Few of us remember that the declaration of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and its subsequent World Heritage status was born out a 12-year popular struggle to prevent the most wondrous coral reef in…
Sydney’s Rookwood Cemetery, the largest necropolis in the southern hemisphere, has had its share of troubles lately. A recent ABC investigation reported on a suite of alleged governance problems, including…
When I was at primary school in the late 1970s, engaging kids in history lessons meant a good dose of role-play. Each year, on today’s date, it was time to re-enact the Eureka Stockade. It was on this…
How did Australia, the mysterious southern continent that had captured European imaginations since ancient times, slip from the grasp of the Dutch? Four hundred years ago, the Dutch East India Company…
Delivering the Remembrance Day address at the Australian War Memorial, Paul Keating has highlighted the protection that unifying Europe gave from the sort of dangers that led to “Armageddon” last century…
Over the next four years, the centenary of World War One will prompt the publication of a vast number of war-related books. In Australia, it will be hard to keep count of the new books on Gallipoli, with…
In the last week of the campaign, some naggingly familiar comments came out from the Coalition. Then opposition leader Tony Abbott said he wanted to see the national curriculum in history changed because…
Finally, the AFL home and away season is beginning. Once again our footy teams will make history. But let us not forget that history made footy. Australia, notes Geoffrey Blainey in his Shorter History…
The recent drama about Julia Gillard’s activities on behalf of one faction of the Australian Workers’ Union back in the early 1990s is another chapter in the long story of money in Australian unions. Parliament…
Why is the University of Sydney powerless to stop bullying behaviour in what the public sees as “its colleges”? This has been a constant refrain in recent weeks as the controversy surrounding the behaviour…
Ten years ago this month, John Howard’s Minister for Veteran Affairs, Danna Vale, launched a searchable internet database known as the World War 2 Nominal Roll. It was intended to be a virtual war memorial…
More than a century ago, on 26 September 1905, in a remote and isolated part of German Southwest Africa (present day Namibia) a young Australian lay dying amid the sand dunes and salt pans. Lured across…
FUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION: We continue our series on the rise of online and blended learning and how free online courses are set to transform the higher education sector. Today Ruth Morgan looks at the…
Fifty years ago, the United States and the Soviet Union stood on the brink of nuclear war over Soviet missiles in Cuba. Since then, the Cuban Missile Crisis has been recognised as one of the most definitive…
There is a great deal of derogatory, evidence-free and ill-informed opinion about how history is taught in Australian schools. But these tired arguments are so often repeated that we can actually put them…
When Fascist Italy declared war on Britain in mid-1940, almost 5,000 Italians living in Australia were imprisoned in internment camps. Few Italian families escaped the human cost of detention as “enemy…
The 6½-hour journey of Venus across the path of the sun has enthralled thousands of Australians gathered at viewing locations to witness the event. Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Brian Schmidt, a Distinguished…
AUSTRALIA IN THE ASIAN CENTURY – A series examining Australia’s role in the rapidly transforming Asian region. Delivered in partnership with the Australian government. Today, Professor David Walker looks…
Tasmanian Rohan Wilson won last year’s Vogel Literary Award for unpublished manuscripts with his book, The Roving Party. Since then the novel has been published to great critical acclaim and he has taken…
Consider two furry Australian animals: the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) and the Sydney funnel-web spider (Atrax robustus). Both icons in their own way, both live only in Australia and both were…