Girt
Girt

Author: David Hunt

Publisher: Black Inc.

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781863956116

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Girt. No word could better capture the essence of Australia ... In this hilarious history, David Hunt reveals the truth of Australia's past, from megafauna to Macquarie - the cock-ups and curiosities, the forgotten eccentrics and Eureka moments that have made us who we are. Girt introduces forgotten heroes like Mary McLoghlin, transported for the crime of "felony of sock", and Trim the cat, who beat a French monkey to become the first animal to circumnavigate Australia. It recounts the misfortunes of the escaped Irish convicts who set out to walk from Sydney to China, guided only by a hand-drawn paper compass, and explains the role of the coconut in Australia's only military coup. Our nation's beginnings are steeped in the strange, the ridiculous and the frankly bizarre. Girt proudly reclaims these stories for all of us. Not to read it would be un-Australian. About the author: David Hunt is an unusually tall and handsome man who likes writing his own biographical notes for all the books he has written (one). He has worked as an historical consultant and comedy writer for television, and also has a proper job. "A sneaky, sometimes shocking peek under the dirty rug of Australian history." John Birmingham "Hilarious and insightful -- Hunt has found the deep wells of humour in Australia's history." Chris Taylor, The Chaser

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

Girt Nation
Girt Nation

Author: David Hunt

Publisher: Black Inc.

Published: 2021-11-02

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 1743822049

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David Hunt tramples the tall poppies of the past in charting Australia's transformation from aspiration to nation - an epic tale of charlatans and costermongers, of bush bards and bushier beards, of workers and women who weren't going to take it anymore. Girt Nation introduces Alfred Deakin, the Liberal necromancer whose dead advisors made Australia a better place to live, and Banjo Paterson, the jihadist who called on God and the Prophet to drive the Australian infidels from the Sudan 'like sand before the gale'. And meet Catherine Helen Spence, the feminist polymath who envisaged a utopian future of free contraceptives, easy divorce and immigration restrictions to prevent the 'Chinese coming to destroy all we have struggled for!' Thrill as Jandamarra leads the Bunuba against Western Australia, and Valentine Keating leads the Crutchy Push, an all-amputee street gang, against the conventionally limbed. Gasp as Essendon Football Club trainer Carl von Ledebur injects his charges with crushed dog and goat testicles. Weep as Scott Morrison's communist great-great-aunt Mary Gilmore holds a hose in New Australia. And marvel at how Labor, a political party that spent a quarter of a century infighting over how to spell its own name, ever rose to power. 'Makes you wish David Hunt had been your history teacher. Laugh-out-loud funny and you'll actually learn something.' —Mark Humphries 'An entertaining and instructive historical romp through the formative period of Australian nation-making with a colourful cast of rhymesters, revolutionaries, rebels, racists, reprobates and rabbits.' —Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, The Australian National University 'Once again, David Hunt uses his sharpened wit to chisel away at misconceptions from Australian history leaving us with the cold, hard truth of how our nation came to be.' —Osher Günsberg 'Australian history told intelligently, but with more humour than ever before ... Girt Nation is fabulous storytelling, putting meat on the bones of the national story.' —The Weekend Australian

The Pocketbook of Aussie History
The Pocketbook of Aussie History

Author: Brendan Gullifer

Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com

Published: 2011-02

Total Pages: 114

ISBN-13: 1458763129

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When was the first Melbourne cup, and which horse won? Who was the first woman to stand for federal parliament? Whats the second verse of ? Advance Australia Fair And why was Vegemite renamed Parwill in 1928? Here, in one handy reference, are the dates and deeds, the heroes and villains, the icons and famous words that have shaped our country ...

Crossing the Line
Crossing the Line

Author: Kim McGrath

Publisher: Black Inc.

Published: 2017-08-12

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 1925435741

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For fifty years, Australia has schemed to deny East Timor billions of dollars of oil and gas wealth. With explosive new research and access to never-before- seen documents, Kim McGrath tells the story of Australia’s secret agenda in the Timor Sea, exposing the ruthlessness of successive governments. Australia did nothing to stop Indonesia’s devastating occupation of East Timor, when – on our doorstep – 200,000 lives were lost from a population of 650,000. Instead, our government colluded with Indonesia to secure more favourable maritime boundaries. Even today, Australia claims resources that, by international law, should belong to its neighbour – a young country still recovering from catastrophe and in desperate need of income. Crossing the Line is a long-overdue exposé of the most shameful episode in recent Australian history. ‘Revelatory, extraordinary and compelling – an absolute must-read.’ —Peter Garrett ‘Crossing the Line is an unassailable exposé of Australia’s ruthless pursuit of resources in the Timor Sea. A timely and definitive book.’ —José Ramos-Horta ‘Kim McGrath has trawled the national archives to produce the smoking gun on Australia’s callous betrayal of the people who supported our commandos in World War II, and on the immoral and unlawful appropriation of their oil.’ —Paul Cleary Kim McGrath has been published in the Monthly and has long experience working in government and policy development. She is Research Director at the Bracks Timor-Leste Governance Project, which provides policy advice to the Timor-Leste government.

One Way or Another
One Way or Another

Author: Nikki McWatters

Publisher: Black Inc.

Published: 2012-03-31

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1921870583

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In 1981, fifteen-year-old Nikki McWatters is living in a Gold Coast suburb, dragging herself through humdrum schooldays and dreaming of losing her virginity to a rock star. With three friends she starts the Vulture Club for aspiring groupies – and so begins a festival of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. As Nikki gets older, her conquests get bigger and the stakes get higher. From Australian Crawl to INXS, Pseudo Echo to Duran Duran, she is living her teenage dream – but is the groupie life all it’s cracked up to be? One Way or Another is an irresistible romp through a world of pub rock, big hair, wild nights and mornings after. With irrepressible humour and a bulging little black book, Nikki McWatters recalls an age when everything seemed possible – even if everything wasn’t such a good idea. ‘A vivid, heartfelt trip into the human side of rock ’n’ roll ... Painfully honest and insightful, this is a Puberty Blues for the ’80s generation.’ —Richard Lowenstein, director of Dogs in Space and He Died with a Felafel in His Hand ‘McWatters renders her story with skill, sensitivity, wit and honesty ... a fascinating look into some of rock’s seedier aspects.’ —Bookseller+Publisher ‘A great Australian rock ’n’ roll read’ —Steve Kilbey

The Art of Time Travel
The Art of Time Travel

Author: Tom Griffiths

Publisher: Black Inc.

Published: 2017-07-03

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 1925203123

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No matter how practised we are at history, it always humbles us. No matter how often we visit the past, it always surprises us. Winner of the Ernest Scott Prize and Shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Award for Non-fiction 'A rare feat of imagination and generosity.' – Mark McKenna With every sentence they write, historians must walk the tightrope between discipline and imagination, empathy and evidence. In this landmark work, eminent historian and award-winning author Tom Griffiths shares his passion for the fascinating, complex craft of history – or, as he calls it, the art of time travel. In fourteen portraits, Griffiths illuminates how historians such as Inga Clendinnen, Judith Wright, Geoffrey Blainey and Henry Reynolds have approached their craft. In prose both earthy and elegant, he shows the new insights they have brought to Australian history, and in so doing reshapes our shared knowledge of this continent. The Art of Time Travel is an exhilarating book that will forever change the way you think of Australia's past. 'If the past is a foreign country, Tom Griffiths makes the perfect travelling companion. Let him be your eyes and ears on our shared history. Most of all, follow his heart.' – Clare Wright

The Australian Disease
The Australian Disease

Author: Richard Flanagan

Publisher: Black Inc.

Published: 2015-09-23

Total Pages: 38

ISBN-13: 1921870494

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Non-freedom to the Western mind is inevitably linked with images of backwardness – Soviet tractors, East German Trabants, Kim Jong Il’s haircut. But non-freedom these days is also iPads, iPhones and a dazzling array of less iconic but ubiquitous consumer goods that flood our stores, our homes and which increasingly are used to define our ideas of worth and happiness. It is a full-lipped smile achieved with the aid of collagen made from skin flensed from dead Chinese convicts. The Australian Disease is Richard Flanagan’s perceptive, hilarious, searing exposé of the conformity that afflicts our public life. From Weary Dunlop to Vassily Grossman, from David Hicks to Craig Thomson, Flanagan takes us on a wildly entertaining and unsettling trip. If we are to find hope, he says, we must take our compass more from ourselves and less from the powerful.

Freedom on the Fatal Shore
Freedom on the Fatal Shore

Author: John Hirst

Publisher: Black Inc.

Published: 2008-05-01

Total Pages: 784

ISBN-13: 1921866322

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Freedom on the Fatal Shore brings together John Hirst's two books on the early history of New South Wales. Both are classic accounts which have had a profound effect on the understanding of our history. This combined edition includes a new foreword by the author. Convicts with their "own time", convicts with legal rights, convicts making money, convicts getting drunk - what sort of prison was this? Hirst describes how the convict colony actually worked and how Australian democracy came into being, despite the opposition of the most powerful. He writes: "This was not a society that had to become free; its freedoms were well established from the earliest times." “Colonial Australia was a more ‘normal’ place than one might imagine from the folkloric picture of society governed by the lash and the triangle, composed of groaning white slaves tyrannised by ruthless masters. The book that best conveys this and has rightly become a landmark in recent studies of the System is J.B. Hirst’s Convict Society and Its Enemies.” —Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore “Anyone with an interest in Australian political culture will find The Strange Birth of Colonial Democracy invaluable.” —Professor Colin Hughes, former Electoral Commissioner for the Commonwealth

Dog Days
Dog Days

Author: Ross Garnaut

Publisher: Black Inc.

Published: 2013-11-15

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 1922231177

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A blueprint for the nation after the boom. Australians have just lived through a period of exceptional prosperity, but, says influential economist Ross Garnaut, the Dog Days are on their way. Are we ready for the challenges ahead? In Dog Days, Garnaut explains how we got here, what we can expect next and the tough choices we need to make to survive the new economic conditions. Are we clever enough – and our leaders courageous enough – to change what needs to be changed and preserve a fair and prosperous Australia? This is a book about the future by a leading adviser to government and business, someone with a proven record of seeing where the nation is going. Both forecast and analysis, it heralds a new era for Australia after the boom.