Celebrating Australian Local History
How time has flown! It all seems just like yesterday.
Take a pleasantly sentimental trip down memory lane with Bob Brown as he shows us bits of Australia we've forgotten, identities and landmarks we loved and let him remind us that some of the best things about Australia haven't changed.
The best of Bob Byrne's hit Facebook page and much more, Australia Remember When is a bumper book that shows us bits of Australia we've forgotten, local identities and landmarks we loved and reminds us that the best parts of Australia haven't changed... more
Why was Australia so prosperous so early?
Why did the colonies federate?
From the author of The Shortest History of Europe, acclaimed historian John Hirst, comes this fresh and stimulating approach to understanding Australia's past and present. Hirst asks and answers questions that get to the heart of Australia's history... more
How Dutch sailors discovered New Holland and left Australia to a British pirate.
For many, the colonial story of Australia starts with Captain Cook's discovery of the east coast in 1770, but it was some 164 years before his historic voyage that European mariners began their romance with the immensity of the Australian continent. This is the setting that sees Rob Mundle back on the water with another sweeping and powerful account of Australian maritime history... more
On 19 July 1916, 7000 Australian soldiers - in the first major action of the AIF on the Western Front - attacked entrenched German positions at Fromelles, in northern France.
By the next day, no fewer than 5500 were wounded and just under 1900 were dead - a bloodbath that the Australian War Memorial describes as the worst 24 hours in Australia's entire history.
Just days later, three Australian Divisions attacked German positions at nearby Pozires, and over the next six weeks they suffered another 23,000 casualties... more
In a single leather-bound volume of 238 unlined pages of parchment, Surgeon Arthur Bowes Smyth describes his two-and-a-half year journey with the First Fleet from Portsmouth in England to the new colony in Australia and back.
He is a frank, articulate and observant writer, and his diary, a treasure of the National Library of Australia, covers life at sea, stopovers in the slave port of Rio de Janeiro and the tropical paradise of Tahiti, and three months of early settlement in Australia... more
The story of Changi, told by those who lived through it. In the tradition of The Anzac Book comes this fascinating collection of accounts of life in the notorious Changi prison camp. Changi is synonymous with suffering, hardship and the Australian prisoner-of-war experience in WWII. It is also a story of ingenuity, resourcefulness and survival.
Containing essays, cartoons, paintings, and photographs created by prisoners of war, The Changi Book provides a unique view of the camp... more
Experience the young James Burney's shipboard life and the momentous events that took place during the second voyage of exploration when he sailed with Captain Cook on the Resolution and then on the Adventure between 1772 and 1773.
At the age of 22, James Burney was promoted to the rank of 2nd Lieutenant. Embarking on a great voyage he decided to keep a private journal written not for officialdom but for the delight and information of his family and friends... more
Patrick Gordon 'Bill' Taylor was a pioneer of Australian aviation. As a fighter pilot during the First World War, he was awarded the Military Cross and discovered a life-long passion for flight and air navigation.
Returning to Australia after the war, he became a close friend of Charles Kingsford Smith; they went on to form an incredible flying partnership, setting records around the globe. It was on a flight across the Tasman in Smithy's famous Southern Cross that Taylor earned the Empire's highest award for civilian bravery, the George Cross... more
Shot down in 1942, young Australian fighter pilot John Williams DFC became a POW in the notorious Stalag Luft III camp in Germany. John had joined the air force shortly before the outbreak of war and, in the larrikin tradition, led his squadron into air combat over the deserts of Libya and Egypt dressed in sandals and shorts.
John and his best mate Rusty Kierath were among the 76 POWs who tunnelled their way out of the supposedly escape-proof camp under the noses of their German guards in what later became the Hollywood blockbuster, The Great Escape... more
By 1963, Robert Menzies had been prime minister for thirteen years, Australia had its first troops in Vietnam, and change was in the air. There would soon be street protests over women's rights, Aboriginal land rights and the Vietnam War, and unprecedented student activism.
With the Cold War lingering, ASIO was concerned that protests were being orchestrated to foment revolution.
The Protest Years tells the inside story of Australia's domestic intelligence organisation from the last of the Menzies years to the dismissal of the Whitlam government... more
