This book features full-colour and historical black and white photographs, maps, documents, and illustrations, all brought to life by well-researched and accessible narratives. The events featured in this book changed Australia and have the nation what it is today. Events that Shaped Australia sets out the detail, the people, the images and the after effects of the most important turning points in our nation's history. Starting with the formation of Gondwanaland and the arrival of indigenous Australians, this book features events in such eras as European colonisation, the Gold Rush, Federation, two World Wars and the later part of the 20th Century. Moving into the new millennium, the Bali Bombings, the Tampa controversy and the Rudd-Gillard-Abbott government crises are all featured. Events that Shaped Australia features rare colour and black and white photographs, as well as maps, documents and illustrations brought to life by well-researched and accessible narratives.

Australia is the land where opportunity knocks for everyone, no matter who you are, Australia is open and ready for you to create your own lifestyle and live your dreams. Although Australia may appear as a hostile, arid chunk of land at first glance, the truth is that this mystical, faraway land is rich in more ways than one. Apart from kangaroos and other iconic, endemic species that roam the Australian landscape, the Land Down Under is also home to a vibrant and diverse culture, as well as some of the oldest surviving folk traditions maintained by Aboriginal Australians. Being incredibly diverse themselves, the indigenous people of Australia are made up of a wide range of tribes that speak many languages and maintain countless ancient customs. While the British certainly played a decisive role in Australia

Report on State of the Colony of New South Wales is a nonfiction and fundamental record of some convicts being transported to New South Wales. Excerpt: "Condition and Treatment of Convicts during the passage to New South Wales. CLOTHING.] FOOD.] PREVENTION OF PLUNDER.] VENTILATION.] Parliamentary Evidence, p. 100.] MEDICINE.] PRISON ROOM.] 21st Article of Instructions; A. No. 1.] II. Debarkation and Muster of the Convicts, Male, and Female. Vide Government and Public Notice, Sydney Gazette, 19 April 1817.]"

'Clarke brings a historian's erudition to the ideas. Absolutely engrossing and it's beautifully written. ' KATE GRENVILLE A few years ago Anna Clark saw a series of paintings on a sandstone cliff face in the Northern Territory. There were characteristic crosshatched images of fat barramundi and turtles, as well as sprayed handprints and several human figures with spears. Next to them was a long gun, painted with white ochre, an unmistakable image of the colonisers. Was this an Indigenous rendering of contact? A work of history? Each piece of history has a message and context that depends on who wrote it and when. Australian history has swirled and contorted over the years: the history wars have embroiled historians, politicians and public commentators alike, while debates over historical fiction have been as divisive. History isn’t just about understanding what happened and why. It also reflects the persuasions, politics and prejudices of its authors. Each iteration of Australia’s national story reveals not only the past in question, but also the guiding concerns and perceptions of each generation of history makers. Making Australian History is bold and inclusive: it catalogues and contextualises changing readings of the past, it examines the increasingly problematic role of historians as national storytellers, and it incorporates the stories of people.

"In a sweep of history, this book brings you what National Geographic has introduced into households for more than a century: the world and all that is in it. Concise narratives, each focused on one event and numbered chronologically from 1 to 1,000, walk you through the story of civilization, from the first evidence of life 3.8 billion years ago to the discovery of the first known planet beyond the solar system that could harbor life as we know it. Accompanied by hundreds of illustrations, events famous, infamous and little known offer insight into how and why the world has grown and changed as it has."--BOOK JACKET.

"A Short History of Australia" is an accurate and informative treatise on Australian history written by an Australian historian and professor of history at the University of Melbourne, Ernest Scott. It is most valuable to the research of the post-settlement years of Sydney, New South Wales, and the other Australian colonies before the establishment of the Federation.