At the NSW state election in 2011, the public turned on the 16-year-old Labor administration with unprecedented fury. The Government that had won spectacular victories in 1999 and 2003 was defeated with a swing that was an Australian postwar record. How did it manage to stay in power for four terms? What were its achievements and why did things unravel so badly?In From Carr to Keneally respected experts analyse the four terms of Labor government in NSW: the premiers and th...

For more than five decades, gangs have played a pivotal role in New Zealand crime life, beginning with the bodgies and widgies of the 1950s. Based on 10 years of gang research, this book chronicles the rise of the Hell's Angels and other bike gangs in the 1960s, the growth of the Mongrel Mob and Black Power in the 1970s, and organized crime during the last decade. With descriptions of such events as the Devil's Henchmen throwing Molotov cocktails at the Epitaph Riders in Christchurch's fir...

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...

Paul Keating and John Howard altered the nation’s body-clock. Between them, they dominated 30 years of power, as both treasurers and prime ministers. Typically, they have been seen only as antagonists with competing visions of Australia and its place in the world. In The Longest Decade, however, George Megalogenis argues that they also deserve to be seen as the twin architects of the political, economic, and social revolution that took Australia through a period of trauma and reco...

This is the journal of the two famous explorers who travelled the inland route to Port Phillip, Australia, in 1824.The Hume and Hovell expedition was one of the most important journeys of explorations undertaken in eastern Australia. In 1824 the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Thomas Brisbane, commissioned Hamilton Hume and former Royal Navy Captain William Hovell to lead an expedition to find new grazing land in the south of the colony, and also to find a...

Our fern might be silver but us Kiwis love to take that gold medal spot. First to give women the vote, first to climb Mount Everest, first to split the atom .But did you know that it was a Kiwi who was the first player to be sent off in a rugby test? Or that it was a Kiwi who was the first two-time world Scrabble champion? Or indeed that it was a Kiwi who invented the tranquiliser dart gun? Or that a Kiwi was the first person to free dive to 100 metres unassisted?Great ...

Sir Henry Parkes: Father of Federation, Premier of NSW, Statesman, Visionary, Political Leader, Poet, HumanistMay 27, 2015 brings the 200th anniversary of the birth of Sir Henry Parkes. After he died, the London Times described him as 'a colonial colossus.'Henry Parkes received little schooling and worked on a rope-walk, breaking stones, as an ivory and bone turner, ironmonger, labourer and on the wharves before tr...

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, including three cabinet ministers, crashed into a ridge near Canberra. In the ghastly inferno that followed the crash, the nation lost its key war leaders. Over the next twelve months, it became clear that the passing of Geoffrey Street, Sir...

On Track tells the story of John Blay's long-distance search for the Bundian Way, an important Aboriginal pathway between Mt Kosciuszko and Twofold Bay near Eden on the New South Wales far south coast. The 360-kilometre route traverses some of the nation's most remarkable landscapes, from the highest place on the continent to the ocean.This epic bushwalking story uncovers the history, country and rediscovery of this significant track. Now heritage-listed, and thanks to the...

Beyond Betrayal delves into New Zealand's pioneering history, and asks why such promising partnerships descended into decades of distrust. After the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, a succession of governors resisted missionary advice, despite their local knowledge and peacemaking skills, and influenced a raft of misunderstandings that provoked violent outbreaks across the country. The rise of Maori prophetic movements, and an intense desire for Maori to have a unified political voi...

On 24 November 2007 Australia resoundingly changed government. If you think you know what really happened during that tumultuous year behind the closed doors of the Liberal Party, in the back rooms of the ACTU and deep in the campaign war room of the Labor Party, think again.2007 was a year to remember in Australian politics. It saw the dramatic fall of John Howard and the unexpected rise of Kevin Rudd. It saw the Liberal Party buckle under the inertia of incumbency and the Labor P...

The Customs And Traditions Of The Aboriginal Natives Of North Western Australiaby John G. WithnellA short amateur ethnography of the Northwestern Aborigines, primarily of historical interest.The object of this work is to preserve, before civilization has made them obsolete, the traditions and customs of the aboriginal natives of the North-West of Western Australia-particularly those of the Pilbarra district-as accurately as possible, based upon upwards of twenty year...