1788-1809: From First Fleet to Rum Rebellion by
This book covers the tumultuous first 22 years of the colonization of Australia. It details major events - the arrival at Botany Bay, the settlement at Sydney Cove, the battle to survive, heroic explorations, and tensions between the new arrivals and indigenous peoples.
1810-1845: From the Macquarie Era to Ending Transportation by
This book covers major events from Macquarie’s first days when corruption was brought under control, the development of infrastructure, the breakdown of class structures, exploration and land settlement, the creation of South Australia, Port Phillip and Western Australia, and the battles to end convict transportation. It also shows the steady political development as the colonies moved from autocratic control to the eve of self-government and elected parliaments.
Convicts: The Story of the Penal Settlements That Created Australia by
The story of modern Australia’s beginnings is inextricably linked to 160,000 people who came to the land as convicts. This text tells the story of how Australia grew into a prosperous nation from the cheap labour of these criminal offenders who were transported to a ‘land beyond the sea’, where many learned to cope with an environment utterly alien to them and went on to create new lives for themselves.
Exploration and Settlement in Colonial Australia by
This book tells the story of the brave, sometimes foolhardy, explorers and settlers that opened up the Australian continent to the rest of the world. Names such as Evans, Hume, Hovell, Sturt, Mitchell, Cunningham, Oxley, Leichhardt, Gregory, Burke, Wills, Eyre, Stuart, Forrest and many others resound through this story.
Art and the Common Good by
The passage of land rights laws in New South Wales in 1983 saw political intrigue, deception and disappointment as well as unprecedented engagement by Aboriginal citizens and their supporters. How could a sympathetic NSW State Government redress the effects of two hundred years of colonisation in the most densely populated state in the Commonwealth? "What do we want?" was the rallying call for land rights activists. Heidi Norman's insightful book begins in the late 1970s when Aboriginal people, armed with new skills, framed their land rights demands. The 1978 land rights inquiry and the laws that followed brought Aboriginal people -- and the state -- into new and different relationships of power. These have been the source of on-going contestation ever since. For NSW Aboriginal people, the laws allowed an unparalleled level of involvement in government, and in governing. It opened up a host of possibilities. Thirty years later, with over a billion dollars in land assets, a near billion-dollar investment fund, and with over 115 local Aboriginal land councils, the resultant network of land councils is the largest Aboriginal representative body in the country. This book reveals the challenges of Aboriginal people adjusting to modernity as land councils struggle to fully realise the hopes of their members, many of whom continue to suffer chronic disadvantage.
Van Diemen's Land by
The history of Aborigines in Van Diemen's Land is long. The first Tasmanians lived in isolation for as many as 300 generations after the flooding of Bass Strait. Their struggle against almost insurmountable odds is one worthy of respect and admiration, not to mention serious attention. This broad-ranging book is a comprehensive and critical account of that epic survival up to the present day. Starting from antiquity, the book examines the devastating arrival of Europeans and subsequent colonization, warfare and exile. It emphasizes the regionalism and separateness, a consistent feature of Aboriginal life since time immemorial that has led to the distinct identities we see in the present, including the unique place of the islanders of Bass Strait. Carefully researched, using the findings of archaeologists and extensive documentary evidence, some only recently uncovered, this important book fills a longtime gap in Tasmanian history.
Whose land? : eyewitness to Aboriginal-non-Aboriginal relations, 1770-2007 by
Subjects:Aboriginal peoples;
Aboriginal peoples - History;
Aboriginal peoples - Land rights;
Australia - Race relations - History;
Land settlement - Australia - History