Australian history

Analysis and Comment (15)

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Victoria was a world leader in leisure … and that’s how we founded footy. Australian Football Yarra Park – State Library of Victoria

Australian rules: how a nation fell in love with footy

By Nicholas Herriman, La Trobe University

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…
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Prime Minister Julia Gillard answered questions about the AWU affair at a press conference yesterday. AAP/Alan Porrit

What went wrong with the AWU?

By Geoffrey Robinson, Deakin University

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…
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NSW premier Barry O'Farrell needs to reform the law to give Sydney University more responsibility for its colleges. AAP Image/Alan Porritt

Why a solution to the St John’s scandal lies with Barry O’Farrell

By Julia Horne

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…
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Australia is not fulfilling its obligations to its veterans. Flickr/Another Seb

Roll call: how Australia broke the promise of remembrance

By John Cokley, Swinburne University of Technology

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…
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Survivors of Namibia’s Herero tribe surrendering after a battle with German forces. Ullstein Bilderdienst Berlin/Supplied

Move over Breaker Morant: the forgotten story of Edward Presgrave

By Peter Curson

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…
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Australian humanities subjects need to get on board with MOOCs and develop Australian voices in online learning. World image from www.shutterstock.com

Deadset? MOOCs and Australian education in a globalised world

By Ruth Morgan, Monash University

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…
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A United States Air Force RF-101 Voodoo aircraft pilot photographs a Russian ship loaded with missiles while the aircraft itself casts a shadow in Port Casilda, Cuba, Nov. 6, 1962. EPA/Defense Imagery

Australia’s untold reaction to the Cuban Missile Crisis

By Laura Stanley, Victoria University

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…
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Former Prime Minister John Howard is misinformed about the Australian history curriculum. AAP Image/Julian Smith

Howard’s history repeating: curriculum complaints nothing new

By Tony Taylor, Monash University

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…
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The families of the interned men of the Caminiti clan in Queensland, circa 1940. Supplied

When ethnicity counts: civilian internment in Australia during WW2

By Mia Spizzica, Monash University

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…
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Australia has a long history of engagement with Asia, as Melbourne’s Chinese Museum demonstrates. Greenstone Girl

Engaging with Asia? We’ve been here before

By David Walker, Deakin University

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…
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Look out! They’re poisonous! AAP

Why don’t we cuddle funnel-webs?

By Peter Hobbins

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…
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Pardoning Breaker Morant should not be a priority for the government. AAP Image/Australian War Memorial

Pardon me, but Breaker Morant was guilty

By Craig Wilcox, National Museum of Australia

Early in the New Year, while most of us were thinking about going to the beach or when it would be okay to consign those unwanted Christmas presents to a charity bin, Commander Jim Unkles of the Royal…
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The velocipede created one of several cycling booms in Australia. Harpers Weekly (Dec 18, 1868)

Bigger than Cadel: Australia’s century-old love affair with cycling

By Rob Hess, Victoria University

CYCLING IN AUSTRALIA: Forget about the wild scenes of public adulation for Cadel Evans following his Tour de France triumph. Forget about the widespread admiration for champion cyclist Anna Meares following…
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The man behind the mask. Ned Kelly’s skeleton can finally be laid to rest. the euskadi 11

Ned Kelly remains are positively identified … but how was it done?

By Dadna Hartman, Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine

The remains of iconic bushranger Ned Kelly have been positively identified by forensic scientists more than a century after his hanging in 1880. The identification was made after an exhaustive forensic…

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