You're History, Mate!

Among all those legendary bushrangers, heroic explorers, genius inventors and upstanding politicians in Australian history, aren't there some duds in the pack? Of course there are! Paul Stafford has rounded up all the dingbats, dropkicks and disasters in our glorious past. All together now, let us say to them . . . 'YOU'RE HISTORY, MATE!'

Which explorer claimed to have found an enormous reef of gold then lost it again (and lost himself in the process)? Heard about the men who sold their shares in BHP just days before the mineral discovery that made it the richest mine in history? Surely it can't be true that one of our politicians drank a glass of herbicide to prove it wasn't poisonous? And how did the police catch the ugliest, least successful and unluckiest colonial bushranger you could ever hope to find?

Learn about some of the lesser-known episodes buried in our history and what life was really like in colonial Australia, right through to the 1920s and beyond.

About The Author

PAUL STAFFORD is a literacy consultant in primary and secondary schools throughout Australia, specialising in reluctant male readers. One of his literacy projects for boys, ‘The Dead Bones Society’, won a NSW Local Government Cultural Award in 2007. Paul has written thirteen fiction books, distributed throughout Australasia. He has published four titles in the HORROR HIGH series with Random House Australia. SHANE NAGLE has illustrated more than forty books for authors like Richard Tulloch, Mike Dumbleton, Nigel Gray, Meme McDonald, and Katharine Scholes. He has also written four of his own. Shane's drawings have been commissioned by TIME, ROLLING STONE, BRW and NEW SCIENTIST magazines, and he has exhibited work in Italy. More recently Shane began a second career as an actor, and enjoys living in Byron Bay with his daughter.