Showing titles in Australia, New Zealand & Oceania

There was a place far worse than Changi - Singapore's Outram Road Gaol. Deprivation here was so extreme that there really was a fate worse than death. Stubborn Buggers is the story of 12 Australian POWs who fought and survived the battle for Malaya, then captivity and slave labour, followed by the unimaginable hardships of Outram Road Gaol.

It is a story of how they dealt with the brutality of the Japanese military police, the feared Kempeitai.

This book is an exposure of some of the difficulties that challenged the promoters, the legislature, and the settlers. It also records the enterprise and tenacity of the powerful community ethic that saved the settlement from total collapse. A core group of settlers at great cost to themselves by continuing to work when their wages defaulted, showed that notwithstanding a lack of financial capital, they could dedicate abundant social capital to the cause.

A job as a deckhand on a shark fishing boat in Bass Strait for law student Chris Howse, begets a quest to keep a journal of his dreams as a way of exploring who he is and what he should do and as an antidote to a seemingly lazy zeitgeist. Via the shark boats, the occupation of a barrister at the Victorian Bar and work as a tram conductor in Melbourne (in that order), his dreams lead him to the heart of Aboriginal Australia at the Katherine Regional Aboriginal Legal Aid Service and subsequently to Darwin and the bush courts of the Northern Territory, acting on behalf of the Aboriginal people.

You’ve probably heard that famous 'Well may we say' speech made by Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam on the day he was sacked by the queen’s representative, or seen the grainy footage from the steps of old parliament house. But do you properly understand the extraordinary events leading up to the most dramatic day in Australian political history? How did The Dismissal actually happen? This audio series takes you inside the highest circles of power to uncover pieces of this story that have never been told before.

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...

Australia is a proud country full of proud people, but exactly what are we proud of? Comedian and history buff Ben Pobjie delves deep into Australia's past and has a good old rummage amongst the nation's personal effects. With wit, perspicacity and a healthily elastic attitude to historical accuracy, the great saga of Australia is unravelled like an old woolly jumper. For anyone who snoozed through history class at school, this is the book to get you all caught up.

According to the Australian government’s website, at the time of first contact with Europeans, there were some 500 distinct Indigenous nations, speaking different languages and following their own religious and cultural practices. As with all human societies, that of the Indigenous Australians is abounding in stories. Stories of how the world came to be the way it is, stories of heroism and perfidy, stories about animals and birds, and stories about love and hate all have parts to play in the wide array of myths, legends, and tales created by Indigenous Australians.

Bruce Pascoe has been described as a ‘living national treasure’ and his work as ‘revelatory’. This volume of his best and most celebrated stories and essays, collected here for the first time, ranges across his long career and explores his enduring fascination with Australia’s landscape, culture, land management and history.

From peacemakers and strategists to explorers and entrepreneurs, the tūpuna of the North are an inspiration to the people of Te Tai Tokerau. This remarkable book by Melinda Webber and Te Kapua O'Connor introduces a new generation to twenty-four of those tūpuna–Nukutawhiti and Hineāmaru, Hongi Hika and Te Ruki Kawiti, and many more. Through whakapapa and kōrero, waiata and pepeha, we learn about their actions, their places, their values, and their aspirations.

A land of almost 3 million square miles has lain since time immemorial on the southern flank of the planet, so isolated that it remained almost entirely outside of European knowledge until 1770. From there, however, the subjugation of Australia would take place rapidly. Within 20 years of the first British settlements being established, the British presence in Terra Australis was secure, and no other major power was likely to mount a challenge. In 1815, Napoleon would be defeated at Waterloo, and soon afterwards would be standing on the barren cliffs of Saint Helena.

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.

A fascinating look at a neglected Allied front in the Southern hemisphere, Instructions for American Servicemen in Australia, 1942 follows its successful predecessors as a captivating historical document of a pivotal era in history.

Tall tales of bushmen, bulldozers and back-country blokes 'It was the mid-1970s and I was about eight, I thought it was completely normal for your old man to pull out a high-powered deer-hunting rifle and fire it through the kitchen door from the breakfast table...' In the 1970s and 80s, Barry...

Before Fake News, there was the real Fake News. There was Truth. Hailed as ‘a fearless exposer of folly, vice and crime’ when it first hit the streets in the 1890s, Truth was later condemned by a High Court Judge as ‘a wretched little paper, reeking of filth, injurious to the health of...

All those great and not so great sporting moments that have made us chuckle, roll and roar with laughter, told in Peter FitzSimons' inimitable style. Putting his unique spin on our sporting life, Peter FitzSimons celebrates the tall tales and true, the outrageous yarns and the knockabout humour from the footy fields, cricket grounds, dressing rooms, bars and commentary boxes of Australia.

For over a century, the Ned Kelly legend has grown and grown. He's become Australia's Robin Hood, and leader of a colonial Irish resistance. How much of the legend is true? This is the real story of the hunt for the Kelly Gang over two long years. As gripping as any police procedural, it is an account of poorly trained officers unfamiliar with the terrain, in pursuit of the most dangerous men in the state. By recounting the story from the perspective of the law, David Dufty gets to the heart of the story and finds answers to many unresolved questions.

The most recent state to join the union, Hawaii is the only one to have once been a royal kingdom. After its discovery by Captain Cook in the late 18th century, Hawaii was fought over by European powers determined to take advantage of its position as the crossroads of the Pacific. The arrival of the first missionaries marked the beginning of the struggle between a native culture with its ancient gods, sexual libertinism, and rites of human sacrifice and the rigid values of the Calvinists.

From the earliest days of European settlement in New Zealand, Maori have struggled to hold on to their land. Tensions began early, arising from disputed land sales. When open conflict between Maori and Imperial forces broke out in the 1840s and 1860s, the struggles only intensified. For both...

Given their stellar legacy, it is little surprise that ANZAC soldiers were used by the British Empire for the several decades, most notably in World War II, ensuring that even after the British Empire declined, the Australian and New Zealand troops’ contributions to the Commonwealth remain a source of pride.

For the 10 years after 1902, when Australia’s suffrage campaigners won the vote for white women, the world looked to this trailblazing young democracy for inspiration. Clare Wright’s epic new history tells the story of that victory - and of Australia’s role at the forefront of the subsequent international struggle - through the eyes of five remarkable players: the redoubtable Vida Goldstein, flamboyant Nellie Martel, indomitable Dora Montefiore, daring Muriel Matters and self-effacing artist Dora Meeson Coates....