Australia & Oceania Audiobooks | History

"This is not a fairy tale, not a love story, but bound into the truths of everyday deeds, in a world that doesn't exist today. Once upon a time, near a century younger, lives so fresh, every experience cherished by a thought and a nation on the brink. From the honesty of memory, we live for the moment, because our next might be our last, in a war to end all wars. Hear from the lips of those that lived... those that felt... those that dreamed, and those that didn't make it. This is their story, told from a small city called Perth. (included... Eye witness accounts: picking up of German Raider 'Kormoran' survivors, after she had sunk HMAS Sydney... Thousands of American sailors hitting the streets of Perth, Western Australia, after their base in Surabaya, Java, was over run by the Japanese in WW2. Joyce, one of four teenage girls, about to meet another nations servicemen for the first time.)"

Brian Dry (Author), Ann Dry (Narrator)

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Crumpy's Campfire Companion - Volume 1: Collected Short Stories 1 to 8

"Crumpy's Campfire Companion is the entertaining third part of a trilogy on The Life and Times of a Good Keen Man. In this collection of yarns, the river, the road, the ridge and the rogue all come alive in Crump's unique humorous style. The yarns reveal his understanding and compassion for the characters and life he writes about."

Barry Crump (Author), Martin Crump (Narrator)

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The Devil's Work: Australia's Jack the Ripper and the serial murders that shocked the world.

"He was a murderer, swindler, bigamist and suspect in the Jack the Ripper killings. Frederick Deeming was also the most hated man in the world. Claiming to be haunted by the ghost of his dead mother, Deeming had spent years roaming the planet under various aliases, preying on the innocent, the gullible and the desperate. But the discovery by Australian police in 1892 of the body of one of his wives in a shallow concrete grave triggered one of the greatest manhunts in history and exposed a further series of grisly murders - those of his first wife and four children - that stunned the Victorian era. The Devil's Work is a gothic journey into the twisted mind of a serial killer, set in the dying years of the 19th century when science and religion had collided and some of the world's most powerful and influential people believed in spirits and an afterlife. It reveals Deeming's crime spree across three continents, raising fresh questions about his role in the Jack the Ripper killings and culminating in his sensational trial where he was defended by a future Australian Prime Minister who believed he could also speak to the dead. Born bad or simply mad? It's time to meet Frederick Deeming, the man known and reviled throughout the United States, England and Australia as the Criminal of the Century."

Garry Linnell (Author), Peter Phelps (Narrator)

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Lies, Damned Lies

"A deeply personal exploration of Australia's colonisation past, present and future by one of Australia's finest contemporary authors. This is a difficult piece to write. It cuts closer to the bone than most of what I have written; closer to my bones, through my blood and flesh to the bones of truth and country; there is truth here, not disguised but in the open and that truth hurts. In Lies, Damned Lies acclaimed author Claire G. Coleman, a proud Noongar woman, takes the listener on a journey through the past, present and future of Australia, lensed through her own experience. Beautifully written, this literary work blends the personal with the political, offering listeners an insight into the stark reality of the ongoing trauma of Australia’s violent colonisation. Colonisation in Australia is not over. Colonisation is a process, not an event – and the after-effects will continue while there are still people to remember it. ‘An urgent examination of oneself and one’s country. Written with a booming cadence that demands to be read aloud, again and again’ Tara June Winch, Miles Franklin Award-winning author of THE YIELD ‘You may think you’re woke, but Coleman never sleeps’ Dr Tyson Yunkaporta, bestselling author of SAND TALK"

Claire G. Coleman (Author), Lisa Maza (Narrator)

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P.L.O.T Past Lives, Olden Times: Tales from Waikumete Cemetery Auckland, New Zealand

"P.L.O.T Past Lives Olden Times is a fascinating look into the lives of a few who are buried in Waikumete Cemetery, Auckland New Zealand. These accounts range from a scandalous tale of star-crossed lovers, to the story of an old boarding house in West Auckland. Included in the book are recipes and poem readings for the listener to enjoy."

Jane Wilks (Author), Jane Wilks (Narrator)

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Australia's Dambusters: Flying into Hell with 617 Squadron

"A truly comprehensive account of 617 Squadron, RAF, who carried out one of the most dangerous and audacious aerial bombing raids of World War II. It was the evening of 16 May 1943. Nineteen modified Lancaster bombers from 617 Squadron RAF, under the command of youthful Wing Commander Guy Gibson, roared into the night sky from their Lincolnshire base. They were on a top-secret Bomber Command mission, codenamed Operation Chastise, now regarded as one of the most dangerous and audacious bombing raids of World War II – an attack on the formidable, well-defended dams of Germany's Ruhr Valley. Slung beneath the belly of each aircraft was one of the war's greatest secrets – a bouncing bomb. Against the odds, and flying straight and level into the teeth of terrifying enemy fire, they succeeded in breaching the two principal dams. Many of the 133 airmen involved that fateful night hailed from Australia, and several would be counted among the 56 who would not return to base next morning. The Dams Raid led to the men of this gallant company – often referred to as a suicide squadron – taking on even more hazardous operations in the final two years of the war. Under valorous leadership, and now armed with massive Tallboy and Grand Slam 'earthquake' bombs, they obliterated vital Nazi installations, destroying such defiant targets as the heavily defended Kembs Barrage and the German battleship Tirpitz, often at a terrible cost in lives. First published in 2003, this deeply researched, revised and updated edition of Australia's Dambusters offers a truly comprehensive account of the most famous bombing raid of the war through the words and stories of the courageous Australian airmen and others who flew on this and later perilous missions, remembered and forever immortalised as the Dambusters."

Colin Burgess (Author), Steve Shanahan (Narrator)

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Semut: The Untold Story of a Secret Australian Operation in WWII Borneo

"March 1945. A handful of very young Allied operatives are parachuted into the remote jungled heart of the Japanese-occupied island of Borneo, east of Singapore, there to recruit the island's indigenous Dayak peoples to fight the Japanese. Yet most speak next to no Borneo languages and know little about Dayaks, other than that they were once headhunters who might kill them on arrival. For their part, some Dayaks have never before seen a white face. This is the story of Operation Semut, an Australian secret military operation launched by the organisation popularly known as Z Special Unit in the final months of WWII. Anthropologist Christine Helliwell has called on her years of first-hand knowledge of Borneo, interviewed more than one hundred Dayak people and all the remaining Semut operatives, and consulted thousands of military and other documents to piece together this astonishing story. Focusing on two of Borneo's great rivers - the Baram and Rejang - the book provides a detailed military history of Semut II's and Semut III's brutal guerrilla campaign against the Japanese, and reveals the decisive but long-overlooked Dayak role in the operation. But this is no ordinary history. Helliwell captures vividly the terrors of the jungle environment into which the operatives are plunged. And she takes us into the lives and cavernous longhouses of the Dayaks on whom their survival depends. The result is a truly unique account of the meeting of two very different cultures amidst the savagery of the Pacific War."

Christine Helliwell (Author), Christine Helliwell, Dorje Swallow (Narrator)

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The Brilliant Boy: Doc Evatt and the Great Australian Dissent

"Longlisted for the 2022 Indie Book Awards. Longlisted for the Australian Political Book of the Year Award. Chosen as a 'Book of the Year' in The Australian, The Australian Financial Review and The Australian Book Review. In a quiet Sydney street in 1937, a seven year-old immigrant boy drowned in a ditch that had filled with rain after being left unfenced by council workers. How the law should deal with the trauma of the family's loss was one of the most complex and controversial cases to reach Australia's High Court, where it seized the imagination of its youngest and cleverest member. These days, 'Doc' Evatt is remembered mainly as the hapless and divisive opposition leader during the long ascendancy of his great rival Sir Robert Menzies. Yet long before we spoke of 'public intellectuals', Evatt was one: a dashing advocate, an inspired jurist, an outspoken opinion maker, one of our first popular historians and the nation's foremost champion of modern art. Through Evatt's innovative and empathic decision in Chester v the Council of Waverley Municipality, which argued for the law to acknowledge inner suffering as it did physical injury, Gideon Haigh rediscovers the most brilliant Australian of his day, a patriot with a vision of his country charting its own path and being its own example - the same attitude he brought to being the only Australian president of the UN General Assembly, and instrumental in the foundation of Israel. A feat of remarkable historical perception, deep research and masterful storytelling, The Brilliant Boy confirms Gideon Haigh as one of our finest writers of non-fiction. It shows Australia in a rare light, as a genuinely clever country prepared to contest big ideas and face the future confidently. 'Gideon Haigh has always been an exquisite wordsmith, and he proves here that he is also an intuitive historian and acute biographer with a masterful control of the broad sweep and telling detail' AFR Books of the Year 'Here is a master craftsman delivering one of his most finely honed works. Meticulous in its research, humane in its storytelling, The Brilliant Boy is Gideon Haigh at his lush, luminous best. Haigh shines a light on person, place and era with the sheer force of his intellect and the generosity of his words. The Brilliant Boy is simply a brilliant book.' Clare Wright, Stella-Prize winning author of The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka 'Gideon Haigh has a nose for Australian stories that light up the past from new angles, and he tells this one with verve, grace and lightly worn erudition. I couldn't put it down.' Judith Brett, The Saturday Paper 'An absolutely remarkable, moving and elegant re-reading of the early life of an extraordinary Australian. Gideon Haigh is one of Australia's finest writers and thinkers … mesmerizing … one of the best Australian biographies I have read for a long time.' Michael McKernan, Canberra Times"

Gideon Haigh (Author), Gideon Haigh (Narrator)

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The Palace Letters: The Queen, the Governor-General, and the Plot to Dismiss Gough Whitlam

"What role did the queen play in governor-general Sir John Kerr’s plans to dismiss prime minister Gough Whitlam in 1975, unleashing one of the most divisive episodes in Australia’s political history? And why weren’t we told? Under the cover of being designated as private correspondence, the letters between the queen and the governor-general about the dismissal have been locked away for decades in the National Archives of Australia, and embargoed by the queen—potentially forever. This ruse has furthered the fiction that the queen and the Palace had no warning of or role in Kerr’s actions. In the face of this, Professor Jenny Hocking embarked on a four-year legal battle to force the Archives to release the letters. In 2015, she mounted a crowd-funded campaign, securing a stellar pro bono team that took her case all the way to the High Court of Australia. Now, drawing on never-before-published material from Kerr’s archives and her submissions to the court, Hocking traces the collusion and deception behind the dismissal, and charts the secret role of High Court judges; the leader of the opposition, Malcolm Fraser; and the Queen’s private secretary in fostering and supporting Kerr’s actions. Hocking also reveals the obstruction, intrigue, and duplicity she faced, raising disturbing questions about the role of the National Archives in preventing access to its own historical material and in enforcing royal secrecy over its documents."

Jenny Hocking (Author), Katherine Littrell (Narrator)

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Convict-era Port Arthur: Misery of the deepest dye

"Detailing the development of the prison and its outlying stations, including its dreaded coal mines and providing an account of the changing views to convict rehabilitation, Convict-era Port Arthur focuses in on a number of individuals, telling the story through their eyes. Charles O'Hara Booth, a significant commandant of Port Arthur; Mark Jeffrey, a convict who became the grave digger on the Island of the Dead; and William Thompson, who arrived just as the new probation system started and who was forced to work in the treacherous coal mines. Convict-era Port Arthur will for the first time provide a comprehensive history of Port Arthur, its horrors and its changing role over a fifty-year period. In gripping detail, using the experiences and words of the convicts, soldiers and administrators who spent time there, David W. Cameron brings to life these deeply miserable days."

David W. Cameron (Author), Ant Neate (Narrator)

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Only the Brave: July 1944--The Epic Battle for Guam

"For Dutton Caliber's American War Heroes series, a World War II narrative on the American liberation of Guam in 1944, focusing on the twenty days of intense combat as the Marine Corps took the island back from the Japanese. On July 21, 1944, a US Marine division landed on the beaches of Guam, a once sleepy island in the Pacific that had been seized from the Americans by the Japanese in the hours after Pearl Harbor. The Japanese would not be giving Guam up easily. The large enemy force defended the island viciously, punching holes through the American lines, attacking from the flanks, and eventually resorting to banzai suicide attacks. The fighting was bloody and brutal, every bit as deadly as Iwo Jima or Okinawa would be. Now, acclaimed author Don Keith offers up a compelling account of one of the toughest fights of the Pacific War, a battle that led to ten thousand American casualties and four Medals of Honor."

Don Keith (Author), Steven Kearney (Narrator)

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The Arrival of the Maori: Legends of Gods, the Creation Myths and Spectacular Culture of Indigenous

"Marikoriko, the first woman, and Tiki, her Creator. Hupene, the old Tohunga, squats muttering on the floor beside his carved ancestor Tiki. Tiki is a God who in the dim long ago helped to build the world, and the whose carved image is now supporting the middle pillar of the house. His eyes of pawa-shell, which once commanded in the Ten Heavens and were full of fire and wisdom, glisten out of the silent twilight; they stare far, far into the Darkness, which Hine-nui-te-po is slowly spreading over the world, Hine-nui-te-po, the Great Mother of Night, who at one time was young and beautiful, and gave Life to Nature.'Haere-mai, e te manuhire, Haere-mai' ('Welcome, stranger, welcome'), so speaks the old Tohunga; then, drawing his flax mat around him, he mutters: 'Haere-mai,' and, after a long silence again, as if murmuring to himself, 'Haere-mai'—but soon his eyes follow those of his ancestor again, gazing into the silence of the slowly descending Night, the ancient goddess Hine-nui-te-po, the Great Mother of Rest. Wisdom dwells with the aged, and their muttering is the sign that their wisdom is ripe. Flying from the mouth of the old, it becomes Mother now and wife to the listening ear."

Norah Romney (Author), Robbie Smith (Narrator)

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Australia & Oceania Audiobooks in History