History

It's 150 years since Burke and Wills set out from Melbourne on their ill-fated bid to cross the continent, and the anniversary of that historic day – August 20 – will be marked by another...

It's ironic that Ray Collins should build a memorial to honour the First Fleet – his family changed its name to avoid the stigma some believed came with a convict heritage. Ray’s...

Billy Sing was once a World War I hero around the world. But by the time he died in 1943, alone and almost penniless amid the tumult of another world war, he had been all but forgotten. Now...

The portrait is large and solidly framed but Mary Evans carries it easily from her lounge room through the garden to the adjoining bank of the McIntyre River where the sunshine lights the subject...

 ‘Letters! Letters!’ was the cry. They were produced, and torn open in trembling agitation. News burst upon us like meridian splendour on a blind man. We were overwhelmed with it:...

  Walking around the dusty six-hectare factory site, Adam Furphy looks like any other worker in his fluorescent vest and hard hat. The fact is, however, Adam, the managing director of...

There’s an old joke that has Dad and Dave staring at a paddock that’s been stripped bare by scores of rabbits. “You know,” says Dad, “the rabbits were first brought here...

A nasty old witch. Fighter for justice. A hospitable, intelligent woman. A cantankerous troublemaker. Worshipper of plants. A fine lady. Principled anthropologist. A woman who shot at children. A...

The Australian Army used horses in several theatres of war across the early 20th century, and their capability rested on the unsung attentions of the Australian Army Veterinary Corps (AAVC). The...

John and Leanne Clothier follow the tyre marks that wind between and around the river gums that dot the flatlands of the Darling River on their property, Polia Station, in south-western New South...

Peter Crauford stands in the garden of his gracious and historic hilltop homestead “Lexington”, near Moyston in western Victoria, and looks down the slope to the flat lands below where his black...

The simple stone homestead stands on a bare bluff, buffeted by bitter gale-force winds. Almost treeless, the whisker-stubbled paddocks stretch clean away to the horizon, over hills that rise like a...

Port Augusta pilot Greg McNaughton recalls the first time he was called out for the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS). “They told me I was off to Mungarannie [on the Birdsville Track in South...

The evening sun settles slowly on the Wollogorang Creek outside Goulburn in southern New South Wales, reflecting on a glistening pond and lighting up the greenery that is making a valiant stand...

There's a small stone cairn in the main street of the tiny town of Roebourne in the north-west of Western Australia. It stands almost in isolation on the nature strip that separates the sporadic...

Britain had made several unsuccessful attempts to settle the north coast of Australia before 1863, when South Australia annexed what is now the Northern Territory. Fired by optimism, the South...

Most visitors to Kalgoorlie find their way to the Town Hall to have their photograph taken beside Paddy Hannan’s statue, on the corner of the main street in the city centre. It’s an...

On the Sunday closest to November 19 every year, Club 34 meets in the western Victorian town of Portland. Some 200 people gather and, over afternoon tea, they talk about times gone by, recall those...

In the last years of his life there was not much about Ernest Favenc to suggest that he had pioneered the exploration and settlement of Australia’s Outback, especially in the far north. The...

If you’ve ever shed a secret tear to the rousing sounds of I Still Call Australia Home the June long weekend in Longreach would have been a real tearjerker.  Crowded onto a blistering...

For most, Australia’s cricket history revolves around the great grounds of the capital cities and, to a lesser extent, places like Cootamundra and Bowral in New South Wales where Sir Donald...

Australia has been an urbanised country from the beginning of white settlement, but the bush dweller has always been a symbol of everything we see as good about our national character. Mateship,...

Just before Anzac Day, a life-size, bronze sculpture depicting two workmen with pick and shovel and sharing a water bottle as they stand on top of a bluestone boulder will be unveiled. This ceremony...

A distant puff of smoke and a distinctive, haunting whistle blast once alerted people that a train would soon be pulling into their local station. While the powerful locomotive stood at the platform...

The early aviators were fearless adventurers, always seizing opportunities to test their mettle and machines by flying further and faster. As it turned out, it was the public’s desire to shave...

Under the cover of darkness, Moondyne Joe frantically jiggled the bolts in his cell door hinges until they fell out and the door swung open. He drifted into the shadows and began destroying the...

The Aboriginals had a legend to describe how the Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, acquired its characteristic coat, but to the first European settlers of Van Diemen’s Land (as Tasmania was known...

There is something peculiarly fascinating about these long slow trips with a great mob of cattle across a whole continent” – so wrote a Northern Territory Times journalist in 1910, the...

Reading through John Arthur Macartney’s reminisces of his early pioneering life in central Queensland, you are struck by the traits that he has passed on to future generations, such as...

From the 1860s to the 1890s, the pioneers of inland Australia imported camels, and their turbaned Afghan camelmen, to open up the arid interior and build their pastoral empires. Camels could survive...

Broncoing is the name given to a uniquely Australian method for handling cattle without the use of a yard, developed on the great outback plains where timber suitable for yard-building was scarce or...