In this lively, provocative collection, some of Australia's leading historians - and a Miles Franklin shortlisted historical novelist - challenge established myths, narratives and 'beautiful lies' about South Australia's past. Some are unmasked as false stories that mask brutal realities, like colonial violence - while others are revealed as simplistic versions of more complex truths. 'Each generation writes history that speaks to its own interests and concerns,' write historians Paul Ashton and Anna Clark. In Foundational Fictions in South Australian History, which grew out of a series of public lectures at the University of Adelaide, an impressive range of contributors suggest different ways in which familiar narratives of South Australia can be interpreted. These essays tap into wider debates, too, about the nature and purpose of history - and the 'history wars' first flamed by John Howard. Stuart Macintyre highlights South Australia's central role in several national events. Humphrey McQueen questions the origins and influence of the money behind South Australia's so-called progressive founding. Lucy Treloar suggests historians can learn from novelists when it comes to understanding the past. Steven Anderson argues that Don Dunstan's achievement in abolishing capital punishment owed much to a historical movement. And Carolyn Collins highlights the role of anti-conscription group Save Our Sons (SOS) in not just ending the Vietnam War, but broadening the appeal of the anti-war movement.

A History of South Australia investigates the state's history from before the arrival of the first European explorers to today.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of capital punishment in the Australian colonies for the very first time. The author illuminates all aspects of the penalty, from shortcomings in execution technique, to the behaviour of the dying criminal, and the antics of the scaffold crowd. Mercy rates, execution numbers, and capital crimes are explored alongside the transition from public to private executions and the push to abolish the death penalty completely. Notions of culture and communication freely pollinate within a conceptual framework of penal change that explains the many transformations the death penalty underwent. A vast array of sources are assembled into one compelling argument that shows how the ‘lesson’ of the gallows was to be safeguarded, refined, and improved at all costs. This concise and engaging work will be a lasting resource for students, scholars, and general readers who want an in-depth understanding of a long feared punishment. Dr. Steven Anderson is a Visiting Research Fellow in the History Department at The University of Adelaide, Australia. His academic research explores the role of capital punishment in the Australian colonies by situating developments in these jurisdictions within global contexts and conceptual debates.

In this lively, provocative collection, some of Australia's leading historians - and a Miles Franklin shortlisted historical novelist - challenge established myths and narratives about South Australia's past. Some are unmasked as false stories that mask brutal realities, while others are revealed as simplistic versions of more complex truths.

Its capital is named after German-born Queen Adelaide, its main street after her English husband, King William IV, so it is not surprising that little is known about South Australia's Irish background. However, the first European to discover Adelaide's River Torrens in 1836 was Cork-born and educated George Kingston, who was deputy surveyor to Colonel Light; the river was named in turn for Derryman Colonel Torrens, Chairman of the South Australian Colonisation Commission. Adelaide's first judge and first police commissioner were immigrants from Kerry and Limerick. Irish South Australia charts Irish settlement from as far north as Pekina, to the state's south-east and Mount Gambier. It follows the diverse fortunes of the Irish-born elite such as George Kingston and Charles Harvey Bagot, as well as doctors, farmers, lawyers, orphans, parliamentarians, pastoralists and publicans who made South Australia their home, with various shades of political and religious beliefs: Anglicans, Catholics, Dissenters, Federationalists, Freemasons, Home Rulers, nationalists, and Orangemen. Irish markers can be found in South Australian archaeology, architecture, geography and history. Some of these are visible in the hundreds of Irish place names that dot the South Australian landscape, such as Clare, Donnybrook, Dublin, Kilkenny, Navan, Rostrevor, Tipperary, and Tralee (as Tarlee). The book's editors are twentieth-century Irish immigrants from Dublin (Dymphna Lonergan), Portadown (Fidelma Breen), Trim (Susan Arthure), and by descent from eight Irish-born (Stephanie James).

This edited collection explores how migrants played a major role in the creation and settlement of the British Empire, by focusing on a series of Australian case studies. Despite their shared experiences of migration and settlement, migrants nonetheless often exhibited distinctive cultural identities, which could be deployed for advantage. Migration established global mobility as a defining feature of the Empire. Ethnicity, class and gender were often powerful determinants of migrant attitudes and behaviour. This volume addresses these considerations, illuminating the complexity and diversity of the British Empire’s global immigration story. Since 1788, the propensity of the populations of Britain and Ireland to immigrate to Australia varied widely, but what this volume highlights is their remarkable diversity in character and impact. The book also presents the opportunities that existed for other immigrant groups to demonstrate their loyalty as members of the (white) Australian community, along with notable exceptions which demonstrated the limits of this inclusivity.

In this comprehensive study, Kenneth Morgan provides an authoritative account of European exploration and discovery in Australia. The book presents a detailed chronological overview of European interests in the Australian continent, from initial speculations about the 'Great Southern Land' to the major hydrographic expeditions of the 19th century. In particular, he analyses the early crossings of the Dutch in the 17th century, the exploits of English 'buccaneer adventurer' William Dampier, the famous voyages of James Cook and Matthew Flinders, and the little-known French annexation of Australia in 1772. Introducing new findings and drawing on the latest in historiographical research, this book situates developments in navigation, nautical astronomy and cartography within the broader contexts of imperial, colonial, and maritime history.

A History of South Australia investigates South Australia's history from before the arrival of the first European maritime explorers to the present day, and examines its distinctive origins as a 'free' settlement. In this compelling and nuanced history, Paul Sendziuk and Robert Foster consider the imprint of people on the land - and vice versa - and offer fresh insights into relations between Indigenous people and the European colonisers. They chart South Australia's economic, political and social development, including the advance and retreat of an interventionist government, the establishment of the state's distinctive socio-political formations, and its relationship to the rest of Australia and the world. The first comprehensive, single-volume history of the state to be published in over fifty years, A History of South Australia is an essential and engaging contribution to our understanding of South Australia's past.

Voted The Times' Book of the Year, Salt Creek is an Australian historical novel about a family pursuing their dreams, duty, and displacement. ‘Salt Creek is a love song to a lost world' The Guardian A story of love, duty, hardship and intolerance through the eyes of a strong woman in 1850s colonial Australia. The comfortable and respectable life Hester Finch now leads in Chichester, England, could not be further from the hardship her family endured on leaving Adelaide for Salt Creek in 1855. Yet she finds her thoughts drawn back to that remote, beautiful and inhospitable outcrop of South Australia and the connections she and her siblings forged there, far from the city society in which they had been raised. Encounters with the few travellers passing along the nearby stock route and the local indigenous people, in particular a boy, Tully, whom Hester's father seeks to educate almost as his own son, would change the fates of the Finches forever; nor would life ever be the same again for those who had long called the area home.

WINNER OF THE BARBARA JEFFERIS AWARD 2020 'Atmospheric...evocative...important.' Tom Keneally Kitty Hawke, the last inhabitant of a dying island sinking into the wind-lashed Chesapeake Bay, has resigned herself to annihilation... Until one night her granddaughter blows ashore in the midst of a storm, desperate, begging for sanctuary. For years, Kitty has kept herself to herself - with only the company of her wolfdog, Girl - unconcerned by the world outside, or perhaps avoiding its worst excesses. But blood cannot be turned away in times like these. And when trouble comes following her granddaughter, no one is more surprised than Kitty to find she will fight to save her as fiercely as her name suggests... A richly imagined and mythic parable of home and kin that cements Lucy Treloar's place as one of our most acclaimed novelists. SHORTLISTED FOR THE PRIME MINISTER'S LITERARY AWARD FOR FICTION 2020 SHORTLISTED FOR NSW PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARD FOR FICTION 2020 SHORTLISTED FOR ABIA LITERARY FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020 LONGLISTED FOR THE VOSS LITERARY AWARD 2020 PRAISE FOR LUCY TRELOAR 'A capacious talent' The Australian 'Deeply moving' The Age 'This lovely, atmospheric book sings of the inherent human drama, rising fragility of home-country and the recurrent need to flee and to protect. The journey told in this book is so evocative it will stay with the reader as an important literary fable of our period of history, in which a fraught world threatens all of us with flight, exile and bewilderment.' Tom Keneally, bestselling author of Schindler's Ark 'A work that is more than powerful: it's transformative.' Australian Book Review 'Disturbing but beautiful' Susan Wyndham