There is a CLOSED RESERVE trolley of books available for use in the library.
These books are not to be borrowed. You may scan and photocopy any information.
The Making of Australia by
This is the story of how a struggling convict settlement grew into six dynamic colonies and then the remarkable nation of Australia. Told through the key figures who helped build it into the thriving nation it is today, David Hill once again offers up Australian history at its most entertaining and accessible.
In his latest book, David Hill traces the story of our nation from its European beginnings to Federation. When James Cook landed on the east coast of Australia, the rest of the world had some idea of how empty, vast and wild this continent was, but so little was known of it that in 1788 most people thought it was two lands.
In the subsequent years, its coastline was charted, its interior opened up, and its cities, laws and economy developed. In this riveting, wide-ranging history, David Hill traces how this happened through the key figures who built this country into the thriving nation it is today: from its prescient and fair-minded first governor, Arthur Phillip, to the unpopular William Bligh, the victim of the country's first and only military coup; from the visionary builder and law-maker Lachlan Macquarie to William Wentworth, the son of a convict who secured Australia's first elected parliament; from Henry Parkes, the grand old man of politics who started the fraught process of Federation, to the first prime minister, Edmund Barton. It was Barton who formed the first Australian government just in time for the inaugural celebrations on 1 January 1901, when the nation of Australia was born!
A Concise History of Australia by
Australia is the last continent to be settled by Europeans, but it also sustains a people and a culture tens of thousands years old. For much of the past 200 years the newcomers have sought to replace the old with the new. This book tells how they imposed themselves on the land, and brought technology, institutions and ideas to make it their own. It relates the advance from penal colony to a prosperous free nation and illustrates how, as a nation created by waves of newcomers, the search for binding traditions was long frustrated by the feeling of rootlessness, until it came to terms with its origins. The third edition of this acclaimed book recounts the key factors - social, economic and political - that have shaped modern-day Australia. It covers the rise and fall of the Howard government, the 2007 election and the apology to the stolen generation. More than ever before, Australians draw on the past to understand their future.
The Making of Australia by
In The Making of Australia historian Robert Murray draws on a lifetime's fascination with Australian history and 45 years writing about it to give a clear, concise history of the country. From the coming of the first Aborigines perhaps 60,000 years ago, certainly 40,000, to the election of the Abbott government in 2013, Murray traces the forces that have shaped the nation. In Murray's mainly chronological account the main periods and events in the Australian story are all present. The content is political, social and economic, showing how these strands of Australian life interacted in eras of exploration, in boom periods and depressions and droughts, and in a number of wars. The transition from a convict society to a free one is traced, as is development of representative government and of Federation, the growth of cities, and the careers and influence of key politicians. A notable feature is the systematic treatment given to Aboriginalsettler relations and how they have evolved over more than two centuries. In doing this Murray gives, briefly, both sides of controversies that have led to heated disputes in recent times. This is done in a way that allows the reader to continue to follow developments and modern debates. He is similarly even-handed in his consideration of the White Australia Policy, and the reforms and scandals of the Whitlam era and the Dismissal, and still unresolved questions relating to climate and to refugee policy. Another strength of the book is the manner in which Murray puts developments in a broad international context, as Australians negotiate their heritage and their geographical location. The illustrations include many cartoons from the periods covered, which give added insights into contemporary attitudes.
The Fatal Shore by
The history of the birth of Australia which came out of the suffering and brutality of England's infamous convict transportation system. With 16 pages of illustrations and 3 maps.
The Story of Australia's People by
The vast, ancient land of Australia was settled in two main streams, far apart in time and origin.
The first stream of immigrants came ashore some 50,000 years ago when the islands of Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea were one. The second began to arrive from Europe at the end of the eighteenth century. Each had to come to terms with the land they found, and each had to make sense of the other. It was not – and is still not – an easy relationship, and the story of Australia's people is as complex as it is rich.
The long Aboriginal occupation of Australia witnessed spectacular changes. The rising of the seas isolated the continent and preserved a nomadic way of life as agriculture revolutionised other parts of the world. Over millennia, the Aboriginal people mastered the land's climates, seasons and reserves.
Traditional Aboriginal life came under threat the moment Europeans crossed the world to plant a new society in an unknown land. Australia was to be a land that rewarded, tricked, tantalised and often defeated the new arrivals. The meeting of the two cultures is one of the most difficult meetings in history.
In The Story of Australia's People, Professor Geoffrey Blainey returns to the subject of his most celebrated works on Australian history, Triumph of the Nomads (1975) and A Land Half Won (1980), retelling the story of our history up until 1850 in light of the latest research and archaeological findings. Some of those findings have led him to change his mind about vital aspects of Aboriginal history, examined more fully here than in any other popular history of Australia yet published.
Compelling, groundbreaking and brilliantly readable, The Story of Australia's People is the first installment of an ambitious two-part work, and the culmination of the life work of Australia's most respected historian.
Convicts by
CONVICTS explores some of the issues surrounding the banishment of thousands of convict men, women and children to Australia. It provides discussion and documentation on many transportation-era topics such as convict labour and skills, prisoners' diets, the role of the British military in the penal settlement, the Female Factory system, the difficulties of forming and maintaining a family under the convict system and the bitter struggle to bring convict transportation to this sea-bound continent to an end. With an evocative new cover and including a foreword by the Hon Justice Michael Kirby AC CMG, this publication is among the first to explore the nation's criminal past on a national scale.
Australian Colonists by
In Australian Colonists, the author examines the period beginning with British settlement in 1788, to 1870, the year when the last British soldiers sailed home from the colonies. We read of convicts, currency lads and emigrants. We are shown the holidays the newcomers carried with them from the old world and the new fetes they made as colonists. We see them facing their natural enemies in the land, and having their tranquillity pierced by bushrangers and by rebellious convicts, military officers and gold diggers. We hear with them the sound of distant war. We meet the men they honoured and we read of efforts by poets and orators to turn the Australian experience into history.
Exploration and Settlement in Colonial Australia by
The Europeans who stepped ashore on January 26, 1788 knew next to nothing about the land that was to be their home. Almost immediately they began to explore the region around Sydney Cove, pushing further and further out, uncovering the rich agricultural lands and the hostile, barren landscapes. They found their way across the Great Dividing Range to the vast plains where their sheep would flourish and their crops would grow in abundance. Following closely behind the explorers were the settlers. These were hardy pioneers, each desperate to carve out their own slice of the new colonies. Some prospered, creating a particular type of person who knew the land and its possibilities well, but many failed. This book shows how brave, sometimes foolhardy, explorers opened up the continent to the rest of the world.
Australians by
Now in paperback, the outstanding first volume of acclaimed author Thomas Keneally's major new three-volume history of Australia brings to life the vast range of characters who have formed Australia's national story Convicts and Aborigines, settlers and soldiers, patriots and reformers, bushrangers and gold seekers—it is from their lives and their stories that Tom Keneally has woven a vibrant history to do full justice to the rich and colorful nature of Australia's unique national character. The story begins by looking at European occupation through Aboriginal eyes, moving between the city slums and rural hovels of 18th-century Britain and the shores of Port Jackson. Readers spend time on the low-roofed convict decks of transports and see the bewilderment of the Eora people as they see the first ships of turaga, or "ghost people." They follow the daily round of Bennelong and his wife Barangaroo and the tribulations of warrior Windradyne. Convicts like Solomon Wiseman and John Wilson find their feet and even fortune, while Henry Parkes' arrival as a penniless immigrant gives few clues to the national statesman he was to become. Chinese diggers trek to the goldfields, and revolutionaries like Italian Raffaello Carboni and black American John Joseph bring readers the drama of the Eureka uprising. Tom Keneally has brought to life the high and the low, the convict and the free of early Australian society. This is truly a new history of Australia, by an author of outstanding literary skill and experience, whose own humanity permeates every page.
TASK: You are to complete an extended response outlining the experiences of either: Australian Convicts; Australian Free Settlers; or African Slaves. As well as a two sentence introduction and conclusion, your extended response should include the following three paragraphs:
Investigating Pastoral Settlement in Australia in the Nineteenth Century This weblink is to a pdf produced by the National Museum of Australia.
Colonial Period 1788-1901 This weblink is produced by the Australian War Memorial and covers content on free settlers.
The following links are to videos produced by ABC Splash in accordance with this unit of work.
Convict Life in The Rocks, Sydney
The Understanding Slave Initiative is a British learning project which supports the teaching and learning of transatlantic slavery and its legacies using museum and heritage collections. Content on this website is classified across the following themes: Europe Before Transatlantic Slavery; Africa Before Transatlantic Enslavement; Trade and Commerce; Atlantic Crossing; Plantation Life; Resistance and Rebellion; The Campaign for Abolition; Emancipation; and Legacies. On the left of these links be sure to check out the related case studies and artefacts.
International Slavery Museum This weblink is to the History of the Slave Trade on the International Slavery Museum's website. Follow the links on the left to discover more content.
Enslaved Africans: our truth Follow four Africans on their harrowing journeys into slavery with an interactive feature. The year is 1780 - the year European traders took thousands of Africans into slavery.
Transatlantic Slave Trade This weblink is to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization website. Follow the links on the left to more information on the slave route.
