A barbecue, a protest … or a good book? We asked some of our leading historians to choose an illuminating Australia Day read.
- Professor of History and Professor of Public Engagement, La Trobe University
We were dismayed to see no Australians on the New York Times Best Books of the 21st Century – so, with the help of 50 experts, we created our own, all-Australian list. You can have your say, too!
For decades, women from Munich to Melbourne, from Westminster to Washington, had been campaigning for a voice.
Clare Wright has spent ten years researching the history of these groundbreaking petitions. Though few Australians have heard of them, she writes, we can learn much from the story of their creation.
Before the goldrush, Indigenous people told stories about how the bronzewing pigeon seeded precious minerals across the land. Europeans stole not just land, but the value deep within it.
The Australian Electoral Commission is taking public submissions on the name for a new federal electorate in Victoria. Prominent women like Susan Ryan and Margaret Tucker deserve consideration.
The early suffragists would be rolling in their graves to know that women joining the ranks of parliamentarians barely changed their male colleagues’ outlook and demeanour at all.
Football has changed dramatically in the 35 years since Richmond last had a chance at the Grand Final. But while footy is now ‘an industry’, the arrival of the first women’s league is to be celebrated.
This year is the 120th anniversary of the Australasian Federal Convention through which, with rancour, prejudices and vested interests, the Australian nation was eventually born.
The early goldrush was a topsy-turvy time for rebellious women, such as the globetrotting dancer Lola Montez. An exhibition showcasing goldfields jewellery spotlights this era when penniless immigrants could dress like queens.
Was Ned Kelly a Robin Hood warrior or a lone wolf/dangerous criminal/whacko? Given enough cultural oxygen, outlaws are apt to become folk heroes - something today’s shock jocks might care to remember.
Australia’s inimitability with regard to women’s political equality has barely entered conventional studies of political history.
Australia’s key foundation stories have a narrative arc based on the slow simmering of social tension and anxiety culminating in an explosive release of group hostility. Was Cronulla any different?
The democratic freedoms Australians hold dear today – freedom of the press, assembly and speech – were won on home soil by courageous women and men who sacrificed much, but rarely recognised for it.
When I was at primary school in the late 1970s, engaging kids in history lessons meant a good dose of role-play. Each year, on today’s date, it was time to re-enact the Eureka Stockade. It was on this…
Australia’s national story is littered with significant occasions that have fallen on November 11 and two years ago, for me, was no different. It was the morning of November 11, 2011 and I was working…
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