Why did nine brothers and sisters from a large Irish family take dangerous ocean voyages to the Australian colonies, on the other side of the globe? They came alone or in groups over 23 years and some of them were children as young as 13 or 14. Most never saw their parents or their birth country again.There must be hundreds of descendants of the Irish Carrs living today. How much do we know of our ancestors? Where did they come from and why did they come? What did they do when they...

Bringing together bad women of every stripe and variety - the scandalous, the brash, the fearless, the downright nasty and some who just went a little bit wrong - in the one big book.Some are wicked, some are scandalous, some are downright mean and ruthless and some just went a little bit sideways. Meet the bad women of Australia: the femmes who challenge our ideas of what women should be - together in the one big book.tilly Devine, Mary Bryant, Helena Rubinstein, Lola Montez - thes...

New edition of the bestselling history that traces the chequered story of 100 women transported together in 1829 to Sydney. Includes new information on the women and treatment of convicts and new illustrations. Intrigued to discover a convict ancestor in her family tree Babette Smith decided to investigate her life and the lives of the 99 women who were transported with her on the ship Princess Royal in 1829. Piece by piece she reveals the story of her ancestor the indomitable Susannah Wat...

The First World War particularly affected the landed classes with their long military tradition; country houses were turned into military hospitals and convalescent homes, while many of the menfolk were killed or badly injured in the hostilities. When the war ended efforts were made to return to the pre-war world. Pleasure-seeking in night-clubs, sporting events and country-house weekends became the order of the day. Many of the former rituals, such as presentation at Court for debutantes,...

Many thousands of abandoned children were treated as free labour in late 19th century Australia, yet their stories have been hidden until now, even to their descendants. Lucy Frost's painstaking research has uncovered what really happened to the convict orphans.Longlisted for the 2025 Tasmanian Literary Awards Premier's Prize for Non-fictionLonglisted for the 2024 Green Family Tasmanian History AwardAll families have...

Did you ever see a big house in the countryside and wonder who used to live in such a property? Have you ever wondered about the story behind such an old and historic house? This book reveals the story behind some of the greatest houses in Ireland. Maurice O'Keefe has interviewed the surviving members of many of the Anglo-Irish and old Irish families who lived, and in many cases still live, in these great houses. They have talked about their family histories, their links to the communities...

This is the fascinating story of a Quaker family from England who camped on the beach in 1837 before the city of Adelaide was created, but rose to owning a 3000-acre estate in the Adelaide Hills. Barton Hack built his first house where the Adelaide Railway station now stands, became a merchant who owned ships, a whaling station and the first vineyard in the Province, and was chairman of the first Chamber of Commerce in Australia. His younger brother Stephen became a grazier and explorer. Afte...

A hundred years ago sevants underpinned middle- and upper-class life in Ireland, and domestic service was the major source of employment for women before social conditions changed utterly after the First World War and labour-saving appliances took their place. Two generations on, the domestic servant is an almost extinct species. This book examines an area of life which has never been adequately reflected in Irish literature, labour or social history. The author of this pioneering study ba...

The Myers is a sweeping study of four generations of the successful and influential Myers family. It moves from Prussian Poland to the goldfields of Ballarat to bankruptcy in the South Island and then to a growing fortune in beer and liquor. There is a thorough analysis of Douglas Myers’ controversial takeover of the family company Campbell & Ehrenfried in the 1970s and the court cases that ensued, and the story of Lion Breweries then Lion Nathan and of Douglas Myers’ contribution to ...

Welcome to Dundee. A modern city at first glance, but with an illustrious past that's not always easy to see. Decades of regeneration, and sometimes dubious progress, have seen to that. But if you look a little closer, dig a little deeper, you will find a hidden city alive with history. Undiscovered Dundee uncovers the city's lost inheritance, its forgotten disasters and forsaken landmarks, the heroes and villains that time has erased, the citizens who stayed and made a difference to their...

"I do not think that I believe in ghosts, but just for this morning, just for the time it will take to ramble through this quiet city under clouds the colour of tin, or of pigeons' wings, I am going to believe in them." Ordinary lives are revealed as extraordinary, as Carol Lefevre traces the stories of West Terrace Cemetery's little-known inhabitants: there is the tale of the man who fatally turned his back on a tiger, and the man who avoided one shipwreck only to perish in another; there is...

'A triumphant family memoir' Hallie Rubenhold'Powerfully told...an impressive work' The Times'Gives a voice to the voiceless' Australian Book ReviewIn this remarkable book, Carmen Callil discovers the story of her British ancestors, beginning with her great-great grandmother Sary Lacey, born in 1808, an impoverished stocking frame worker. Through detailed research, we follow Sary fro...