The Victorian Bush: its ‘original and natural’ condition aggregates in a readable way extracts from logs, reports and diaries of Victorian explorers, early settlers, travellers and officials that describe the vegetation and fauna they encountered.The author analyses what he sees are the major ecological processes across south-eastern Australia, including the role of fire. Obviously Victoria today differs greatly from those nineteenth century landscapes. Some of these dif...

A broad, concise and inclusive vision of Australia and Australians by one our most renowned historians.After a lifetime of research and debate on Australian and international history, Geoffrey Blainey is well-placed to introduce us to the people who have played a part and to guide us through the events that have created the Australian identity: the mania for spectator sport; the suspicion of the tall poppy; the rivalries of Catholic and Protestant, Sydney and Melbo...

In 1770, Captain James Cook sailed up the east coast of Australia in his ship, the HM Bark Endeavour. Setting out from England in 1768, he was given two instructions: to observe the transit of Venus and to find and chart the mythical "Great Southern Land". He succeeded in both tasks, despite he and his crew facing great hardship and danger, to complete one of the great voyages of exploration. But as a result of this voyage and reports made later by Joseph Banks, botanist on board the Endea...

The extraordinary story of the UK’s most gruelling and spectacularly beautiful islands. Tom Steel’s acclaimed portrait of the St Kildan’s lives is now updated in this reissued edition.Situated at the westernmost point of the United Kingdom, the spectacularly beautiful but utterly bleak island of St Kilda is familiar to virtually nobody. A lonely archipelago off the coast of Scotland, it is hard to believe that for over two thousand years, men and women lived here, cut off from the ...

The internationally acclaimed author of The Weather Makers crafts a love letter to his native land and one of its most unique inhabitants: the kangaroo.Drawing on three decades of travel, research, and field work, Tim Flannery shows us how the destiny of the extraordinary kangaroo is inseparable from the environment that created it. Along the way he uses encounters with ancient aboriginal cultures, eccentric fossil hunters, farmers, scientists, kangaroo ad...

The author of the #1 international bestseller, The Weather Makers, provides a stunning portrait of Australia's cultural capital.Sydney, Australia, is one of the world's most beautiful and fascinating cities, home to over five million people and a popular tourist destination. In The Birth of Sydney, scientist and historian Tim Flannery blends the writings of Australian explorers, settlers, leaders, journalists, and visitors to construct a compellin...

'You almost feel you are taking that trek with the party as Robert Macklin cites the obstacles - torrential river crossings, dense bush, the Snowy Mountains and more. Macklin covers Hume's public and private life, emphasising his affinity with the country and rapport with the Indigenous people, as well as providing a portrait of the evolving colony.' SYDNEY MORNING HERALDThe stirring untold story of a true Australian hero who opened up the nation.While Engl...

Australia: 1813, Gregory Blaxland led the first known European expedition across the area of the Great Dividing Range known as the Blue Mountains, along with William Lawson and William Charles Wentworth, on a journey which would open up the inland of the continent.Blaxland's diaries show that he had a clear grasp of the scale upon which agricultural and pastoral activities would be profitable in Australia. In 1814, like many others almost insolvent because ...

For the first time in a single volume, this book brings together more than 150 of the best walks, tracks or trails in Victoria, which can be walked, cycled or driven by the moderately fit individual. They are located in national and state parks, state forests, conservation reserves, historic parks and local government and public easements. Other routes follow state highways, old railways and gold routes, or pass bushranger haunts and back roads linking towns, historical and geological or geog...

Graham Seal brings to life the brutal Australian convict transportation system with stories of notorious criminals, colourful characters, and harsh punishments. There were also happy endings for the men and women for whom transportation was an opportunity to start afresh in a new land.'Graham Seal has the knack of the storyteller'Warren Fahey AMGraham Seal takes us back to Australia's ignominious beginnings, when a hungry child could be transported t...

On 14 February 1842 Leichhardt arrived in Sydney, Australia. His aim was to explore inland Australia and he was hopeful of a government appointment in his fields of interest. In 1848 Ludwig Leichhardt and his companions vanished during his second attempt at crossing Australia from east to west. No trace of his expedition has been found. Nine separate extensive but unsuccessful searches were conducted over the next century. With no evidence whatsoever of Leichhardt's fate, his disappearance cr...

Convincing Ground is a wide ranging, personal and powerful work which resonates with historical and contemporary Australian debates about identity, dispossession, memory and community. For Pascoe, the Australian character was not forged at Gallipoli, Eureka and the back of Bourke, but in the more satanic furnace of Murdering Flat, Convincing Ground and Werribee. He knows we can't reverse the past, but we can bring our soul in from the fog of delusion. He proposes a way forward, be...