Australia

Mark Juddery introduces The Story of the Kelly Gang, possibly the first-ever feature film, now largely lost, that was made a hundred years ago in Australia about the notorious outlaw with the unusual body-armour. Hugely popular when it was first released in 1906, it spawned a genre of bushranger movies and epitomized the significance of the Kelly legend in Australian cultural identity.

Anthony Fyson reads a letter from his great-grandfather, who as a young man was caught up in the Eureka Stockade, where gold-miners in Ballarat, Victoria, famously clashed with state troops, 150 years ago this month.

Matthew Stewart discusses Peter Weir's 1981 cinematic tour de force, and what it tells us about the ANZAC myth.

Australian prospectors struck gold on February 12th, 1851.

Who discovered Australia? Most people think of the First Fleet that went to Botany Bay 1788, but our ideas may require rethinking, following recent research on DNA analysis, and epidemiological studies of a rare disease. 

In the aftermath of 1798 the British had to deal with thousands of political prisoners. Michael Durey traces the mixture of decisiveness, pragmatism and clemency with which they were treated.

Janis Wilton records the stories of 19th-century Chinese immigrants and their descendants, and explores their relationship with ‘White Australia’.

Daryl Best on use and abuse in Australia's environmental history.

Christopher Innocent on ancient Australian burial sites.

Ball-and-chain nationhood: Brian Fletcher chronicles the ambiguities Australians have felt over the years towards the nation's 'Founding Fathers'.

Two hundred years before Captain Cook, Dieppe map makers placed the Portuguese flag on a large land-mass called Java-la-Grande approximately where Australia appears on today's atlas. Helen Wallis sifts through the cartographic evidence to examine the intriguing question.