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When our politicians are too busy playing musical chairs to run the country, our cricketers are doing suspicious things with sandpaper, and a murderous starfish with twenty-one arms roams freely around the Great Barrier Reef it seems about time that we, as a nation, ask a tough question: how the heck did it come to this? In Australia - What Happened? TV columnist, comedian and history buff Ben Pobjie turns an incredulous eye on the history of Australia to bust open the national mythology, reveal the truth about what it means to be an Australian and work out what happened to all our best-laid plans. What's the real story of the Aussie larrikin? How exactly did sheep ruin everything? What impact did the Gold Rush have on Australian culture? And what do you mean 'murderous starfish'? All these questions and more will be answered in this hilarious and historically accurate account of our wayward nation.
History is always written by the winners and about the winners. But what about the poor souls lurking in the shadows of history, the ones who were just as remarkable but perhaps didn't stick their chests out as they crossed the line? In Second Best, Australia's foremost historian and comedian Ben Pobjie celebrates the nobility and altogether more fascinating stories of the silver-medal getters. What drove them on their incredible feats, why did they just miss out, and how did they cope with the oblivion of finishing second? From the Second Fleet, the second man on the moon and Australia's second prime minister whose name we consistently forget, Second Best shines a light on those plucky men and women who, through no fault of their own - or at least only a little bit of fault of their own - didn't quite get there before everyone else, but did get there before almost everyone else.
History is always written by the winners and about the winners. But what about the poor souls lurking in the shadows of history, the ones who were just as remarkable but perhaps didn't stick their chests out as they crossed the line? In Second Best, Australia's foremost historian and comedian Ben Pobjie celebrates the nobility and altogether more fascinating stories of the silver-medal getters. What drove them on their incredible feats, why did they just miss out, and how did they cope with the oblivion of finishing second? From the Second Fleet, the second man on the moon and Australia's second prime minister whose name we consistently forget, Second Best shines a light on those plucky men and women who, through no fault of their own - or at least only a little bit of fault of their own - didn't quite get there before everyone else, but did get there before almost everyone else.
What is a Bloke? What is a Bloke? This is the question that has occupied the greatest minds of the anthropological and sociological worlds for many years. Not in a literal sense, of course, at the base level, the definition of a Bloke is perfectly clear: a Bloke is a human male native to Australia, typically between 150 and 200 centimetres tall, frequently partial to beer and ventilated footwear, who has built a mighty nation from the scraps of colonialism and inappropriate farming practices. That much is obvious. Writer and comedian Ben Pobjie examines the different types of Bloke in Australia today, giving the reader a unique and expert insight into Blokedom. What makes a Bloke tick? What do Blokes like to do? Where do they go? These questions and more are answered in this hilarious and irreverent book.
We're engrossed with reality TV these days, yet we so often neglect the greatest reality of all: the reality of our nation and how it came to be. In Error Australis, TV columnist, comedian and history buff Ben Pobjie recaps the history of Australia from its humble beginnings as a small patch of rapidly cooling rock to its modern-day status as one of the major powers of the sub-Asian super-Antarctic next-to-Africa region. As thrilling as it is to see Delta Goodrem's chair turn around, there's an argument that World War Two was even more exciting and, like any good recapper, Pobjie provides an immediate, visceral sense of what it was like to be there in the moment at our nation's defining events. It is only by looking at where we have been that we can understand who we are, what we stand for and why nothing seems to work. Error Australis is a scholarly and hilarious account of a young nation that has spent many years seeking its place in the world, and almost as many years not liking what it has found.
Ned Kelly's tin helmet looms large over Australia's bushranging past, but what about all the unsung outlaws of the Australian bush? What about Black Caesar, who escaped his tyrannous British overlords four times and indeed invented the great Australian tradition of bushranging? Or Mad Dog Morgan who set out to write his name in blood on history's ledger, the dynamic Captain Thunderbolt and his loyal wife Mary Ann Bugg, bushranging's greatest queen, and Matthew Brady, the gentleman bushranger, who showed us all the cilivised side of armed robbery? In Mad Dogs and Thunderbolts Ben Pobjie celebrates the derring-do and revolutionary passion of all the wild colonial boys and girls who raided our towns and stole our hearts, all while wearing sensible headgear.
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A hilarious parody of Australia's most successful tv cooking phenomenon
From the nailbiting escapades of Caligula Coleridge, Undercover Poet, to the life-affirming romance of The Man Who Looked Like A Fish From Certain Angles, to the dizzying wonder of What I Did On My Holidays, Handy Latin Phrases provides everything the modern human needs to educate, amuse, and get through awkward moments at parties.
A hilarious parody of Australia's most successful tv cooking phenomenon