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The British First Fleet knew little of conditions in Port Jackson, later Sydney Cove, before their arrival. George Edwards Peacock, State Library of New South Wales.

Black skies and raging seas: how the First Fleet got a first taste of Australia’s unforgiving climate

When the First Fleet sailed into Sydney Cove in 1788, they entered an ancient and unforgiving landscape. A new book charts Australians’ relationship with one of the world’s most volatile climates.
O-Week has changed drastically since the 1960s, especially the student newspaper reportage, which was much more provocative back then. The University of Queensland

Student press in 1960s Australia was political, now it’s more Prozac

A new book from historian Sally Percival Wood explores how the politically active student media of the 1960s changed Australia socially, culturally and politically.
The thrust of contemporary migration policy is not towards settlement but temporariness, not towards belonging but contingency. AAP

How temporary migration is changing Australia – and the world

Temporary migrants are excluded from the benefits and rights of Australian citizenship. Is such immigration policy compatible with Australia’s democratic principles and values?
John Howard confirms the nation’s involvement in the war in Iraq in March 2003, a decision subject to remarkably little oversight by comparison to Australia’s allies. AAP/Alan Porritt

When Australia goes to war, public trust depends on better oversight

It is important to restore public trust in any future decision for Australia to go to war. For this, a system that provides better democratic accountability is essential.
Mutual admiration between big businessmen like Alan Bond (left) and the Labor Party was a double-edged sword for Bob Hawke in the 1980s. AAP/NAA

Book extract: The Eighties – The Decade That Transformed Australia

In the 1980s Australians grappled with the challenges of living in an era that brought together boom and crisis, nationalism and globalisation, confidence and anxiety, and conservatism and exuberance.
Queensland Police Commissioner Terry Lewis was a target of the Fitzgerald Inquiry. Supplied

Book extract: All Fall Down

Matthew Condon’s new book, All Fall Down, ends Queensland Police Commissioner Terry Lewis’ story amid the demise of the Rat Pack and their corrupt system of graft payments known as “The Joke”.

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