• Making Moonta: The Invention of 'Australia's Little Cornwall' - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : This book is an investigation of the popular tradition of 'Australia's Little Cornwall': how one town in South Australia gained and perpetuated this identity into the twenty-first century. This book is about Moonta and its special place in the Cornish transnational identity. Today Moonta is a small town on South Australia's northern Yorke Peninsula; along with the neighbouring townships of of Wallaroo and Kadina, it is an agricultural and heritage tourism centre. In the second half of the nineteenth century, however, Moonta was the focus of a major copper mining industry. "Making Moonta" explores Moonta and its copper-mining hinterland in the years after 1860, charting the arrival of hundreds of Cornish immigrants and the transplantation of distinctive Cornish cultural patterns.
  This book may also be available from Amazon.com (United States) and Amazon.ca (Canada). Click on links for details. -

• Outback: The Discovery of Australia's Interior - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : In 1800, while the coast of Australia had finally been charted, the vast interior of the continent, and routes across its deserts and mountains from north to south and east to west lay all undiscovered. By 1874, its lands had been all but won. Derek Parker's new and exciting book gathers together the stories of those intrepid explorers who, often against great odds, on journeys of months or even years, beat starvation, inadequate information and mapping, disease and loss, to forge a route which would enable the country's development.
  This book may also be available from Amazon.com (United States) and Amazon.ca (Canada). Click on links for details. -

• A Concise History of Australia - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : This revised edition of a comprehensive single-volume Australian history reference incorporates the most recent historical research and contemporary debate on relevant issues.
  This book is also available from Amazon.com (United States) and Amazon.ca (Canada). Click on links to check for availability. -

• A History of Australia: From Earliest Times to 1838 Vols 1 & 2 - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : The first two volumes of Manning Clark's classic six-volume history of Australia. These two texts deal with the pre-white settlement era and the earliest years of European colonisation through to the establishment of an increasingly settled society and the expeditions of the inland explorers.
  Also available from Amazon.com (United States) and Amazon.ca (Canada) -

• A History of the Port Phillip District: Victoria Before Separation - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : This first general history of pre-goldrush Victoria in more than ninety years incorporates the advances in documentation and scholarship which have taken place. The book is illustrated in colour with contemporary paintings, many of which will be unfamiliar to most readers. The period from the first temporary convict camp of 1803 to the formal separation of Victoria from New South Wales in 1851 encompassed years of struggle, adversity and uncertainty.
  Also available from Amazon.com (United States) and Amazon.ca (Canada) -

• American Citizens, British Slaves: Yankee Political Prisoners in an Australian Penal Colony, 1839-1850 - (Book - Amazon.com) : American Citizens, British Slaves tells the strange story of almost a hundred United States citizens who were transported to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in 1839-40. As members of the Patriot Army that had conducted border raids into the colony of Upper Canada in 1838, they saw themselves as courageous republican activists. Instead of heroic liberators, they became political prisoners of Her Majesty's government.
  Also available from Amazon.co.uk (United Kingdom) and Amazon.ca (Canada) -

• Australia's Boer War: The War in South Africa 1899-1902 - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : The author has drawn on primary sources from Australia, South Africa and the United Kingdom to produce a book that encompasses not only Australia's experience of the war, but also tells the stories of individuals including Breaker Morant, Alexander Krygger and Arthur Lynch. The volume was commissioned by the Australian War Memorial, which has provided over 200 illustrations and maps, including 15 artwork reproductions in full colour.
  Also available from Amazon.com (United States) and Amazon.ca (Canada) -

• Australian Genesis: Jewish Convicts and Settlers 1788-1860 - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : The story of Australia's early Jewish settlers, from the First Fleet to the gold rushes of the 1850s, is filled with characters and adventure. There is a Jewish convict who became Australia's "first lady", and a Jewish bushranger whose brother founded a newspaper. There are pugilists, publicans and purveyors of all manner of household wares. In telling the stories of individual lives, John Levi and George Bergman chronicle the struggle of Jews in Australia for political emancipation and religious tolerance.
  Also available from Amazon.com (United States) and Amazon.ca (Canada) -

• Australian Ways of Death - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : This volume is the result of intensive research into where and how people have died in Australia, how they have been buried, mourned and commemmorated, and how social and regional factors have influenced mortality rates and people's consciousness of death and loss. The book describes how Australians in the past came to terms with death within the constraints and cultural perspectives of their own times.
  Also available from Amazon.com (United States) and Amazon.ca (Canada) -

• Claremont: a History - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : Starting as a yeoman settlement for pensioned-off British soldiers who guarded Western Australian convicts, Claremont was developed for the English gentry in the late 1800s. This history of the town has been written with the co-operation of the current inhabitants. -

• Convict Fremantle: A Place of Promise and Punishment - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : Long recognised for its fine heritage buildings, the cosmopolitan port city of Fremantle has special significance in Western Australian history. As first landfall to emigrating Swan River colonists, it heralded hopes for a new life after arduous months at sea. But for thousands of prisoners incarcerated in its Convict Establishment after 1850, the future was far grimmer. Convict Fremantle: A Place of Promise and Punishment guides the reader on a fascinating journey through nineteenth century Fremantle's developing face, viewed from the pivotal perspective of its dour, sprawling Victorian gaol. There are personal insights into the lives of both officials and the inmates - some of whose cramped cells, barely more than 5 cubic metres, confined them for 21 hours a day - and tales of desperate attempts to escape.
  Also available from Amazon.com (United States) and Amazon.ca (Canada) -

• Convict Maids: Forced Migration of Women to Australia - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : Convict Maids destroys the myth that the female convicts transported from Britain and Ireland to New South Wales between 1826 and 1840 were mainly prostitutes, professional criminals and the 'sweepings of the gaols'. Deborah Oxley argues that in fact these women helped put the colony on its feet. Oxley shows that the women were generally first offenders, transported for minor offences.
  Also available from Amazon.com (United States) and Amazon.ca (Canada) -

• Convict Workers: Reinterpreting Australia's Past - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : Convict Workers offers a radical new interpretation of Australia's convict past. It is based on an exhaustive and detailed analysis of records of 20,000 male and female convicts - one in three of those transported to New South Wales between 1817 and 1840. The convicts sent to Australia were not professional criminals, but ordinary British and Irish men and women. They brought with them a diverse range of useful work skills, essential to the forging of a new economy and society.
  Also available from Amazon.com (United States) and Amazon.ca (Canada) -

• Depraved and Disorderly: Female Convicts, Sexuality and Gender in Colonial Australia - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : This innovative book marks a new way of looking at convict women. It tells their stories in a powerful and evocative way, drawing out broader themes of gender and sexual disorder and race and class dynamics in a colonial context. It considers the convict past in light of contemporary concerns, looking at the cultural meanings of aspects of life in the colony: on ships, in the factories and in orphanages.
  Also available from Amazon.com (United States) and Amazon.ca (Canada). -

• For the Term of His Natural Life - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : Forced to conceal his identity and forego his inheritance, Rufus Dawes is unjustly implicated in his father's murder, convicted of theft and sentenced to be transported to Australia, where he encounters the brutality of the penal system. First published as a serial in the Australian Journal between 1870 and 1872 and in a revised, shortened form as a novel in 1874, For the Term of his Natural Life is an Australian classic, a tale of inhumanity and suffering during Australia's early colonial history.
  This book is also available from Amazon.com (United States) and Amazon.ca (Canada). Click on links to check for availability. -

• From the Mountains to the Bush: Italian Immigrants Write Home from Australia 1860-1953 - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : This study explores the experience of Valtellinese migrants to Australia between 1860 and 1953. It employs the letters exchanged between the Italian migrants and their families to trace the story of these sojourners who journeyed from the mountains to the bush.
  Also available from Amazon.com (United States) and Amazon.ca (Canada) -

• Gold: Forgotten Histories and Lost Objects of Australia - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : In this book, a team of prominent historians and curators have collaborated to produce a cultural history of gold and its impact on the development of Australian society. This fascinating book will add a new dimension to previously recorded Australian history, and provide a richer understanding of the foundations of Australian culture. Like a handful of tailings, Gold brings together a collection of stories that have been left out of standard Australian histories.
  Also available from Amazon.com (United States) and Amazon.ca (Canada) -

• Great Convict Escapes in Colonial Australia - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : In Colonial times Australia was considered the perfect prison - a place of impenetrable bush and wide oceans. But hundreds of convicts did escape. This book is a collection of the more extraordinary tales. Drawn from the memoirs of men and women who made the escapes as well as from official documents, the daring and adventure of these tales are equal to any in fiction. -

• Greek Pioneers in Western Australia - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : Greek immigrants and their descendants constitute one of the earliest and most successful ethnic groups in Western Australia. Even before the large immigration program following World War Two, Greeks had roots in the state extending back to the 1870s. Read more...
  May also be available from Amazon.com (United States) -

• Henry Mundy: A Young Australian Pioneer - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : Here is the unique and enthralling real-life story of an average Australian pioneer born over 170 years ago. Henry Mundy was not a member of the establishment, he had no power of privilege and was far from remarkable. Read more...
  Also available from Amazon.ca (Canada) -

• Lucky City - The First Generation at Ballarat: 1851-1901 - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : Ballarat, Australia was not a typical goldfield. In a tantalizing search for fabulous underground river beds the youthful migrants of the 1850s overcame immense obstacles. They were both thrifty and speculative, using the profits of one bonanza to pursue another - and were probably goaded by officialdom into the famous Eureka rebellion of 1854. Lucky City explores the interaction of man with the environment and of particular men and ideas with the urban situation. It shows how, from a makeshift boom town, the city matured and sponsored such images of itself as 'Golden City', 'City of Gardens', 'City of Sculptures'. It sees its pioneers as heroic adventurers.
  Also available from Amazon.com (United States) and Amazon.ca (Canada) -

• Religion in Australia: A History - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : This is an updated and accessible account of how various religious beliefs and institutions have influenced Australia's history politically and culturally. Although the main emphasis is on Christianity, the dominant religion of most of Australia's population, Aboriginal spirituality, as well as Judaism, Islam and other religions are also included. What emerges from this history is a greater understanding of Australian political and social cultures, particularly regional differences deriving from religious sectarianism and the often tense relationship between church and state. -

• Settlers, Servants and Slaves: Aboriginal and European Children in Nineteenth Century Western Australia - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : This work covers the exploitation of European and Aboriginal children by the settler elite of 19th-century Western Australia. It shows how concern over "the problem" of children of mixed descent in the last decade of the 19th century was to provide the rationale for infamous 20th century solutions.
  Also available from Amazon.com (United States) and Amazon.ca (Canada) -

• The Australian Frontier Wars 1788-1838 - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : From the Swan River to the Hawkesbury, and from the sticky Arnhem Land mangrove to the soft green hills of Tasmania, this book describes the major conflicts fought on the Australian frontier to 1838. Based on extensive research and using overseas frontier wars to add perspective to the Australian experience, The Australian Frontier Wars 1788-1838 will change our view of Australian history forever.
  Also available from Amazon.com (United States) and Amazon.ca (Canada) -

• The Birth of Sydney - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : Tim Flannery's brilliant anthology reveals Sydney's strange and secret life, from its unruly beginnings to its arrival as the 'queen of the south' a century later. Sydney was born like no other city before it: 1500 souls - both convicts and their gaolers - struggled during the tempestuous summer of 1788 to establish an outpost of empire in a remote and incomprehensible new land. Superbly edited and introduced by Tim Flannery, The Birth of Sydney includes the voices of its settlers and inhabitants from Aboriginal women to Irish rebels and Russian sailors. Charles Darwin, Anthony Trollope and Mark Twain join a host of others in these pages to write the biography of Australia's first city. -

• The Dig Tree: The Extraordinary Story of the Ill-fated Burke and Wills 1860 Expedition - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : For Australians, the Burke and Wills Expedition of 1860-61 provides the great epic in the story of the European exploration of their continent. Like many epics of 19th-century European exploration across the world, it has taken on some of the elements of myth. Sarah Murgatroyd's book looks beneath the myths to find the truth about the ill-fated expedition.
  This book is also available from Amazon.com (United States) -

• The Explorers - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : An anthology of epic first-hand accounts of exploration in Australia.
  This book is also available from Amazon.com (United States) and Amazon.ca (Canada). Click on links for details. -

• The Fatal Shore : The Epic of Australia's Founding -

  (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : The history of the birth of Australia which came out of the suffereing and brutality of England's infamous convict transportation system. With 16 pages of illustrations and 3 maps. This book is also available from Amazon.com (United States) and Amazon.ca (Canada)

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• The Floating Brothel: The Extraordinary True Story of an 18th-century Ship and Its Cargo of Female Convicts - (Book - Amazon.co.uk) : The fascinating history of the 200-odd women convicts--"disorderly girls"--who, at the very end of the 1780s, found themselves condemned to Transportation to Parts Beyond the Seas. The Floating Brothel is a compelling and readable account of that moment in penal history when transportation from England to the colonies (in this case, New South Wales) was a commonplace alternative to the death sentence.
  Also available from Amazon.com (United States) and Amazon.ca (Canada) -

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