Books in the Australian History series in order

1860. An Aboriginal labourer named Jim Crow is led to the scaffold of the Maitland Gaol in colonial New South Wales. Among the onlookers is the Scotsman AS Hamilton, who will take bizarre steps in the aftermath of the execution to exhume this young man''s skull. Hamilton is a lecturer who travels the Australian colonies teaching phrenology, a popular science that claims character and intellect can be judged from a person''s head. For Hamilton, Jim Crow is an important prize. A century and a half later, researchers at Museum Victoria want to repatriate Jim Crow and other Aboriginal people from Hamilton''s collection of human remains to their respective communities. But their only clues are damaged labels and skulls. With each new find, more questions emerge. Who was Jim Crow? Why was he executed? And how did he end up so far south in Melbourne? In a compelling and original work of history, Alexandra Roginski leads the reader through her extensive research aimed at finding the person within the museum piece. Reconstructing the narrative of a life and a theft, she crafts a case study that elegantly navigates between legal and Aboriginal history, heritage studies and biography. Searching for Jim Crow is a nuanced story about phrenology, a biased legal system, the aspirations of a new museum, and the dilemmas of a theatrical third wife. It is most importantly a tale of two very different men, collector and collected, one of whom can now return home.

Injustice. Survival. Memory. These are the stories of civilians arrested, deported, and incarcerated in camps at Hay, Orange and Tatura during the Second World War. Over 2500 men came from Britain to Australia on the Dunera, disembarking in Melbourne and Sydney in September 1940. Over 250 men, women and children came from Singapore on the Queen Mary three weeks later. Volume 2 of Dunera Lives follows the paths of a selection of these people, from their early lives before and during the Nazi years, through their arrival in Britain or the Straits Settlements in search of a safe haven, to their arrest as enemy aliens and subsequent deportation and incarceration in camps in Australia. Then, as free men, they start new lives in many parts of the world. What they made of their freedom is striking. This book is a chronicle of injury, endurance, courage, and transcendence.

While the Great War raged, Australians were twice asked to vote on the question of military conscription for overseas service. The recourse to popular referendum on such an issue at such a time was without precedent anywhere in the world. The campaigns precipitated mass mobilisation, bitter argument, a split in the Labor Party, and the fall of a government. The defeat of the proposals was hailed by some as a victory of democracy over militarism, mourned by others as an expression of political disloyalty or a symptom of failed self-government. But while the memory of the conscription campaigns once loomed large, it has increasingly been overshadowed by a preoccupation with the sacrifice and heroism of Australian soldiers -- a preoccupation that has been reinforced during the centennial commemorations. This volume redresses the balance. Across nine chapters, distinguished scholars consider the origins, unfolding, and consequences of the conscription campaigns, comparing local events with experiences in Britain, the United States, and other countries. A corrective to the militarisation of Australian history, it is also a major new exploration of a unique and defining episode in Australias past.

For much of the twentieth century, the National Council of Women of Australia was the peak body representing women to government in Australia, and through the International Council of Women, to the world. This history of NCWA tells the story of mainstream feminism in Australia, of the long struggle for equality at home and at work which is still far from achieved. In these days when women can no longer be imagined as speaking with one voice, and women as a group have no ready access to government, we still need something of the optimistic vision of the leaders of NCWA. Respectable in hat and gloves to the 1970s and beyond, they politely persisted with the truly radical idea that women the world over should be equal with men.

Englishwoman Eilean Giblin arrived in Australia in 1919 with a shipload of war brides, almost certainly the only woman not wearing a wedding ring. An unconventional feminist, Giblin arrived with a commitment to women's rights and social justice, developed through the suffrage movement and the intellectual appeal of left-wing social and political ideas. During the next three decades in three Australian cities, she pursued roles relevant to her feminist and humanitarian ideals. In the small, insular society of Hobart in the 1920s, Eilean Giblin campaigned for the important feminist goal of 'equal citizenship.' She represented Tasmanian women at the International Woman Suffrage Congress in Rome in 1923 and was the first woman appointed to a hospital board in Tasmania. In Melbourne in the 1930s, she led a committee that achieved the long sought goal of a non-denominational university women's college. During World War II, she kept a diary in Canberra that is a unique social record and a powerful witness to the immense human suffering and futility of war. Eilean Giblin was one of a small minority who supported the enemy aliens deported from Britain to Australia in 1940 on the Dunera, undertaking a lone 500 km journey to investigate their remote internment camp. *** "An incredible true story of one woman's persistence and determination to leave the world a better place than she found it, Eilean Giblin is highly recommended especially for high school, college and public library collections." - The Midwest Book Review, Wisconsin Bookwatch, The Biography Shelf, January 2014 *** "Through meticulous research, and lively writing, Clarke has contributed to the body of evidence that shows that feminists were energetically focused on improving the lives of women during that period ['...the apparent lull in feminist activity between the earlier struggle of the suffragists and the efforts of the late 1960s']. It is a welcome addition to a growing number of biographies of hitherto unknown Australian feminists." - Australian Historical Studies, 45, 2014Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?

Living with drought is one of the biggest issues of our times. Climate change scenarios suggest that in the next fifty years global warming will increase both the frequency and severity of these phenomena. Stories of drought are familiar to us, accompanied by images of dead sheep, dry dams, cracked earth, farmers leaving their lands, and rural economic stagnation. Drought is indeed a catastrophe, played out slowly. But as Rebecca Jones reveals in this sensitive account of families living on the Australian land, the story of drought in this driest continent is as much about resilience, adaptation, strength of community, ingenious planning for, and creative responses to, persistent absences of rainfall. The histories of eight farming families, stretching from the 1870s to the 1950s, are related, with a focus on private lives and inner thoughts, revealed by personal diaries. The story is brought up to the present with the authors discussions with contemporary farmers and pastoralists. In greatly enriching our understanding of the human dimensions of drought, Slow Catastrophes provides us with vital resources to face our ecological future.