Description

Angus & Robertson [Published Date: 1962]. Hardcover, 264 pp. First Edition. In Good condition / NO dust jacket. Red cloth covered boards with gold illustration of a unicorn's head on the front and gold lettering on spine. Light bumping and scuffing to edges of covers with a bit of the color scuffed off along edges. Binding tight. Bookplate on front free end paper dedicated to previous owner as an award from his school. Otherwise pages are lightly aged but unmarked. NOT Ex-Library. NO remainder marks. Black and white photo reproductions, illustrations, maps. This is Ivan Southall's nonfiction account of his observations of the Woomera rocket range in South Australia based on his year-long visits to the facility by special permission in the early-1960s. He later wrote a children's book entitled "Rockets in the Desert". Despite its high-level security, Southall was permitted to spend significant amounts of time getting to know both the people and the facilities and states in his preface he is expressing his own opinion and that the book is not sponsored by any government or other concern. He provides a history of the site and then focuses on research for rockets known as the Black Knight and Blue Streak. He stresses in his preface that it is not a book for the technician but for the layman.