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The Sydney Wars tells the history of military engagements between Europeans and Aboriginal Australians – described as ‘this constant sort of war’ by one early colonist – around the greater Sydney region. Telling the story of the first years of colonial Sydney in a new and original way, this provocative book is the first detailed account of the warfare that occurred across the Sydney region from the arrival of a British expedition in 1788 to the last recorded conflict in the area in 1817. The Sydney Wars sheds new light on how British and Aboriginal forces developed military tactics and how the violence played out. Analysing the paramilitary roles of settlers and convicts and the mili...
In 1789 in Sydney Cove, the remotest penal colony of the British Empire, a group of convicts and one of their captors unite to stage a play. As felons, perjurers and whores rehearse, their playmaker becomes strangely seduced. For the play's power is mirrored in the rich, varied life of this primitive land, and, not least, in the convict and actress, Mary Brenham.
This book describes William Dawes’ life and professional achievements. William Dawes was a British Marine serving as the official astronomer on board the First Fleet making the 1787–1788 voyage from Britain to the new colony of New South Wales. Between 1788 and 1791, Dawes established not one but two observatories within a kilometre of Sydney’s present-day city centre, a full seven decades before the construction of Sydney’s historical Observatory at Dawes’ Point, today a stone’s throw from the Sydney Harbour Bridge. In this comprehensive biography, the authors discuss William Dawes’ life and his considerable impact—as astronomer, engineer, surveyor, ordnance officer and inte...
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William Byrd’s Gradualia is one of the most unusual and elaborate musical works of the English Renaissance. This large collection of liturgical music, 109 pieces in all, was written for clandestine use by English Catholics at a time when they were forbidden to practice their religion in public. When Byrd began to compose the Gradualia, he turned from the penitential and polemical extravagances of his earlier Latin motets to the narrow, carefully ordered world of the Counter-Reformation liturgy. It was in this new context, cut off from his familiar practice of choosing colorful texts and setting them at length, that he first wrote about the "hidden and mysterious power" of sacred words to e...
Some biographers are critical of John Hunter's leadership style as the Governor of Port Jackson. Others say he was a failure at sea. Linda Groom disagrees and claims that Hunter was an outstanding seaman whose mere survival as governor was an achievement for his time. Linda Groom is Curator of the National Library of Australia's Pictures Collection.