Ken Inglis is one of Australia's most admired and warmly regarded historians. For forty years he has looked with a sharp but sympathetic eye at how we came to be who we are.Written with style and wit, Observing Australia is a collection of his short pieces. They come from many sources, for Inglis's engagement in our continuing conversation about Australian life has always been expressed through the mainstream press as well as in scholarly journals and his books.Of th...

A social history of the period from 1788 to 1870 from the beginning of British settlement of Australia to the year when the last British soldiers sailed home from the colonies.In his inimitable fashion Inglis tells the story of convicts, currency lads and emigrants settling into their new land. The newcomers brought with them from the old world their traditional holidays and made their own fetes in the new. We see them facing natural enemies in the land, and having their tranquilli...