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...

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...

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 ...

The Award-Winning History of Colonial Melbourne'James Boyce tells the true history of this country with rare clarity and an eye for the essential that never fails.' —David MarrWith the founding of Melbourne in 1835, a flood of settlers began spreading out across the Australian continent. In three years more land – and more people – was conquered than in the preceding fifty.In 1835 James Boyce brings this pivotal moment to life. He traces ...

Has history been wrong for 200 years? Read the startling truth about the mutiny on the Bounty, its characters, causes, and aftermath. Television rights are now in development with Ridley Scott's Scott Free Productions.More than two centuries after Master’s Mate Fletcher Christian led a mutiny against Lieutenant William Bligh on a small, armed transport vessel called Bounty, the true story of this enthralling adventure has become obscured by the legend. Combining vi...