标签： Oceania

More than a century and a half after it was first checked out, a rare 19th-century architecture book has found its way back to the small coastal Australian library it was borrowed from — and its unlikely journey traces back to a stonemason who helped build one of London’s most iconic landmarks.

The volume, *Antiquities of Athens*, a detailed illustrated reference on classical Greek architecture, was borrowed from Kiama Library in the 1870s. Kiama, a quiet seaside town located roughly 120 kilometers south of Sydney, had only opened its public library eight years prior, built with a £200 government grant that launched the institution’s original collection of fewer than 1,000 books. This particular volume, cataloged as item number 506, would disappear from the library’s records for generations.

The story of its rediscovery begins with 77-year-old Ross Simmons, a dedicated amateur family historian who has spent years unpacking the legacy of his great-grandfather, John Simmons. Born in the United Kingdom, John Simmons trained as a stonemason in Westminster between 1839 and 1844, and worked as an apprentice on the construction of the UK Houses of Parliament before emigrating to Australia in 1857 at the age of 27. After settling first in Sydney’s Newtown suburb, he moved permanently to Kiama after leading the construction of a local sandstone church, establishing himself as a respected architect in the region.

Ross Simmons explains that his great-grandfather, who had a deep professional and personal passion for architecture, likely borrowed the reference volume to support his work. For decades after John Simmons’ death, the book sat undisturbed in a wooden tea chest stored alongside other family documents, tucked into a boarded-up fireplace in the old family home. The sealed hiding place kept the volume safe for generations, until a home renovation 30 years ago unearthed the chest, and the collection of books inside was passed to Ross Simmons for safekeeping.

It was only two weeks ago that Simmons finally sorted through the full collection, and made a surprising discovery: inside the front cover of the 1858-published *Antiquities of Athens*, a clear Kiama Library stamp was visible, alongside the library’s original 19th-century borrowing rules. Those rules offer a fascinating window into 1870s public library practices: patrons could normally only check out one book at a time, unless they could prove six members of the same household were literate, which allowed a limit of three books; intoxicated patrons were banned from borrowing, and late returns incurred a fine of three pence per week overdue.

When library staff calculated the total fine accumulated over 150 years, adjusted for inflation, the total came out to roughly AU$28,000 (equivalent to around £15,000 or $20,000 USD). In an act of good faith, the library has completely waived the unexpected fine, recognizing the historic significance of the returned volume.

While the library’s original borrowing records from the 1870s have been lost to time, so there is no definitive proof that John Simmons was the one who checked the book out, the circumstantial evidence strongly points to him. Today, the book remains in surprisingly good condition: it has minor water damage from its decades in the fireplace, but its detailed fold-out illustrations of Greek monuments, complete with the original precise measurement notes, are still intact.

Kiama Council libraries manager Michelle Hudson says the extraordinary story of the book’s return has drawn widespread public interest, with visitors traveling from more than 40 minutes away just to see and even handle the historic volume. The library has now added *Antiquities of Athens* to its special collections archive, meaning it will no longer be available for checkout to prevent another century-long disappearance. “We don’t want to wait another 150 years for it to come back,” Hudson joked.

For Ross Simmons, the book’s homecoming feels like the perfect end to a long, unlikely journey. “I think he’d be happy to see the book returned and he’d probably have a bit of a laugh about it,” he said of his great-grandfather.

On Friday, convicted murderer Adrian Basham, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2023 for killing his estranged wife Samantha Fraser one week before she was set to testify against him on rape allegations, brought his appeal case before Victoria’s Court of Appeal. The 49-year-old, who is required to serve a minimum 30-year term behind bars and will not be eligible for parole until 2048, twice disrupted the court proceedings, prompting a sharp rebuke from the bench and a formal warning that he could be removed from the courtroom if the outbursts continued.

During one disruption, Basham gestured toward a police informant in the court and demanded that officers check camera footage from July 20, but his legal team made no reference to any such footage during formal arguments, leaving the context of his claim unclear.

Fraser, a mother of three, left Basham in 2017, and was murdered in her Cowes home on Australia’s Phillip Island in July 2018. Court documents from the original 2023 trial lay out the brutal details of the premeditated killing: Basham lay in wait for Fraser after she dropped her children at school, attacked her in her garage, inflicting 41 separate blunt force injuries, then staged her death to look like suicide by hanging her from the garage door. CCTV footage captured Basham arriving at the property shortly before the murder and fleeing the scene just over an hour later. At trial, Basham admitted to the assault but claimed Fraser was still alive when he left, and that her death was ultimately a suicide; trial judge Justice Lesley Taylor dismissed this account as a blatant lie, or “palpable fiction”.

In the 2023 sentencing, Justice Taylor classified the killing as falling into the worst category of murder, noting that Basham targeted Fraser specifically because she had found the courage to leave him, protect their children from abuse, and speak publicly about the alleged rapes. “The steps that you took to disguise your presence on Phillip Island and stage a suicide scene shows that you had the arrogance to think that you would not be caught,” Taylor said in her sentencing remarks.

The core of Basham’s appeal centers on a claimed “fatal flaw” in the original trial’s jury instructions. His senior barrister, Dermot Dann KC, argued that while prosecutors only introduced Fraser’s three untested rape allegations to establish Basham’s motive for the killing, the trial judge’s final directions to the jury incorrectly invited jurors to decide whether the rape claims were actually true. While Justice Taylor had previously instructed the jury that the allegations were unproven and that jurors should not conduct their own independent fact-finding on the claims, Dann argued that the conflicting directions put the entire trial at risk of unfairness. “Think about the dangers associated with any juror coming to conclusion the allegations of rape were true – it would be devastating for a fair trial,” Dann told the appeal court.

Representatives for the Crown, led by barrister Stephanie Clancy, rejected the claim, arguing that Justice Taylor’s jury directions on hearsay evidence followed standard, orthodox legal procedure. Clancy contended that when read as a whole in the context of the entire trial, there was no meaningful risk that jurors misunderstood the instructions as an invitation to rule on the validity of the rape allegations. She added that the rape allegations were properly introduced as contextual evidence to prove Fraser’s well-founded fear of Basham, which explained why she would never have voluntarily let him into her home or approached her car if she knew he was waiting. Clancy also defended the life sentence, arguing there was no error in the original sentencing decision.

Members of Fraser’s family, including her father Trevor Fraser, attended the appeal hearing to observe the proceedings. The three-judge panel leading the appeal, led by Court of Appeal President Justice Karin Emerton, has reserved its decision and will deliver a judgment at a later, unspecified date.

A devastating mass shooting at a Thai high school just north of Bangkok has left four people dead and 15 others injured, according to Thailand’s Deputy Interior Minister. The attack, which unfolded Friday at Debsirin Nonthaburi School in the Bang Kruai district of Nonthaburi province, claimed the lives of two students and two teachers, Deputy Minister Polapee Suwunchwee confirmed to local public broadcaster Thai PBS. All 15 injured people were students who sustained harm not from direct gunfire, but from accidents during their panicked escape from the campus, Polapee added.

Law enforcement and local media have identified the shooter as a teenage student currently enrolled at the targeted school. Multiple sources confirm the suspect is also dead, though conflicting accounts have emerged about the circumstances of his death: some reports state that responding police officers shot and killed the teen, while others indicate he died by suicide.

Polapee noted that the attacker used a handgun in the assault, and the Interior Ministry has launched a full investigation into how the underage student obtained the illegal weapon. Photographs published by local Thai media outlets show the suspect dressed in the school’s purple uniform carrying a black cross-body bag, with multiple spent bullet casings scattered across the ground near the scene of the attack.

An AFP journalist stationed near the school reported that road traffic in the immediate area came to a near-standstill in the hours after the shooting, as panicked parents flooded the neighborhood to pick up their children following the lockdown and alert.

The tragedy has reignited long-simmering debate over gun control in Thailand, which boasts one of the highest civilian gun ownership rates in Southeast Asia. Current estimates put the total number of unregistered and registered firearms in circulation at roughly 10 million — meaning one firearm for every seven Thai citizens. Despite repeated past political pledges to tighten national gun regulations, high-profile mass shootings have continued to plague the country with alarming frequency.

Just this year in February, a teenage shooter opened fire at a school in southern Thailand, killing the principal and wounding two students before being arrested by police. That attacker, who had recently been discharged from psychiatric hospitalization, stabbed an on-duty police officer and stole his 9mm service pistol before carrying out the attack. The deadliest incident in Thailand’s modern history of mass violence took place in 2022, when a former police officer entered a nursery in the country’s north and murdered 36 people, including 24 children, before killing himself.

Speaking to reporters at Government House in Bangkok shortly after the shooting, Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul expressed shock and sorrow over the attack. “It’s such a terrible incident. It should never have happened. How could this happen in our country?” the prime minister told reporters.