Australian History

When Ned Kelly and his band of young tearaways ambushed and killed three brave policemen in a remote mountain camp in 1878, they sparked the biggest and most expensive manhunt Australia had seen. The desperate search would end when Kelly and his gang, wearing suits of armour, tried to derail a train before waging their final bloody gun battle with police in the small Victorian town of Glenrowan.

In October 1863, Ian Steele, having taken on the identity of Captain Samuel Forbes, is fighting the Pashtun on the north-west frontier in India. Half a world away, the real Samuel Forbes is a lieutenant in the third New York Volunteers and is facing the Confederates at the Battle of Mission Ridge in Tennessee. Neither is aware their lives will change beyond recognition in the year to come. In London, Ella, the love of Ian's life, is unhappily married to Count Nikolai Kasatkin.

Atop the hierarchy of Australian bushrangers sits Ned Kelly–the ultimate outlaw–and just below him, the tragic figure of Ben Hall, who joined a gang led by a man whose name today is less well known, but in his time was much more famous than any other: Frank Gardiner. Mastermind of the largest gold robbery in Australia’s history, Gardiner led an extraordinary life, the full telling of which is long overdue. In a tough country and among a group of tough men, Gardiner was the toughest of them all.

On this adventure we're travelling right around the world - to visit Australia! We're going to learn about everything this brilliant vibrant county has to offer. We're going to learn about the amazing Great Barrier Reef, see the magnificent Uluru, encounter some wonderful wildlife and we might even have time to take in a performance at the Opera House.

Given their stellar legacy, it is little surprise that ANZAC soldiers were used by the British Empire for the several decades, most notably in World War II, ensuring that even after the British Empire declined, the Australian and New Zealand troops’ contributions to the Commonwealth remain a source of pride.

A unique collection of poignant, horrific, sad and sometimes dryly humorous stories and yarns from the bloody battlefield of Gallipoli. This is not a history, nor is it an individual soldier's story. Rather Jim Haynes has done what he does so well and pulled together the many yarns and stories and verses written about Gallipoli - everything from the firsthand accounts of being recruited to memories of ordinary soldiers written from the trenches and accounts of the aftermath.

From his early life as an up-and coming AFL player to his tours of duty in Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan and his final battle in the dusty Ghawcha village in the Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan - the powerful biography of Cameron Baird, VC, MG, one of Australia's most decorated modern soldiers.

The islands of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia stretch across a huge expanse of ocean and encompass a multitude of different peoples. Starting with Captain James Cook, the earliest European explorers to visit the Pacific were astounded and perplexed to find populations thriving thousands of miles from continents. Who were these people? From where did they come? And how were they able to reach islands dispersed over such vast tracts of ocean?

The magnificent monolith the locals call “Uluru”, situated in the heart of Australia, hovers over a patchy bed of desert poplars and spinifex grasslands. The pleasant, but otherwise unexceptional, surroundings of the spellbinding sandstone landform only further accentuates its majesty - one that can be appreciated from a variety of angles.

John Ibrahim's incredible life story told in his own words. Last King of the Cross lays bare Australia's most notorious underworld figure. In the mongrel tongue of the streets, John writes of fleeing war-torn Tripoli with his family and growing up in Sydney's rough and tumble west - before establishing himself as a tough guy and teen delinquent, then a bouncer, enforcer and nightclub king on the Golden Mile.

In the distant highlands, a puma named Dusk is killing shepherds. Down in the lowlands, twins Iris and Floyd are out of work, money and friends. When they hear that a bounty has been placed on Dusk, they reluctantly decide to join the hunt. As they journey up into this wild, haunted country, they discover there's far more to the land and people of the highlands than they imagined. And as they close in on their prey, they're forced to reckon with conflicts both ancient and deeply personal.

Вена – город вальсов и кофе, уютная столица древнего и некогда могучего государства, а ныне небольшой и гостеприимной страны, помнящей как о былых победах, так и поражениях. Вена – город Шуберта и торта Захер, привлекающий туристов своей роскошной архитектурой, музыкой и, конечно же, сладостями, которыми гордятся сами венцы. Вена сохранила свой первоначальный блеск, научившись, при том, быть демократичной и открытой. Каким же был этот город в прошлые столетия? Кто впервые приготовил знаменитый венский кофе? Кто был "отцом" вальса?

Hudson Fysh was a decorated World War I hero who not only founded Australia's national airline, Qantas, but steered it for almost half a century from its humble beginnings with two rickety biplanes to the age of the jumbo jets. One of Australia's celebrated Light Horsemen at Gallipoli, Fysh went on to fly death-defying missions for Lawrence of Arabia with the Australian Flying Corps and battle Germans in deadly dogfights in the skies over Palestine.

Australia es mucho más que un enorme país. Y mucho más que la isla más grande del mundo. Es un universo aparte. Árida, con una climatología extrema y una fauna atípica (y en muchos casos muy peligrosa), Australia también tiene gentes hospitalarias, ciudades muy modernas y otros muchos secretos por descubrir. ¿Cómo no enamorarse de un lugar fascinante que no se parece a ningún otro?

The ultimate collection of unbelievable true Australian stories: the unknown, the forgotten and the surprising. Did you know that in 1932 the Australian army was called out to wage war on an invading army of 20,000...emus? Or that the first royal personage to arrive in Australia was the King of Iceland, and he came as a convict? And how about the spooky phenomenon of the mischief-making Guyra Ghost? From Jim Haynes, one of our most successful and prolific tellers of yarns and bush tales, comes this collection of unbelievable true Australian stories.

Bangka Strait, Indonesia, 1942. Allied ships are evacuating thousands in flight from Singapore, the island having fallen to Japanese Imperial forces. Facing terrifying assaults by fighter planes, one ship, the Vyner Brooke, is badly bombed and sinks. Its survivors swim or paddle for hours to the nearest land, a beach on Bangka Island, parched, many dreadfully injured One of the survivors is Australian Army nurse Dorothy 'Bud' Elmes, the great-aunt of Georgina Banks. Bud makes it to the island, where she, colleagues and a matron tend to the wounded as a plan is formulated.

Submariners are a special breed. Not for them a life on the ocean wave, the fresh air and sunshine of other naval sailors. With stealth and daring they go deep and dark, alone and unseen, in often dangerous waters. They sometimes call themselves the Silent Service, with good reason. Submarines and the sailors who serve in them have been and remain the tip of the spear of Australia's defences. For the first time, this is their unique story.

The story of the emergence and dominance of two brilliant Australian soldiers who commanded the most effective armies in defeating the Germans and the Turks in the Great War. Monash and Chauvel is a gripping narrative history that follows the extraordinary campaigns of the two most outstanding battlefield commanders of the First World War across all the Allied armies: John Monash and Harry Chauvel.

Veteran war historian Paul Ham embarks on a journey that has never been attempted: to restore the idea of the soul to the human story and to show how belief in, and beliefs arising from, the soul/mind have driven human history. The Soul tells the story of the inner 'I', the strange essence of ourselves, and how it has been animated, immortalized, loved, armed, inflamed, enslaved, illuminated and enlightened over 250,000 years.

The son of a struggling country butcher, Stan Savige left school at 12 to become a blacksmith’s striker. But in 1915, a passage in the Bible inspired the devout scout leader and Sunday school teacher to enlist. Soon, his abilities as a crack marksman attracted the attention of officers and he was put in charge of the sniper’s post, his job to eliminate enemy assassins at Anzac Cove. Savige succeeded and survived Gallipoli, only to be sent to the Western Front, then to Persia as part of the elite squad Dunsterforce.