Well, I finally did it. After four editions of The Big Book of Australian History for the National Library of Australia, and after three years of them shilly-shallying and dithering, I seized control and started on a  |
| This was the third edition (2017) |
Now, being in control, I have been able to tell all of the stories that I felt needed to be told (there's a partial list at the end). The snag is that a dead-tree (print) book of this size, especially as it would be in colour, would be huge, so it is probably only going to be an e-book. To be blunt, printed copies would be somewhere above $100, so I might do it to have copies to give my grandkids, but that's about it.
Because I have broadened the scope far beyond the original, it is now called Australia, a social history. This work (you can get it here) is the title I will wish to be remembered by, because it tells all of the truths that were never shared with we pre-Boomers when we were at school. The governor who owned slaves, kangaroo-tail soup, the observation of Christmas Day in colonial times
Here, I mention people swimming naked (it was the norm for all strata of society until the 1890s, but if somebody saw you, it was indecency). You will also find the first (and probably last) foot race between two ladies in crinolines, and the truth behind Sydney's fabled Flying Pieman, what Lola Montez smoked, and who found gold in Australia first.
Here, you encounter tales of pirates in Melbourne, a cannibal captain, the governor who had his own thief, willing to do his bidding, the time Melbourne's citizens feared they were being invaded, where the very first shot was fired in World War I (Melbourne, again), and why Melbourne ladies stood on chairs and waved handkerchiefs.
I look at how Australians stole Lawrence of Arabia's thunder, Mak Sai-Ying, who arrived on Laurel in February 1818, our first Chinese Australian (he was later a publican), a plan to lure freed slaves from the US to Australia as migrants and a one-legged surf lifesaver.
Having worked in bushfire research, that section is far better informed than the work of any run-of-the-mill historian, and you can learn of teenage boys and girls going exploring, not to mention adult women explorers, gate hinges, bark huts, fleas, lighting, clothes, Barcoo Rot, drinking water, ingenious tricks, frauds, smoke signals, bicycles, survival, bunyips, marriage, divorce, sports, food, health and quack remedies, plague, ballet, operas, voting, how currency lads and lasses got their name, and much more.
I have no time for the tiresome conservative racists, usually from the Peasant Party who babble about how the blackfellow never invented the wheel: I explain why the geology, biota and the locals' sensible, conservative lifestyle based on trust made such a development most unlikely. At the same time, I record the speed with which these 'savages' learned to use glass.
And if you haven't seen it before, there's a sample chapter, The Lure of Gold.
Contents
To begin at the beginning, as Dylan Thomas commences Under Milk Wood, I start with Laurasia, Gondwana, how we know about them, because you cannot understand Australia unless you understand the biota, and to understand that, you need to understand then soil, and that makes no sense without a grasp of what our rocks are, and why. I also introduce the first people to suspect and then to prove that monotremes lay eggs (and why they were willing to believe this: my first degree had a major in zoology, and we were never taught any of this.
Here's a quick run-down:
1. Ancient Australia
Old rocks made us; The age of giants; Reading the stories in the rocks.
2. The Dreaming
The first people; A surviving culture; Aboriginal artists.
3. Voyages of
Discovery
Drawing maps; Mapping the coast; Naming Australia; The hidden map makers.
4. Settling in
The First Fleet; A surprise meeting; The convict system; The law;
Aboriginal resistance; Settling Tasmania; The Rum Rebellion; Macquarie’s
legacy; Establishing Brisbane and Perth; Starting Adelaide and Melbourne;
Clothes, uniforms, hats and shoes.
5. Travelling to
Australia
Passage times; The overland route to Home; Travellers; Making a home in
Australia.
6. Mapping the Land
Conquering the Blue Mountains; Searching for the ‘Inland Sea’; Following
the rivers; Reaching westward; Wrong way, Mr Eyre?; Criss-crossing the country;
Crossing the continent; Exploring science; Travelling south with Mawson.
7. The Lure of Gold
The gold rushes; Immigration and gold; The Eureka Stockade; Goldfields
life; Golden villains.
8. Settling the Land
Going up the country; Raising sheep; The life of a settler; Settler homes;
Australian agricultural inventions; Bushrangers and outlaws; Boom and bust;
Looking after the workers.
9. Domestic life in
the 19th century
Home making; Food and drink; Cleaning; Shopping; Commerce; Freight; Inns.
10. The Growth of
Cities
City life; Sectarian matters; Steam engines; Seeing the light; Moving the
masses.
11. Communicating
The hunger for news; The post in the 19th century; Telephones.
12. Federation
Moving towards Federation; Celebrating our new nation; The first Federal
Parliament; Who could vote in Australia?; Restricting immigration; Providing
social welfare; Selecting a capital city site.
13. Becoming Anzacs
Supporting the British Empire; Wartime leaders; Who was in the Great War?;
Australian ‘firsts’ in the war; The Gallipoli campaign; A respected enemy; The
home front; Raising an army; Animals at war; The Western Front; Three
Australian generals; War in the air; The desert campaign.
14. Modern Times
Turning the radio on; Scientific advances; Government comes to Canberra;
Motoring across Australia; Aviation takes off.
15. The Great
Depression
The dream fades; The Sydney Harbour Bridge; Doing it tough; The mighty Phar
Lap; Bodyline bowling.
16. Defending
Australia
The fear of invasion; War approaches…; Training aircrew; Campaigning in
North Africa; Looking to America; War comes to Australian shores; Women at war;
Rationing.
17. Building for the
Future
Displaced persons; The Snowy Mountains Scheme; Australia’s own car;
Expansion of the suburbs; Television comes to Australia.
18. Controversial
Issues
The Menzies era; The fear of communism; The Vietnam War; Dismissing a
government; Conserving Tasmanian wilderness; Fighting overseas; Reconciliation;
Aboriginal land rights; Australia Day; Saying sorry; Vying for the leadership.
19. Dealing with
Disasters
Drought; Fighting fire; Cyclones; Floods; Lost in the bush; Medical perils.
20. The Sporting Life
The Melbourne Olympics; Cricket; Tennis; Athletics; Swimming; Surfing;
Indigenous athletes; Football; The America’s Cup; Other sporting highlights;
Professional women’s sport.
21. Being
Multicultural
Dropping the White Australia Policy; Refugees in Australia; Chain
migration; Multicultural Australia.
Entertaining abroad; Sharing Australia’s stories; Making music; The Nobel
winners; Picturing Australia; Australian dance; Australia on film; A hero in
his own lunchtime.
23. Education and the
arts
Education; Training the next generation; University education’.
Some of the rare facts
Here are just a few of the more unusual events that shaped the way Australian society evolved after the invasion, and this is the hidden underbelly of our history, a random grab-bag of the stuff that was never mentioned when I was at school. How many of these did you know about? They're all in the book!
In early 1788, Peter White, the sail-maker from Sirius, left the ship, carrying just 4 ounces of “biscuit”, and was lost for four days.
In 1790, the Second Fleet arrived. Contracted out to the lowest bidder, there was a 26% death rate among the convicts.
In August 1795, David Collins knew that an Aboriginal woman had come to the Hawkesbury from the other side of the Blue Mountains: that was 18 years before Lawson, Blaxland and Wentworth got over the top (and that order of names is what Macquarie used).
In 1799 near Cape Moreton, now in Queensland, Matthew Flinders met with local warriors to trade artefacts. The thing some of them really wanted was Flinders’ cabbage tree hat.
In 1803, a regulation in Sydney ordered: “That no Pigs be allowed to run without being ringed, as they destroy the road.” (A pig with a ring in its nose cannot use its nose to dig up the ground.)
In late 1803, Lieutenant-Governor David Collins landed at Sullivan Bay on Port Phillip in Victoria. He later gave it up, and moved to Hobart.
In 1813, on 30 January, the word Australia first appeared in print in Australia.
In 1818, the first Chinese man to settle in Australia arrived, just at the time that Indian slaves were being repatriated from Sydney.
In 1822, a tremendous snake was reported at Liverpool, which, to the best of the reporters' belief, was at least forty five feet in length, and three times the circumference of the human body.
In 1825, squatter was an American term.
In 1826, bushfires were first reported on in the papers. In that year, Sarah Webb was the first recorded woman bushranger.
In 1827, seeds of the Scotch thistle, taken from Robbie Burns' grave, arrived in Hobart.
In 1829, Edward Gibbon Wakefield wrote his Letter from Sydney, a plan for a convict-free colony, and this gave rise to Adelaide. He had never been to Australia, and he was in gaol at the time!
In 1830, Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur had over a thousand soldiers and armed settlers sweep across the settled areas in what was known as the Black Line. Two Aboriginal people were captured and three were killed.
In 1831, Sydney saw its first velocipede crash.
In 1832, the horse-powered boat Experiment began operating on the Hunter River.
In 1838, an unknown number of Aboriginal people—possibly as many as 30—were killed near Bingara in the New England region of New South Wales. Seven of the killers were later hanged.
In 1839, the Illawarra Steam Packet Company called tenders for building a surfboat: it was to be used for landing passengers and cargo on beaches to the south of Sydney.
In 1841, Eyre undertook an amazing journey, but most drawings show him going the wrong way.
In 1845, Bathurst burr (then just 'the burr') was noticed near Bathurst.
In 1846, men in Sydney could buy cabbage-tree hats, Jim Crow or wide-awake hats.
In 1847, you could buy a telephone in Sydney (but the name meant an ear trumpet!).
In 1849, one Fanny Moyle saw that Joseph Penfold was wounded and said she would fetch a shoemaker to put a stitch in his wound. He went away, fell in a pit and died.
In 1851, Hargraves never found gold: he just conspired with Enoch Rudder to start a gold rush.
In April 1852, pirates boarded the barque Nelson in Melbourne, stealing 8183 ounces (213 kg) of gold.
In June 1852, about 80 white people drowned when a flood arose during the night: two Wiradjuri men, Yarri and 'Jacky Jacky' saved many more.
In the 1850s, Harriette Walters adopted male garb to avoid unwanted attention as she worked on the Melbourne wharves and waited for her husband to arrive in Australia.
In 1853, William Kelly was advised to buy the first class Dublin Diploma of a deceased doctor, as his widow had it for sale. The informing druggist told him the diploma would be excellent for a tolerably smart man, “of good address and general knowledge, with a smattering of Latin”.
In 1855, one 'Scrammy Jack' went one better than those who salted gold claims: he salted a pub.
In 1855, Morris Pell, the University of Sydney’s Professor of Mathematics, recommended higher train fares because ‘otherwise every man, woman, and child would lose all their time and money running up and down the line continually’.
In 1859, Mr Austin of Geelong took delivery of 24 wild rabbits.
In 1862, the first attested case of a redback on a dunny seat was reported.
In 1862, a woman from Ballarat and another from Buninyong ran a foot race, wearing crinolines.
In 1866, the first code of rules for 'Aussie Rules was drawn up.
In 1868, Anthony Trollope could not enter South Australia from Perth without a certificate, issued and signed by a resident magistrate at the cost of one shilling. This asserted that he had never been a convict.
In 1870, the word larrikin first appeared in print. Kookaburra came into wide use that same year.
In 1872, Australia's first photo-bomb happened in central Australia.
In 1877, a cricket game between an All- England team and a group of Victorian and New South Wales players was referred to as ‘Australia v. England’ or ‘The International Cricket Match’.
In 1880, New South Wales and Victoria set a legal minimum requirement for attendance at school between the ages of 6 and 14.
In 1883, some 80 years after Sir Joseph Banks asked George Caley to see if platypuses laid eggs, William Caldwell arrived to slaughter large numbers of monotremes to get an answer.
In 1883, Emily Creaghe, pregnant and riding across the Top End, wrote “Mr. Watson has 40 pairs of blacks’ ears nailed round the walls collected during raiding parties after the loss of many cattle speared by the blacks.”
In 1886, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume was out-selling Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes book.
In late 1891, Australia was in a depression.
In 1892, the people of Port Fairy allowed ‘bathing in company’.
In 1894, the NSW Bathing Bill of 1894 allowed for mixed bathing (males and females together) during daylight hours on some beaches. In that year, Paterson's curse was first noted as a "new noxious weed".
In 1896, women in South Australia voted for the first time.
In 1897, the VFL competition began.
In 1898, in Queensland, a Labor government held office for one week.
In 1898, Thargomindah got electricity from a water wheel. Yes, way out in the desert (and you will have to work out what was going on, or read the book).
In 1898. Louis de Rougemont revealed his 30 years among the cannibal tribes of unexplored Australia, where he rode a turtle and saw flying wombats. He was a fraud, and his real name was Louis Grin.
In 1899, Steele Rudd's On Our Selection was published in The Bulletin.
In 1900, Sir John Forrest gave the vote to women, in a failed attempt to rort the Federation referendum. Also in that year, Frederick Lane won Olympic gold in an obstacle race that involved swimming under boats in the sewage-rich River Seine.
In 1900, Herbert Thomson and E.L. Holmes had an incident-free drive from Bathurst to Melbourne in a Thomson steam car. They spent a total of 56 hours and 36 minutes on the road, at an average speed of about 14 kilometres per hour.
In 1901, bubonic plague struck Sydney. Later in the year, Melbourne matrons stood on chairs and waved their handkerchiefs. Read the book to find out why (no, it was not about the plague).
In 1901, the number of Australians aged over 65 had increased by about 60%, compared with 1891.
In late 1901, a motor car made the trip from Sydney to Broken Hill, taking a month to get there.
The 1902 Commonwealth Franchise Act gave women the vote throughout Australia
In 1903, the water pipeline to Kalgoorlie was opened.
In 1906, Australia had 46 power stations generating 23,000 kilowatts for domestic and industrial use.
In 1909, Francis Birtles rode his bicycle from Perth to Sydney to check if it was possible to drive a car across Australia.
In 1912, Australia and New Zealand competed at the Stockholm Olympics as Australasia.
In 1914, the first shot in World War I was fired in Melbourne, at a ship called Pfalz.
In 1915, the first identified Anzac Day in Adelaide (it was not on April 25) subsided into riot and drunkenness. The original plan to have two trams smash into each other had been dropped...
In 1918, when Major Harry Olden and the Australian Light Horse galloped into the city of Damascus, they infuriated British military adviser Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence—better known to us as the legendary ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. He had planned to be the first to enter the city, but he arrived two hours after the victorious Australians.
In 1919, scientists first pondered using myxomatosis to control rabbits.
In 1920, a one-legged lifesaver (a shark had taken the other one) entered a surf race in Manly, and came "in the first dozen": he was allowed to start from the water's edge, while the others started at the back of the beach.
In 1952, June Gough adopted the name June Bronhill.
In 1965, Gearin O'Riordan's boiling down works still assailed Sydney's airport with an awful stink.
In 1965, students from the University of Sydney went on a Freedom Ride.
In 1966, decimal currency was adopted in Australia.
In 1967, a referendum had 90% of voters supported the necessary changes to the Constitution to limit inequality affecting Indigenous people.
In about 1970, corner shops began to disappear.
In 1975, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam symbolically poured soil into Vincent Lingiari’s hands—as well as giving him the title deeds to land at Daguragu.
In 2017, Aboriginal hopes for a First Nations voice, enshrined in the Constitution were put forward in the Uluru Statement from the Heart.
In 2023, Australia showed the first recorded case of selective community deafness, the ability to hear only hate, greed and fear.
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