books, shoes, furnishings, anything really, to be sold for heavily discounted prices.

They are also places to get the BEST books.

The type of books I’m interested in are Australiana. Myths and lore of an Australia past, classics and literature. Today I pored over a heavy tome of a book that was written in the 1960s. However, as it was so large and I didn’t have a bag with me, I had to put it back on the shelf in the hope that no one buys it for a steal at $8.

There was also another wonderful coffee table book on Australian art and artists. However, I didn’t buy that either. That’s because I think I spent at least half an hour looking through it and imagining life in colonial Australia. The artworks gave a great picture of what life was like back then.

Then….I spotted it.

Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall.

Now I have to tell you that I have a steady collection of books on the Mutiny on the Bounty.

How many books can one buy on the same story?

Well, you can never have enough I say.

Just look at my book shelves. I’m a Bligh tragic.

Nevertheless, I hadn’t seen this work which was published in 1932 by a pair of writers (also World War I war heroes) Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall (whose first book is Kitchener’s Mob) who wrote 32 books between them – individually and together.

What an amazing feat.

Well anyway, for $3, there was no way I was going to put that book back on the shelf!

When I went to the counter to pay for it, scrounging around for coins, the happy chap, looked at the cover and exclaimed that he loved this story.

“I hadn’t seen this book by these authors,” I said to him.

“I’m fascinated about the story of the mutiny and how they ended up on Pitcairn. I often wonder about how one can go there.”

“Well, it’s pretty bloody hard,” I said. “I looked into it one day when I wanted a grand adventure. Going to Pitcairn would be pretty high on my bucket list but it’s pretty difficult to get there,” I added. (As if I was some kind of expert *eye roll*)

Sometimes I think that if I wasn’t married, I would have been travelling all around the world on adventures like this, chasing history. If there’s one thing I’ve always wanted to do was to have the life of adventure. It’s why I think I feel most “myself” when I’m travelling, on the go, following trails of people in history.

Andrew isn’t as obsessed as I am with travel and history as I am – certainly not travel that involves roughing it a bit – he’s 4 and 5 star accomodation man, so getting him on a ship or a boat, or living in huts on a beach, is impossible.

It’s why I live in my head most days, have my nose in books or watching YouTube videos about this stuff. If I can’t get there, at least the internet brings me that adventure from the comfort of my own home.

I don’t know when I’ll get to read this version of the Mutiny on the Bounty. My favourite version of course is the story written by the man, Bligh himself. I had found this book in the City Basement Book Store (you really should go there if you have a chance, you can get lost in the maze of books – and legend has it there are secret rooms that lead to tunnels under the Melbourne streets) and I loved reading it because it was like having the voice of William Bligh in my head.

Righto. A happy find and now feeling a bit better – I was feeling a tad listless today.