This account of European settlement in the modern state of Victoria, Australia, spans developments from the first convict camp established in 1803 on the Bass Strait to the contemporary separation of the district from New South Wales. Aborigines, whalers, adventurers, squatters, speculators, and immigrants figure into this history of Victoria before the gold rush. The stories of such key leaders as John Baton and John Pascoe Fawkner offer insight into the founding of Melbourne, the economic depression and recovery of the 19th century, and the social progress of the 20th century. Details are drawn from primary sources including correspondence between officials in Melbourne, Sydney, and London and newspapers from Batman, Swanston, the Port Phillip Association, and La Trobe.

"The brave independence of the 'roaring days', the camaraderie of the gold fields, jolly diggers on a spree - these are the images that have come down to us of the gold era of the 1850s in Australia and California. But these images were largely shaped decades later, by writers such as Henry Lawson and Bret Harte - they speak of later nostalgia rather than the experience of the time." "In this study of the contemporary response to the discoveries of gold in Victoria and California, David Goodman argues that people at the time were apprehensive about gold rushing, and the kind of society it seemed to prefigure. In the chaos of the gold rushes, individual self-interest seemed to be all that could motivate people to any exertion. And it was only the economic rationalists of the day - those who believed in political economy and its promise, that out of the confusion of individual self-interest would come some sort of social order - who could wholeheartedly endorse the gold rushes as events." "This is a history of the ways people talked about gold. As the first full-length cultural history of the gold rushes on two continents, it examines the meanings of gold at the time, and the narratives which were told about social disruption. It locates the deeper underlying themes in the response to gold. It also looks at the ways in which the dominant later memories of gold were shaped. And it is about national differences, about the construction of distinctive national cultures out of materials common to the British world. This book should be read not only by Australian and American historians but by anyone with an interest in the cultural history of modernity."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The first white intruders in the area north of the Great Divide to the Murray River drained by the Goulburn, Loddon and Wimmera rivers were cattle and sheep ‘overlanders’ from the Sydney-side searching for green pastures in drought-affected NSW and a route to South Australia. Echo 76: THE NORTHERN CONQUEST – Drover’s accounts of overlanding sets the scene for the later Echo 83: REVIEWING THE FAITHFULL MASSACRE, WANGARATTA AND SCOURING THE OVENS. With a military escort, the wife of the Governor of VD Land Lady Jane Franklin wrote travel diaries and letters of her visit to Melbourne and ‘tour’ of Australia Felix in 1839. Sounding 5 introduces the journals of Protector Dredge camping with the Goulburn clans and is followed by Echo 79: THE HUTTON & MUNRO AFFAIRS, being the invasion of Djadja Wurrung country as revealed in Chief Protector Robinson’s journal for January 1840. This leads into Parker’s Mount Franklin Protectorate Station combined with shire history snippets of Maryborough, Avoca and Boort before a section on the Djadja Wurrung who survived colonization. Another group of shire histories cover Kyabram, Shepparton, Murchison, Benalla, Tallangatta, Benambra and Bendigo areas before Ian D Clark’s depiction of the box-ironbark forests and pre-1840s Aboriginal land tenure in north-central Victoria. Included here is an ecological section on ‘fire-stick farming’ replaced by agri-business. The fate of the Goulburn tribe, the Taungurong clans, and pioneer Carter’s early days on the Wimmera lead to echo 87: ORIENTING THE WERGAIA WIMMERA-MALLEE CLANS and then to EBENEZER – archaeology of an Aboriginal Mission Station. Sounding 5 closes with an echo on the bush-life experiences of battler William Kyle and for contrast reveals the dispossession role played by wealthy land speculators in echo 90: BEN BOYD – Royal Yacht Squadron Slaver.

New edition of a guide to Australian football, first published in 1995. Presents a history of the game, discussing the Anzac heritage and football during the Depression as well as outlining rules, strategies and positions. Includes references, a bibliography and an index. The author is foundation dean of arts at VUT. He has written widely on local history, sport and popular culture.