What an honour it has been to be Chair of judging for this years ARA Historical Novel Prize. Along with fellow judges Carmel Bird and Roanna Gonsalves it has been a fiendishly difficult task. The shortlist has recently been announced, and the three wonderful novels in contention for Australia's richest genre-based literary prize are noted [...]
A writer's thoughts: I've never been one for soppy love stories. Unless you count the first couple of series of Outlander which matched love and adventure and damn good story-telling. However after the author scurried her characters across the seas leaving Scotland and all those glorious men in kilts to wander the lochs and hills [...]
The man who defied shackles, chains, heights, padlocks, earth and water nearly suffocated to death when he was restrained in a coffin and buried six feet underground. Harry Houdini the supreme escapologist, survived to tour Australia in 1910. He arrived with his wife and an aeroplane as well an array of tricks that surpassed the [...]
Yesterday morning the Murki Homestead burnt to the ground. Four generations of Alexanders lived there, from my great-grandfather’s time through to my generation; 1893-2016. It was here that the early beginnings of our business were established, and over the years the house grew to accommodate successive families. Beneath its roof men and women discussed the [...]
Quilting and patchwork have long been associated with Europe and the Americas, and the arrival of this particular brand of needlework from the northern hemisphere to Australia came with the transportation of convicts in the 1800s. There is evidence of a woman named Elizabeth Fry giving migrating women material patches so that they could sew [...]
The world’s most beautiful war memorial spans 243 kms and was built by men who served during the Great War. The Great Ocean Road was first planned towards the end of World War I, when the chairman of the Victorian Country Roads Board asked the State War Council for monetary assistance. The funds would enable returned soldiers [...]
When English explorer Matthew Flinders unexpectedly sighted Frenchman Nicolas Baudin’s vessel at sea near the South Australian coastline on the 8th April 1802, both men were probably a little wary. As far as they knew, Britain and France were still at war. The French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802) were a series of sweeping military conflicts stemming from the French [...]
Charles E. W. Bean is considered Australia’s finest WW1 correspondent and historian, having served as a journalist at Gallipoli, arriving there only a few hours after the sea-landing, and then travelling to the Western Front after recovering from wounds received on the battlefield. His first-hand accounts of the ‘fog of war’ exposed the heroism, logistical [...]
Artist Tom Roberts is perhaps best known in Australia for his iconic paintings which depict our rural life and pastoral history, such as The Golden Fleece painted in 1894 or the romantic and dangerous era of the bush-ranging years in Bailed Up. Never one to stay long at home, even after marrying relatively late in [...]
On the 3rd March 1885 an infantry and artillery battalion of 758 men and officers set sail from Sydney for the Sudan with great fanfare. By the end of the month they had reached their destination. It was an important milestone, for never before had an Australian colony sent paid soldiers to fight in an [...]
