Australasian History

How an ancient land became a great democracy. 'Tony Abbott should be congratulated ... This history of Australia is vivid, readable, provocative ' Geoffrey Blainey, historian Australia is one of...

'What a treat! Brutal truths and bombshells galore. Profound reflections on life, longing and the legacy of Bob. It's like a long Friday lunch that you never want to end....

The inspiring story of Mary Penfold, the mother of the Australian wine industry - a self-taught vintner and business genius who emigrated to a frontier settlement and built her family's...

Prolific Australian author, Jim Connelly, ('Mountain Boy', 'Wild Beauty') turns to his own native Gippsland in his free-wheeling account of this beautiful, varied and historic region.

The Pacific Ocean was the setting for the last great chapter in the convergence of humankind from across the globe. Driven by Enlightenment ideals, Europeans sought to extend control to...

For fans of The Wager and Mutiny on the Bounty comes a thrilling true tale of power, obsession, and betrayal at the edge of the world. In 1808, an American...

The Divine Sarah, recognised as the world's greatest actress, is at the centre of this book, but the story it tells is much wider. Corille Fraser's lively writing and her...

They are the greatest Australian and New Zealand racehorses of all time, the giants who transcend the sport, who broke records and captured hearts. But which are the best of...

Have you ever seen, heard or felt something that cannot be rationally explained? Australia is troubled by the departed spirits of convicts, bushrangers, drovers, nurses and miners. People have seen...

In this book, the residents of Prahran, past and present, tell something of their own stories. These are as diverse as Prahran itself. There are tales of wine and roses...

'Beautiful Lies' describes the forces that in less that four decades turned Australia from being dependent upon the United Kingdom to becoming an independent power, which, if it owes any...

Eureka- The Unfinished Revolution ... history comes to life with Peter Fitzsimons. THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER 'Peter FitzSimons is an Australian phenomenon.' The Canberra Times In 1854, Victorian miners fought a...

For the first time Kel's Corner, a widely read column and a favourite on the Bellarine Coast, has been compiled in a single volume. Ken Davis's stories, as told to...

For decades schoolchildren have made the pilgrimage to the Museum of Victoria to see the final resting place of our greatest racing horse ever. No wonder Phar Lap holds a...

History has portrayed Australia's First Peoples, the Aboriginals, as hunter-gatherers who lived on an empty, uncultivated land. History is wrong. In this seminal book, Bruce Pascoe uncovers evidence that long...

The women who shaped Australia were rebels, resourceful and remarkable. From Mary Penfold, co-founder of Penfold Wines; Lillie Goodisson, pioneer of family planning; Eileen Joyce, world-famous pianist; Enid Lyons, our...

'We were to go through and take on targets of opportunity, to shoot up anything we could. Never at any stage can I remember any plan of us coming back,...

It was the greatest feat of engineering in nineteenth-century Australia, but it very nearly collapsed in the face of monumental obstacles. The year was 1870, and mail took six weeks...

When an unassuming young Melbourne woman bumped into a handsome naval lieutenant in a Colombo hotel swimming pool in 1926 she would never have dreamed of one day being the...

From multi-award-winning writer Helen Ennis comes the first ever biography of the photographer Max Dupain, the most influential Australian photographer of the 20th century and creator of many iconic images...

'Impostor ', 'greedy' and 'incompetent' - Edmund Hammond Hargraves was beloved by few and reviled by many more. Ask google Who discovered gold in Australia? and you'll promptly get 'Edward...

Featuring contributions from leading lawyers, historians and social scientists, this path-breaking volume explores encounters of laws, people, and places in Australia since 1788. Its chapters address three major themes: the...

At last a history that explains how indigenous dispossession and survival underlay and shaped the birth of Australian democracy. The legacy of seizing a continent and alternately destroying and governing...

John Curtin remains a venerated leader. His role as Labor's wartime supremo is etched deep into the national psyche: the man who put Australia first, locked horns with Churchill, forged...

On the 11th of November 1934 over 300,000 people gathered on the slopes of Melbourne's Domain to witness the dedication of the Shrine. It was the largest state war memorial...

Anzac and Empire is the remarkable story of George Foster Pearce - a carpenter who became one Australia's most influential politicians, and the man central to how Australia planned for,...

Great cities deserve great encyclopedias. A city is known by its past, its characteristic virtues and troubles, and its ways of life. 'Marvellous Melbourne' symbolises the achievements of Australian urbanisation...

From one of Australia's leading military historians and biographers, Peter Rees, comes Guts and Glory , an enthralling history of the way in which sport is ever present in the...

In the shadow of the impending Second World War, a battle for control kicked off between two rival factions in Australian Rules football-the powerful upstart Victorian Football League, comprising the...

SURVIVAL IN SINGAPORE is a gripping account of an untold story of Japanese-occupied Singapore, and a testament of courage, sacrifice and the resilience of the human spirit. 'Wonderfully evocative writing,...

The Pacific Islands remain for most people a region of obscurity or puzzlement. The attention of news media is attracted by atypical events such as political violence that contradict the...

Souter describes in fascinating detail the years of rapid and dramatic change from federation in 1901 to the end of the Great War. A new cheaper edition published to coincide...

Out of Australia's total population of around nine million, an estimated seven million people turned out to catch a glimpse of the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II in 1954. Sixty...

In the 1950s and 1960s, Keith Smith interviewed a number of "old timers", people whose living memories then stretched as far back as the 1880s, the gold-rush days and the...

This is a full and revealing account of the perilous and adventurous course of the Northern Territory; a comprehensive account of its history which debunks the myths and makes human...

O'Connor's life was both a triumph and a tragedy. He pulled himself up from disadvantaged beginnings in a famine-torn Ireland to become a master of his profession, inspired and inspiring...

In the early twentieth century, there was much speculation about what was going on behind the curtains of bohemia. Perils of the Studio reveals how the romance and mythology of...

The Story of the Calcutta Convicts and their Settlement in Australia.

In the summer of 1888-89, professional photographer Charles Bristow Walker ventured outside his studio into the streets, and captured the splendour of Melbourne at its peak. For over a century...