User:John Hill

About me
I am 63 and now retired living in the bush about 25 km west of Cooktown, Australia on Cape York Peninsula. I was born in Montreal, Canada in 1943 and raised in Port of Spain, Trinidad. I am of English and French background with a dash of Beothuk.

I first came to Australia in 1964 and am now a citizen. Besides travelling widely, I trained as a young man as a Laboratory technician in virology in Trinidad, I have worked in fisheries research in Alaska both at sea and ashore (1962-63), and graduated as a Registered Psychiatric Nurse in Sydney, Australia (1967). I lived for more than three years in India doing research on Indian and Tibetan history and have travelled extensively in South Asia. I have worked for many years in remote Aboriginal communities in Australia in a very wide variety of positions.

My main interests

 * Asian history; particularly Chinese, Tibetan, Central Asian and Indian history and the development of trade routes both overland and maritime between East and West, and pre-historic contacts between Australia and other countries.


 * I have two heavily annotated draft translations of Chinese books on the Silk Routes from the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, which are freely available on the Silk Road Seattle website hosted by the University of Washington. To have a look - click on http://depts.washington.edu/uwch/silkroad/texts/hhshu/hou_han_shu.html and/or http://depts.washington.edu/uwch/silkroad/texts/weilue/weilue.html I have also published an article on the history of Khotan: Hill, John E.: "Notes on the Dating of Khotanese History." Indo-Iranian Journal 31 (1988), pp. 179-190.


 * My first book has now been published as: Through the Jade Gate to Rome: A Study of the Silk Routes during the Later Han Dynasty, 1st to 2nd Centuries CE. (2009). John E. Hill. (2009). BookSurge, Charleston, South Carolina. ISBN 978-1-4392-2134-1. It is available from several sources and is being sold at a 20% discount (at US$ 31.57 plus post) through Amazon.com at the moment.


 * Australian Aboriginal issues and culture.


 * West Indian (particularly Trinidadian) history and culture.


 * The Beothuk people (the original inhabitants of Newfoundland).


 * The history, wildlife and conservation of Cape York Peninsula and Cooktown.

I am able to contribute with an intermediate level of French and Spanish.