Macquarie (HB) by Grantlee Kieza

$14.99 AUD

$39.99 (62% off)

Category: Australian History

A lively and engaging portrait of a towering and complex figure of Australian colonial history. Lachlan Macquarie is credited with shaping Australia's destiny, transforming the harsh, foreboding penal colony of New Holland into an agricultural powerhouse and ultimately a prosperous society. He also help ed shape Australia's national character. An egalitarian at heart, Macquarie saw boundless potential in Britain's refuse, and under his rule many former convicts went on to become successful administrators, land owners and business people. However, the governor's ambitions for the colony (which he lobbied to have renamed 'Australia') brought him into conflict with the continent's original landowners, and he was responsible for the deaths of Aboriginal men, women and children, brutally killed in a military operation intended to create terror among local Indigenous people. So, was Macquarie the man who sowed the seeds of a great nation, or a tyrant who destroyed Aboriginal resistance? In this, the most comprehensive biography yet of this fascinating colonial governor, acclaimed biographer Grantlee Kieza draws on Macquarie's rich and detailed journals. He chronicles the life and times of a poor Scottish farm boy who joined the British army to make his fortune, saw wars on five continents and clawed his way to the top. Ultimately, Macquarie laid the foundations for a new nation, but, in the process, he played a part in the dispossession of the continent's original people. Lover, fighter, egalitarian, autocrat - Lachlan Macquarie is a complex and engaging character who first envisaged the nation we call Australia.             ...Show more

Bill and Horrie: Australia's Greatest War Horse and War Dog by Roland Perry

$29.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

Two bestselling stories of Australian animals during wartime, now in one volume.

The Last Bushrangers by Mike Munro

$14.99 AUD

$34.99 (57% off)

Category: Australian History

The story of Australia's last bushranging gang - the murderous Kenniffs. Easter Sunday, 1902, deep in the Carnarvon Ranges a police constable and station manager are slain then later incinerated, their remains stuffed into saddlebags. Accused of the ghoulish crime are two members of the bushranging Ken niff gang, fast gaining notoriety as Queensland's equivalent of the Kelly gang. Yet the murders are a bold escalation from the petty fraud, horse stealing and cattle duffing the gang is known for. Starving and exhausted after three long months on the run, the brothers are finally captured, and so the wheels of justice start to turn. The story of the Kenniffs has fascinated Mike Munro for decades - ever since he found out these last bushrangers were his family. If not for Mike's grandfather illegally changing his name in shame from Kenniff to Munro, this major figure in Australian television would be known to us as Mike Kenniff. But who were Mike's relatives? What drove them to their life of crime? And were the brothers really responsible for such terrible murders? In answering these questions Mike Munro takes us back to the dawn of Federation, when bush skills and horsemanship could help outlaws escape the police, when remote pastoralists were vulnerable targets for thieves and marauders, when race and class divides were entrenched - but resented - and when brutal, feckless outlaws faced the ultimate punishment. This is a story that is both gripping and personal, and an insight into an Australia just coming of age. PRAISE FOR THE LAST BUSHRANGERS 'All families have a secret ... but Mike's is a doozy! This touching, TRUE story is a terrific read!' Di Morrissey ...Show more

Moonlite: The Tragic Love Story of Captain Moonlite and the Bloody End of the Bushrangers by Garry Linnell

$34.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

Charismatic, intelligent and handsome, George Scott is unlike any other bushranger. Born into a privileged life in famine-wracked Ireland, Scott's family loses its fortune and is forced to flee to New Zealand. There, Scott joins the local militia and fights as a soldier against the Maori in the brutal N ew Zealand wars. After recovering from a series of serious gunshot wounds, he sails to Australia and becomes a Lay Preacher, captivating churchgoers with his fiery and inspiring sermons. But Scott is also prone to bursts of madness. The local villagers back in Ireland often whispered that a 'wild drop' ran in the blood of the Scott family. One night he dons a mask in a small country town, arms himself with a gun and, dubbing himself Captain Moonlite, brazenly robs a bank before staging one of the country's most audacious jailbreaks. After falling in love with fellow prisoner James Nesbitt, a boyish petty criminal desperately searching for a father figure, Scott finds himself unable to shrug off his criminal past. Pursued and harassed by the police, he stages a dramatic siege and prepares for a final showdown with the law - and a macabre executioner without a nose. Meticulously researched and drawing on previously unpublished material, Moonlite is a brilliant work of non-fiction that reads like a novel. Told at a cracking pace, and based on many of the extensive letters Scott wrote from his death cell, Moonlite is set amid the violent and sexually-repressed era of Australia in the second half of the 19th century. With a cast of remarkable characters, it weaves together the extraordinary lives of our bushrangers and the desperation of a young nation eager to remove the stains of its convict past. But most of all, Moonlite is a tragic love story. For these are the dying days of the bushrangers and Captain Moonlite is about to make his last stand. ...Show more

The Convict Valley: The Bloody Struggle on Australia's Early Frontier by Mark Dunn

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

In 1790, five convicts escaped Sydney by boat and were swept ashore near present day Newcastle. They were taken in by the Worimi people, given Aboriginal names and started families. Thus began a long and at times dramatic series of encounters between Aboriginals and convicts in the second settlement in Australia. The fertile valley of the Hunter river was the first area outside of Sydney explored by the British, and it became one of the largest penal settlements. Yet today manicured lawns and prosperous vineyards hide the struggles, violence and toil of the thousands of convicts who laid its foundations. The Convict Valley uncovers this rich colonial past, as well as the story of the original Aboriginal landholders. While there were friendships and alliances in the early years, in the mad scramble for land in the 1820s as the Valley was opened to free settlers, tensions increased and bloodshed ensued. With fascinating stories about convicts, white settlers and the Aboriginal inhabitants that have long been forgotten, The Convict Valley is a new Australian history classic. ...Show more

Talking to My Country by Stan Grant

$24.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

An extraordinarily powerful and personal meditation on race, culture, and identity. When Stan Grant was born in Australia in 1963, the national census classed him and his family among the country's flora and fauna. As Aboriginal Australians, their history and culture had been suppressed for centuries. A legacy of racism stood between him and the opportunities that white Australia - the so-called Lucky County - seemed awash with. But Grant was lucky enough to find an escape route through education. Finding early inspiration in the writing of James Baldwin and fellow indigenous activists at the Australian National University, on completing his studies he went on to become one of the country's leading journalists. As a correspondent for CNN he travelled extensively, covering conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Struck by how common humanity can live on in the face of repression and mass destruction - from North Korea to Pakistan to Baghdad - the lives of individuals he met spoke to him of sacrifice, endurance, and the undying call of family and homeland. And in the stories of other dispossessed peoples, he saw that of his own.  In Talking To My Country, Grant draws on his own life and community to respond to the ongoing racism that he sees around him. He writes with passion and striking candour of the sorrow, shame, anger, and hardship of being an indigenous man. Forthright and unblinking, Stan reaches beyond his own heritage to show how the effects of colonialism and racism are everyday realities that still shape our world, and how we should never grow complacent in the fight to overcome them.  ...Show more

The True Story of Ned Kelly's Last Stand by Paul Terry

$22.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

Using science, history and family lore to unearth a new understanding of how a legend was made this is the full story of the most famous siege in Australian history - the man and the myth; the people great and small.

Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia by Anita Heiss

$29.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

Childhood stories of family, country and belonging What is it like to grow up Aboriginal in Australia? This anthology, compiled by award-winning author Anita Heiss, showcases many diverse voices, experiences and stories in order to answer that question. Accounts from well-known authors and high-profile identities sit alongside those from newly discovered writers of all ages. All of the contributors speak from the heart - sometimes calling for empathy, oftentimes challenging stereotypes, always demanding respect. This groundbreaking collection will enlighten, inspire and educate about the lives of Aboriginal people in Australia today. Contributors include- Tony Birch, Deborah Cheetham, Adam Goodes, Terri Janke, Patrick Johnson, Ambelin Kwaymullina, Jack Latimore, Celeste Liddle, Amy McQuire, Kerry Reed-Gilbert, Miranda Tapsell, Jared Thomas, Aileen Walsh, Alexis West, Tara June Winch, and many, many more. ...Show more

Breaker Morant by Peter FitzSimons

$49.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

The epic story of the Boer War and Harry 'Breaker' Morant: drover, horseman, bush poet - murderer or hero? Most Australians have heard of the Boer War of 1899 to 1902 and of Harry 'Breaker' Morant, a figure who rivals Ned Kelly as an archetypal Australian folk hero. Born in England and emigrating to Qu eensland in 1883 in his early twenties, Morant was a charming but reckless man who established a reputation as a rider, polo player and writer. He submitted ballads to The Bulletin that were published under the name 'The Breaker' and counted Banjo Paterson as a friend. When appeals were made for horsemen to serve in the war in South Africa, Morant joined up, first with the South Australian Mounted Rifles and then with a South African irregular unit, the Bushveldt Carbineers. In September 1901 Morant and two other Australians, Lieutenants Peter Handcock and George Witton, were arrested for the murder of Boer prisoners. Morant and Handcock were court-martialled and executed in February 1902 as the Boer War was in its closing stages, but the debate over their convictions continues to this day. Does Breaker Morant deserve his iconic status? Who was Harry Morant? What events and passions led him to a conflict that was essentially an Imperial war, played out on a distant continent under a foreign flag? Was he a scapegoat for British war crimes or a criminal himself? With his trademark brilliant command of story, Peter FitzSimons unravels the many myths and fictions that surround the life of Harry Morant. The truths FitzSimons uncovers about 'The Breaker' and the part he played in the Boer War are astonishing - and, in the hands of this master storyteller, make compelling reading.           ...Show more

Hell Ship by Michael Veitch

$22.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

The riveting story of one of the most calamitous voyages in Australian history, the plague-stricken sailing ship Ticonderoga that left England for Victoria with 800 doomed emigrants on board.

Salt: Selected Essays and Stories by Bruce Pascoe

$34.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

A collection of stories and essays by the award-winning author of Dark Emu, showcasing his shimmering genius across a lifetime of work. Bruce Pascoe has been described as a 'living national treasure' and his work as 'revelatory'. This volume of his best and most celebrated stories and essays, collected here for the first time, ranges across his long career, and explores his enduring fascination with Australia's landscape, culture, land management and history. Featuring new and previously unpublished fiction alongside his most revered and thought-provoking nonfiction - including extracts from his modern classic Dark Emu - this collection is perfect for Pascoe fans and new readers alike. It's time all Australians saw the range and depth of this most marvellous of local writers ...Show more

What Ever Happened to Ned Kelly's Head? by Eamon Evans

$29.99 AUD

Category: Australian History