Australasian and Pacific history Books

Emu Field is overshadowed by Maralinga, the larger and much more prominent British atomic test site about 193 kilometres to the south. But Emu Field has its own secrets, and the fact that it was largely forgotten makes it more intriguing. Only at Emu...

**Winner, Queensland Literary Awards 2022, Queensland Premier's Award for a Work of State Significance**Like many Australians, I looked on with horror as images of a million dead fish swamped the media and consumed the news cycle. I resolved to...

** Shortlisted, NSW Premier's History Awards 2022, NSW Regional and Community History Prize **** Shortlisted, Les Carlyon Literary Prize 2022 **'In May 1824, what can only be described as a period of all-out, total gudyarra ('war' in the Wiradyuri...

Australia and the Suez Crisis 19501957 focuses on the evolution of Australian policy before, during and after the Suez Crisis. The central theme of the volume is how, in the development of the Australian policy response to that crisis, questions of...

Longlisted for the ICAS Book Prize 2021 - Best Book in the HumanitiesShortlisted for the 2021 Ernest Scott PrizeHighly Commended- Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2021Shortlisted for the Australian History Prize in the NSW Premier's...

*Winner of the Australian History Prize in the NSW Premier's History Awards 2020**Shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards Non-Fiction Book Award**Shortlisted for the 2020 Ernest Scott Prize for History**Shortlisted for the Australian Historical...

This graphic book brings to life the struggles of daily life on the goldfields and the powerful events of the Eureka stockade.The extraordinary story of Eureka is one that Australians have revisited since it happened in 1854. Why did British Army Red...

The first ever book devoted entirely to the golden years of the Sydney underworld.In the late 1960s Sydney was one of the most prosperous places on earth and one of the most corrupt. A large proportion of the population was engaged in illegal gambling...

After decades of silence, Serving Our Country is the first comprehensive history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's participation in the Australian defence forces.While Indigenous Australians have enlisted in the defence forces since the...

A new edition of this bestselling Australian classic.After the Japanese invasion of Burma in late 1941,11-year-old Colin McPhedran was forced to flee his homeland on foot, across thesteep Patkoi Mountain Ranges, to safety in India. Over a three-month...

In Australia's rush to commemorate allthings Anzac, have we lost our ability to look beyond war as the central pillarof Australia's history and identity?Thepassionate historians of the Honest History group argue that while war has beenimportant to...

Contrary to what you may think, local Aboriginal people did not lose their culture and die out within decades of Governor Phillip's arrival in Sydney in 1788.Aboriginal people are prominent in accounts of early colonial Sydney, yet we seem to skip a...

Niel Black, a Scot from Argyllshire, arrived in Melbourne in September intending to make his fortune. Ambitious and determined, Black became one of the most successful and energetic squatters in the Western District of Victoria a livestock breeder and a...

A history that populates the streets of colonial Sydney with entrepreneurial businesswomen earning their living in a variety of small and sometimes surprising enterprises.There are few memorials to colonial businesswomen, but if you know where to look...

The history of Aborigines in Van Diemen's Land is long. The first Tasmanians lived in isolation for as many as 300 generations after the flooding of Bass Strait. Their struggle against almost insurmountable odds is one worthy of respect and admiration,...

1940. Wartime Australia. Key members of Menzies' government die in a fiery plane crash. What went wrong and what happened next? In August 1940 Australia had been at war for almost a year when a Hudson bomber the A16-97 carrying ten people,...

In this timely and controversial treatment of the Australian labour movement, Humphrys examines the role of the Labour Party and trade unions in constructing neoliberalism in Australia.Why do we always assume it was the New Right that was at the centre...

This edited collection investigates New Zealand's history as an imperial power, and its evolving place within the British Empire. It revises and expands the history of empire within, to and from New Zealand by looking at the country's spheres of internal...

On a triangle of land that points out to sea at the mouth of the Swan River is Fremantle's heritage district, the West End, renowned for its colonial architecture. Although Fremantle has often been threatened by the demands of redevelopment, today it is...

In this compelling new book, distinguished historian and writer Cassandra Pybus reveals that black convicts were among our first fleet settlers a fact which profoundly complicates our understanding of race relations in early colonial Australia. Most of...

Fighting Anzacs have metamorphosed from flesh and blood into mythic icons. The war they fought in is distant and the resistance to it within Australia has been forgotten. In the Shadow of Gallipoli corrects this historical amnesia by looking at what was...

'If only', 'what if' and 'why didn't we' are phrases that often come to mind when we look back to the past. This exciting and stimulating book looks backat turning points and crucial moments in Australian history. Rather than arguing that there have been...

1606 marked the first European sighting of Australia, when the Dutch ship Duyfken landed on Cape York. This gripping book tells the stories of the seafaring explorers, shipwrecks and mutinies that followed, including the voyages of Torres and La Perouse,...

This landmark volume will be created to coincide with the 20th InternationalCongress of Historical Sciences which the University of New South Wales inSydney will be hosting in 2005. Sponsored by the Australian HistoricalAssociation, the book will...

The publication of this book in 1981 profoundly changed the way in which we understand the history of relations between indigenous Australians and European settlers. It has since become a classic of Australian history. Drawing from documentary and oral...

Bulldog and Musquito, Aboriginal warriors from the Hawkesbury, were captured and sent to Norfolk Island following frontier skirmishes in New South Wales. Eventually, Bulldog seems to have made it home. Musquito was transported to Van Diemen's Land, where...

This is the third and final volume of the landmark, award-winning series The Europeans in Australia that gives an account of settlement by Britain. It tells of the various ways in which that experience shaped imagination and belief...

A gripping reckoning with the bloody history of Australia's frontier wars David Marr was shocked to discover forebears who served with the brutal Native Police in the bloodiest years on the frontier. Killing for Country is the result - a soul-searching...