Local and place-based, em PRESS seeks to connect people to our own landscapes, rather than those elsewhere. To present Aboriginal peoples as well as our newcomer settler perspectives in pursuit of a wider and deeper vision of Australia's 65,000 year old cultural heritage. To find ways we can live more sustainably – as our Indigenous forebears once did, and many still strive to do.

em PRESS has produced regional histories, guidebooks and essays on the interplay between the natural landscape and the cultural heritage of the central Victorian goldfields and the Grampians/Gariwerd ranges.

​Writer and emPRESS principal, Gib Wettenhall, has collaborated extensively with First Nations people in south-west and central Victoria, as well as north-east Arnhem Land in order to bring their stories from the margins into the mainstream. 

A refreshed Second Edition  for the em PRESS stable tops the news  below – Recreating the Country has expanded by a third and contains six case studies of author Steve Murphy's revegetation design principles.  Steve was interviewed by Rhiannon Stevens for an online ABC Rural article, published last August.

Another Second Edition, The People of Budj Bim, has also been reprinted. Two new chapters were added to bring the Gunditjmara's side of the story up-to-date. Go to the SHOP to buy – still only $25.

In September last year, a second book that I co-edited with good friend and farm forester, Digby Race, was launched at the University of South Pacific in Fiji. Both books review strategies for improving tree management by the tens of millions of small scale farmers in the Global South, so as to improve their livelihoods and incomes. This second book Raising Trees and Livelihoods  is more ambitious in scale, moving from considering agroforestry approaches in Indonesia to reviewing 15 projects undertaken around the Pacific Rim  – visit the em PRESS BLOG

Two award winning em PRESS books are highlighted IN PRINT.  

A high quality gloss version of a Gunditjmara family story Daughter of Two Worlds is back on sale. Exclusively in the SHOP.

Tanya Loos' six season nature journal and wall calendar for the Wombat Forest is now discounted by 30% – check REVIEW. In November 2024, she launched her second book with CSIRO Publishing, Living with Wildlife – visit the em PRESS BLOG

Refer to the OUT OF PRINT page for other publications and check out REVIEWS for in-depth appraisal. Books can be purchased by credit card via the SHOP ONLINE or you could visit one of the listed BOOKSHOPS selling em PRESS stock.

A menu of  ESSAYS by Gib Wettenhall explores overlooked aspects of treegrowing and inconvenient Indigenous issues.
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Second Edition of Recreating the Country  by Stephen Murphy – An updated and expanded edition was published this March 2024.  The Second Edition builds on  15 years of hard-won experience in rethinking revegetation strategies to match ten key design principles, as observed in nature by the author and ecologist, Steve Murphy. The new edition includes three more chapters, along with revisions based on further observations of nature in action since 2009. In a new chapter highlighting personal case studies, six landholders attest to having applied Steve's design principles and declare the results are now in – wildlife, in all its wonderful diversity, is returning.
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See online ABC Rural interview of Steve by Rhiannon Stevens 
Conservationist helps farmers protect 'paddock trees' and restore degraded land
www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-23/revegetating-land-by-protecting-paddock-trees/104135760?utm_campaign=abc_news_web&utm_content=mail&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web

In 2019, the Budj Bim landscape in south-west Victoria gained UNESCO World Heritage listing as Australia's first Indigenous cultural landscape after 17 years of persistent negotiation. Written in collaboration with the Gunditjmara in 2010, the award-winning The People of Budj Bim was revised and updated in 2022 with two new chapters added on the World Heritage listing process and how the Gunditjmara are stepping up to the challenges they face.  To order the 2nd edition, go to the SHOP. See the Blog for a gallery of images of the award winning interpretive signage now in place across the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape.
Back on sale  – a high quality reprint on gloss paper with improved photo contrast of Daughter of Two Worlds by Gunditjmara descendant Dawn Lees is in the SHOP now.  One of the most comprehensive photographic records of any  Victorian Indigenous family and an extraordinary historic record. John Batman's storekeeper Willian Willoughby, went bush in 1841, met a Gunditmara woman Susannah and lived with her in the lava caves of Budj Bim long enough for Susannah to bear two children. Susannah and her children were to witness one of the last massacres at Lake Condah (now Tae Rak). Dawn was a great-granddaughter of Susannah and William.  

​Exclusive to the emPRESS SHOP

A 3rd reprint of  The People of Gariwerd is now available at the Brambuk National Park shop in Halls Gap as well as online – purchase here  Still the only accessible Indigenous history of the Gariwerd/ Grampians ranges. It was written in collaboration with the Indigenous peoples of Gariwerd, and  this  reprint was undertaken in association with the Brambuk National Park & Cultural Centre. Illustrated throughout, it is ideal for students and visitors  to the ranges. Still only $25 retail.
An essay by Gib  puts the case for Indigenous cultural burning to be taken up by landowner's groups as an alternative environmental approach to large scale 'hazard' reduction burning. A short version is featured in the winter 2020 edition of the Victorian Landcare magazine –  click here.
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Others in the series include:- Raising a green wood shed  pleas for a return to lost crafts and localism; the enigma of Aboriginal standing stones is explored along with their appropriation by a bunch of Celts; A brief history of the slaughter of trees demonstrates how we don't seem to learn our environmental lessons; and Reimagining and reinventing our culture delves into aspects of animism and what it might have to teach us.
We've found another box of My Father's Son, Ric Throssel's award-winning autobiography of his struggles to follow in his famous parents' footsteps and clear his name as a spy. His poet and novelist daughter Karen recently entwined poetry and prose to explore three generations of her family and Ric's battle with ASIO in The Crime of Not Knowing Your Crime.
Running legend and former Governor of Victoria, John Landy AC, provided the Foreword for em PRESS's large format, high quality hardback Gariwerd: Reflecting on the Grampians. Still relevant, still beautiful, the book has  100 evocative full page images of the Gariwerd/Grampians ranges by Alison Pouliot (now of fungi fame) and five challenging essays by Gib Wettenhall – still available for purchase in the SHOP, now at a 40% discount.
Author and musician Craig Horne has launched his new book Line of Blood, pulling apart the legend of his famous explorer and anthropologist cousin, Alfred Howitt. It turns out he was a flawed, extremely racist hero – even for those days. Em PRESS published an early pair of novels by Craig on the rise and fall of a rock star – Bureaucracy Blues and Alpha Jerk.  They're  still available to buy for a song in the SHOP  Craig also co-wrote with Gib their first published work together in 1988, a guidebook titled Runs Around Melbourne.