The Australians

by Ross Terrill

From frontier mining towns to the Great Barrier Reef, this book traces the history of Australia from its origins two hundred years ago as a British penal colony to its emergence as a commonwealth

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Australia

330 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[April]

A well-written, though impressionistic, take on Australia from WW2 through the 80s. The author is an Australian historian who specializes in China. He took a break during the 80s to contemplate his homeland. For a historian he's not terribly rigorous. The material mostly seems to come from his own experiences - both in his childhood, and then during his adulthood. Much of it comes from interviews. There are interesting profiles of three Australian prime ministers, Robert Menzies, Gough Whitlam, and Malcolm Fraser. FYI - the author's political sympathies are clearly left-of-center, so the politicians and policies on the right are often given short shrift.

[Karla Thomas]

This book was written in the mid-eighties, so in a sense the Australia that he recorded does not exist anymore. I would like to see him go back and revisit the subject, to show how conditions and attitudes have changed since that time. At the time of writing, Australia was caught in the rising economic recession, and immigration from Asia was still a fairly recent phenomenon. Now the people in the major cities, at least, are as likely to be Asian as white, and the country was one of the few not to be caught in the past decade's financial disaster. The attitudes would likely be far less pessimistic on both counts.

[Ruppert Baird]

Ironically, I read this book while a soldier in South Korea in the late 1980's and I ran into a group of Aussies. It was insightful and gave me a better understanding of my new friends who were turning me on to bands like Redgum and funky foods like vegemite.

[Beth]

Trying to read a bunch of Brian's Australia books before our trip

[Jussi]

personal view of australia by an intellectual in exile. quite good to get an impression and helpful for a visitor to understand some of the political faultlines.