The big book of Australian history PDF
Preview The big book of Australian history
Published by the National Library of Australia Canberra ACT 2600 © National Library of Australia 2013 Text © Peter Macinnis Books published by the National Library of Australia further the Library’s objectives to interpret and highlight the Library’s collections and to support the creative work of the nation’s writers and researchers. Every reasonable endeavour has been made to contact the copyright and rights holders. Where this has not been possible, the copyright and rights holders are invited to contact the publisher. Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander communities should be aware that this book contains images and names of people who are now deceased. This book is copyright in all countries subscribing to the Berne Convention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Macinnis, P. (Peter), author. Title: The big book of Australian history / Peter Macinnis. ISBN: 9780642278524 (ePub) Target Audience: For upper primary school age. Subjects: Australia—History—Juvenile literature. Australia--Social conditions—Juvenile literature. Australia--Discovery and exploration—Juvenile literature. Other Authors/Contributors: National Library of Australia, issuing body Dewey Number: 994 Commissioning Publisher: Susan Hall Editors: Stephanie Owen Reeder and Joanna Karmel Designer: Susanne Geppert Image coordinators: Jemma Posch and Kathryn Ross Production coordinator: Melissa Bush Indexer: Joanna McLachlan Find out more about National Library Publishing at http://publishing.nla.gov.au. The National Library of Australia would like to thank Debra Dank of the Indigenous Literacy Project, Fred Ford, Michael McKernan, George Nichols, Glen Rose, Roslyn Russell and Mary Webb for their help with this book. Preface This book provides a broad overview of the history of Australia from its earliest geological formations to the present day. The framework that underpins the narrative was developed in consultation with teacher-librarians and specialists in specific subject areas. The lively and engaging text by award-winning writer Peter Macinnis and illustrations from the National Library of Australia collections make the historical narratives in The Big Book of Australian History accessible to young readers. The diversity of the Australian experience—from the culture of the Indigenous people to the contributions made by waves of settlers from countries around the globe— is captured in the book. There are no lists of colonial governors or prime ministers, but there are many stirring stories about well-known (and not so well- known) people, all of whom have contributed to our national story. There are also stories about how Australians have dealt with the challenges of living in this country in times of drought, flood, bushfire and other disasters. As the centenary of the World War I approaches, the impact on the national consciousness of Australia’s involvement in foreign wars is an essential component of the book. No history of Australia could fail to mention our sporting achievements and the centrality of sport in the nation’s life. The book also examines Australian contributions in science and the arts, from our Nobel Prize winners to singers, dancers, actors, filmmakers and visual artists who have created imagery that conveys the distinctive qualities of Australian life, both Indigenous and non- Indigenous. Rosyln Russell, Consultant Historian Ancient Australia Australia is an ancient land. Some Australian fossils are around 3.5 billion years old. Some of its surface rocks are about two billion years old, while one Australian plant, the Wollemi pine, belongs to a family that has been growing on the continent for about 200 million years. And the history of modern humans inhabiting Australia goes back tens of thousands of years. Australia has unique animals and plants, including the platypus and the waratah. A rainforest in ancient Australia would have looked much like this. Creating an island continent Inside planet Earth, everything is so hot that even the rocks melt. The heat comes from radioactive atoms breaking down, and it makes the liquid rock move around like boiling water in a saucepan. Luckily, melted rock moves much more slowly than boiling water. The Earth’s crust, the solid rock we live on, floats on this hot liquid rock. Sometimes the molten rock breaks through, making a volcano, but mostly it spreads out sideways under the Earth’s surface. Then the molten rock gets cooler and sinks again. A hundred years ago, some people noticed that, on maps, South America and Africa looked like they fitted together, just like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. That made them think that the seven continents—Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, Antarctica, North America and South America—must have moved around. And so they came up with the idea of ‘continental drift’. They could also see patterns in the way certain animals had lived in certain places—especially monkeys, camels, horses and birds. These patterns made sense only if the continents had moved. The problem was that nobody could explain what made them move. Two members of the protea family: an Australian waratah and a South African Protea A platypus that bites! There is an opal in the Australian Museum in Sydney that, around 110 million years ago, was the jaw of an animal like a platypus. This little animal had teeth, but adult platypuses do not have teeth now. The jaw was found at Lightning Ridge in New South Wales. It came from a relative of Australia’s modern monotremes—echidnas and platypuses. About 50 years ago, scientists realised that the pieces of the Earth’s crust, called plates, can move. They get pushed along by currents in the molten rock below them. That gave rise to the term ‘plate tectonics’. Today, the big plate that includes all of Australia, New Zealand and New Guinea moves north at about 67 millimetres a year. The plates are huge, but so are the forces moving them. These forces can cause earthquakes, and they can also rip plates apart. Luckily, Australia is in the middle of a stable, single plate, and so it does not have many earthquakes. These maps show how scientists believe the present-day continents formed over time. The supercontinents divide We now know that once, very long ago, there was just one large area of land called Pangaea. The plants and animals on Pangaea could live anywhere around the land, and so they either evolved, by slowly changing to suit their surroundings, or they died out. Pangaea then split into the supercontinents, Laurasia and Gondwana, and different groups of plants and animals evolved separately on each one. Then, when Gondwana split into separate continents, including Australia, lots of evidence was left behind. For example, while Australian plants from the family Proteaceae—which includes banksias, waratahs and grevilleas—were found all over Gondwana, they are also related to other members of the family in southern Africa and in South America. Today, the big plate that includes all of Australia, New Zealand and New Guinea moves north at about 67 millimetres a year. Similarly, most people think marsupials like kangaroos, possums, koalas, bilbies and Tasmanian devils are found only in Australia, but the American opossum evolved from the same animals found on Gondwana that became Australia’s marsupials. Flightless birds, called ratites—like the emu, the cassowary, the African ostrich, the South American rhea and the now extinct New Zealand moa—were also found on Gondwana. Around 220 million years ago, in what is called the Late Triassic period, the supercontinents began to separate. Gondwana later broke up, and the Australian continent drifted south. As the plates moved, the animals and plants that lived on them were carried along with them. Fossils were formed in the rocks, and by studying them we can work out what once lived there. People who study fossils and the rocks in which they are found are called palaeontologists. They are like detectives searching for clues. By examining minerals called zircons in New Zealand rocks, they can actually detect that those rocks formed from sediments that came from rocks in New South Wales and Queensland over 150 million years ago! Australia and its animal and plant life are the way they are because of how our continent formed and changed.
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