In the bestselling Black Kettle and Full Moon, master storyteller Geoffrey Blainey takes us on another absorbing journey – a guided tour of a vanished Australia. Covering the years from the first gold rush to World War I. Blainey paints a fascinating picture of how our forebears lived – in the outback, in towns and cities, at sea and on land. He looks at all aspects of daily life, from billycans to brass bands, from ice-making to etiquette, from pipes to pubs. The engaging text is further brought alive by an evocative selection of contemporary illustrations by artists such as Julian Ashton.This is Geoffrey Blainey doing what he does best bringing to life for the modern reader the sighs and sounds and smells of another time.

Pioneering study of the anglophone 'settler boom' in North America, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand between the early 19th and early 20th centuries, looking at what made it the most successful of all such settler revolutions, and how this laid the basis of British and American power in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In Living with Fire historians Tom Griffiths and Christine Hansen trace both the history of fire in the region and the human history of the Steels Creek valley in a series of essays which examine the relationship between people and place. These essays are interspersed with four interludes compiled from material produced by the community.

The contentious science of phrenology once promised insight into character and intellect through external 'reading' of the head. In the transforming settler-colonial landscapes of nineteenth-century Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, popular phrenologists – figures who often hailed from the margins – performed their science of touch and cranial jargon everywhere from mechanics' institutions to public houses. In this compelling work, Alexandra Roginski recounts a history of this everyday practice, exploring how it featured in the fates of people living in, and moving through, the Tasman World. Innovatively drawing on historical newspapers and a network of archives, she traces the careers of a diverse range of popular phrenologists and those they encountered. By analysing the actions at play in scientific episodes through ethnographic, social and cultural history, Roginski considers how this now-discredited science could, in its own day, yield fleeting power and advantage, even against a backdrop of large-scale dispossession and social brittleness.

This new book provides a fresh analysis of Queensland during the colonial era. It provides new insights into Queenslands past. Sir Thomas McIlwraith thundered across Queensland's political and business landscape for 30 years. The three times Premier took bold and audacious actions, and had the energy and motivation to drive not only the colony's economic development, but also his own business enterprises. The biography analyses McIlwraith's progressive beliefs in economic development, European settlement, railways, responsible government, nationalism, federation, republicanism, defence and foreign policy, issues that are as relevant today as they were in the colonial era. The publication narrates the history of one of Queensland great political figures, charting the trials and tribulations of arguably one of the most significant Scotsmen to come to the Antipodes. Modern day historians have presented McIlwraith as a larger-than-life conservative entrepreneur rather than a classical laissez-faire liberal who strived to make Queensland the premier colony of Australia.

This book explores the circus as a site in and through which science and technology are represented in popular culture. Across eight chapters written by leading scholars – from fields as varied as performance and circus studies, art, media and cultural history, and engineering – the book discusses to what extent the engineering of circus and performing bodies can be understood as a strategy to promote awe, how technological inventions have shaped circus and the cultures it helps constitute, and how much of a mutual shaping this is. What kind of cultural and aesthetic effects does engineering in circus contexts achieve? How do technological inventions and innovations impact on the circus? How does the link between circus and technology manifest in representations and interpretations – imaginaries – of the circus in other media and popular culture? Circus, Science and Technology examines the ways circus can provide a versatile frame for interpreting our relationship with technology.

Records and archival arrangements in Australia are globally relevant because Australia's indigenous people represent the oldest living culture in the world, and because modern Australia is an ex-colonial society now heavily multicultural in outlook. Archives and Societal Provenance explores this distinctiveness using the theoretical concept of societal provenance as propounded by Canadian archival scholars led by Dr Tom Nesmith. The book's seventeen essays blend new writing and re-workings of earlier work, comprising the fi rst text to apply a societal provenance perspective to a national setting.After a prologue by Professor Michael Moss entitled A prologue to the afterlife, this title consists of four sections. The first considers historical themes in Australian recordkeeping. The second covers some of the institutions which make the Australian archival story distinctive, such as the Australian War Memorial and prime ministerial libraries. The third discusses the formation of archives. The fourth and final part explores debates surrounding archives in Australia. The book concludes by considering the notion of an archival afterlife. - Presents material from a life's career working and thinking about archives and records and their multiple relationships with history, biography, culture and society - The first book to focus specifically on the Australian archival scene - Covers a wide variety of themes, including: the theoretical concept of the records continuum; census records destruction; Prime Ministerial Libraries; and the documentation of war

In The Legacy of Douglas Grant, John Ramsland vividly re-creates the famous Aborigine's life - now lost in the mists of history. Douglas was born to Indigenous parents and, as an infant, was the sole survivor of a cruel massacre in northern Queensland. As an adult, he was a charismatic speaker on Aboriginal rights, but spoke with a distinct Scottish burr. Why was this so?He was rescued by a kindly Scottish immigrant and brought up and well educated in the Scottish way in Sydney’s leafy suburb of Annandale.Highly successful at school, he became a leading engineering draftsman at Mort's Dock Company in Balmain and, later, a woolclasser at "Belltrees" station near Scone in the Hunter Valley of NSW.With friends from "Belltrees", he joined the 1st AIF. His dangerous encounters on the Western Front and as a prisoner-of-war in Germany are pieced together by the author from many fragments.Douglas bravely faced unpleasant racism in post-war Australia, but never lost his keen sense of humour and scholarly interests.

Hector Crawford – the name remains synonymous with Australian television. The tag line ‘This has been a Crawford Production’ still resonates with generations of Australians who grew up with his cops, the Sullivan family or any of the long line of productions that flowed from his legendary company. His public façade is part of our collective memory but the man behind it, and how his passion and determination changed Australian culture forever is revealed in ‘Hector’. In this compelling account of his life Rozzi Bazzani recounts vividly how, as Crawford’s influence grew, the off screen politics employed by the TV networks and rivals to diminish his company’s power became as exciting as any of his onscreen dramas. ROZZI BAZZANI was a successful singer and studio artist for many years before she turned to writing full time. In addition to spending years of her life researching Hector and Dorothy Crawford’s lives, she co-wrote the musicals Gershwin, The Musical and The King of Corn, and hosted countless radio and TV programs. Ms Bazzani is a graduate of Melbourne University and lives in the Macedon Ranges in Victoria. Winner of the History Publication Award at the 2016 Victorian Community History Awards Shortlisted Ashurst Business Literature prize 2016 ‘Formidable research. Tells the rich story of Crawfords before as well as after television arrived.’ – Jock Given, Media International Australia ‘Sub plots-indicate difficulties of Hector’s sister and his wives forging careers and wanting to marry and have families in the 1940’s–50’s.’ –Susan Lever, literary critic, and general editor of the Cambria Australian Literature Series ‘Detailed, and thoroughly researched – a keyhole into the times.’ – Steven Carroll, Sydney Morning Herald and The Age ‘Entertaining…’ – Tom Gilling, The Australian ‘Narrative style for a general readership’. – Don Gibbs, RHSV ‘A quite incredible book about the life of radio the TV producer Hector Crawford.’ – Melbourne Observer

This book explores the food history of twentieth-century Sydney, Shanghai and Singapore within an Asian Pacific network of flux and flows. It engages with a range of historical perspectives on each city’s food and culinary histories, including colonial culinary legacies, restaurants, cafes, street food, market gardens, supermarkets and cookbooks, examining the exchange of goods and services and how the migration of people to the urban centres informed the social histories of the cities’ foodways in the contexts of culinary nationalism, ethnic identities and globalization. Considering the recent food history of the three cities and its complex narrative of empire, trade networks and migration patterns, this book discusses key aspects of each city’s cuisine in the twentieth century, examining the interwoven threads of colonialism and globalization. ​