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Trim, the Cartographer’s Cat: The Ship’s Cat Who Helped Matthew Flinders Map Australia
Trim, the Cartographer’s Cat: The Ship’s Cat Who Helped Matthew Flinders Map Australia by Matthew Flinders, Philippa Sandall and Gillian Dooley, with illustrations by Ad Long and a foreword by Julian Stockwin Adlard Coles (Bloomsbury), 2019, 128 pp., ISBN: 9781472967206, h/bk, AUS$22.49 Trim,…
Tom Frame, Gun Control: What Australian Got Right (and Wrong)
Tom Frame, Gun Control: What Australia Got Right (and Wrong) NewSouth Books, 2019, 201 pp., ISBN: 9781742236346, p/bk, AUS$34.99 Professor Tom Frame’s Gun Control: What Australia Got Right (and Wrong) offers a clear and concise history of Australian politics and policy for the…
The last public hanging at Darlinghurst Gaol
The People's Advocate and New South Wales Vindicator, 25 September 1852, p2 via Trove On 21 September 1852, illicit grog dealer, snappy dresser and murderer Francis Green was the last man to be publicly hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol. Listen to the…
Peter Corris, See you at the Toxteth: the best of Cliff Hardy and Corris on crime
Peter Corris, See you at the Toxteth: the best of Cliff Hardy and Corris on crime Selected by Jean Bedford Allen & Unwin, 2019, 323 pp., ISBN: 9781760875633, p/bk, AUS$29.99 Many readers will feel privileged to hold one more book from Peter Corris…
Sydney’s Oldest Unsolved Murders
An account of the English colony in New South Wales : with remarks on the dispositions, customs, manners, &c. of the native inhabitants of that country, compiled, by permission, from the MSS. of Lieutenant-Governor King by David Collins, London: 1798-1802,…
Australia's first serial killer
Frank Butler, alias Frank Harwood, alias Frank Ash, Darlinghurst Gaol Photographic Description Book 4 May 1897, Pic: State Archives & Records New South Wales (2138_a006_a00603_6061000098r) This week on 2SER Breakfast, Tess talked to Dr Rachel Franks about the 'al-fresco murderer' Frank…
James Dunk, Bedlam at Botany Bay
James Dunk, Bedlam at Botany Bay NewSouth Books, 2019, 244 pp. (plus notes, select bibliography and index), ISBN: 9781742236179, p/bk, AUS$34.99 Looking at the great corpus of works that exist on Australia's colonial history, there are so many available to inspire (and…
Sally Young, Paper Emperors: The Rise of Australia’s Newspaper Empires
Sally Young, Paper Emperors: The Rise of Australia’s Newspaper Empires NewSouth Books, 2019, 654 pp., ISBN: 9781742234984, p/bk, AUS$39.99 Sally Young’s new book, Paper Emperors: The Rise of Australia’s Newspaper Empires (2019), is stunning. The history of print media is messy. It is more…
James Phelps, Australian Heist
James Phelps, Australian Heist HarperCollins Publishers, 2018, 351 pp., ISBN: 9781460756232, h/bk, AUS$39.99 New, from one of Australia’s most popular, and prolific, true crime writers James Phelps, is Australian Heist (2018). Phelps tells the story of how a gang of bushrangers held up…
Vanessa Finney, Transformations: Harriet and Helena Scott, colonial Sydney’s finest natural history painters
Vanessa Finney, Transformations: Harriet and Helena Scott, colonial Sydney’s finest natural history painters NewSouth Books, 2018, 204 pp. (plus notes and index), ISBN: 9781742235806, h/bk, AUS$49.99 Harriet Scott (Morgan) (1830–1907) and Helena Scott (Forde) (1832–1910) were, as natural history artists, without peer…