The Ghosts of Roebuck Bay: The 1942 Bombing of Broome, and its Tragic Aftermath by Ian W. Shaw

$32.99 AUD

Category: Broome History

The Japanese attack on Broome is the second most deadly air raid on Australia soil in our history and yet it's almost entirely overlooked. On 3 March 1942, nine Japanese Zero planes strafed the small town planning to destroy the aerodrome and American planes. With no notice, the townsfolk could only put up minimal opposition and in an attack that lasted only an hour, almost one hundred men, women and children lost their lives. Not a single operational aircraft remained in Broome, but the shocking loss of human life can never be truly calculated. The Ghosts of Roebuck Bay tells the story of this tragedy, shining light on a story that has slipped through the cracks of history. A captivating tale of refugees and soldiers, of reputations made and lost, of survival and spirit that resonates to today. ...Show more

Defiant Voices: How Australia’s Female Convicts Challenged Authority 1788–1853 by Babette Smith

$49.99 AUD

Category: History

Between 1788 and 1868, approximately 25,000 women were transported to Australia. For nearly 200 years, there has been a chorus of outrage at their vulgarity, their depravity and their promiscuity. Babette Smith takes the reader beyond this traditional casting of convict women, looking for evidence of th eir humanity and individuality. Certainly some were desperate, overwhelmed by a relentless chain of criminal convictions, drunkenness and despair. But others were heroic, defiant. Smith offers fresh insights: the women's use of sound and voice to harass officials, for example; the extent of their deliberate resistance against authority. This resistance, she argues, has contributed significantly to broader Australian culture. The women's stories begin when their fates are decided by the British Crown. We are introduced to women who stole, set fires, rioted, committed insurance fraud, murdered; mothers of six and 12-year-old girls; women who refused to show deference to the Court, instead giving mock curtsies, 'jumping and capering about'.'A sailor', wrote ship's surgeon Peter Cunningham, was 'more an object of pity than wrath. To see twenty wicked fingers beckoning to him, and twenty wicked eyes winking at him, at one and the same time, no wonder his virtue should sometimes experience a fall!'. Among the hysterical accounts of bad behaviour aboard female convict ships written by concerned reverends, surgeons and others are scenes that show female camaraderie, fun and intrepid spirit. Washing clothes became 'a grand water party'; caught in a storm, women came up on deck to help their fellow convicts haul water; women sang and danced before bed, putting on concerts for each other, 'dressed out in their gayest plumage'. This camaraderie continued in Australia. In Tasmania's overcrowded Cascades factory, the superintendent complained about women 'corrupting each other' in nightly conversation laced with 'obscenity'. Another interpretation is that women sought the comfort of sharing their woes with one another, telling 'war stories' of life on assignment and generally enjoying each other's company in language that was everyday for them.Defiant Voices tells the story of the Crown trying and failing to make its prisoners subservient to a harsh penal system. Convict women challenged the authorities by living in perpetual disobedience, which was often flagrant, sometimes sexual and always loud. They were not all 'the most abandoned prostitutes', but their sexual mores were certainly different from the observers who labelled them. From factory rioters to individuals like Ann Wilson, whose response-'That will not hurt me'-provoked a magistrate to pile punishment after punishment onto her, the women of Defiant Voices fought like tigers and drove men to breaking point with their collective voices, the lewd songs and 'disorderly shouting' resounding from the page. ...Show more

God Before Gugeri Luggers, Trucks & Water Bores & Other Kimberley Stories by GUGERI MICHAEL

$58.99 AUD

Category: History

The Gugeri family have been landmarks in the Kimberley for nearly a century. This book follows four generations of life in the north, from pearling, carrying, Anna Plains station, water boring, Cockatoo Island, oil drilling, wool carting, the Underworld, rockets, fishing, and many incidents and characte rs. Biographies of Doug Blythe, Billie King and details of many other Kimberley personalities are also offered. --Publisher's website. ...Show more

Flight to Fame: Victory in the 1919 Great Air Race, England to Australia by Ross Smith; Peter Monteath (Editor)

$29.99 AUD

Category: History

 'Flight to Fame', a classic adventure story, tells the hair-raising tale of the world-first flight from England to Australia, in the words of the pilot, (Sir) Ross Smith. In March 1919, Australia's prime minister announced a prize of £10,000 for the first successful flight from Great Britain to Austral ia in under 30 days. Late that same year, the victorious pilots, Ross and Keith Smith, landed in Darwin to international acclaim. The 'New York Times' gushed: 'Captain Ross Smith has done a wonderful thing for the prestige of the British Empire. He must be hailed as the foremost living aviator.' Their achievement was the forerunner to the age of international air travel. During the race, Ross and his brother Keith (his co-pilot and navigator) wrote in their diaries daily, recording the journey of their four-man crew in their Vickers Vimy G-EAOU twin-engine plane, its open cockpit exposing them to snow, sleet, hail and unbearable heat. Originally published as '14,000 Miles Through the Air' (1922), Ross Smith's book recounts their danger-ridden, record-breaking journey - a mere 16 years after the Wright brothers first defied gravity for just a few seconds. This richly illustrated edition, published to coincide with the flight's centenary, is introduced and edited by historian Peter Monteath ...Show more

Endeavour Voyage: The Untold Stories of Cook and the First Australians by National Museum of Australia

$49.99 AUD

Category: History

The Story of Cook and 1770 marks the first moment of British contact with the east coast of the continent we now know as Australia. It is one of our nation's origin stories, although remembered very differently by Anglo-Australians and by Indigenous Australians. Endeavour Voyage: The Untold Stories of C ook and the First Australians brings something new to this chapter of our history. It expands our national narrative to encompass the perspectives of Indigenous Australians long absent from the telling of these stories. In making the exhibition and creating this companion book,  the National Museum of Australia worked closely with Indigenous people from communities along the east coast of Australia — people whose ancestors witnessed the events of 1770. This richly illustrated publication provides the back story to the exhibition and offers insights from Megan Davis, Maria Nugent, Angus Trumble, Sarah Engledow and others on both Captain James Cook and the Endeavour voyage, including how our understandings of the events of 1770 have been shaped, in part, by a 250th anniversary year defined by COVID-19. ...Show more

Kosciuszko by Nick Brodie

$29.99 AUD

Category: History

Australia's highest mountain, Mount Kosciuszko, is a dangerous place. Evan Hayes was an ordinary Australian battler. Hardworking, likable. Laurie Seaman was a world-wise American. Adventurous, affluent. When this athletic pair of cross-country skiers disappeared into the wilds of Kosciuszko they left a mystery, and became a sensation. Following their trail, Kosciuszko reveals the story of a young Australia between wars told by one of Australia's leading historical voices.  When Evan and Laurie went missing in August 1928, Australia's Snowy Mountains were remote. Traversing the globe from New York's Long Island to Siberia to Sydney and beyond Charlotte Pass, with shipboard romance and industrial strife along the way, this is the story of two very different people growing to manhood in a world of change. Accompanied by a diverse cast including motor car enthusiasts and aviators, bushmen and horsemen, trackers and journalists, this is the true story of a meeting of peoples and nations. This is history in a land of legend. From the world-famous to the nearly-forgotten, Kosciuszko is more than a mountain, it is a collective heritage, part of Australia's sense of self. Evan and Laurie are guides to this vantage point, to a time and place that deserves to be better known. At Kosciuszko, Australians came together in peacetime. And they did so simply because two mates vanished.   ...Show more

Planting Dreams : Shaping Australian Gardens by Richard Aitken

$49.99 AUD

Category: Plants and Animals

'A garden should ...be just a little too big to keep the whole cultivated. Then it gives it a chance to go a little wild in spots' - Edna Walling, landscape designer Waratah or wattle? Chrysanthemum or rose? Planting Dreams celebrates the artistry and imagination that have shaped Australian gardens. Res pected garden historian Richard Aitken explores the environmental and social influences that have helped produce our unique gardening culture - from Indigenous land management and the earliest European garden at Farm Cove, to the potted plants and besser block screens of mid-twentieth century modernist design and beyond. Drawing on the unparalleled collections of the State Library of New South Wales, Planting Dreams showcases Australian garden making in all its richness and diversity through a stunning and intriguing mix of paintings, sketches, photographs, and prints, from popular culture to high art. 'An elegant look at the miraculous gardening evolution' - Indira Naidoo, author of The Edible Balcony ...Show more

Australia Under Attack: Darwin by Douglas Lockwood

$24.99 AUD

Category: History

The morning of 19 February 1942 saw the grim face of war on Australian shores for the first time as a Japanese task force attacked Darwin. A correspondent for the Melbourne Herald at the time of the bombings, author Douglas Lockwood witnessed the event with his own eyes.

Many Maps - Charting Two Cultures: First Nations Australians and European Settlers in Western Australia by Bill Bunbury; Jenny Bunbury

$29.99 AUD

Category: History

The title Many Maps, Charting Two Cultures, looks at the way two contrasting societies often misunderstood each other in the western third of Australia. Maps can be drawn and interpreted in different ways. It is possible to map a path through life, find a way through a forest, traverse a desert or chart a sense of self and guide one's relationship to the natural world. Australia's First Nations mapped their world in terms of a spiritual and environmental relationship to country and an animate sense of being. The maps in European heads often explored ways to obtain wealth from the Australian earth.  Many Maps traces both misunderstandings, and sometimes sensitive understandings of land and culture in a continent that we both inhabit. ...Show more

Northern Patrol

$32.99 AUD

Category: History

An Australian Saga. R.H Pilmer I have travelled many hundreds of miles under the Leadership of the Author both with camel and horse equipment in parts of Western Australia little frequented by white men David Hunter Commissioner of Police 1937

Okinawans Reaching Australia by John Lamb

$49.99 AUD

Category: History

Pioneer Women of the Outback Bush by Isaacs, Jennifer

$40.00 AUD

Category: History

This book is a fascinating insight into the daily lives of women from a variety of backgrounds - including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Chinese, Indian and German woman. Pioneer Women provides a unique portrait of how women set up and ran their remote bush hom es and the work they did outside the home - shearing, droving, managing properties, teaching and governessing. Includes a wealth of photographs contributed by museums and descendants of many of the pioneers. ...Show more