Australian History

The controversial Battle at Xa Long Tan was not only a critical episode in Australia's Vietnam involvement; it was also a textbook nightmare in the history of jungle warfare. Reconstructing this dramatic action from secret documents and the vivid recollections of many diggers who fought at Long Tan, Terry Burstall challenges the official army version.

Willacy’s devastating award-winning Four Corners program, Killing Fields, captured on film for the first time a war crime perpetrated by an Australian: the killing of a terrified, unarmed Afghan man in a field by an SAS soldier. It caused shockwaves around the world and resulted in an Australian Federal Police war crimes investigation. For Willacy, it was just the beginning of a much bigger story. More SAS soldiers came forward with undeniable evidence and eyewitness testimony of other unlawful killings, and exposed a culture of brutality and impunity.

Robodebt was a new debt-creation system that was used to illegally pursue close to half a million Australian welfare recipients for fake debts generated by the thousands. It was described by the Royal Commission's report as a 'massive failure of public administration' caused by 'venality, incompetence and cowardice'. Essentially, Australians were gaslit by their own government, which doggedly and knowingly concocted a program that was both mathematically wrong and illegal, just to shake down innocent people for money, then lied about it for four and a half years.

In cemeteries throughout Australia, gravestones hint at our history - tales of true crime, early settlement, mystery, tragedy, health epidemics, unsolved murders, love lost, and sacrifice. The Grave Tales series reveals more than the headstone can ever tell. Written by journalists Helen Goltz and Chris Adams, these stories feature people who willingly or unwillingly were participants in events that made headlines. The series offers individual short stories of heroes, victims, trailblazers, and patriots, encapsulating the journeys that lead to their resting places.

Emma McKenna is a heroine to remember. While resisting eviction from the Queensland family property at the start of the Great Depression, Emma McKenna's father is shot dead. Emma is left destitute but she is not easily defeated and fights back. In her struggle to survive she must overcome, heartless wealthy relatives, racial bigotry, corrupt financiers and choose between the love of two very different men: one a wealthy Sydney lawyer involved with the New Guard, a paramilitary anti-communist movement, and the other, a persecuted and penniless left-wing activist. The Light Horseman's ...

Over the many years Jim Haynes has spent exploring and writing about the quirkier events and people in Australia’s history, he has discovered characters who have amazed, surprised and simply baffled him. This is a book about some of those men and women and their remarkable, out-of-the-ordinary and almost unbelievable lives. As he always does, Jim has discovered that there is more to the story than first meets the eye.

One day while sitting around the dinner table with his family, Victor Briggs’s Uncle Tim told him that on a visit to Hawaii, he had met an Indigenous Hawaiian Elder who told him a story. A long time ago, Indigenous Australian seafarers had sailed to Hawaii on the trade winds. When they got there, they had helped the Hawaiians with skills, information and technology. Hawaiian people were so impressed with Aboriginal people that they let them stay on their islands when they were travelling throughout the Pacific Regions.

Australia is a nation forged in the furnace of revival. Long forgotten, Australia’s Spirit-filled history comes to life in Great Southland Revival. Discover how the flame of Pentecost spread from the book of Acts all the way to the South Pacific. Journey on convict ships and city trams, to goldfields, outback communities and far-flung islands transformed by the gospel. Most of all, be inspired that God longs to revive the church, sweep multitudes into His kingdom, and renew our world once again.

Cheryl flies sick patients from rural areas to emergency medical treatment in cities; Sue is often the only one between life and death for her patients in the Kimberley; Ricky trades city comforts to connect with kids through sport in remote communities while Eileen overcomes great challenges to protect remote land for generations to come - these are some of the characters who embody the spirit of the Outback.Inspiring, stirring and touching by turn, these people draw on enormous personal reserves to preserve Outback values for the future of all Australians.

Mike Bellamy's father Barry is as tough as they come. Widely credited as the inspiration for Barry Crump's back-country character Sam Cash, Barry was a roving worker in rural North Island during the 50s, 60s and 70s. Tough Country is a book about a father by a son, about a bygone era of bushmen, scrub-cutters, hunters and shepherds. It's also a book about the author's own life working the land, and the characters of the 80s and 90s, from tradies and digger-drivers to drain-layers and wharfies.

The story of the clipper ships, and the tens of thousands of migrants they brought to the Australian colony of the 19th century, is one of the world's great migration stories. For anyone who travelled to Australia before 1850, it was a long and arduous journey that could take as much as four months. With the arrival of the clipper ships, and favourable winds, the journey from England could be done in a little over half this time.

Our struggles as women in the twenty-first century are not new. Some of our most interesting women artists had to eschew all accepted social norms in order to find a life of art. For some, it was catastrophic; for others, a liberation. But how did they view themselves through the prism of their art, and what do we, as modern women, take from their struggle? HER BODY, HER ART looks back to the lives and art of six European modernist women, who literally recast the ways in which women's art could be seen, and asks why they still matter.

Bruce Pascoe has collected a swathe of literary awards for Dark Emu, and now he has brought together the research and compelling first-person accounts in a book for younger listeners. Using the accounts of early European explorers, colonists and farmers, Bruce Pascoe compellingly argues for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer label for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. He allows the listeners to see Australia as it was before Europeans arrived.

The sewing kete of an unknown 18th-century Maori woman; the Endeavour cannons that fired on waka in 1769; the bagpipes of an Irish publican Paddy Galvin; the school uniform of Harold Pond, a Napier Tech pupil in the Hawke’s Bay quake; the Biko shields that tried to protect protestors during the Springbok tour in 1981; Winston Reynolds’ remarkable home-made Hokitika television set, the oldest working TV in the country; the soccer ball that was a tribute to Tariq Omar, a victim of the Christchurch Mosque shootings, and so many more.

An entertaining collection of insider yarns by an Aussie Test cricket legend. 'In the Test arena, Dennis Lillee was never beaten. West Indian champion Viv Richards had taken the sword to all the international bowlers of his era. But when he came up against Lillee, it was a heavyweight fight between unrelenting combatants. Their contests were always take-no-prisoners affairs.'

The British Colonization of New Zealand: The History of New Zealand from Settlement to Dominion analyzes the expeditions that discovered New Zealand and the early settlements and conflicts waged there from 1650 to 1850. You will learn about the European settlement of New Zealand like never before.

Since the referendum, supporters and volunteers have been asking for guidance as to how to continue to support Indigenous recognition. Mayo, a leader of the Yes 23 campaign and co-author of the bestselling The Voice to Parliament Handbook, has produced a new audiobook to answer that question. For the thousands of people who have been feeling sad, empty and powerless since last October, Always Was, Always Will Be aims to be a positive rallying cry. This will map the path toward next steps on how to create a fairer Australia.

New Zealand and the British Empire: The History of New Zealand under British Sovereignty analyzes the expeditions that discovered New Zealand and the early settlements and conflicts waged there from 1650 to 1850. You will learn about New Zealand under British sovereignty like never before.

When the first convoys of the ANZAC Expeditionary Forces sailed from Albany’s majestic King George Sound in November and December 1914, they carried with them hundreds of horses. Many had been loaded in ports elsewhere in Australia and New Zealand. Some came from unexpected places, including Juna Downs, a vast pastoral station in Western Australia’s remote Pilbara region.

In the relatively short history of colonial Australia, one event stands apart, both for its revolutionary spirit and its impact: The Eureka Rebellion of December 3, 1854. This was the only time in Australian history when a government was resisted by free subjects of the Crown in a violent conflict. It only took place in one colony, Victoria, but it was an important event in the evolution of the democratic government in Australia as a whole. The Eureka Rebellion analyzes the chain of events that led to the fighting and its lasting impact.