The Australian Historical Association is urging all its members to sign an important Open Letter on the bushfires, drought, and climate change. The letter and link for AHA members to sign. Hundreds have signed already. The letter is a thoughtful…
Open letter from Australian historians on climate change, drought and bushfires: an important statement
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Taking the long view of today’s bushfire crisis: miscellaneous sources
Update 17 January 2020: Daniel May in Inside Story. To burn or not to burn is the wrong question to ask. Update 16 January 2020: Kevin Tolhurst in The Conversation on the findings of previous bushfire inquiries – over fifty…
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Broome, Richard, Charles Fahey, Andrea Gaynor, Katie Holmes: Mallee Country: Land, People, History
Richard Broome, Charles Fahey, Andrea Gaynor, Katie Holmes Mallee Country: Land, People, History, Monash University Publishing, Melbourne, 2019 Mallee Country tells the powerful history of mallee lands and people across southern Australia from Deep Time to the present. Carefully shaped and…
Myrtle, John: Weathering the Mallee over nearly two centuries
John Myrtle* ‘Weathering the Mallee over nearly two centuries’, Honest History, 8 November 2019 John Myrtle reviews Mallee Country: Land, People, History by Richard Broome, Charles Fahey, Andrea Gaynor and Katie Holmes Mallee Country records a project on the ecological…
Pascoe, Bruce: Salt: Selected Stories and Essays
Bruce Pascoe Salt: Selected Stories and Essays, Black Inc, Melbourne, 2019 A collection of stories and essays by the award-winning author of Dark Emu, showcasing his shimmering genius across a lifetime of work. This volume of Bruce Pascoe’s best and most…
Bell, Diane: Read and savour the salt of Bruce Pascoe’s stories and essays of our land
Diane Bell* ‘Read and savour the salt of Bruce Pascoe’s stories and essays of our land’, Honest History, 1 November 2019 Diane Bell reviews Bruce Pascoe’s Salt: Selected Stories and Essays Bruce Pascoe’s dedication of Salt, ‘For the three rivers…
Lawrence, Susan & Peter Davies: Sludge: Disaster on Victoria’s Goldfields
Susan Lawrence & Peter Davies Sludge: Disaster on Victoria’s Goldfields, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2019 Everyone knows gold made Victoria rich. But did you know gold mining was disastrous for the land, engulfing it in floods of sand, gravel and silt…
Beggs-Sunter, Anne: Water and gold: a book about the environmental impact of mining
Anne Beggs-Sunter* ‘Water and gold: a book about the environmental impact of mining’, Honest History, 22 October 2019 Anne Beggs-Sunter reviews Sludge: Disaster on Victoria’s Goldfields, by Susan Lawrence and Peter Davies Sludge – a very unpromising title for a…
Macklin, Robert: Castaway: The Extraordinary Survival story of Narcisse Pelletier, a Young French Cabin Boy Shipwrecked on Cape York in 1858
Robert Macklin Castaway: The Extraordinary Survival story of Narcisse Pelletier, a Young French Cabin Boy Shipwrecked on Cape York in 1858, Hachette, Sydney, 2019 In 1858, fourteen-year-old French cabin boy Narcisse Pelletier was aboard the trader Saint-Paul when it was wrecked off…
Flora, Steve: Robert Macklin’s Castaway is an interesting and informative read in a modest-sized, though wide-ranging, book
Steve Flora* ‘Robert Macklin’s Castaway is an interesting and informative read in a modest-sized, though wide-ranging, book’, Honest History, 10 September 2019 Steve Flora reviews Castaway: The Extraordinary Survival story of Narcisse Pelletier, a Young French Cabin Boy Shipwrecked on…
Shield, John: The soldier settlers of Ubobo, south-west of Gladstone, have left only memories
John Shield* ‘The soldier settlers of Ubobo, south-west of Gladstone, have left only memories’, Honest History, 21 July 2019 On 13 August 1929 the Ubobo Branch of the Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial League of Australia (RSSILA) held its annual…
Martin, Richard J.: The Gulf Country: The Story of People and Place in Outback Queensland
Richard J. Martin The Gulf Country: The Story of People and Place in Outback Queensland, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2019; electronic edition available With its great rivers, grassy plains and mangrove-fringed coastline, Queensland’s remote Gulf Country is rich and fertile…
Megarrity, Lyndon: Book on Queensland’s Gulf Country shows how people have lived and thrived in isolated communities
Lyndon Megarrity* ‘Book on Queensland’s Gulf Country shows how people have lived and thrived in isolated communities’, Honest History, 20 May 2019 Lyndon Megarrity reviews Richard J. Martin, The Gulf Country: The Story of People and Place in Outback Queensland…
Hardie, Elsbeth: The Passage of the Damned: What Happened to the Men and Women of the Lady Shore Mutiny
Elsbeth Hardie The Passage of the Damned: What Happened to the Men and Women of the Lady Shore Mutiny, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2019 In an extraordinary move, in 1797, the British government pressed a small group of French and…
Flora, Steve: Story of 1797 mutiny is a work in search of an identity
Steve Flora* ‘Story of 1797 mutiny is a work in search of an identity’, Honest History, 13 May 2019 updated Steve Flora reviews Elsbeth Hardie’s The Passage of the Damned: What Happened to the Men and Women of the Lady…
Fraser, Peg: Black Saturday: Not the End of the Story
Peg Fraser Black Saturday: Not the End of the Story, Monash University Publishing, Melbourne, 2018 The Victorian bushfires of February 2009 captured the attention of all Australians and made headlines around the world. One hundred and seventy-three people lost their…
Stanley, Peter: Black Saturday: a satisfying story about a profoundly important event
Peter Stanley* ‘Black Saturday: a satisfying story about a profoundly important event’, Honest History, 28 February 2019 Peter Stanley reviews Peg Fraser’s Black Saturday: Not the End of the Story While reading Dr Peg Fraser’s insightful and illuminating Black Saturday…
Buchan, Bruce: Cooking the books
Bruce Buchan ‘Cooking the books’, Inside Story, 14 June 2018 Looks at a British Library exhibition on Cook and contrasts it with recent Australian announcements about celebrating the 250th anniversary of Cook’s 1770 voyage. Buchan draws this conclusion. Not long…
Molony, John: Captain James Cook: Claiming the Great South Land
John Molony Captain James Cook: Claiming the Great South Land, Connor Court, Brisbane, 2016 In a unique and compelling matching of Cook’s journal entries with the journals of others on the voyage, including Joseph Banks, Sydney Parkinson and James Matra,…
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Myrtle, John: Another look at Cook
John Myrtle ‘Another look at Cook’, Honest History, 12 December 2017 John Myrtle* reviews Captain James Cook: Claiming the Great South Land by John Molony In mid-2018 the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich near London will be launching Pacific Encounters,…
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Collins, Alan, Bo Yang & Grant Cox: What’s Australia made of? Geologically, it depends on the state you’re in
Alan Collins, Bo Yang & Grant Cox ‘What’s Australia made of? Geologically, it depends on the state you’re in‘, The Conversation, 21 November 2017 Tracks back billions of years to show that the western part of Australia is older than…
Jones, Rebecca: Slow Catastrophes: Living with Drought in Australia
Rebecca Jones Slow Catastrophes: Living with Drought in Australia, Monash University Publishing, Melbourne, 2017 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…
Clark, Anna: Plenty of fish in the sea? Not necessarily, as history shows
Anna Clark ‘Plenty of fish in the sea? Not necessarily, as history shows‘, The Conversation, 3 October 2017 A look at the history of fishing in Australia, from pre-1788 and going back thousands of years, to now, with draft plans…
Cryle, Denis: Behind the Legend: The Many Worlds of Charles Todd
Denis Cryle Behind the Legend: The Many Worlds of Charles Todd, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2017 “Telegraph” Todd [the man behind the Overland Telegraph through Central Australia] became a legend in his own lifetime for introducing Australian colonists to a…
Abbott, Derek: Worlds behind the legend of Charles Todd, the Overland Telegraph man (review of Cryle)
Derek Abbott* ‘Worlds behind the legend of Charles Todd, the Overland Telegraph man’ (review of Cryle), Honest History, 19 September 2017 Derek Abbott reviews Denis Cryle’s Behind the Legend: the Many Worlds of Charles Todd Denis Cryle is to be…
Talking about The Conversation: five easy pieces in just a few days
Update 22 June 2017: and, lo, just as we ruled a line and settled on the headline, The Conversation came good again with: three charts on looming differential access to the National Broadband Network (digital divide, another form of inequality);…
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Henley, Ben & Nerilie Abram: The three-minute story of 800,000 years of climate change with a sting in the tail
Ben Henley & Nerilie Abram ‘The three-minute story of 800,000 years of climate change with a sting in the tail‘, The Conversation, 13 June 2017 Includes a short video which puts recent climate change and carbon dioxide emissions into the context…
Munday, Bruce: Those Wild Rabbits: How They Shaped Australia
Bruce Munday Those Wild Rabbits: How They Shaped Australia, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 2017 Those Wild Rabbits highlights not only the damage done but also Australia’s missed opportunities for real rabbit control. It recognises the bush’s paradoxical love affair with an…
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Myrtle, John: How wild rabbits shaped the wide brown land (review of Munday)
John Myrtle* ‘How wild rabbits shaped the wide brown land’, Honest History, 13 June 2017 John Myrtle reviews Those Wild Rabbits: How They Shaped Australia by Bruce Munday It is strange but undoubtedly the fact that animals brought from Europe…
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Reed, Liz & Lee Arnold: Naracoorte, where half a million years of biodiversity and climate history are trapped in caves
Liz Reed & Lee Arnold ‘Naracoorte, where half a million years of biodiversity and climate history are trapped in caves‘, The Conversation, 6 June 2017 About the Naracoorte Caves in South Australia, one of the world’s best fossil sites, where…
Hudson, Marc: Who tilts at windmills? Explaining hostility to renewables
Marc Hudson ‘Who tilts at windmills? Explaining hostility to renewables‘, The Conversation, 29 May 2017 Looks at the history of why Australian policy makers have opposed solar and wind energy options. In a search for explanations for this, my paper…
Lever, Susan: Reaping what was sown
Susan Lever ‘Reaping what was sown‘, Inside Story, 4 May 2017 A review of the book Like Nothing on this Earth: A Literary History of the Wheatbelt by Tony Hughes-d’Aeth. The book examines the clearing of land in Western Australia…
Two-thirds of Great Barrier Reef hit by back-to-back mass coral bleaching
Media release today from James Cook University, Townsville, widely reported in other media. For the second time in just 12 months, scientists have recorded severe coral bleaching across huge tracts of the Great Barrier Reef after completing aerial surveys along…
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Gergis, Joelle: Northern NSW is no stranger to floods, but this one was different
Joelle Gergis ‘Northern NSW is no stranger to floods, but this one was different‘, The Conversation, 7 April 2017 Looks at the factors behind the most recent flood and compares them with some historical examples, notably 1954 and 1974. We…
Six snippets of The Conversation (six years old this week) have echoes in The Honest History Book (now available)
Honest History was pleased to send happy sixth birthday wishes to The Conversation; it has been a valuable resource for our website. There are other connections also: some articles in The Conversation this week explore themes which are also evident…
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Cooper, Alan, Ray Tobler & Wolfgang Haak: DNA reveals Aboriginal people had a long and settled connection to country
Alan Cooper, Ray Tobler & Wolfgang Haak ‘DNA reveals Aboriginal people had a long and settled connection to country‘, Guardian Australia, 9 March 2017 Summarises research reported in Nature (behind expensive paywall) that used historic hair samples collected from Aboriginal people…
King, Andrew, David Karoly et al: Climate change’s signature was writ large on Australia’s crazy summer of 2017
Andrew King, David Karoly, Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, Matthew Hale, Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick ‘Climate change’s signature was writ large on Australia’s crazy summer of 2017‘, The Conversation, 2 March 2017 updated Summarises analysis that links record summer heat to the effects…
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Robertson, Joshua: $5bn used to safeguard Murray-Darling from drought largely in vain, says study
Joshua Robertson ‘$5bn used to safeguard Murray-Darling from drought largely in vain, says study‘, Guardian Australia, 2 March 2017 Reports on the political aspects of water planning in Australia. The [ANU] report, Water Reform and Planning in the Murray-Darling Basin,…
Ashcroft, Linden, David Karoly & Joelle Gergis: Delving through settlers’ diaries can reveal Australia’s colonial-era climate
Linden Ashcroft, David Karoly & Joelle Gergis ‘Delving through settlers’ diaries can reveal Australia’s colonial-era climate‘, The Conversation, 10 February 2017 ‘To really understand climate change’, the authors say, ‘we need to look at the way the climate behaves over…
Keeping up with The Conversation: wide selection as Parliament returns
Whether your problem is the return to school last week or the return of Federal Parliament this week, President Trump being erratic or AFLW making a splash, if one needs distractions there seems to be more to read at the…
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O’Callaghan, Judith, Paul Hogben & Robert Freestone, eds: Sydney’s Martin Place: A Cultural and Design History
Judith O’Callaghan, Paul Hogben & Robert Freestone, eds Sydney’s Martin Place: A Cultural and Design History, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2016 The history of one of Australia’s most iconic urban precincts, from bustling colonial thoroughfare to imposing address for global…
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Crocket, Grahame: Centre of Sydney Town (review of O’Callaghan, Hogben & Freestone, eds)
Grahame Crocket* ‘Centre of Sydney Town’, Honest History, 7 February 2017 Grahame Crocket reviews Sydney’s Martin Place: A Cultural and Design History, edited by Judith O’Callaghan, Paul Hogben and Robert Freestone Why Sydney’s Martin Place has not been the subject…
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Bongiorno, Frank: This storied land
Frank Bongiorno ‘This storied land‘, The Monthly, February 2017 An essay riffing off Mark McKenna’s book, From the Edge: Australia’s Lost Histories, which tells four stories of encounters between Indigenous and settler Australians. Bongiorno divides histories of Australia into pre-…
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Tan, Monica: I’m dizzily in love with Australia. Patriotism shouldn’t be reserved for the right
Monica Tan ‘I’m dizzily in love with Australia. Patriotism shouldn’t be reserved for the right‘, Guardian Australia, 1 February 2017 Reflection following a trip around Australia. Attracted more than 500 comments pro and con. Patriotism has become a touchy subject…
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Hochman, Zvi, David L. Gobbett & Heidi Horan: Changing climate has stalled Australian wheat yields: study
Zvi Hochman, David L. Gobbett & Heidi Horan ‘Changing climate has stalled Australian wheat yields: study‘, The Conversation, 25 January 2017 In this article, CSIRO researchers take a historical view of Australian wheat yields, concentrating particularly on the years since 1990.…
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Evans, Kevin: Koalas are at the centre of a perfect storm. The species is slipping away
Kevin Evans ‘Koalas are at the centre of a perfect storm. The species is slipping away‘, Guardian Australia, 16 January 2017 Climate change threatens koala habitat, adding to their usual problems with fire and drought. But more to the point…
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Croke, Jacky: Old floods show Brisbane’s next big wet might be closer than we think
Jacky Croke ‘Old floods show Brisbane’s next big wet might be closer than we think‘, The Conversation, 10 January 2017 Historical view of flooding in the Brisbane area. It links to more detailed material done under an Australian Research Council…
Trewin, Blair: Australia’s climate in 2016 – a year of two halves as El Niño unwound
Blair Trewin ‘Australia’s climate in 2016 – a year of two halves as El Niño unwound‘, The Conversation, 5 January 2017 Places climate records of the year just past into their historical context: overall temperatures the fourth highest on record;…
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Myrtle, John: Review note: Antipodes: In Search of the Southern Continent by Avan Judd Stallard
John Myrtle* ‘Review note: Antipodes: In Search of the Southern Continent by Avan Judd Stallard’, Honest History, 13 December 2016 According to the Macquarie Dictionary, Terra Australia Incognita was the mass of land stretching across much of the south of…
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Snell, Ted: Long before Europeans, traders came here from the north and art tells the story
Snell, Ted ‘Long before Europeans, traders came here from the north and art tells the story‘, The Conversation, 24 November 2016 Indigenous oral tradition and bark and rock paintings have recorded the early visits of Macassan trepangers to northern Australia.…
Hamilton, Clive: What do we want? Charting the rise and fall of protest in Australia
Hamilton, Clive ‘What do we want? Charting the rise and fall of protest in Australia‘, The Conversation, 17 November 2016 updated Discusses the author’s new book, What Do We Want? The Story of Protest in Australia, just published. Traces the…
Catching up with The Conversation: five recent items on climate
The Conversation has become a well-used and high quality media outlet in Australia. It presents topical, usually succinct pieces by writers who have at least a nominal academic affiliation. It now has overseas editions. Its rules about reposting are generous…
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Myrtle, John: Review note: Great Australian Journeys by Graham Seal
Myrtle, John* ‘Review note: Great Australian Journeys by Graham Seal’, Honest History, 8 November 2016 Graham Seal, Professor of Folklore at Curtin University, is a well-published author of popular works on Australian history. His latest book is Great Australian Journeys:…
Braganza, Karl & Steve Rintoul: State of the Climate 2016: Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO
Braganza, Karl & Steve Rintoul ‘State of the Climate 2016: Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO‘, The Conversation, 27 October 2016 Summarises the main points in the report and provides links to it, to a summary video and the portal Climate…
Brophy, Kevin: Friday essay: Judith Wright in a new light
Brophy, Kevin ‘Friday essay: Judith Wright in a new light‘, The Conversation, 28 October 2016 Everyone loves Judith Wright [Brophy begins]. Her poetry was consistently brilliant and stunningly lyrical. She opened Australian eyes in the 1940s to the possibilities of…
Nash, Joshua: Buggered if I know where I am: the stories behind Australia’s weird and wonderful place names
Nash, Joshua ‘Buggered if I know where I am: the stories behind Australia’s weird and wonderful place names‘, The Conversation, 24 October 2016 Just what it says, in case you always wanted to know about Chinamans Knob, Governors Knob, Iron…
Davison, Graeme: Distance and destiny (about Blainey’s Tyranny of Distance)
Davison, Graeme ‘Distance and destiny‘, Inside Story, 28 July 2016 Reflection on the 50th anniversary of the publication of Geoffrey Blainey’s The Tyranny of Distance. The Tyranny of Distance changed our map of the Australian past. It was a bestseller…
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Halford, James: Reading three great southern lands: from the outback to the pampa and the karoo
Halford, James ‘Reading three great southern lands: from the outback to the pampa and the karoo‘, The Conversation, 11 July 2016 The common threads of the literature of Argentina, Australia and South Africa as presented in the work of a…
Nicholls, Christine Judith & Dany Breelle: The voyage of Nicolas Baudin and ‘art in the service of science’
Nicholls, Christine Judith & Dany Breelle ‘Friday essay: The voyage of Nicolas Baudin and “art in the service of science”‘, The Conversation, 7 July 2016 On Baudin’s voyage commencing in 1800 to what is now Australia, during which he dealt…
Daley, Paul: Indigenous songlines: a beautiful way to think about the confluence of story and time
Daley, Paul ‘Indigenous songlines: a beautiful way to think about the confluence of story and time‘, Guardian Australia, 4 July 2016 For NAIDOC Week (3-10 July), a sensitive introduction (by a whitefeller) to songlines, a central part of Indigenous Australian…
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Midwinter (almost) Miscellany from Honest History (info-brokers to the gentry)
Illness has cut a swathe through the Honest History engine-room this week so the remaining HH elves have been forced to bundle some useful links together below. The bundling exercise also warmed us up in an unusually cold Canberra early…
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Honest History Miscellany of the June Long Weekend
Some of our Honest History software fell over late on Thursday last week. Thanks to some sleuthing by our indefatigable Webmaster we got it back on track by late Saturday but it meant there was a buildup of new posts…
van Otterloo, Jozua: Australia’s volcanic history is a lot more recent than you think
van Otterloo, Jozua ‘Australia’s volcanic history is a lot more recent than you think‘, The Conversation, 25 May 2016 The most recent volcanic activity in Australia was around 5000 years ago. More than 400 volcanoes have been identified in south-eastern…
Pascoe, Bruce: Dark Emu: Black Seeds, Agriculture or Accident?
Bruce Pascoe Dark Emu: Black Seeds, Agriculture or Accident? Magabala Books, Broome WA, 2014 (and later editions) Dark Emu argues for a reconsideration of the “hunter-gatherer” tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians and attempts to rebut the colonial myths that have…
Slezak, Michael: Historical rainfall record shows water management flawed
Slezak, Michael ‘Water management flawed owing to vastly underestimated drought risk, study finds‘, Guardian Australia, 11 May 2016 updated Drought and flood risk in New South Wales is vastly underestimated, with weather in the past 100 years being unusually stable…
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ABC Radio National Earshot: Hot summer land: anticipation, fires, rivers
ABC Radio National ‘Hot summer land [three parts], Earshot, 18-20 April 2016 updated Part one: anticipation; part two: fires; part three: rivers. Listeners’ stories and guest commentary (host Kirsti Melville) on how the Australian landscape changed during the three months…
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Daley, Paul: Australian patriotism: it’s not about war, it’s in our love of the land
Paul Daley ‘Australian patriotism: it’s not about war, it’s in our love of the land‘, Guardian Australia, 7 May 2016 updated Daley rejects violent metaphors for election campaigns and suggests patriotism, always evoked at such times, is more subtle and…
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Miles, Elaine, et al.: This summer’s sea temperatures were the hottest on record for Australia
Miles, Elaine, Claire Spillman, David Jones & David Walland ‘This summer’s sea temperatures were the hottest on record for Australia: here’s why‘, The Conversation, 5 April 2016 updated Recent update on the Great Barrier Reef 20, 28 April 2016, May,…
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Online gem No. 7: Antarctica frozen in Canberra street names
Online gem No.7: Antarctica frozen in Canberra street names (26 February 2016) Suburbs and streets in the Australian Capital Territory acknowledge and commemorate the role of individuals or reflect the diverse nature of Australian culture. Mawson as a suburb is…
Linking 40 000 Australian years: Honest History miscellany
Wiradjuri heritage journalist, Stan Grant, launched his book, Talking to My Country, at the National Press Club. Details about the book are here. Guardian Australia carried extracts from the book. We know this history, my people. This is a living…
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Nicholas, Frank: Charles Darwin’s evolutionary revelation in Australia
Nicholas, Frank ‘Charles Darwin’s evolutionary revelation in Australia‘, The Conversation, 12 January 2016 Looks at the contributions of Darwin’s work in Australia (New South Wales, Tasmania and Western Australia) in 1836 to what ultimately became his famous work On the…
Baker, Patrick, Chris Turney & Jonathan Palmer: Australia’s climate history
Baker, Patrick, Chris Turney & Jonathan Palmer ‘500 years of drought and flood: trees and corals reveal Australia’s climate history‘, The Conversation, 4 December 2015 The authors have published in a recent paper the most detailed record of Australia’s droughts…
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Stayner, Guy: 70 000 photos of 1970s Victoria going online
Stayner, Guy ‘State Library makes public up to 70,000 never-seen photos of Melbourne and country Victoria‘, ABC News, 18 November 2015 The SLV has begun digitising rolls of film taken of streets, houses and other buildings in Melbourne and rural…
Bottoms, Timothy: Cairns: city of the South Pacific
Bottoms, Timothy Cairns: City of the South Pacific: a History 1770-1995, Bunu Bunu Press, Cairns, 2015 The township of Cairns was established in the wake of the Palmer River Gold rush of 1873, and established as a port for the…
Wilkie, Benjamin: continent of smoke
Wilkie, Benjamin ‘This continent of smoke‘, Meanjin, 3 November 2015 The article looks back from an impending El Nino episode to the historic effects of fire on Victoria’s Western District. In some parts–and it’s a story replicated across the country–the…
Hudson, Marc: 25 years of emissions cuts history
Hudson, Marc ‘25 years ago the Australian government promised deep emissions cuts, and yet here we still are‘, The Conversation, 9 October 2015 Looks at ‘the largely forgotten history’ of the 25 years since the then minister brought Australia’s first…
Diamond, Marion: street names and naming conventions
Diamond, Marion ‘Street names and naming conventions‘, Historians are Past Caring, 20 August 2015 Whimsical but well-informed piece about how our capital city streets came to get the names they bear today. Street names say a lot about who and…
Jones, Ann: 100 years of Australian lighthouses
Jones, Ann ‘Australian lighthouses in the spotlight‘, ABC Radio National ‘Off Track’, 6 July 2015 (audio and story) Australia’s first lighthouse (Macquarie Lighthouse in Sydney) lit up in 1818 (though it was rebuilt later) but 2015 marks the centenary of…
Buckley, Ian: learning from Adam Smith
Buckley, Ian ‘Learning from Adam Smith: help at hand today‘, Honest History, 9 June 2015 Buckley contests the view that Adam Smith argued ‘that unalloyed selfishness aimed solely at the maximisation of production, trade and profit is in the best…
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Pembroke, Michael: Arthur Phillip
Pembroke, Michael Arthur Phillip: Sailor, Mercenary, Governor, Spy, Hardie Grant, Melbourne & London, 2013 This is not just a book about wooden ships and big guns, although they certainly feature. It is a story of privation and ambition, of wealthy…
Steffen, Will: Climate change and extreme heat
Steffen, Will Quantifying the Effect of Climate Change on Extreme Heat in Australia, Climate Council of Australia, Sydney, 2015 Key findings: climate change is making Australia hotter; climate change has significantly worsened recent extreme heat events in Australia; the case…
Honest History list: taking pictures
There have been a few interesting items recently on photography and things on screens so we cobbled together this list along with a few things that were on the site already. It’s the sort of thing we do at Honest…
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Donegan, John: Australian digital montages 1914-2014
Donegan, John ‘Australian transitions 1914-2014: Digital montages from pre-war cities to a 21st century nation‘, ABC News, 29 July 2014 Montages of 1914 scenes with shots of the same locations in 2014 in seven Australian cities and nationally. Dozens of…
Dyer, Steve: Anzac Christmas at St Paul’s
Dyer, Steve ‘Anzac Christmas at St Paul’s, Melbourne‘, Honest History, 3 March 2015 A short article about two pieces of art, done almost a century apart, which combine Anzac and Christmas themes. There is also an intervention by bushfire. Steve…
Anzac Christmas at St Paul’s
Steve Dyer ‘Anzac Christmas at St Paul’s, Melbourne’, Honest History, 3 March 2015 Just before Christmas last year, in the entrance to St Paul’s Anglican Cathedral in Melbourne, there sat a nativity scene by artist Jan McLellan Rizzo. It was…
Ford, Caroline: Sydney beaches
Ford, Caroline Sydney Beaches: A History, NewSouth, Sydney, 2014 The book looks at the way Sydney’s beaches came to be as they are: how they came to be public land treasured by bathers and surfers, but not places to set…
Bengsen, Andrew: Rabbits of Christmas past
Bengsen, Andrew ‘The rabbits of Christmas past: a present that backfired for Australia‘, The Conversation, 22 December 2014 Examines the history of rabbits in Australia from their introduction in 1859 to now, when they are present in 70 per cent…
Mitchell, Rose & Andrew Janes, ed.: Maps: their untold stories
Mitchell, Rose & Andrew Janes, ed. Maps: their Untold Stories: Map Treasures from the National Archives, Bloomsbury, London, 2014 A map is a snapshot of a place, a city, a nation or even the world at a given point in…
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History is about maps
‘History is about maps’, Honest History, 2 December 2014 Steve Flora reviews Maps: their Untold Stories: Map Treasures from the National Archives, edited by Rose Mitchell and Andrew Janes, and notes some other recent cartographical arrivals It used to be…
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Watson, Don: The Bush
Watson, Don The Bush: Travels in the Heart of Australia, Penguin, Melbourne, 2014; e-book available Most Australians live in cities and cling to the coastal fringe, yet our sense of what an Australian is – or should be – is…
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Henry, Ken: Public policy and economic reform
Henry, Ken ‘Public policy resilience and the reform narrative‘, ANU News, 18 September 2014 A lecture delivered at the Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU, 16 September 2014. The lecture focuses on two questions: how should one assess the wealth…
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Clark, Ian D. et al, ed.: Indigenous and minority place names
Clark, Ian D, Luise Hercus & Laura Kostanski, ed., Indigenous and Minority Place Names: Australian and International Perspectives, Australian National University Press, Canberra, 2014; print and downloadable editions, including print on demand This book showcases current research into Indigenous and…
Water, water not everywhere
Talking of what has shaped our national destiny (as we inevitably do when centenaries loom), H2O deserves a close look. Plunging into Michael Cathcart’s 2010 book The Water Dreamers we find a quote from German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (‘History…
The land speaks
To understand our history, you need to understand the land. Individuals, cultures, persistent ideologies (substantiated or not) and the innate nature of humanity are major forces too. But the land itself is underestimated. Jackie French, Let the Land Speak: A…
Brutality at Swan River, 1837
It is a truth which is painful to relate, that in the 19th Century Englishmen and protestants, shall be so cruel and hunt after the aborigines like after a game, the innocent child is not spared; they are shot in…
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Subversive suburbs
‘So – to sum up – you don’t have to be a mindless conformist to choose suburban life. Most of the best poets and painters and inventors and protesters choose it too.’ (Hugh Stretton, Ideas for Australian Cities (1970))
A Gippsland massacre
They drove the abos in to a bend beside Warragal [sic] Creek homestead and killed all that were there. Then they loaded the bodies into bullock drays and took them up into the sandhills about half a mile away and…
Have we forgotten?
There is no doubt that during the latter half of last century [that is, the nineteenth century] the Australian people were acutely aware of their isolation, and were determined to turn to account the freedom it gave them by building…
Fires breaking out
Fire is a particularly powerful theme in Australian history. Paul Collins wrote in Burn: the Epic Story of Bushfire in Australia, about how Australians have been shaped by fire. Keith Hancock and Bill Gammage have written about fire in aboriginal…
Consistency
In New South Wales the historical pattern of settlement and the development of the state’s economy have encouraged this concern with pork-barrel politics. Distance, isolation and a rural-metropolitan division have bred parochialism at the same time as encouraging dependency on…
Hoskins, Ian: NSW coast
Hoskins, Ian Coast: a History of the New South Wales Edge, NewSouth, Sydney, 2013 From Eden to Byron Bay the New South Wales coast is more than 2000 kilometres long, with 130 estuaries, 100 coastal lakes and a rich history. …
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Sharp, Nonie: Nugget Coombs and Judith Wright
Sharp, Nonie ‘For the well-beloved: Judith Wright and Nugget Coombs‘, Meanjin, 68, 2, June 2009 Tells of the relationship between one of Australia’s greatest public servants and one of its greatest poets, drawing upon the letters they wrote to each…
Australian National Film Board: Postcards from Perth
Australian National Film Board ‘Postcards from Perth‘, historypunk Jo Hawkins of historypunk resurrected this wonderful 10 minute promotional film of Perth and surrounds, complete with great photography, lush soundtrack and equally lush BBC style voice-over. Comes with insightful text from…
Ramsay, Juliet: Lake Burley Griffin
Ramsay, Juliet ‘Lake Burley Griffin: losing an inspired vision‘, Australian Garden History, 25, 4, 2014 To protect Lake Burley Griffin and its lakeshore parklands, the Australian Garden History Society needs to take on advocacy and conservancy by initiating a group…
McCalman, Iain: Barrier reef
McCalman, Iain The Reef: A Passionate History, Viking, Melbourne, 2013 This is a social, cultural and environmental history. The Great Barrier Reef, argues Iain McCalman, has been created by human minds as well as coral polyps, by imaginations as well…
Click here for all items related to: Expressing ourselves, The land we live in, The sweat of our brows
Stanley, Peter: Black Saturday
Stanley, Peter Black Saturday at Steels Creek, Scribe, Brunswick, Vic., 2013 In-depth study of the impact, at the time and after, of the 2009 fires on a small community near Melbourne. Interesting for comparisons with the author’s previous work in…
Sherratt,Tim: Federation and meteorology
Sherratt, Tim Federation and Meteorology, University of Melbourne. Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre & Bureau of Meteorology (2001) Describes the weather around 1 January 1901, many aspects of meteorology around the time of Federation and in the decades since…
About The land we live in
Click here for all items related to: The land we live in Australia is shaped by geography, climate, geology and our history of using the land. And so are Australians. Here the themes include prehistory, distance, exploration, climate, environment, natural…
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Waterhouse, Richard: Vision splendid
Waterhouse, Richard The Vision Splendid: A Social and Cultural History of Rural Australia, Curtin University Books, Fremantle, WA, 2005 Describes how ‘the Bush’, where most Australians do not live, has played an important part in shaping national identity. This is…
Lydon, Jane & Tracy Ireland, ed.: Object lessons
Lydon, Jane & Tracy Ireland, ed. Object Lessons: Archaeology and Heritage in Australia, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2005 This book examines how we define ourselves through our concern with the past, and especially the idiosyncratic ways we engage with the…
McKenna, Mark: Blackfellas’ point
McKenna, Mark Looking for Blackfellas’ Point: An Australian History of Place, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2002 ‘A history for every Australian who is interested in the story of settler-Australia’s relations with Indigenous people—what happened between us, how…
Ryan, Simon: Cartographic eye
Ryan, Simon The Cartographic Eye: How Explorers Saw Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996 Tries to get behind the literature of the early contacts between explorers and the original inhabitants of Australia. This book is about the mythologies of land…
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Mulvaney, John & Johan Kamminga: Prehistory
Mulvaney, John & Johan Kamminga Prehistory of Australia, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, revised edition, 1999; first published Thames and Hudson 1969 as The Prehistory of Australia; other editions Mulvaney has been Australia’s most distinguished prehistorian. ‘The obvious starting…
Robin, Libby & Tom Griffiths: Environmental history
Robin, Libby & Tom Griffiths ‘Environmental history in Australasia‘, Environment and History, 10, 2004, pp. 439-74 Critical analysis of much writing in the field in both Australia and New Zealand.
Sherratt, Tim, Tom Griffiths & Libby Robin, ed.: Change
Sherratt, Tim, Tom Griffiths & Libby Robin, ed. A Change in the Weather: Climate and Culture in Australia, NMA Press, Canberra, 2005 Collection of essays showing how climate and weather ‘can change lives, particularly in Australia, a continent of extreme,…
Griffiths, Tom: Forests of Ash
Griffiths, Tom Forests of Ash: An Environmental History, Cambridge University Press, Port Melbourne, Vic., 2001 This beautifully written and presented book tells the story of Australia’s giant eucalypt, the mountain ash. Dependent on fire for its survival, the mountain ash…
Rose, Deborah Bird & Richard Davis, ed.: Dislocating
Rose, Deborah Bird & Richard Davis, ed. Dislocating the Frontier: Essaying the Mystique of the Outback, ANU E Press, Canberra, 2006 (free formats and print on demand) The frontier is one of the most pervasive concepts underlying the production of…
Flannery, Tim: Future eaters
Flannery, Tim The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People, Reed Books, Chatswood, NSW, 1994; later editions, including Reed New Holland 2006 This is the story of how human beings have consumed the resources they need…
Blainey, Geoffrey: Tyranny of distance
Blainey, Geoffrey The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia’s History, Sun Books, Melbourne, 1966; numerous later editions The book ‘describes how distance and isolation have been central to Australia’s history and in shaping its national identity, and will continue…
Frost, Alan: First Fleet
Frost, Alan The First Fleet: The Real Story, Schwartz, Melbourne, 2012 Disagrees with Manning Clark, Robert Hughes and others that the First Fleet was a shambles. Based on extensive work in primary sources although Frost’s work here and in other…
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Frost, Alan: Endeavour
Frost, Alan Voyage of the Endeavour: Captain Cook and the Discovery of the Pacific, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 1998 Places Cook in the context of European exploration of the Pacific. Based on extensive work with primary sources.
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Hughes, Robert: Fatal shore
Hughes, Robert The Fatal Shore, Vintage, New York, 1986; many later editions and electronic versions Tells the story of freemen (and women) and convicts and the Indigenous people to whose country they came. Covers the period 1787 to 1868. Many…
Rolls, Eric: Visions of Australia
Rolls, Eric Visions of Australia: Impressions of the Landscape, 1642-1910, Lothian, South Melbourne, Vic., 2002. braille edition, 2005 This book remakes the conception of Australia. Writers such as Henry Lawson saw Australia through the eyes of settlers trying to build…
Rolls, Eric: Australia biography
Rolls, Eric Australia: A Biography: The Beginnings from the Cosmos to the Genesis of Gondwana, and its Rivers, Forests, Flora, Fauna, and Fecundity, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Qld, 2000; later editions The sub-title says it all. The story…
Rolls, Eric: Million Wild Acres
Rolls, Eric A Million Wild Acres: 200 years of man and an Australian forest, Nelson, Melbourne, 1981; 3oth anniversary edition, Hale & Iremonger, 2011 Describes the interactions between humans and their environment in the Pilliga scrub country of north-western New…
Hancock, Keith: Discovering Monaro
Hancock, Keith Discovering Monaro: A Study of Man’s Impact on his Environment, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1972; republished 2009 Discusses the Aboriginal occupation of the Monaro region near Canberra, tribal territories, the population before white settlement, economic life, the use…
Gammage, Bill: Biggest estate
Gammage, Bill The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2011 Bill Gammage’s The Biggest Estate on Earth argues that the Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific…
Mclean-Carr, Carol, et al: The navigators
Mclean-Carr, Carol, et al ‘The navigators‘, ABC Learn Online Website for school students and general readers covering history, captains, naturalists, ships, navigation and other aspects of early exploration.
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Fornasiero, Jean, Peter Monteath & John West-Sooby: Encountering
Fornasiero, Jean, Peter Monteath & John West-Sooby Encountering Terra Australis: The Australian Voyages of Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, SA, 2004 ‘Encountering Terra Australis traces the parallel lives and voyages of the explorers Flinders and Baudin,…
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Anderson, Deb: Drought, endurance
Anderson, Deb ‘Drought, endurance and ‘The way things were’: the lived experience of climate and climate change in the Mallee‘, Australian Humanities Review, 45, November 2008 Oral history piece on how experience of regular drought came together with experience of…
McKernan, Michael: Drought
McKernan, Michael Drought: The Red Marauder, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2005 ‘”Drought is the Australian story”, McKernan says. Then again, “It would rain for the farmer and hopes would revive, and the drought would be forgotten – until the…
Camm, JCR & John McQuilton, ed.: Australians atlas
JCR Camm & John McQuilton, ed. Australians: A Historical Atlas, Fairfax, Syme and Weldon Associates, Broadway, NSW, 1987 A volume in the set Australians: A Historical Library. Maps, graphs and notes under the headings, ‘Place’, ‘People’ and ‘Landscapes’. Excellent illustrations.…
Mulvaney, DJ & J. Peter White, ed.: Australians to 1788
DJ Mulvaney & J. Peter White, ed. Australians to 1788, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Broadway, NSW, 1987 A volume in the set Australians: A Historical Library. Twenty-three authors contribute under the main headings ‘The creation of Aboriginal Australia’, ‘Continuity…
Brett, Judith: The country, the city and the State in the Australian settlement
Judith Brett ‘The country, the city and the State in the Australian settlement’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 42, 1, 2007, pp. 1-22 (full reprint) Argues that ‘the [post-Federation] settlement between the country and the city, mediated by the state,…
Cathcart, Michael: The Water Dreamers
Michael Cathcart The Water Dreamers: The Remarkable History of Our Dry Continent, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2010 The book ‘offers an archaeology of our national psyche… and exposes the cultural forces that still powerfully shape our plans for this land’. (Tom…
Collins, Paul: Burn: The Epic Story of Bushfire in Australia
Paul Collins Burn: The Epic Story of Bushfire in Australia, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2006; Scribe, Melbourne, 2009 The ‘central argument’ of the book ‘is that fire is “part of the very fabric of our continent”, a positive and renewing…