Australian War History

For the first time, The Australian Wars brings what for too long has been considered the historical past into connection with its reverberations in the present. It is estimated up to 100,000 people died in the frontier wars that raged across Australia for more than 150 years. This is equivalent to the combined total of all Australians killed in foreign battles to date. But there are few memorials marking these first, domestic wars.

Long before Australia started to be considered one of the best places in the world to live, it was thought to be completely unlivable. In the 15th century, the European race to claim land began. Despite the fact that Australia was a large landmass, no nation believed it was worth colonizing. The land was claimed by the Netherlands. However, little exploration happened there. Many countries actually believed it to be uninhabitable. However, the Aboriginal populations had already been thriving on the land for millennia.

The Irish-American story, with all its twists and triumphs, is told through the improbable life of one man. A dashing young orator during the Great Famine of the 1840s, in which a million of his Irish countrymen died, Thomas Francis Meagher led a failed uprising against British rule, for which he was banished to a Tasmanian prison colony. He escaped and six months later was heralded in the streets of New York - the revolutionary hero, back from the dead, at the dawn of the great Irish immigration to America.

In 1932, Australia faced an enemy it did not know how to defeat. The enemy did not carry weapons. It did not wear uniforms. It did not negotiate. It walked on long legs, moved in scattered groups, and refused to behave like anything a modern army had trained for. The War Australia Lost to Birds tells the true story of one of the most astonishing and uncomfortable episodes in modern history: the moment a national government authorized military force against a population of emus—and failed. In the years following World War I, Australia was under immense strain. Returning soldiers were given...

Based on the remarkable true story of Irish convict John Graham, WHITE SPIRIT is an epic historical adventure set in 19th Century Australia. After escaping from the notorious Moreton Bay Penal Settlement, Graham finds refuge with the Kabi, a tribe of Aborigines who eventually accept him as one of their own. Attempts to recapture Graham are orchestrated by a variety of contrasting characters working for the all-pervasive British Empire. They include Moreton Bay's tyrannical, opium-addicted commandant Lord Cheetham, the dashing yet warlike Lieutenant Hogan, native tracker Barega and the penal...

There are few moments in American history in which the course of events tipped so suddenly and so dramatically as at the Battle of Midway. At dawn of June 4, 1942, a rampaging Japanese navy ruled the Pacific. By sunset, their vaunted carrier force (the Kido Butai) had been sunk and their grip on the Pacific had been loosened forever. In this absolutely riveting account of a key moment in the history of World War II, one of America's leading naval historians, Craig L. Symonds, paints an unforgettable portrait of ingenuity, courage, and sacrifice.

Since the Polynesians (the first humans in New Zealand who would become known as the Māori) were the most modern humans to settle in an uninhabited land, it is no surprise New Zealand has always been ahead of its time. Despite its late settlement, New Zealand has been one of the most rapidly modernizing nations in the world. New Zealand was the first country to introduce full democracy, women’s suffrage, state pensions, and state housing.

While the Marine Corps island-hopped across the Pacific from Guadalcanal to Saipan to Iwo Jima, the U.S. Army was locked in a grueling, multiyear fight for the jungle island of New Guinea, which in Japanese hands threatened both Australia and the vital supply lines stretching to the United States. Forces under Douglas MacArthur intended to deny the Japanese this opportunity and use New Guinea as a stepping stone on the road back to the Philippines and, beyond it, Japan.

In 1942, country girls Minnie Hodgson and Margot McNee set sail from Perth, Australia for Singapore in search of adventure, full of excitement and keen to do their part working as nurses to the fallen soldiers in a time of war. What they encounter is an army of new friends and the terrors of a city under siege. When the Japanese attack and Singapore falls, they are forced to flee aboard the Vyner Brooke. The ship is bombed, resulting in utter devastation.

One American soldier called it "a green hell on Earth". Monsoon-soaked wilderness, debilitating heat, impassable mountains, torrential rivers, and disease-infested swamps - New Guinea was a battleground far more deadly than the most fanatical of enemy troops. Japanese forces numbering some 600,000 men began landing in January 1942, determined to seize the island as a cornerstone of the empire's strategy to knock Australia out of the war.

The Second World War has begun. Harold Cavill travelled back in time to try to change history to prevent the war in 2040 that caused man's extinction. At first, it was hard to tell if Harold's efforts have even made a real difference at all. But as the war raged in Europe and the Pacific, some dramatic differences in the course of history began to appear. But will the changes that Harold has inspired made humanity's future safer or even less uncertain?

In 1932, Australia fought their own Great War... against the Emus. Convinced of an easy victory, the Army quickly learned not to underestimate their flightless foes. The emus formed alliances with other birds and kept advancing, gaining a near-human sentience after the nuclear testing of 1952-54 (We told the Poms and the Pollies that was a bad idea...) Come 2019, the east coast cities are the final hold-out against Avian Conquest of the Sunburnt Country, and it's Magpie season...

“A fast-paced, well-researched…irresistible” (USA TODAY) World War II aviation account of friendship, heroism, and sacrifice that reads like Unbroken meets The Dirty Dozen from the authors of the #1 New York Times bestselling The Heart of Everything That Is. It’s 1942, just after the...

It’s the 1980’s, the Cavill Family and their multi-national megacorporation have established human settlements on both the Moon and Mars. Their work in space has now significantly overshadowed their still substantial mining, energy, communications, defense and manufacturing operations still on Earth. The Cavills are also the leaders in the development of affordable clean energy on Earth and in space. But while the Cavills have continued to oppose the development of nuclear weapons because they had been the cause of humanity’s demise in Harold Cavill’s original timeline, multiple ...

Harold Cavill’s children continue their father’s work to try to prevent humanity from destroying itself in this timeline. Their sister Beatrice continues to live in a self-imposed exile on the fledgling colony on Mars while her oldest sister Judith finds love for the first time. The Cavill lunar installation at Shackleford Crater is soon joined by installations from other nations vying for their own footholds in space. America struggles at first through a disastrous progressive administration before Ronald Reagan is elected President in 1976 to lead a dramatic turnaround in the ...

Live the action of six deadly and seminal conflicts in Australia’s first 150 years: The Eureka Stockade – The Gold Miners of Ballarat’s valiant stand against Government tyranny. The Siege at Glenrowan – Australia’s most infamous outlaw, Ned Kelly, shoots it out with police. The Battle of Cocos Islands – The face-off between HMAS Sydney and SMS Emden would result in the Australian Navy’s first victory. The Broken Hill Massacre – A call to jihad in Turkey is the catalyst for the first terrorist act in Australia. The Battle of Surry Hills – A rambunctious American, called ‘...

General Douglas MacArthur's bloody campaign to defeat die-hard Japanese forces and liberate the Philippines “I shall return,” General Douglas MacArthur promised the Filipino people following the Japanese invasion and occupation of the Philippines in spring 1942. The people there believed...

Unlike most other World War II accounts, this work covers the South Pacific operations in detail. The audiobook includes many now-forgotten operations that deserve to be well remembered. Significantly, the official Australian history of World War II correctly observed that Australia's part in the Pacific war is barely mentioned in American histories. This volume finally brings the major Australian contribution to the fore.

2024 Revision The story of an Australian Family beginning in 1808 and up to 1998. “William Charker, for your part in the burglary of the dwelling of Thomas Evans at St. Mary Lambeth and stealing goods to the value of £33.60 you are hereby sentenced, along with your accomplice, to 7 years transportation in the colony of New South Wales.” And so, starts the saga of an Australian Family. Although this is the story of my ancestors it is also the story of Australia. William Chalker arrived in Australia aboard the convict ship Perseus on 13th of July 1808 and became the first member of the ...

The war in Europe is over. The new post-Nazi German leaders have agreed to a second Armistice after their victory over the Soviet Union. There is an uneasy peace now with the major combatants now struggling with massive wartime debts and the need to rebuild their battered economies. But the war in the Pacific continues. Only now, the Japanese are the ones using weapons of mass destruction in a desperate attempt to stave off defeat at the hands of the Allies. China, Australia and England have finally been joined by America in a final push to end the threat of the Japanese imperialists. ...