Bridging historical scholarship and Aboriginal oral tradition, this innovative book tells the story of the Gugu Badhun people of the Valley of Lagoons in North Queensland. It provides new insights into Aboriginal–European interactions, and new understandings of how Aboriginal people sustained their identities and exercised agency.It lays bare violence and oppression, but also recognises the inter-racial cooperation and friendships which were equally part of Gugu Badhun experience. ...

A bold and provocative book about Australia's national identity and a plea to keep Australia's famed open-mindedness, Cater tracks the seismic changes in Australian culture and outlook since Donald Horne published THE LUCKY COUNTRY in 1964. 'A great book.' Rupert MurdochA bold and provocative book about Australia's national identity and how it is threatened by the rise of a ruling class. Nick Cater, senior editor at the Australian, tracks the seismic changes in Australian culture an...

With a historian's inquiring mind, Billy Griffiths excavates two absorbing twentieth century histories: the reassertion of Aboriginal identity and the uncovering of traces of ancient Australia by pioneering archeologists.Deep Time Dreaming is the passionate product of that journey. In this original, important book, Griffiths investigates a twin revolution- the reassertion of Aboriginal identity in the second half of the twentieth century, and the simultaneous uncovering ...

Former publisher of Griffith Review Professor Julianne Schultz challenges our notions of what it means to be Australian and asks timely and urgent questions about our national identity.'Disruptive, bold and brilliant, The Idea of Australia is a work of masterful synthesis, intimate reflection and stunning vision' CLARE WRIGHTWhat is the 'idea of Australia'? What defines the soul of our nation?Are we an egalitarian, generous, outwar...

A cultural history of Australia told through our fiction.Australia's novels lie at the heart of the country. Capturing everyday lives and exceptional dreams, they have held up a mirror to the nation, reflecting the good and the bad. In this companion book to the ABC TV series, Carl Reinecke looks at the history of Australian culture through the books we have read and the stories we have told.Touching on colonial invasion, the bush myth, world wars, mass mig...

'Clark brings a historian's erudition to the ideas. Absolutely engrossing and it's beautifully written. ' KATE GRENVILLEA few years ago Anna Clark saw a series of paintings on a sandstone cliff face in the Northern Territory. There were characteristic crosshatched images of fat barramundi and turtles, as well as sprayed handprints and several human figures with spears. Next to them was a long gun, painted with white ochre, an unmistakable image of the colonisers. W...

No matter how practised we are at history, it always humbles us. No matter how often we visit the past, it always surprises us.Winner of the Ernest Scott Prize and Shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Award for Non-fiction'A rare feat of imagination and generosity' —Mark McKennaWith every sentence they write, historians must walk the tightrope between discipline and imagination, empathy and evidence. In this landmar...

Winner of the 2022 Australian Political Book of the Year Award 'A drily elegant, bracing work from a pained and open heart' —Helen Garner 'Refreshing and original. A unique window on Australia's past and its barbed resonance today … Essential reading for anyone interested in the challenge of truth-telling.' —Mark McKenna 'A graceful, unostentatiously scholarly, wise (and highly readable) book on a subject of overwhelming and enduring significance for all Australians.' —Robert Manne The tal...

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...

A new paperback reprint of this best-selling and ground-breaking history. When first published in 1996 Making Peoples was hailed as redefining New Zealand history. It was undoubtedly the most important work of New Zealand history since Keith Sinclair's classic A History of New Zealand.Making Peoples covers the period from first settlement to the end of the nineteenth century. Part one covers Polynesian background, Maori settlement and pre-contact history. Part tw...

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 century as they disappear from the historical record, re-emerging early in the twentieth century. What happened to Sydney's indigenous people between the devastating impact of white settlement and increased government intervention a cen...

First Australians is the dramatic story of the collision of two worlds that created contemporary Australia. Told from the perspective of Australia's first people, it vividly brings to life the events that unfolded when the oldest living culture in the world was overrun by the world's greatest empire.Seven of Australia's leading historians reveal the true stories of individuals—both black and white—caught in an epic drama of friendship, revenge, loss and victory in Australia...