Australian History

In 1838, 11 convicts and former convicts were put on trial for the brutal murder of 28 Aboriginal men, women and children at Myall Creek in Northern New South Wales. The trial created an enormous amount of controversy because it was almost unknown for Europeans to be charged with the murder of Aborigines. It would become the most serious trial of mass murder in Australia’s history.

On 11 August 1914, just days after war had been declared, Australian Captain J.T. Richardson boarded a German merchant vessel fleeing Melbourne's Port Phillip and audaciously seized a top-secret naval codebook. The fledgling Australian Navy had an opportunity to immediately change the course of the war. But what exactly had they found? Enter the Australian code breakers....

Australians will gamble on anything, from two flies crawling up a wall to less important things like federal elections. Thanks to the internet, mobile phones and gambling-tax loving federal and state governments, Australians can indulge their love of a punt no matter what they're doing. Aussies can be at the birth of a child, performing open heart surgery or handling heavy machinery and still put a bet on.

Lost for 13 months in the wilds of Afghanistan, this is the dramatic, heart-warming and truly amazing story of Sarbi, the Army's most famous explosives detection dog - the miracle dog of Tarin Kot. Powerful, dramatic, heartwarming, this is the true story of Sarbi, the scruffy black Labrador-cross trained by the Australian Army as an explosives detection dog for the most dangerous combat mission imaginable. Thirteen months after Australia's most famous canine warrior went missing in action in 2008, she was found by an American Special Forces officer patrolling a village....

Once there was a wilderness: Australia's frontier, a dangerous and unforgiving place where outlaws ruled the roads and killers were hailed as heroes. It was here, in 1838, that one man's uncompromising sense of justice changed history and shocked the world. Denny Day was a vicar's son from Ireland. A member of the Anglo-Irish ruling class, as a young man Day joined the British army before resigning to seek his fortune in New South Wales. There he accepted the most challenging role in the young colony: keeping the peace on the frontier.

The daughter of Cambodian refugees, Ai grew up in the small Australian town of Whitlam populated by Asian immigrants who once fled war-torn countries to rebuild their shattered lives. It is now the late '90s and despite their parents' harrowing past, Ai and her tightknit group of school friends lead seemingly ordinary lives, far removed from the unimaginable horrors suffered by their parents. But that carefree innocence is shattered in their last year of school when an incident involving Ai and her friends spirals into senseless violence, leaving behind a trail of unresolved trauma.

Easter Sunday, 1902, deep in the Carnarvon Ranges a police constable and station manager are slain then later incinerated, their remains stuffed into saddlebags. Accused of the ghoulish crime are two members of the bushranging Kenniff gang, fast gaining notoriety as Queensland's equivalent of the Kelly gang. Yet the murders are a bold escalation from the petty fraud, horse stealing and cattle duffing the gang is known for.

On 3 February 1967, despite public outrage and vocal protests from wide-ranging community groups, Ronald Ryan became the last person to be legally executed in Australia. Last Words is the human story behind this historical event that aims to answer some of the remaining unanswered questions, 50 years after his death. Ryan was found guilty of murdering prison officer George Hodson during an escape from Pentridge Prison with fellow inmate Peter Walker. But did Ryan really fire the bullet?

From his perch in the Rocky Mountains, Mr. Buckley looks far over the horizon to Ireland where the Buckley journey to America began generations ago and then turns effortlessly to an opposite horizon to describe the lives of the inhabitants of Micronesia and the social and working adventures he shared with them first in the Peace Corps and later in a return visit with his family.

In this wise and illuminating essay, Laura Tingle looks at leadership, economics, history and more. Competitiveness has marked our relationship from its earliest days. In the past half-century, both countries have remade themselves amid shifting economic fortunes. New Zealand has been held up as a model for everything from tax reform to the conduct of politics to the response to COVID-19. Tingle considers everything from Morrison and Ardern as national leaders to the different ways each country has dealt with its colonial legacy.

The History Plays is a series of five two-hander plays by Vent author Nigel Smith, which are imagined conversations at key moments in recent history, moments that have permanently changed the British psyche. Starting with Mick Jagger's conviction for drug possession and the surprising pro-Jagger line taken in a Times editorial through the fragmented morality of John Stonehouse, the Indian summer of patriotism over the Falklands, the death of Diana, and the end of the Blair years, The History Plays are a satirical and thoughtful exploration of huge social forces.

Psychiatrist Dr Mark Cross has spent most of his adult life working in the mental health system. He also suffers from anxiety, as do three out of four Australians at some point in their lives, so he knows first-hand the challenges, successes and failures facing consumers, patients and professionals. What he has discovered is that while Australia’s physical health system is world-renowned, its mental health system falls miserably short.

At the age of ten, and just short of four feet tall, a boy from Ballarat named Johnny Day became Australia's first international sporting hero. Against adult competition he wooed crowds across continents as the World Champion in pedestrianism, the sporting craze of the day. A few years later, in 1870, he won the Melbourne Cup on a horse aptly called Nimblefoot, this time impressing British royalty and Melbourne's high society. And then, still aged only fourteen, this already-famous athlete and jockey disappeared without a trace. Robert Drewe picks up where history leaves off.

Early 1800s. Thomasina Trelora is on her way to the colonies. Her fate: to be married to a clergyman she's never met. As the Australian coastline comes into view a storm wrecks the ship and leaves her lying on the rocks, near death. She's saved by an Aboriginal man who carries her to the door of a grand European house, Willowbrae.

Rural and remote ambulance drivers and paramedics are a dedicated and gutsy bunch who work tirelessly to care for their communities, often in isolated and inhospitable conditions, with few resources but plenty of experience, courage and care. Ambos deal with it all: car crashes, delivering babies, snake bites, heart attacks, lost bushwalkers, drug overdoses—even the occasional crook camel. One thing they are never short of is a story or two to tell.

The past shapes the present - they teach us that in schools and universities. (Shapes? Infiltrates? More like, imbues, infuses.) This past cannot be visited like an ageing aunt. It doesn't live in little zoo enclosures. Half the time, this past is nothing less than the beating heart of the present. So, how to speak of the searing, unpindownable power that the past - ours, our family's, our culture's - wields in the present? Stories are not enough, even though they are essential. And books about history, books of psychology - the best of them take us closer, but still not close enough.

The story of how gold miners rebelled against British authority, beginning a process that would ultimately lead to democracy in Australia. The Eureka Stockade. It's one of Australia's foundation legends - yet the story has always been told as if half the participants weren't there. But what if the hot-tempered, free-spirited gold miners we learned about at school were actually husbands and fathers, brothers and sons? What if there were women and children right there beside them inside the Stockade when the bullets started to fly?

Es un archipiélago localizado en el Océano Pacífico Sur, cerca a Australia. Posee un clima tropical y una población que no supera los 200 mil habitantes. Su relieve montañoso recorre las más de 70 islotes que conforman su territorio. Sin duda alguna la mayor atracción de Vanuatu son sus islas, propicias para la práctica de numerosos deportes y en donde se realizan maravillosos festivales llenos de danzas y cantos tradicionales, muestra de la riqueza cultural de este pequeño país.

A lone soldier wearing a German uniform stumbles into a British military camp in the North African desert with an incredible story to tell. He is the only survivor of an undercover operation meant to infiltrate a Nazi base, trading on the soldiers’ perfect fluency in German. However, this man is not British-born but instead a German Jew seeking revenge for the deaths of his family back home in Berlin.

An entertaining look at one of sport's greatest rivalries - the Ashes - by former England spin bowler Graeme Swann. Graeme Swann leads us on a compelling adventure through one of world sport's most engrossing rivalries. He knows as much as anybody about the heat of England vs. Australia battles, having played in three series wins and also the whitewash defeat of 2013-14 when its intensity ended his international career.