Cute, captivating and strange, Australia's distinctive marsupials- kangaroos and koalas - have long served as touchstones of national pride and identity. Other animals have, in comparison, been viewed in a highly negative light; crocodiles as fearsome predators, disease-ridden mosquitoes and the tragedy of Tasmanian tigers. But rarely have these species been seen as making history.Responding to calls to incorporate Aboriginal ways of knowing into historical underst...

This book provides a lively and accessible account of Australia’s most prominent crimes and criminals of the nineteenth and twentieth century and offers an informative background for those seeking to understand crimes committed today.A History of Crime in Australia examines the imposition of English law on this ancient continent, and how its operation affected both transported offenders from Great Britain and Ireland, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples w...

Originally published in the November 1943 issue of True Love andRomance Magazine, the People Magazine of its day, Marry MeTomorrow is a story that epitomizes the struggles many generationsof American men and women have faced as loved ones are about togo off to war.

The Star Hotel in Newcastle has become a site of defiance for the marginalized young and dispossessed working class. To understand the whole story of the Star Hotel riot, it should be seen in the context of other moments of resistance such as the 1890 Maritime Strike, Rothbury miners' lockout in 1929 and the recent battle for the Laman Street fig trees. As Australia's first industrial city, Newcastle is also a natural home of radicalism but until now, the stories which reveal its breadth a...

Hal, the hero of Give Your Heart a Break, thought he could be just as successful as Jack Benny or any of the other club acts gaining acclaim during the late 1940s, but comedy is a tough business and he really needed the support of the woman he loves, Nell. The ups and downs of an entertainer’s career are still a problem for the stars of today, just as it was for Hal and Nell. The arrival of their beautiful baby boy, Pete, drove Nell to the breaking point. Would she have the strength to fin...

Whether their populations are perceived as too large, just right, too small or non-existent, animal numbers matter to the humans with whom they share environments. Animals in the right numbers are accepted and even welcomed, but when they are seen to deviate from the human-declared set point, they become either enemies upon whom to declare war or victims to be protected.In this edited volume, leading and emerging scholars investigate for the first time the ways in which the size of...

Before Steve Irwin, Alby Mangels, the Leyland Brothers and Harry Butler there was Eric Worrell. This book traces the life and times of Worrell, the original reptile danger man and naturalist, and the iconic tourist attraction he established on the NSW Central Coast in 1959, The Australian Reptile Park. With the assistance of a committed team of keepers, Worrell created the country's pre-eminent reptile collection at the park, as well as being the main provider of snake and funnel web spide...

History has portrayed Australia’s First Peoples, the Aboriginals, as hunter-gatherers who lived on an empty, uncultivated land. History is wrong.In this seminal book, Bruce Pascoe uncovers evidence that long before the arrival of white men, Aboriginal people across the continent were building dams and wells; planting, irrigating, and harvesting seeds, and then preserving the surplus and storing it in houses, sheds, or secure vessels; and creating elaborate cemeteri...

What do you need to know to prosper as a people for at least 65,000 years? The First Knowledges series provides a deeper understanding of the expertise and ingenuity of Indigenous Australians. For millennia, Indigenous Australians harvested this continent in ways that can offer contemporary environmental and economic solutions. Bill Gammage and Bruce Pascoe demonstrate how Aboriginal people cultivated the land through manipulation of water flows, vegetation and firestick practice. Not sole...

Loving Country is a powerful and essential guidebook that offers a new way to travel and discover Australia through an Indigenous narrative. In this beautifully designed and photographed edition, co-authors Bruce Pascoe and Vicky Shukuroglou, in consultation with communities and Elders across Australia, show travellers how to see the country as herself, to know her whole and old story, and to find the way to fall in love with her, our home.Featuring 18 places in de...

The Australian Aborigines first arrived on the continent at least 60,000 years ago. They almost certainly landed on the northwest coast by sea from the nearby islands of the Indonesian archipelago. That first arrival may have been replicated many times over. The following exploration and settlement of a vast and varied continent was a venture of heroic proportions. The new settlers had reached southern Tasmania, the point farthest from the original landfall at least 30,000 years ago. By th...

What do you need to know to prosper as a people for at least 65,000 years? The First Knowledges series provides a deeper understanding of the expertise and ingenuity of Indigenous Australians. Plants are the foundation of life on Earth. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have always known this to be true. For millennia, reciprocal relationships with plants have provided both sustenance to Indigenous communities and many of the materials needed to produce a complex array of techn...