Sydney’s Parramatta is developing fast, building over a rich archaeological history. Finding ways to retain it can help visitors and residents feel a sense of physical connection with those who came before.
More than 100,000 records of live performance are on a database of our theatre history. They tell of corroborees, the first play staged by white settlers, and long-gone gracious theatres.
Australia’s rich tradition of crime fiction is little known – early tales told of bushrangers and convicts, one hero was a mining engineer turned amateur detective – but it reveals a range of national myths and fantasies.
Ngár-go (Fitzroy), Quo-yung (Richmond), Yálla-birr-ang (Collingwood), and Bulleke-bek (Brunswick), are just some of the Woiwurrung names uncovered in the notebooks of a 19th century anthropologist.
Thousands of Australian women took flight to the US in the early 20th century, escaping sexism at home for success overseas. They included architects, artists, dentists and an economist who advised JFK.
Essays On Air: Australia’s property boom and bust cycle stretches back to colonial days
The Conversation, CC BY58.7 MB(download)
Australia's property market is slowing and many are contemplating a possible bust. But today's episode of Essays On Air reminds us that since colonial days, Australia's property market has had its ups and downs.
A Tasmanian Requiem brings together Western and Aboriginal voices to confront the violence of the state’s Black War. It shows what a historical reckoning, and reconciliation, might look and sound like.
Fook Shing spent 20 years as a Melbourne gumshoe. He policed the thriving Chinese community – claiming opium as an expense – but was never promoted above his entry rank of detective third class.
Behind the built-up glitz of Surfers Paradise lies a deep history that has been written and overwritten in successive layers that have become thinner and thinner as time goes on.
Lisa Reihana’s video installation Emissaries combines Indigenous actors and performance techniques to reenact Captain Cook’s encounters across the Pacific.
Irish influence on Australian English is much like the influence of the Irish on Australians themselves — less than you’d expect on the surface, but everywhere once you start looking.
In the early days of colonial Tasmania, the British used threatening picture boards to communicate with Aboriginal people, giving them a choice between conciliation and death.
When did Australia’s human history begin?
The Conversation, CC BY16.6 MB(download)
Today's episode of Essays On Air, the audio version of our Friday essay series, seeks to move beyond the view of ancient Australia as a timeless and traditional foundation story.
Lindeman’s Ben Ean Moselle was the ultimate wine for everyone in the 1970s. But as Australia grew wealthier, its fortunes faded in competition with other, ‘finer’ wines.