There is no team that gives pleasure to the sporting public like the Canberra Raiders.' - Bob Hawke, former Prime Minister of AustraliaThe Canberra Raiders' spectacular grand final win against the Balmain Tigers in 1989 is widely regarded as Australian Rugby League's greatest ever decider. For a fledgling club this was an extraordinary and unexpected achievement, heralding a sequence of years that produced two more premierships and two near misses. The Raiders' trademark a...

'Canberra is not simply a city. It is a chosen city.' - Marion HalliganDragged from the big metropolises of Sydney and Melbourne in the 1920s, a first generation of federal government workers settled into humble red brick Canberra 'govvies' on the brown paddocks of the Limestone Plains. They complained about the cold and the lack of pubs. But over time, like the first pioneers a century earlier, they embraced their new home. They grew fond of the peaceful tree-lined street...

Thousands of convicts were transported to Australia. Of these, some managed to escape incarceration and went on to achieve notoriety in their new land. A few tried to invent a Robin Hood reputation, taking the side of the poor settler against those in authority. Some committed crimes so heinous they were both feared and despised by the general population. Their lives were desperate, their fate often tragic. AUSTRALIAS MOST NOTORIOUS CONVICTS reveals not only their stories but also the horr...

An earthy, entertaining collection of yarns about twenty larger-than-life outback characters. Meet Ron Canlin, who one day began sculpting the sandstone walls of his opal mine. Ten years later, every drive and tunnel in Ron's claim is full of wonderful sculptures - the eighth wonder of the world. Or Peter Venables, with his flowing white beard, puffing his pipe like a character from the pioneering 1800s, whose teams of Clydesdales plough, sow and harvest the crops they eat. Or Janie Marsha...

Dando-Collins adroitly interweaves a compelling family history with the broader canvas of the Anzacs. Crack Hardy is a fine and important book.This is the true story of three Australian soldiers, the Searle brothers. One brother was killed at Gallipoli, another on the Western Front. One came home a decorated hero. Viv, a gifted poet who was planning to be a clergyman before the war, became a deadly efficient sniper. Ray shot himself and was charged with desertion. Ned was ...

The importance of the Australian contribution to the Allied war effort during World War I should never be underestimated.Some 400,000 Australians volunteered for active duty, an astonishing 13 per cent of the entire (white) male population, a number so great that the Australian government was never forced to rely on conscription. Casualties were 52 per cent of all those who served, ensuring that the effects of the war would be felt long after the armistice....

It's 1930 . . . and Daisy has been adopted and whisked away to a beautiful mansion. She's to be a companion to Annie, a girl with a mysterious illness. While Daisy's new life is full of luxuries she could never have imagined, what she wants the most is the thing her new parents can't provide: the freedom to find her real family before it's too late . . .Follow Daisy on her adventure in the third of four exciting stories about a hopeful girl in troubled times.

The stories behind Australia's many, many strange, inappropriate and downright hilarious place names.From Dismal Swamp to Useless Loop, Intercourse Island to Dead Mans Gully, Mount Buggery to Nowhere Else, Australia has some of the strangest, funniest, weirdest and most out-of-place names going - now described and explained in one humorous and fascinating book.Australia's vast spaces and irreverent, larrikin history have given us some of the best place name...

Britain formally colonised Van Diemen’s Land in the early years of the nineteenth century. Small convict stations grew into towns. Pastoralists moved in to the aboriginal hunting grounds. There was conflict, there was violence. But, governments and gentlemen succeeded in burying the real story of the Vandemonian War for nearly two centuries.The Vandemonian War had many sides and shades, but it was fundamentally a war between the British colony of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) and th...

In The SHADOW OF THE GUNS Joan Harvey recounts a unique life as an independent-minded girl growing up in the late 1800s. Although born in Bangalore, India, her early childhood was spent in Hobart, Tasmania. Left in the care of relatives in Hobart at a young age when her parents returned to India where her father was serving in the Indian Army, Joan penned these memories partly to record for her sister the events of everyday life in Tasmanian society and to put down what was known of her an...

An omnibus from Jim Haynes about the true essence of what makes us Australians - our yarns, collected from every walk of life.Best Australian Yarns is a substantial and definitive collection of factual and fanciful Aussie stories, humour and anecdotes--the result of decades of researching popular Aussie culture and history and yarning to mates and other colourful characters from all parts of Australia and all walks of life.This collection includes ...

David Collins's The English Colony in New South Wales (Vol. 1 & 2) is among the foundational narratives of British Australia, combining official chronicle, legal record, ethnographic observation, and natural-historical description. Written in a measured, documentary prose characteristic of late Enlightenment travel and colonial writing, it records the precarious establishment of the penal settlement at Port Jackson, the struggles of supply and governance, convict discipline, exploration, a...