Item category 1: Countries: History & Geography

Paul Hogan's ancestors were a couple of Irish blow-ins who arrived in the colony of New South Wales by boat, with a little assistance from the judges of the Old Bailey. Blow-ins from everywhere have been coming ever since, and while it hasn't always been a walk in the park, Hoges reckons this mix...

"This fully updated edition is a treasure-trove of a book, presenting the history of Australia with more than 600 pictures in colour and monochrome, and a text that is bright, readable and rich in little-known facts about our remarkable country."--Provided by publisher.

From the first pioneers battling the elements, industrial success, great literature and theatre, the tragedy and triumph of 20th century war, victories in sport and an ever-changing relationship between human and land, this is the story of Australia.

Since the end of their involvement in the Vietnam War, the Australian Army has been modernized in every respect. After peacekeeping duties in South-East Asia, Africa and the Middle East in the 1980s90s, 'Diggers' were sent to safeguard the newly independent East Timor from Indonesian harassment i...

Exciting and informative history of the land down under 'Australian History For Dummies' is your tour guide through the important events of Australia's past, introducing you to the people and events that have shaped modern Australia. Understand how Australia took two steps forward to become a nat...

"Australian Symbols presents the official symbols and emblems of the Commonwealth, states and territories of Australia. Australian Symbols is a companion book to Australian Flags which describes the history and significance of the official flags of Australia (the Australian National Flag, the Aus...

When Patsy Adam-Smith wrote Australian Women at War in 1984, her aim was to tap into the memories of all the ‘brave, modest, forgotten women’ while they were still alive, in order to honour them. Now, for the first time, this iconic volume is republished for an entirely new generation of readers....

WARFARE & DEFENCE. This stunning new edition of AK Macdougall's famous pictorial history is a truly masterful work. Covering the more than 100 years in which Australians have been fighting overseas war, it includes a full write up of the legends created by Australian soldiers in both World Wars, ...

The bush is the source of traditional Aussie humour. Pioneering, settlement and battling fire, flood and drought have produced yarns of tough cocky farmers, shearers, bush workers, swaggies and dreadful cooks. Much of this humour relates to the resilience and fortitude necessary to endure the rea...

Some generations are born unlucky. Australians who survived the horrors of the Great War & the Spanish flu epidemic that followed were soon faced with the shock of the Great Depression. Today we remember long dole queues, shanty towns and destitute men roaming the country in search of work. With ...

Some of the world's oldest stories are told beneath Australian skies. Graham Seal takes us on a journey through time, from ancient narratives recounted across generations to the symbols and myths that resonate with Australians today. He uncovers tales of ancient floods and volcanic eruptions, and...

Hidden deep in the jungles and high in the mountains of the Southwest Pacific during World War II, Australia's secret army - the Coastwatchers - reported every move of the Japanese invaders to Allied intelligence. Following World War I, the Coastwatcher organisation was formed from European plant...

The people of the first nomadic empire left no written records, but from 200 BC they dominated the heart of Asia for 400 years. They changed the world. The Mongols, today's descendants of Genghis Khan, see them as ancestors. Their rise cemented Chinese unity and inspired the first Great Wall. The...

'The way I look at it is this... When you're behind the line and get yourself into trouble, you've got to get your bloody self out irrespective of anybody else. That's why I like it.' Jock McLaren was a true Australian hero. He escaped Singapore twice, participated in numerous raids on the Japane...

The greatest air battle in history was fought in the skies over southern England between the RAF and the Luftwaffe in the high summer of 1940. Riding high on the success of their Blitzkrieg campaign that had steamrollered France and the Low Countries into defeat, by June 1940 the Nazi forces were...

It was the afternoon of 18 August 1966, hot, humid with grey monsoonal skies. D Company, 6RAR were four kilometres east of their Nui Dat base, on patrol in a rubber plantation not far from the abandoned village of Long Tan. A day after their base had suffered a mortar strike, they were looking fo...

On the afternoon of 18 August 1966, just five kilometres from the main Australian Task Force base at Nui Dat, a group of Viet Cong soldiers walked into the right flank of Delta Company, 6 RAR. Under a blanket of mist and heavy monsoon rain, amid the mud and shattered rubber trees, a dispersed Com...

Famous battles from throughout history, mapped out in detail and explored in depth Experience the world's most significant battles through bold, easy-to-grasp maps. Includes a foreword by Peter Snow, broadcaster and historian. Covering everything from the battlefields of the ancient world to ...

A guide to 20 battles from every era.

The remarkable archaeology of pharaonic Egypt continues to captivate countless people worldwide but evidence for Egypt's prehistoric or Stone Age past has been relatively neglected. This is perhaps understandable, as the archaeology of Stone Age Egypt often seems crude in comparison, and the numb...

TRUE STORIES. 'The Beheading' is the title piece of this spectacular collection of true stories and commentaries. It is an eye-witness account of a beheading in the desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia where the author witnessed savage and soul-destorying punishments. They are recounted in this book wi...

PHOTOGRAPHS: COLLECTIONS. Sites include: Deshengmen Arrow Tower, Qianmen Arrow Tower, Qianmen Gate, Entrance to the Imperial City, Mao's Mausoleum, Tiananmen Gate, Duanmen Gate, Entrance to the Forbidden City, Wumen Gate, Hall of Supreme Harmony, Jingshan, Beihai Park, the White Dagoba, Imperial ...

When the Nazis invaded neutral Belgium in May 1940, defeat and occupation were inevitable but Belgian armed forces held out against a vastly superior enemy for 18 days. The elected Government went into exile in London but King Leopold III controversially remained with his people as a prisoner. As...

The first joint biography of Bennelong and Governor Arthur Phillip, two pivotal figures in Australian history - the colonised and coloniser - and a bold and innovative new portrait of both. Bennelong and Phillip were leaders of their two sides in the first encounters between Britain and Indigenou...

Over eleven months from June 1948 to May 1949, British and American aircrafts carried out the most ambitious airborne relief operation ever mounted, flying 2.3 million tons of supplies on 277,500 flights to save a beleaguered Berlin – opening a new, if unsure, chapter in the UK/US ‘special relati...

The appearance of a hastily-constructed barbed wire entanglement through the heart of Berlin during the night of 12-13 August 1961 was both dramatic and unexpected. Within days, it had started to metamorphose into a structure that would come to symbolise the brutal insanity of the Cold War: the B...

In 1920, at the age of thirteen, Irmgard Gebensleben first traveled from Germany to The Netherlands on a "war-children transport". She would later marry a Dutch man and live and raise her family there while keeping close to her German family and friends through the frequent exchange of letters. Y...

EUROPEAN HISTORY: SECOND WORLD WAR. This account of a remarkable expedition still stands as a military classic. It was written in just 12 days, only a year after the end of the story that it tells. The Second World War had still fourteen months to run and General Orde Wingate, the charismatic lea...