Ugo Catani’s A Summer Shower in Collins Street, 1889, sets the scene for Andrew May’s invitation to walk the streets of Melbourne, imagine the everyday past, and see the urban landscape with new eyes. For the author, as for artists like Catani and Tom Roberts, the street frames the ever-changing throng of the wealthy and down-and-out, the passers-by, shoppers, idlers, hawkers, cabbies, entertainers, beggars, larrikins, prostitutes, custodians and law-breakers. It is the stage of ritual, procession and protest and the site of proud architecture, fine trees and public utilities. And it also has its hazards, of traffic, animals, assault, falling buildings, fire. Original and vital in subject and tone, this award-winning book is a rich commentary on the growth and transformation of a great Australian city and the balance between the need for public order and the democratic right to public space.

Northern Australia is rediscovered by each new generation of Australian politicians. Dams, mines, large transport projects, a food bowl for Asia and many other projects are promised and sometimes delivered, but then the political momentum fades away and the focus of attention turns to other issues. What is often missing in discussion is the region’s long history of nation-building initiatives and proposals, stretching back to 1901. Without this knowledge we are likely to repeat the mistakes of the past. Northern Dreams brings to life the passionate arguments about Northern Australia’s national significance and analyses the political debates that have periodically drawn the public’s attention northwards. It also highlights the role that Australian politicians such as Gough Whitlam, Ben Chifley, Robert Menzies and Bob Hawke played in shaping northern development policies to suit their times. Northern Dreams is the definitive history of the politics of northern development in Australia.

"My Lords,The several Goals and Places for the Confinement of Felons in this Kingdom being in so crouded a State … I … signify to your Lordships His Majesty’s Pleasure, that you do forthwith take such Measures as may be necessary for providing a proper number of vessels for the conveyance of 750 Convicts to Botany Bay, together with such Provisions, necessaries and Implements for agriculture as may be requisite for their use after their arrival …" When the British Cabinet accepted his recommendation that convicts be sent to Botany Bay, Lord Sydney - Thomas Townshend - instructed the Treasury ‘forthwith’ to provide for the First Fleet. A John Bull figure, full of bumptious ambition and self-confidence, ‘Tommy’ Townshend spent most of his working life in parliamentary opposition. He sympathised with the American colonists while holding true to British interests, and was made a peer in 1783 for his key role in settling the peace between Americans and Britons. Among other things, he saw to it that Canada’s boundary with the United States was drawn through the Great Lakes, not further north, as the Americans had demanded. Townshend chose the name Sydney for his barony in memory of his distant uncle Algernon Sidney, who had been beheaded in 1683 for writing ‘the people of England… may change or take away kings’. As a cabinet minister, though, he was measured and capable, displaying ‘the rare faculty of perceiving intuitively, the latent powers in the men with whom he came in contact’. His choices of Henry Strachey to negotiate the peace with America and Arthur Phillip to lead Australia’s first European settlement were inspired.

Central Australia has, with reason, been seen as the last frontier of Australia and, politically, the forgotten country. This book distils the conclusions of Emeritus Professor Alan Powell, reached after more than four decades of exploring northern Australia and researching the history of white settlement and the culture clash with the original people, through war and peace, in the Northern Territory. Powell cuts through the immense array of Territory yarns and learned tomes that reflect what we know of the Centre and moves straight to the core factors of its history: the visionary explorers, driven telegraph men and miners, the cattlemen and the dreamers who felt the lure and sweep of this stark, beautiful heart of Australia and endured the impact of war, conflict and adaptation in a harsh unforgiving environment. He raises hard questions on the structure and government of the area and the past, present and future of the mix of its peoples.

David Campbell (1915-79) was one of Australia’s finest lyric poets. Born into a landed family, he was a grazier for most of his life in the Canberra and Bungendore district of the Monaro. He fought with the RAAF in the Second World War, rising to the rank of wing commander, and he was twice awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross. Life on the land, writing, and wide friendships, followed. Campbell published eleven books of poems and two of short stories. He was a regular contributor to The Bulletin, when under Douglas Stewart’s literary editorship (1939–61) it promoted Australian writing. In those years, he had 135 poems included in The Bulletin, and seven short stories. He also occasionally had poems published in The Listener in England. His poetry, much of it, was inspired by his love of the land, in all its forms, and by his belief in the unity of all things in nature. Though not conventionally religious, he was a true pantheist. He had friends in many fields and his influence on fellow writers was considerable, especially on the young poets in Canberra in the 1970s; they remember him still with gratitude and affection. He was a man of strong and highly individual personality and character, and wide achievement.

The word ‘Anzac’ has been the subject of a century of legal regulation in Australia and internationally. In Anzac: The Landing, The Legend, The Law, Catherine Bond interrogates the legal history of one of Australia and New Zealand’s most revered words and the restrictions on the acronym that still exist today. This book examines how, in 1916, control of ‘Anzac’ was introduced initially for businesses then extended, without precedent, to more private spheres, including prohibiting the use of the word as the name of a home. It documents the effect that these laws had on the Australian home front and the devastating impact on soldiers and families. Yet, such use and regulation was not limited to Australia, with New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States authorities also grappling with how to respond to the increased adoption of ‘Anzac’ within their borders. Bond explores these issues and how this legal history can be used to inform the restrictions on ‘Anzac’ that remain in force in Australia to this day.

1918 was a year of triumph for the Australian Corps in France yet today this is seldom recognised by most Australians. Our perceptions have been clouded by legends, built up over the past century, that have trivialised their achievement. Here an ex-soldier, Pat Beale DSO MC, uses his military background to help re-discover why and how the Corps was so successful and also the reasons their triumph has been ignored. This concise and knowledgeable account will not sit comfortably with everyone. As the author admits, he slaps a number of ‘sacred cows’ on the rump and challenges some deeply held perceptions, but he hopes it will encourage a better understanding of the great victory of those men and how they achieved it.

In poetic vignettes set against the fascinating exotics of Australia and France, Chandani Lokugé weaves a haunting and meditative story on the spectral gains and losses of travel, the nature of its transience. Through it, she dignifies with grace and tenderness, our unassuageable yearning, when we have lost everything and even ourselves, to anchor to something, someone, somewhere, and the unexpected moment of our arrival.

Who could imagine that finding a suitable pair of football boots would prove almost impossible for women and girls in the 1970s?The focus of the women’s liberation movement was fought in the streets, in universities, in workplaces and in the home. We add the football field to these sites of protest and empowerment for individual women. We follow the Australian and New Zealand national players – schoolgirls, factory workers, university graduates and professionals – as they navigate the male-dominated world of football. This book never shies away from the uncomfortable aspects of their journeys, uncovering stories of vulnerability and strength, sexual harassment as well as sexual awakening, personal vilification as well as celebration, giving voice to a silencing in sport. Written by historian Dr Marion Stell, in collaboration with football identity Heather Reid AM, this enlivened account is told with honesty, pain and humour.

A compelling drama… a verdict just in time. A newcomer to Broome in Western Australia, Colin Everett is drawn into a fierce dispute about native title known as ‘the Bradshaw case’. The disappearance of a key witness points to threats of blackmail, or even worse. To win the case for the Aboriginal claimants, Colin and his fellow lawyers have to find the witness, get the better of their opponents, and probe the origin of ancient rock art in the Kimberley region. The case ends in a swirl of controversy and a crucial verdict. It offers a poignant glimpse of how the future can be shaped by half-truths and human failings, by contested versions of the past. Joseph Bradshaw, an explorer and pastoralist, gave his name to rock art of great beauty, uniqueness and antiquity. Little is known of the people who created it many thousands of years ago.

It’s October 2048 and an Islamist political Party has swept to power in Britain’s general elections. Overnight the country is transformed by the introduction of the blasphemy laws. An Australian history teacher who lost his wife and daughter in a terror attack arrives in London to make contact with the leader of the Resistance. When he becomes involved with a homeless young woman, he discovers the possibility of a new life for both of them far from the dangers of the new London.

Keys to the past; Gallipoli reimagined. Athens, November 1915. A city buffeted by the chaos of the war, a city swarming with spies and opportunists. When a British counter espionage unit is contacted by a man from Smyrna, it seems that a bold new plan is afoot to cut through the Turkish defences at nearby Gallipoli …. until the finding of the man’s body in a room set aside for the meeting. An Australian-born agent Robert Kaub is drawn into the investigation, and is soon forced to confront memories of love and betrayal in pre-war Athens. An ominous note, an old coin from Ephesus, cryptic cables – Robert’s discoveries bring him eventually to a place where things could go either way for the Allied cause. Aegean battlefields. A besieged city. Deaths foretold. These are mirrored in a mystery shaped by the ill-fated attempt to capture Constantinople, a story tinted by the truths and untruths of war, a tragic tale akin to myth.

Costas Taktsis, arguably the most important post-war Greek writer, called himself a ‘Sacred Monster’, and his life-long Australian friend Carl Plate – an important painter, Gallerist and influencer of modern art in Sydney – the Colossus of Woronora.

In these twenty-two interviews with verse novelists from the UK, USA, Australia and Canada, Linda Weste explores the uniqueness of storytelling through poetry and the genre of the verse novel. Her subjects are notable representatives of countries where the genre thrives; among them is Bernardine Evaristo, joint winner of the Booker Prize in 2019; and what they have to say enriches our understanding of the many ways poetry and narratives can meld to create a unique reading experience.

Great writers engage with the changing times and by using their imaginations transform their ideas and environments into fiction. More than any other writer of the 20th century, George Orwell responded to a period of historical change by imagining his dystopian future of Nineteen Eighty-Four, perhaps the most influential political novel ever written. At the same time 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' was very much a product of post-war England with its rations and shortages. Orwell, in fact, remained a socialist until his death in January 1950, but the far more intriguing question is what Nineteen Eighty-Four would be like if it were written today, in an age of Islamist terror, fake news and post-truth politics.

In this collection acclaimed Australian author, playwright, screenwriter Louis Nowra shows his breathtaking range that takes us from Venice to Lord Howe Island, from the chaos of contemporary Moscow to Sydney high society, from Edwardian London to a mysterious island full of beauty and terror in Far North Queensland. In these highly imaginative stories and novellas, odd balls, society matrons, prime ministers, obsessives, drunks, the vengeful, the innocents and other vivid characters feature in stories that are disturbing, moving and comic. This extraordinary collection is a testament to Nowra’s unique and unsettling vision.