Great Moments in Australian History, by Jonathan King

Australian history…does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies…it is full of surprises, and adventures, and contradictions, and incongruities; but they are all true, they all happened.(Mark Twain)

Quoted as the back of book blurb, and again in the book’s introduction, Twain’s view of Australia is epitomised in Great Moments in Australian History, a book which makes Australian history accessible to the casual reader. Author Dr Jonathan king, who re-enacted the first fleet voyage in 1988 and has spent a lifetime re-enacting, teaching and writing about Australian history, has selected 66 key events from Australia’s past and here brings them to life with a fictionalised recount of each event followed by an analysis of its significance and its background. Supported with illustrations and photographs from the period, the events can be read individually, or sequentially.

From the arrival of the first humans on the continent 60,000 years ago, to the 2009 election of Anna Bligh as the first woman to head a state Government, there are events with which most readers will be familiar, as well as some more obscure – yet nonetheless significant – moments in history.

Great Moments in Australian History will appeal to anyone with an interest in Australia’s history.

Great Moments in Australian History, by Jonathan King
Allen & Unwin, 2009

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