Includes the Society's Annual report and statement of accounts.

The Sydney Wars tells the history of military engagements between Europeans and Aboriginal Australians – described as ‘this constant sort of war’ by one early colonist – around the greater Sydney region. Telling the story of the first years of colonial Sydney in a new and original way, this provocative book is the first detailed account of the warfare that occurred across the Sydney region from the arrival of a British expedition in 1788 to the last recorded conflict in the area in 1817. The Sydney Wars sheds new light on how British and Aboriginal forces developed military tactics and how the violence played out. Analysing the paramilitary roles of settlers and convicts and the militia defensive systems that were deployed, it shows that white settlers lived in fear, while Indigenous people fought back as their land and resources were taken away. Stephen Gapps details the violent conflict that formed part of a long period of colonial strategic efforts to secure the Sydney basin and, in time, the rest of the continent. ‘A powerful and cogent contribution to one of the most contentious aspects of Australian history: the war between British settlers and the First Nations. The fine detailed research will mean that we will have to radically reassess our understanding of the history of the first thirty years of settlement.’ —Henry Reynolds

This 12-volume set contains titles originally published between 1957 and 1992. International in scope, the set looks at security and military history covering several battles, particularly the first and second world wars. Highlighting the difference between theory and practice, it also explores the people involved in the policy making and strategy of war, and the leaders tasked with carrying those decisions out.

This book is a record of events that happened at Callan Park before 1960. It is a journey of discovery that uncovers facts and manoeuvring not published before. In time dramatic changes did happen; there was a paradigm shift from mothering to encouraging independence. The government’s predominant focus, through its bureaucrats, was on costs, structure, and process. Others had different ideas. The change came through a handful of unlikely people; a female psychiatrist and her friends, two young nurses, one psychopathic doctor, a patient’s brother, a few buck-passing bureaucrats, a newspaper, and a Royal Commission. This story involves the CIA. Sexual favours; one doctor proudly claimed that there were three things necessary for a happy life, “...to eat in style, to drive in style and to f... in style.” The use of spies to gather information for personal gain or write headlines for a paper. Political gameplay and deals. Lies and empire builders, hatchet people and scapegoats. Callan Park is littered with the refuse of dedicated staff who succumbed to suicide, alcoholism, PTSD, depression, and family breakdown—written off as collateral damage. Treatments for psychiatric conditions are continually changing, not necessarily due to scientific advances. A popular treatment in the 1920s was isolation, an aperient in the 1940s and 50s, brain surgery, psychotropic drugs and LSD in the 1950s and 60s. The stage was set to usher in a revolution in the care and treatment of people with a mental health problem and to experience the worse of political intervention. Volume two explores these two concepts.