The arrival of the First Fleet heralded monumental and often catastrophic changes to the lives of the indigenous peoples living between the Blue Mountains and the sea. As British settlement spread out from Sydney Cove the next 28 years saw frequent flare-ups of violence as disputes over precious resources erupted and the Aborigines' connection with the land was challenged. Raids on isolated farms would often be followed by a totally disproportionate reprisal from the military and settlers, bu...

Girt. No word could better capture the essence of Australia...In this hilarious history, David Hunt tells the real story of Australia's past from megafauna to Macquarie ... the cock-ups and curiosities, the forgotten eccentrics and Eureka moments that have made us who we are.Mark Twain wrote of Australian history: 'It does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies ... but they are all true, they all happened.' In Girt, Hunt uncovers these beautiful li...

**NATIONAL BESTSELLER • This incredible true history of the colonization of Australia explores how the convict transportation system created the country we know today."One of the greatest non-fiction books I’ve ever read ... Hughes brings us an entire world." —Los Angeles Times**Digging deep into the dark history of England's infamous efforts to move 160,000 men and women thousands of miles to the other side of the world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, ...

A biography of unprecedented expedition under sailThe role of the sailor through history should never be underestimated. Over centuries battles were won and new lands discovered and settled by their skills and nerve. Rob Mundle is back on the ocean to tell one of the great stories of an expedition under sail: the extraordinary eight-month, 17-000-nautical mile voyage of the First Fleet. With customary sweep and swell, Mundle puts you alongside 48-year-old Captain Arthur Phillip on ...

Eureka Stockade - the unfinished revolution . . . In 1854, Victorian miners fought a deadly battle under the flag of the Southern Cross at the Eureka Stockade. Though brief and doomed to fail, the battle is legend in both our history and in the Australian mind. Henry Lawson wrote poems about it, its symbolic flag is still raised, and even the nineteenth-century visitor Mark Twain called it: � a strike for liberty�. Was this rebellion a fledgling nation�s first attempt to assert its indepen...

Ships sailing the trading routes of the South Pacific in the 1800's mostly carried general merchandise. Other sailors sought fortunes gathering sandalwood and diving for pearls and pearl shell.But,in the latter half of the century a much more lucrative trade developed - the labour trade.Plantation owners in Australia and Fiji were desperate for a source of cheap labour. Their dreams were fulfilled when the Australian government approved a scheme to recruit labourers from the South P...

Thousands of convicts were transported to Australia. Of these, some managed to escape incarceration and went on to achieve notoriety in their new land. A few tried to invent a Robin Hood reputation, taking the side of the poor settler against those in authority. Some committed crimes so heinous they were both feared and despised by the general population. Their lives were desperate, their fate often tragic. AUSTRALIAS MOST NOTORIOUS CONVICTS reveals not only their stories but also the horr...

The often harsh and unforgiving Australian landscape was a far cry from what the early colonisers were used to, and it proved a daunting obstacle to settlement. However, a few brave and at times foolhardy men were determined to prove themselves equal to the challenge. AUSTRALIA'S GREAT EXPLORERS looks at the tragedies and triumphs of men such as Wentworth and Lawson, Hume and Hovell, Burke and Wills, Leichhardt and Strzelecki as they battled to conquer the Great Diving Range, find an elusi...

In this side-splitting sequel to his best-selling history, David Hunt takes us to the Australian frontier. This was the Wild South, home to hardy pioneers, gun-slinging bushrangers, directionally challenged explorers, nervous indigenous people, Caroline Chisholm and sheep. Lots of sheep.First there was Girt. Now comes . . . True GirtTrue Girt introduces Thomas Davey, the hard-drinking Tasmanian governor who invented the Blow My Skull cocktail, a...

In this volume of a unique history of Australia where people are always centre stage, bestselling author Thomas Keneally brings to life the vast range of characters who have formed our national story.Convicts and Aborigines, settlers and soldiers, patriots and reformers, bushrangers and gold seekers, it is from their lives and their stories that he has woven a vibrant history to do full justice to the rich and colourful nature of our unique national character.The story begi...

On the afternoon of 8 April 1802, in the remote southern ocean, two explorers had a remarkable chance encounter. Englishman Matthew Flinders and Frenchman Nicolas Baudin had been sent by their governments on the same quest: to explore the uncharted coast of the great south land and find out whether the west and east coasts, four thousand kilometres apart, were part of the same island.And so began the race to compile the definitive map of Australia. These men's journeys were the cul...

As a captain in the Georgian navy Arthur Phillips integrity, intelligence and persistence made him perfectly suited to the role that history and circumstance presented to him in 1788, but landing the First Fleet at Botany Bay was only one of many achievements in a captivating life.His is a story of political intrigue, eighteenth-century sailing ships, and the race for economic and geographic advancement in a world that was becoming truly international. It is a tale of ambition, of wealthy ...