At the end of the First World War, there were 270,000 demobilised Australian soldiers in Europe. Getting them home after the Armistice was a task of epic proportions that would take more than two years. In the meantime, how to keep these disgruntled, damaged men with guns occupied? In a word: sport. The Oarsmen tells the story of the servicemen ......

Before the Manhattan Project, before nuclear warfare and the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was the twentieth centurys great scientific quest to fathom the secrets of the atom. It was through that search for the inner workings of matter that a unique friendship was forged, a partnership that defied academic orthodoxy and altered the ......

With a reputation for being hard to discipline, generosity to their comrades, frankness and sticking it up any sign of pomposity, Australian soldiers were a wild and irreverent lot, even in the worst of circumstances during World War II. In Larrikins in Khaki, Tim Bowden has collected compelling and vivid stories of individual soldiers whose ......

Opinion is still sharply divided on whether Breaker Morant and his Australian co-defendants were criminals who got what they deserved, or scapegoats used by the British Empire. Major Thomas, the bush lawyer drafted in at the last minute to defend them, is invariably depicted either as a hero or an incompetent fool. Now, for the first time, Greg ......

Since the end of their involvement in the Vietnam War, the Australian Army has been modernized in every respect. After peacekeeping duties in South-East Asia, Africa and the Middle East in the 1980s-90s, Diggers were sent to safeguard the newly independent East Timor from Indonesian harassment in 1999, and to provide long-term protection and ......

Late on the night of May 16, 1943, Wing Commander Guy Gibson led 617 Squadron of the Royal Air Force on a mission code-named Operation Chastise--an audacious bombing raid across the English Channel. Their aim? Destroy three dams in the Ruhr Valley, the industrial heartland of Germany. The dams were fiercely protected. Torpedo nets in the water ......

As a UN peacekeeper, I joined the East Timorese fight for life. By then, the earth had drunk the blood of one third of their population. But worse was still to come.