UNSW Press

As Paul Irish writes, Aboriginal people have lived in Sydney throughout its European history and the traces of this history are all around us. 

Historian Michelle Arrow launches The Honest History Book, asking why some myths about Australian history persist, and why so much evidence is ignored.  

We’re here to talk about two things: Louis Nowra, one of our finest writers, and Woolloomooloo, which he’s documented in his new book.

I was born into the Catholic tribe. For all my moral failings and run-ins with Church authorities, I have remained a cheerful member of that tribe. About ten years ago I began to ask myself what I actually believed. What were the central, the defining beliefs of Catholicism, of Christianity? Did I think they were true? So I started to note down things that puzzled me, teachings that seemed to me dicey. But I also had to question myself; did I think there was a God: if I did, were there useful ways of thinking about such a figure, of describing such a reality?

Politics in 1950s Adelaide was a gentlemanly affair. The Premier, Thomas Playford, and Labor’s Mick O’Halloran faced each other in four election campaigns between 1950 and 1959. More surprisingly, they dined together each week to discuss Playford’s future plans for South Australia, and often praised each other publicly. O’Halloran remained Labor leader until he died in 1960. Playford wept openly when told of the death, and was a pallbearer and speaker at O’Halloran’s State Funeral.

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} After a forty year absence Amanda Webster returns to her hometown of Kalgoorlie in the hope of reconnecting with former school friends – Aboriginal kids from the local Kurrawang Mission. In doing so, she confronts her racist blunders, her cultural ignorance and her family’s secret past. And so begins her journey of reconciliation and friendship.

In the 1970s, acclaimed investigative journalist Brian Toohey was instrumental in breaking the story of plutonium contamination at Maralinga in South Australia, a result of the atomic weapons tests by the British in the 1950s. On 27 September 2016 he launched Liz Tynan’s new book Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga Story with the speech that follows.

September 2016 marks the 60th anniversary of the first British atomic bomb tests at Maralinga in the South Australian desert. But most of us still don’t know how disastrous the tests were for Australia, and why they were carried out here in the first place. Elizabeth Tynan’s book Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga Story brings together the events, the political machinery and the stories of the veterans and victims themselves to explore the full, disturbing story of British nuclear testing in Australia. 

Congratulations to the shortlisted authors for the Bragg UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing 2016.   

In July 2015 Tim Carmody resigned as Chief Justice of Queensland just 51 weeks after being sworn into the office. It had been a tumultuous 12 months, to say the least. Rebecca Ananian-Welsh, Gabrielle Appleby and Andrew Lynch tell the story of his divisive tenure in Queensland's top judicial job. 

Kate Leigh ruled the eastern Sydney crime scene for decades with an intelligent, tough and violent approach to criminal enterprise. Leigh was one of Australia’s first major criminal–celebrities, decades before ‘Chopper’ Read and the Melbourne ‘Underbelly’ identities. Leigh Straw, author of The Worst Woman in Sydney: The life and crimes of Kate Leigh, looks at the importance of community in the Kate Leigh story. 

Australian humanitarians worked for decades with orphans and survivors of the Armenian Genocide. With now over 50,000 Armenian-Australian’s sharing direct family links to the Genocide, this terrible moment in history that is being shared for the first time. Armenia, Australia & the Great War is co-authored by Peter Stanley and Vicken Babkenian.