This is the story of how the car changed a society.Graeme Davison, Australia's leading urban historian, explores the Melbourne he knows so well to show us how the car entered our consciousness - as an object of desire, a symbol of status, a creator of freedoms, a shaper of sexual mores. His is a fascinating journey through landscapes changed and cities redesigned by the car, of mayhem on the road and influence in the world of politics, of communities challenged and the environment ...

Behind the glittering image of 'Marvellous Melbourne' there existed in the popular imagination another, very different, picture of the colonial metropolis. This was the city of 'low life', of crowded slums, poverty, disease and vice.The nine essays in The Outcasts of Melbourne attempt to reveal the social realities behind this picture. They include new accounts of the forces which created the city's physical environment. They show how perceptions of a city can be shaped by campaign...

'I did not look for skeletons in my family's cupboard, but once the cupboard was open, they simply fell out.'A widow and her eight older children are uprooted from their Hampshire farm in 1850, and thrown together on an emigrant ship with 38 distressed needlewomen from London. How they came to be on the boat, and what happened on the high seas and afterwards in Australia, is a vivid tale of family ambitions and fears, successes and catastrophes.In Lost Relation...

I became an urban historian because I believed that our cities deserved more of our curiosity and idealism.In City Dreamers Graeme Davison restores Australian cities, and those who created them, to their rightful place in the national imagination. Building on a lifetime's work, Davison views Australian history, from 1788 to the present day, through the eyes of city dreamers – such as Henry Lawson, Charles Bean and Hugh Stretton – and others who ha...

From its beginnings Monash has been a 'university in a hurry.' Born on the suburban fringe of Melbourne, it reached outwards rather than gazing inwards. Over its five decades it embraced the challenges of the age of Sputnik, became a hotbed of student radicalism, then took an equally radical turn towards market capitalism to become Australia's largest and most international university, with branches in Italy, Malaysia and South Africa.Its movers and shakers included visionary vice-...

From the bestselling author of The Roving Party, comes a moving father and son story set amidst the beauty and the violence of the poor and preyed upon of our colonial past.Summer 1874, and Launceston teeters on the brink of anarchy. After abandoning his wife and child many years ago, the Black War veteran Thomas Toosey must return to the city to search for William, his now motherless twelve-year-old son. He travels through the island's northern districts ...

This is the first volume of Witi Ihimaera's enthralling, award-winning memoir, packed with stories from the formative years of this much-loved writer. Witi Ihimaera is a consummate storyteller — one critic calling him one of our ‘finest and most memorable’. Some of his best stories, however, are about his own life. This honest, stirring work tells of the family and community into which Ihimaera was born, of his early life in rural New Zealand, of family secrets, of facing ...

A stunning novel of terror, love and survival in the greatest wilderness on earth. A lyrical, heartbreaking epic debut.An isolated property in the middle of Western Australia, just after the Great War. An English heiress has just given birth and unleashed hell. Weakened and grieving, she realises her life is in danger, and flees into the desert with her Aboriginal maid. One of them is running from a murderer; the other is accused of murder.Soon the women are being hunted ac...

A captivating true story that will speak to generations of Australians, from the author of Mezza Italiana.'Nonno Anni gives me a nudge. "You know, when I first came to Australia, I knew that my life would change forever."'Leaving the small village of Fossa in Italy in 1939 to meet a father he barely remembered in a place that was far from everything he knew, fifteen-year-old Annibale Boccabella arrived in Australia determined to make a go of it. It was a ti...

Convinced quitting sugar is the key to health? Think again!Sugar is CRITICAL for minimising stress, supporting thyroid function and optimising metabolism. Eliminating all sugars from your diet WILL do you harm.In Don't Quit Sugar, Sydney-based nutritionist Cassie Platt (M. Hum. Nutr.):- explains the very real and serious risks of quitting sugar- debunks the major anti-sugar myths- offers a practical guide to i...

An uproarious, eye-opening history of Europe's notorious royal houses that leaves no throne unturned and will make you glad you live in a democracy.Do you want to know which queen has the unique distinction of being the only known royal kleptomaniac? Or which empress kept her dirty underwear under lock and key? Or which czar, upon discovering his wife's infidelity, had her lover decapitated and the head, pickled in a jar, placed at her bedside?Royally dishing on hundreds of...

First published in 1974 as A Circle of Children this is the first of four books from learning disabilities specialist Mary MacCracken.This is a book about children so emotionally disturbed they cannot fit into society; it is also the story of a woman whose involvement with these children changed the shape of their lives forever.When Mary MacCracken joined a school for emotionally disturbed children as a volunteer, she quickly found herself rocked to the core by the strong, ...