Kenneth Muir
This is the story of the wild colonial boys — the bushrangers who terrorised the highways and back roads of regional Australia for a century from 1788.
This diverse group of criminals varied from 'gentlemen' to outright psychopaths, from hold-up merchants to murderers. The book relates how their very diverse circumstances drove them into lives of crime and celebrity status among the colonial population.
Bushrangers were a handful of fugitives,
...No other mineral can excite the world in the way that gold does.
In 1851 gold was discovered near Bathurst in New South Wales, setting off a series of gold rushes that attracted fortune-seekers from around the world. When the rush spread to the infant colony of Victoria, the continent was transformed.
Here we see how the power of the pastoralists and squatters was broken by a new class of people whose wealth was not based on landholdings or
...The story of modern Australia's beginnings is inextricably linked to 160 000 people who came to this land as convicts.
Here we see how a nation was founded not on free settlement or immigration, but by criminal offenders who were transported to a 'land beyond the sea'. Many went on to create new lives for themselves. Follow the story of greed, brutality, inhumanity, and occasional decency as a small group of people learn to cope with an environment
...This is the story of Australia's economic development from the arrival of the First Fleet to today's post-industrial society.
From the near-bankruptcy of the early convict days, follow the currency difficulties and the use of rum to finance infrastructure. As the dominance of wool is displaced, New South Wales and Victoria grow wealthy on gold. The long boom follows, then depression, recession, and days when it seemed the good times would never
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