Convict Colony: The Remarkable Story of the Fledgling Settlement That Survived Against the Odds by David Hill

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

The author of the magnificent bestselling account of the First Fleet returns to early Sydney to tell the story of the years that followed as it's never been told before.

Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture by Bruce Pascoe

$19.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

'Dark Emu injects a profound authenticity into the conversation about how we Australians understand our continent ... [It is] essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what Australia once was, or what it might yet be if we heed the lessons of long and sophisticated human occupation.' Jud ges for 2016 NSW Premier's Literary Awards Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating, and storing -- behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag. Gerritsen and Gammage in their latest books support this premise but Pascoe takes this further and challenges the hunter-gatherer tag as a convenient lie. Almost all the evidence in Dark Emu comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources. Bruce's comments on his book compared to Gammage's: " My book is about food production, housing construction and clothing, whereas Gammage was interested in the appearance of the country at contact. [Gammage] doesn't contest hunter gatherer labels either, whereas that is at the centre of my argument." ...Show more

Australia's Vietnam - Myth vs History by Mark Dapin

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

When Mark Dapin first interviewed Vietnam veterans and wrote about the war, he swallowed (and regurgitated) every misconception. He wasn't alone. In Australia's Vietnam, Dapin reveals that every stage of Australia's commitment to the Vietnam War has been misunderstood, misinterpreted and shrouded in myt h. From army claims that every national serviceman was a volunteer; and the level of atrocities committed by Australian troops; to the belief there were no welcome home parades until the late 1980s and returned soldiers were met by angry protesters. Australia's Vietnam is a major contribution to the understanding of Australia's experience of the war and will change the way we think about memory and military history. ...Show more

James Hardy Vaux's 1819 Dictionary of Criminal Slang and Other Impolite terms as Used by the Convicts of the British Colonies of Australia by Simon Barnard

$29.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

In the early 1800s magistrates in the Australian colonies were often frustrated by the language used by reoffending convicts to disguise their criminal activities and intensions. Convict clerk James Hardy Vaux came up with a useful idea: a dictionary of slang and other terms used by convicts. And so, in 1819, he compiled what was to be Australia's first published dictionary. With words such as fence (a receiver of stolen goods), flesh-bag (a shirt), flip (to shoot); galloot (a soldier), kid (a child thief), knuckle (to pickpocket), ramp (to rob out in the open), ruffles (handcuffs), screw (a skeleton key), serve (to rob), stamps (shoes) and wrinkle (a lie), Vaux's dictionary is a fascinating account of convict language, including the origins and early usage of several words that have evolved to become part of Australian English today. And Simon Barnard's illustrations and supporting accounts of individual convicts and their criminal antics complements this lively picture of Australia's convict history. ...Show more

The Man on the Twenty Dollar Notes: Flynn of the Inland by Everald Compton

$29.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

The Royal Flying Doctor Service is a revered legend of the development of Australia as a caring nation. However, few Australians are aware of the man who founded it-John Flynn-usually known as Flynn of the Inland. Flynn, who died in 1951, is regarded by historians as one of Australia's greatest sons. In addition to creating the Flying Doctor, he pioneered the Pedal Radio, founded the School of the Air, and built bush hospitals all over the continent on behalf of the Australian Inland Mission. It is a story that every Australian should read, and its powerful drama has been captured by veteran author Everald Compton. Flynn has been his role model in life ever since he first learned about him at a bush Sunday School in 1936. His fervent prayer is that many who read "The Man on the Twenty Dollar Notes" will choose to follow in Flynn's footsteps as the future pioneers of Australia as the finest nation on earth. ...Show more

Waltzing Matilda: Australia's Accidental Anthem - a Forensic History by W Benjamin Lindner

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

Anzac and Aviator: The Remarkable Story of Sir Ross Smith and the 1919 England to Australia Air Race by Michael Molkentin

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

The story of extraordinary Australian, Ross Smith, who rode to war at Gallipoli on horseback and by the end of the war, was one of the most highly awarded fighter pilots.

Bedlam at Botany Bay by James Dunk

$34.99 AUD

Category: Australian History | Reading Level: 4 Non Fiction

What happened when people went mad in the fledgling colony of New South Wales? In this important new history of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, we find out through the correspondence of tireless colonial secretaries, the brazen language of lawyers and judges and firebrand politicians ,and heartbreaking letters from siblings, parents and friends. We also hear from the mad themselves. Class, gender and race became irrelevant as illness, chaos and delusion afflicted convicts exiled from their homes and living under the weight of imperial justice; ex-convicts and small settlers as they grappled with the country they had taken from its Indigenous inhabitants, as well as officers, officials and wealthy colonists who sought to guide the course of European history in Australia. This not a history of the miserable institutions built for the mentally ill, or those living within them, or the people in charge of the asylums. These stories of madness are woven together into a narrative about freedom and possibilities, and collapse and unravelling. The book looks at people at the edge of the world finding themselves at the edge of sanity, and is about their strategies for survival. This is a new story of colonial Australia, cast as neither a grim and fatal shore nor an antipodean paradise, but a place where the full range of humanity wrestled with the challenges of colonisation. ...Show more

From Ocean to Ocean - Across Australia on a Bicycle by Jerome Murif

$24.95 AUD

Category: Australian History

A captivating account of the first South to North crossing of the Australian continent on a bicycle, in 1897. "Then the bicycle, loaded now for the expedition, was lifted downstairs; I shook hands with the landlady, told her I might not be back for tea and not to keep it waiting, and quietly pedalled aw ay..." This is how, without any sponsor, and almost no one knowing about his plan, that Jerome Murif departed from Adelaide with the firm intent to reach Port Darwin, more than 3,000 km (1,900 miles) away, and be the first to cross the Australian continent by bicycle from South to North. He did so with very little food and gear, and at a time when roads were non-existent, on a bicycle that didn't have gears or brakes. Far from the speed record attempts, Murif did his crossing at a leisurely pace, even taking time to tour the Alice Springs region on the way. This account of his journey, first published in 1897, is based heavily on his own diary; it is full of humor and captivating from the first word to the last. ...Show more

Mad Dogs and Thunderbolts by Ben Pobjie

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

Ned Kelly’s tin helmet looms large over Australia’s bushranging past, but what about all the unsung outlaws of the Australian bush? What about Black Caesar, who escaped his tyrannous British overlords four times and indeed invented the great Australian tradition of bushranging? Or Mad Dog Mo rgan who set out to write his name in blood on history’s ledger, the dynamic Captain Thunderbolt and his loyal wife Mary Ann Bugg, bushranging’s greatest queen, and Matthew Brady, the gentleman bushranger, who showed us all the cilivised side of armed robbery? In Mad Dogs and Thunderbolts Ben Pobjie celebrates the derring-do and revolutionary passion of all the wild colonial boys and girls who raided our towns and stole our hearts, all while wearing sensible headgear. ...Show more

Major Thomas: The Bush Lawyer who Defended Breaker Morant and Took on the British Empire by Greg Growden

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

Notorious Australian Women by Kay Saunders

$24.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

NOTORIOUS AUSTRALIAN WOMEN celebrates the lives of some of Australia's most fearless, brash and scandalous women. There's Tilly Devine, who went from streetwalker in London to wealthy Sydney madam and standover merchant; Mary Bryant, the highway robber and First Fleeter who escaped by rowing from Port J ackson to Timor with her two children; Lola Montez, the Irish-born grande horizontale, who destroyed King Ludwig I of Bavaria; Ellen Tremaye and Marion Edwards, women who challenged the gender order and became men; and Helena Rubinstein, who rewrote her humble Polish background and became one of the most successful and astute businesswomen in the world. From bushrangers, courtesans and cross-dressers, to writers, designers and a radical or two, what these splendid rebels have in common is a determination to take their destinies into their own hands. ...Show more