Australia's Most Notorious Convicts
Australia's Most Notorious Convicts

Author: Barbara Malpass Edwards

Publisher: Exisle Publishing

Published: 2007-04-01

Total Pages: 97

ISBN-13: 0908988885

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Thousands of convicts were transported to Australia. Australia's Most Notorious Convicts shows what became of the most dangerous and desperate of those incarcerated in Australia, and records their deeds both foul and fascinating. Some arrived here with serious criminal records; many more escaped and became hardened criminals... This is the story of the worst of them and those that ran the system. Multiple murderers, bushrangers, cannibals, conmen and the desperately criminal fought lifetime battles with a prison system that was often no better, managed by the incompetent, the sadistic, the ignorant and the foolhardy. This story of the worst of Australian convicts and the system that created them is a meticulously researched insight into the tragedy, treachery, drama and characters that founded our nation. This book is part of Exisle Publishing's Little Red Books series. Every title in the Little Red Books series provides an overview of key events, people or places in Australian history. They cover the essentials, bringing the reader up to speed on the most important, fascinating or intriguing facts. Appealing to everyone from students to pensioners who've always wanted to "know a bit about that", they're an essential part of every Australian bookshelf.

The Lieutenant
The Lieutenant

Author: Kate Grenville

Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

Published: 2010-09-14

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 080219768X

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A young astronomer in colonial Australia faces tragedy on the ground in this follow-up to the award-winning The Secret River—“A triumph. Read it at once” (The Sunday Times, UK). A stunning follow-up to her Commonwealth Writers’ Prize-winning book, The Secret River, Grenville’s The Lieutenant is a gripping story of friendship, self-discovery, and the power of language set along the unspoiled shores of 1788 New South Wales, Australia. As a boy, Daniel Rooke was an outsider. Ridiculed in school for his intellect and misunderstood by his parents, he finds a path for himself in the British Navy—and in his love for astronomy. As a young lieutenant, Daniel joins a voyage to Australia. And while his countrymen struggle to control their cargo of convicts and communicate with nearby Aboriginal tribes, Daniel constructs an observatory to chart the stars and begin the work he prays will make him famous. Out on his isolated point, Daniel becomes involved with the local Aborigines, forging an intimate connection with one girl that will change the course of his life. But when his compatriots come into conflict with the indigenous population, Daniel must turn away from the stars and declare his loyalties on the ground.

Unfinished Revolution
Unfinished Revolution

Author: Anne-Maree Whitaker

Publisher: Dr Anne-Maree Whitaker

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 9780646179513

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"400 United Irishmen and fellow-rebels brought the spirit of Irish rebellion "down under" in the aftermath of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 - and changed Australia forever. At Castle Hill in 1804, this "army of shadows" carried on where they left off but during Bligh's overthrow in 1808, they stood back from a fight that was not theirs. The "political Irish" played a central role in the developing colony. Their professions, trades and skills made them useful as clerks, storekeepers and teachers, and fitted them to be overseers and constables, and helped bring self-sufficiency to the still-fragile colonial economy. They remained revolutionaries; only they negotiated change rather than raised warlike rebellion. Through their open defiance and quiet manipulation of authority, the harp "new strung" resonates to this day in the Australian ethos that United Irishmen helped to create." -- book cover.

True Girt
True Girt

Author: David Hunt

Publisher: Black Inc.

Published: 2016-10-31

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13: 1925435326

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In this side-splitting sequel to his best-selling history, David Hunt takes us to the Australian frontier. This was the Wild South, home to hardy pioneers, gun-slinging bushrangers, directionally challenged explorers, nervous indigenous people, Caroline Chisholm and sheep. Lots of sheep. First there was Girt. Now comes . . . True Girt True Girt introduces Thomas Davey, the hard-drinking Tasmanian governor who invented the Blow My Skull cocktail, and Captain Moonlite, Australia's most famous LGBTI bushranger. Meet William Nicholson, the Melbourne hipster who gave Australia the steam-powered coffee roaster and the world the secret ballot. And say hello to Harry, the first camel used in Australian exploration, who shot dead his owner, the explorer John Horrocks. Learn how Truganini's death inspired the Martian invasion of Earth. Discover the role of Hall and Oates in the Myall Creek Massacre. And be reminded why you should never ever smoke with the Wild Colonial Boy and Mad Dan Morgan. If Manning Clark and Bill Bryson were left on a desert island with only one pen, they would write True Girt. 'An engaging, witty and utterly irreverent take on Australian history.' —Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie Project 'Astounding, gruesome and frequently hilarious, True Girt is riveting from beginning to end.' —Nick Earls

Australia's Immigrants
Australia's Immigrants

Author: Geoffrey Sherington

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Published: 1990-08-01

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1742696554

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Geoffrey Sherington's Australia's Immigrants is the best one-volume account of the dynamic part migration has played in the formation of Australian society.

The Playmaker
The Playmaker

Author: Thomas Keneally

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2015-12-22

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1504026772

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An English lieutenant is ordered to stage a play starring prisoners of the Australian penal colony he supervises in this phantasmagoric historical fiction masterwork from the author of Schindler’s List In the penal colony of Sydney Cove, Australia, at the farthest reaches of the late-nineteenth-century British Empire, Lieutenant Ralph Clark has received a bizarre commission. In honor of the king’s birthday, Clark is charged with staging a production of the George Farquhar comedy The Recruiting Officer using as cast and production crew the highwaymen, whores, cutpurses, killers, and other assorted disreputables exiled there from the British Isles. Pining over the family he left behind, Clark must work miracles with only two printed scripts, a company of unstable and largely illiterate “actors,” and the dubious assistance of his colleagues. But the success—or failure—of the mammoth enterprise rests largely on the shoulders of lead actress Mary Brenham, the mesmerizing and enigmatic female convict to whom Clark finds himself strangely and dangerously attracted. Based on the lieutenant’s real diaries, The Playmaker is a truly remarkable achievement. Atmospheric, dreamlike, and richly evoking time and place, featuring a monumental cast of magnificently drawn, unforgettable characters, it is a work of insight, imagination, and true genius by one of the most notable names in historical fiction.

The Tin Ticket
The Tin Ticket

Author: Deborah J. Swiss

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2010-10-05

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 1101464429

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The convict women who built a continent..."A moving and fascinating story." --Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost Historian Deborah J. Swiss tells the heartbreaking, horrifying, and ultimately triumphant story of the women exiled from the British Isles and forced into slavery and savagery-who created the most liberated society of their time. The Tin Ticket takes us to the dawn of the nineteenth century and into the lives of Agnes McMillan, whose defiance and resilience carried her to a far more dramatic rebellion; Agnes's best friend Janet Houston, who rescued her from the Glasgow wynds and was also transported to Van Diemen's Land; Ludlow Tedder, forced to choose just one of her four children to accompany her to the other side of the world; Bridget Mulligan, who gave birth to a line of powerful women stretching to the present day. It also tells the tale of Elizabeth Gurney Fry, a Quaker reformer who touched all their lives. Ultimately, it is the story of women discarded by their homeland and forgotten by history-who, by sheer force of will, become the heart and soul of a new nation.