The Big Book of Australian History notes for teachers
These teachers’ notes offer some of the more interesting avenues for you to explore with your students. This is Big History, in the sense that historian David Christian (who has created an online course in Big History for high school students) uses the term. Australian history cannot be studied without looking at where we came from and where Australia came from. The once commonly heard dismissive comment that Aboriginal people did not invent wheeled vehicles can best be seen as profoundly ignorant when you look at Australia’s lack of suitable draught animals. Equally, the lack of Aboriginal agriculture (as non-Aboriginal people think of ‘agriculture’) is understandable when you consider Australian climate, soils and plants, which simply don’t lend themselves to farming. Everything is connected, and the details are everything!
Author’s notes
Page number references: The numbers after the activities refer to the relevant pages in the printed version of the book. In this electronic version, these page numbers have been retained and used as hyperlinks to the relevant parts of the book. Comments in smaller print after activities are for the teacher to give out or not, depending on students’ needs—and when the teacher sees fit.
Angle brackets: The common computing convention of placing URLs and search terms in angle brackets is used in these teachers’ notes. Any quotation marks seen in a search string are meant to be used, but the angle brackets should not be used as part of the search expression or URL.
Trove’s digitised newspapers: In writing the book, the author used a lot of historical newspapers from the National Library of Australia’s digitised newspaper collections. You can access Trove’s newspapers at http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper if you or your students want to explore them. References to Trove in the teachers’ notes usually refer to the digitised historical newspapers in Trove. In carrying out searches of Trove’s newspapers, students will sometimes discover other material, such as a column of pictures to the right of the search results.
Lists in Trove: Most of the author’s sources are in public lists which are accessible to anybody. There is a master list that can be accessed in two ways: the URL is http://trove.nla.gov.au/list?id=31895 but, as that can be hard to recall, there is a shortcut, http://tinyurl.com/ozhistory, which takes you to the same place.
Sometimes you might not hand out the links but look through the lists and select one or two items from them and use those. Even though the book is published, the author plans to keep adding to the lists.
There were times when space limitations meant important ideas were left out of the book after they were written but, if the topics were researched, they will still appear in the lists.
Ask students to look at the rainforest plants in the picture. How many of them can they recognise? How many can they identify? What is the difference between recognising and identifying? (p. 8)
Ask students to list plants that Aboriginal people ate. (p. 13)
Ask students to list as many members of the Australian megafauna as they can. (p. 15)
As a class, discuss whether the Diprotodon fossil is real or not. (p. 14)
The photographer said it was a cast, placed in a sandpit, so it is not real.
Ask students to identify the places where plants of the Protea family (Proteaceae) grow naturally. (p. 10, p. 11)
Ask students to show on a map the places where plants of the Protea family (Proteaceae) grow naturally. (p. 10, p. 11)
The key thing to note is the southern distribution.
Ask students to create a timeline of Australia’s ancient history and to include the following terms: Ediacara, dinosaurs, marsupials, monotremes, amphibians and ice ages. (p. 11, p. 12)
Organise a debate on the topic: Which was the most frightening ancient Australian animal? (p. 14)
Using paper cut-outs, create a short video, showing how Australia and the other continents have moved in the past 250 million years. (p. 11)
Warning: this will not be easy.
Ask students to research the story about the discovery of the Wollemi pine and then tell the story, in writing, in their own words. (p. 9)
Ask students to find out what stromatolites are and why they seem to have changed so little in the last 3.5 billion years. (p. 12)
Ask students to find some pictures of the Ediacara fauna. (p. 12)
Ask students to choose one plant food that Aboriginal people in their area used and find out more about it—how it was prepared, when it was in season, where it grew and so on. (p. 13)
Ask the more able students to find out how scientists use stable isotopes. (p. 13)
This is serious science.
Ask students to compare the ice ages in the Northern Hemisphere and those experienced in the Southern Hemisphere.
Ask students to work out a search string to find the name of the fossil of the platypus-like animal. (p. 10)
The string <platypus jaw “Lightning Ridge”> in a search engine takes you to information and an image of Steropodon galmani.
Ask students to search online to find out the names of the fossils found at the Canowindra fish-kill site. (p. 13)
The quick way is to locate the website of the Age of Fishes Museum.
Ask students what traditional Aboriginal shelters are like? Ask them to list traditional shelters from other countries and cultures. (p. 18)
Ask students to decide whether the traditional shelters in the picture on page 18 are accurately depicted. (p. 18)
The artist is S.T. Gill (see page 280), who was generally very reliable.
As a class, discuss which aspects of Aboriginal culture are still visible and respected where the students live? Why those aspects? (p. 21)
It seems to be mainly dance, art and dijeridu: are we missing out on some of the most valuable parts of the culture? What is a culture, anyway?
Sydney’s Aboriginal artists used to engrave sandstone; in other areas, they carved trees or painted on rocks or bark. Ask students to discuss, in groups, the following:
If you were living in the bush, closest to here, with no tools and no shops, what materials could you find and how would you use them to create lasting art? (p. 22)
Ask students to find a list of Aboriginal seasons. Are there any for your area? Why or why not? (p. 18)
A search on <Aboriginal seasons> goes first to Wikipedia which appears reliable.
Apart from the three Aboriginal artists referred to on page 23, ask students to investigate whether there were any other nineteenth-century Aboriginal artists whose work was admired by white people? (pp. 22–23)
The answer is probably no—but why were there so few?
Refer students to the list of traditional tales in the box on page 20. Ask them to find two tales, each from a different culture or religion that has a similar message or moral. What is the message? Are the stories similar in other ways? How do the stories differ? (p. 20)
Ask students to piece together as much of Albert Namatjira’s story as they can find in Trove. (p. 23)
Chapter 3: Voyages of Discovery
Ask students why they think Tasman called the new place ‘Van Diemen’s Land’? (p. 28)
Ask students to make a list of the first European explorers who saw and/or landed in Australia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Which countries did they come from? (pp. 26–29)
Ask students, in groups, to research and then demonstrate with diagrams or maps why the Dutch ships always followed the same route to Batavia. (p. 27)
It was all to do with the winds.
As a class, discuss with students what they think early explorers of Australia’s coast hoped to find. (p. 29)
Probably jewels, gold, spices and dyewoods, but a careful look at early journals may reveal more.
Ask students to investigate the story of the Batavia after it had been wrecked on a reef and then to write a short play about it. (p. 27)
Ask students to look at the book cover shown on page 25 and to work out what language it is in. (p. 25)
Googling a couple of words will give students more than enough hints, but ‘Utrecht’ also gives it away. Using the details of the image on page 280 is another way.
Ask students to find out why there was so much fighting going on in Indonesian waters around 1600. (p. 26)
People were trying to establish new empires and there was general lawlessness.
Ask students to find the spelling error on the map. Then using this precise search string in Trove: <fulltext:(“Van Dieman’s Land”)>, see how common the error was in the past. (p. 31)
If you didn’t spot the error, Van Dieman’s Land should be Van Diemen’s Land. Look for the ‘Decade’ option on the left of the search results to trace comparative frequencies and, to take it further, do exactly the same search on the correct spelling.
There is no certain date for the aerial image on page 45 of the Conservatorium of Music. Ask students how they could date the photo. (p. 45)
The vehicles give the most obvious evidence of the approximate date.
Ask students to explain in writing the differences between a ticket-of-leave and a conditional pardon. (p. 37)
Ask students to find the text of John Dunmore Lang’s poem Colonial Nomenclature, and then develop a list of some of the ‘Downing Street appellatives’ that Lang missed. (p. 45)
Hawkesbury, Bathurst, Melbourne, Adelaide for starters.
As a class, discuss when students think the picture on page 32 was painted. (p. 32)
The surprising answer shown on page 280 is 1937! It is good to introduce students to this sort of picture information, found in all the best books!
As a class, discuss when students think the picture on page 35 was painted. (p. 35)
The surprising answer shown on page 280 is 1936. Ask students to now look at the picture on page 34 and discuss the same question. See if they notice that the answer is in the caption. Why were the paintings on 32, 34 and 35 painted when they were? 1938 was the sesquicentenary of first settlement by white people.
Ask students to locate an early account of the founding of Hobart, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth or Brisbane, and then write down or tell the story in their own words. (pp. 46–49)
Some of these will not be easy to track down. Sydney, on the other hand, was extremely well covered.
Ask students to draw a map of the route followed by the First Fleet. (p. 35)
The various journals kept on the voyage tell us what was taken on board where.
Ask students to prepare a map of all of the Australian places called after Governor Lachlan Macquarie. (pp. 44–45)
Note: the Lachlan River was named for the governor’s son, not for the father.
Ask students to use Trove, and either <“John Appleby”> or <“John Appleby” convict> to learn more about Appleby. (p. 33)
Ask students to look at the photos of the convicts and estimate when they were taken. (p. 36)
Hint: one of them is John Appleby, but the image details on page 280 reveal the date as 1874. This is worth keeping in reserve until students have tried their hardest, but the existence of lists of images in books is valuable for students to learn about.
Ask students to find out who Tarwood’s four companions were. (p. 37)
The results of a Google search on <“John Tarwood” “Port Stephens”> will include two separate hits David Collins’ Account of the English Colony, volume 2, in Google Books. The second hit is full-view. There is a better file, a PDF of the book at SETIS (University of Sydney). You can find this by putting <SETIS pdf collins "English colony"> into Google. SETIS is well worth browsing, as it is a magnificent resource.
Ask students to find out more about the life and times of naval officer and explorer John Hayes. (p. 39)
The search string <“John Hayes” Derwent 1793> will give results.
Organise students to debate the statement: William Bligh was a good governor. (p. 43)
The evidence for Bligh as a good man is hard to find, but not impossible. One tantalising but very relevant hint: find out why Malcolm Turnbull’s middle name is ‘Bligh’.
Ask students to go to http://www.oldbaileyonline.org and enter the search string <“New South Wales”> or <“Botany Bay”> or <“Samuel Burt”> in the keywords box on the right. Ask students to choose a convict and tell the story of his or her crime(s) and sentence(s). (p. 34)
Samuel Burt is the most interesting, but part of the story is hard to find. Some details can be uncovered by entering into a search engine the search string <“Samuel Burt” convict>, one of the hits being the author’s blog, Old Writer on the Block.
Ask students to use any available online First Fleet database to prepare a First Fleet Book of Records. (p. 35)
For example, the following convicts could be included: the oldest and the youngest; the ones with the longest name and the longest sentence; the last one to die; the convicts who had carried out the most valuable theft and the smallest theft.
Background reading: Peter Macinnis has written two books on exploration—Australia’s Pioneers, Heroes & Fools (Murdoch, 2007, now out-of-print) and Australian Backyard Explorer (National Library of Australia, 2009). He also recorded an Ockham’s Razor (ABC Radio National) talk called Climbing Mt Exmouth, which was still available as a podcast in September 2013.
Ask students to identify and list all of the floods that have hit the Hawkesbury valley. (p. 52)
This is obviously more relevant if you live near there! For other students, ask them to list the floods they know about in their area.
Ask students to find out how many of the explorers had Aboriginal people in their parties. (p. 58)
Hint: the task may be easier if they re-read paragraph 3 on page 23, which lists the sorts of ‘English’ first names usually given to Aboriginal men. Then look at the explorers’ journals (available from Project Gutenberg), and look for the names of party members. The short answer is that most explorers had Aboriginal people in their parties.
Ask students to explain why finding a route to Port Essington was so important. (p. 61)
This is a difficult task, but a Trove list ‘The Road to Port Essington’ will provided the raw material.
As a class, discuss the reasons why the Burke and Wills expedition was such a disaster. (p. 62)
Ask students to read the report in The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 12 February 1814, page 1, concerning George Evans’ trip over the Blue Mountains, and tell it in their own words. (p. 53)
A search in Trove on <Evans Blue Mountains> will bring it up. Display results earliest first.
Organise students in groups to create a list of equipment and provisions that they would have to take if they went on a three-month expedition these days.
Students could determine the length of time for their expedition and the area they would explore.
Ask students to find out why so many of the explorers took bullocks with them. (p. 55)
They could eat a bullock when its load was used up, and bullocks could not bolt as horses sometimes did.
Ask students to draw up a list of explorers who suffered from scurvy (also called ‘Barcoo Rot’). (p. 64)
At the least, they will find Sturt, Stuart and Burke and Wills mentioned in the book as having suffered from scurvy.
Ask students to compare the ways that the different explorers learned their craft. (pp. 54–65)
This will be a challenge when they come to look at Burke.
Ask students to use Trove to find out what happened to Clarke the Barber in the end. (p. 59)
He was probably hanged in VDL in 1835, after doing three years on Norfolk Island and reverting to crime (burglary) when he was released. Once students search on <Clarke Barber Kindur> and learn that his name was George, they should come across a public list in Trove (not mine) called Bushranger George Clarke (alias The Barber).
For background material, go to the Trove list called ‘Gold!’ at http://trove.nla.gov.au/list?id=31866. This has well over 200 links but to find them, you have to start delving down into the sublists.
Ask students whether they know the names of any well-known gold diggers or goldfields of nineteenth-century Australia.
Ask students why the ‘gold rushes’ were called the ‘gold rushes’. (pp. 70–71)
Ask students whether they know what the two kinds of gold mining were on the goldfields in the nineteenth-century. (p. 72)
Ask students to read about Thomas Chapman, Charles Brentani and the Pyrenees gold, and write a letter that Chapman might have written to his family at home about it. (p. 70)
A search on <Chapman Brentani gold>, sorted with the earliest reports first, will provide adequate material.
Ask students to write a letter from a colonial politician to a prominent citizen or another politician, explaining why a gold rush would be a bad thing. (pp. 70–71)
Students need to think about trade, the loss of workers (from towns, farms, mines and ships) harming the economy, crime and health and so on.
Ask students to debate the topic: Protests like the Eureka Stockade would never happen today. (p. 75)
Ask students to imagine they were at Eureka, but had access to the internet and mobile phones. Tell them that they have to draw up a plan for a modern-style protest about an old injustice (as they, playing the role of diggers, see it). At the end, ask them what they think the results would be. (p. 75)
These days in Australia, the authorities are too mobile and too well-armed with riot control equipment, and public opinion gets heard before things get as violent as they did at the Eureka Stockade. Using modern communications, there probably would have been no violence, but there would have been a result.
Ask students to make a list of what we know about Hugh M’Gregor, an early gold-finder. (p. 70)
The Trove list <M’Gregor’s gold> (http://trove.nla.gov.au/list?id=12994) will give students a good start.
Ask students to find out about the prices paid on the goldfields, and write a letter from a migrant gold digger to his or her family in Europe, Asia or North America (not just England!) about the terrible prices diggers have to pay. (p. 74)
Some of the best information comes from old books. See the list of free downloadable books at http://trove.nla.gov.au/list?id=45573
Organise students to debate the statement: The Victorian colonial government was responsible for the Eureka Stockade. (p. 75)
Was there a single cause?
Ask students to examine some paintings of diggers going to or at the diggings, and list the equipment they took. (p. 68)
The best move is to go to http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Search/Advanced and enter <diggings> in the first box, then in the limitations, select <NLA digitised material>.
It wasn’t easy being a farmer in the nineteenth century!
Ask students to describe what the first European settlers’ houses were like.
Ask students to describe the different meanings which ‘squatter’ took between 1820 and 1850. (p. 79)
Some of the work is already done and available at http://tinyurl.com/ozlingo.
Ask students to list all the domestic items and tools they can see in the picture of a selector’s hut. Ask them whether they know how they were all used. (p. 80)
Things like the washboard, the camp oven, the tomahawk, the two-ended saw and the saddle.
Ask students to mark out an area of 1 hectare (2.5 acres) in either the school grounds or a nearby park. (p. 80)
This is half the size of the area that a settler needed to provide feed, grain and food.
Ask students why the woman in the centre foreground of the picture is holding up her skirts? (p. 86)
All sorts of muck would be on the street.
Ask students, in groups, to research and publish a short anthology of poems by writers whose work was published in The Bulletin. First, discuss with students different criteria they could use to select their poems. (p. 86)
Breaker Morant might be the hardest to locate on the web, but he is easy to find in Trove. The OCR text can be highlighted and copied.
Ask students to find articles in the newspapers in 1843 about ‘boiling down’ sheep by searching <“boiling down” sheep> on Trove. Then ask them to write a letter ‘home’ (the country they left) about the method and its financial advantages. (p. 79)
Ask students to locate C.J. Dennis’ poem, Going to School, and his pencil sketch at the State Library of Victoria. Have students write and illustrate their own poems about going to school. (p. 81)
Search on <“C.J. Dennis” “Going to School”>.
Ask students to look into the origins of some colonial words that started to emerge in the 1830s, like jumbuck or paddock. (p. 78)
There is a good resource for this created by the author at http://tinyurl.com/ozlingo. Encourage students to try to find the earliest dates that they can for the words (and pass these on to the author). If students can’t think of colonial words, suggest cooee, bark hut, squatter, billy, swag and damper, or tell them to look in the ozlingo list.
Ask students to find a current photo of Collins Street in Melbourne and compare it with the picture on page 86. Ask them to list the things that are different and the things that are the same.
Ask students to list the technologies that would make it hard for bushrangers to remain in hiding for very long today. (p. 84)
Think about mobile phones with cameras, video surveillance, thermal imaging etc.
Chapter 8: The Growth of Cities
The cities grew because farms were getting larger and more mechanised, so there was less work for labourers; factories in the cities needed workers; new transport technology made larger cities possible; water and sewerage made larger cities habitable. But Henry Lawson’s Faces in the Street and Arvie Aspinall’s Alarm Clock make us ask: how habitable?
Ask students to identify as many of the places and landmarks as they can in the aerial view of Sydney. (p. 90)
Mainly for students who know something of Sydney. Note the swimming baths in Woolloomooloo Bay, as these turn up later.
Ask students what subjects were taught in schools in the nineteenth century. (pp. 94–95)
After students have read pages 94–95, ask them to do a Trove search on <school pupils arithmetic> (arithmetic can be replaced by reading or writing) for a given decade. This will bring up advertisements for schools which will list the subjects they offer. Ask students to use the list in Trove http://trove.nla.gov.au/list?id=28663 to draw up a timeline of steam power in Australia. (pp. 100–101)
Ask students to write a news story on the ‘planting’ by a Miss Douglas of the first pole of the Overland Telegraph, drawing on newspaper reports of the time, adding an explanation of what the telegraph would do. (pp. 97–98)
A search on <“Miss Douglas” telegraph> will turn up some details in Trove. Miss Douglas was the daughter of Captain Douglas, the Government Resident—a sort of mini-governor.
Organise a debate on the statement: Ned Kelly was a murderer, not a hero. Refer students to the plays and films of his life. (p. 107)
Repeat entry from chapter 7: If you haven’t already done it, ask students to locate C.J. Dennis’ poem Going to School, and Dennis’ pencil sketch at the State Library of Victoria. Draw up a plan for the schoolyard which includes stables with space for one horse for every four children (some pupils would live close enough to walk). (p. 81, now also pp. 94–95)
Search on <“C.J. Dennis” “Going to School”>.
Ask students to draw on contemporary newspaper reports to write a letter ‘Home’ about the fears held in the colonies for the life of the ill Prince of Wales. (p. 99)
Encourage students to think themselves into the character of someone who really cared about the Prince of Wales and make the letter as gushing as possible.
Ask students to draw up a timeline for bubonic plague in Australia. (p. 93)
The author has created a Trove list of key articles on the epidemic: http://trove.nla.gov.au/list?id=24377.
Ask students to see what more they can discover about the roles played by German Friedrich Gerstäcker and American Augustus Baker Peirce (sic) in making Murray navigation possible. (p. 104)
The names should be enough. Gerstäcker’s Narrative of a Journey around the World is in Google Books and it has a link in the author’s Gold Books list (<http://trove.nla.gov.au/list?id=45573), but Peirce’s book Knocking About will have to be located in a library.
Ask students to debate the purpose of the net on the front of the tram. (p. 106)
A search in Trove newspapers using <Isaac Nathan tram fatal> will bring up the death in 1864 of our first great composer, Isaac Nathan, and <"fatal tram accident"> will bring up many more examples. On the other hand, urban scenes like the Collins Street picture on page 86 show that dogs were commonly loose on city streets. Looking at other city scenes, students might find goats, sheep or other animals shown. Isaac Nathan, by the way, would not have been saved, as he rolled under his tram from the side.
How many differences can you see in the 1878 picture of a school, compared with a modern school? (p. 95)
Ask students to list the advantages of electric light over gas lights and oil lights. (p. 105)
Ask students to research the differences between the velocipede and the bicycle. (p. 104)
There was a velocipede accident at Sydney’s Race Course (i.e. Hyde Park) in 1831. Students could find a newspaper report about it on Trove, but they will need to think through their search strategy first. They could also find out when bicycles first got a mention.
Many politicians were content to be a large fish in a small puddle, and feared Federation. Others feared the other colonies, but the visionary ones among them realised that Australia had to unite.
Ask students what ‘Federation’ refers to in Australian history.
Ask students to list the main supporters and opponents of Federation in the 1880s and 1890s. Who was right about the need to federate? (p. 110)
Ask students to draw up a family tree of the kings and queens of England during Australia’s history, with dates. (p. 113)
Older people often refer to some reign or other, knowing one George or Edward from another, and so confusing young students.
Discuss with students why the opening of the first Federal Parliament was recorded in a painting (see page 108) and not a photograph. (p. 108)
A painting—the light was too poor for photography. According to the notes (page 281), it was completed in 1903.
Ask students to research and debate the statement: ‘Kanakas were just slaves by another name’. (p. 118)
Be aware that most of the nineteenth-century commentary came from interested parties—both the users of the Kanakas, those who recruited and probably exploited the Kanakas and those who opposed their use (unions who wanted the jobs, and churches who thought that it was wrong to use this cheap labour)—and accuracy was often an early casualty.
Ask students, in groups, to consider this scenario: Canberra has been destroyed by a fungus that attacks building materials, so everybody has been evacuated and the city has been sprayed and sealed in plastic. It will be unusable for a century. Australia needs a new capital. Ask groups to determine what it should have (transport, access to water, buildings, anything the city would need, as well as projected size) and where it should be and then to present their conclusions to the class. (p. 120)
The aim of this is to simulate the search for Canberra. Get students to read up on the search for Canberra first. They can use the Trove list called ‘A capital site’ at http://trove.nla.gov.au/list?id=31332.
Discuss with students how they would go about identifying the politicians shown in the cartoon. Then ask them to try to identify them. (p. 115)
Sometimes, looking up an image in the Library catalogue (get its record number from page 281) can give more details, but not in this case.
Ask students to describe how ‘coolies’ were regarded and treated in early Australia. (p. 116)
There is a Trove list to work from called ‘Coolies in Australia’ at http://trove.nla.gov.au/list?id=24515. See the Goulburn case of 1852.
Refer to the arch in the photograph and then ask students to collect images of the arches erected in 1901 and those erected for the royal visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Australia in 1954. Ask students to compare the styles of arch. Discuss why we don’t have festive arches in the streets now. (p. 113)
Trove goes up to 1954: search on <“royal visit” arches> and limit the search to articles with illustrations (look on the left for ‘Illustrated’).
Ask students to consider ‘Mawson’s young men’ and the modern teams which go down there. When did women first start working in Antarctica? (p. 122)
The author’s first science teacher, ‘Penguin’ Watson, was one of ‘Mawson’s young men’. By then, he had become a headmaster, had then retired and had gone back teaching. What happened to the other young men—or the young women who came later?
Ask students to use available information to track down the advertisement, in the Trove historical newspapers, for the first showing of Perry’s film. (p. 112)
Apart from Perry’s film, searching on <“Wonderful Troupe of Trained Dogs”> (ordering earliest first, then scrolling down to the right date), other ads that show up are quite amusing: who would have thought there would be so many ‘wonderful troupes’?
Ask students to prepare lists of all the countries who fought on each side in the ‘Great War’. (p. 128)
It would be interesting for students to add the dates on each of the countries that declared war—the USA was not the only late arrival.
Discuss with students what Frank Hurley’s photograph of the battlefield says about war. (p. 124)
Ask students who ‘Johnny’ and ‘Mehmet’ were, and ask them to see if they can find any other names used like that to refer to foes (on either side) in time of war? (p. 145)
Americans were called Jonathan by the British in the wars of the 1770s, Germans were often called Fritz, English soldiers were Tommies or Tommy Atkins when they spoke of themselves, and Russians usually Ivan.
Ask students to choose a soldier who fought in both World Wars, and research and tell his story to the rest of the class. (p. 129)
If you have access to the author’s Kokoda Track: 101 Days (Black Dog Books, 2007), a suitable soldier would be Jim Cowey (p. 426, James Picken Cowey). This man, almost single-handedly, held together the 39th battalion in World War II on the Kokoda Track but, having won a Military Cross in World War I, he was never decorated in World War II, even though his leadership held together the tattered group of men who grimly delayed the Japanese until reinforcements could arrive. Most histories of the Kokoda campaign will have something on this wonderful hero.
Ask students to find conflicting stories about the ship Pfalz and write what really happened, both before the ship left and after it returned, and what happened to the ship and the captain. (p. 131)
There is a Trove list to get students started called The Pfalz case at http://trove.nla.gov.au/list?id=45605. This list does not cover the fate of the ship which had a most interesting career as the Boorara, nor does it cover the captain’s return to Australia in the 1930s, when he spoke of his internment. These omissions are deliberate.
Ask students to create a timeline for the slow formation of the Australian Flying Corps. (p. 140)
Recommended Trove search: <“Australian Flying Corps”>, in the decade 1910–1919.
Ask students in small groups to look into the war-time purge of maps of Australia of ‘names of foreign origin’. Then, on a map of Australia, ask them to plot the names, giving both the ‘foreign’ and new names. Ask them to give the origin of the old and new names on the map. (p. 146)
The main stories have been tagged by the author with <German names>, <propaganda> and <chauvinism>. Search on these and then use the tags in any story, as these are hot links that take you to a whole list. Searching just on <“German names”> also brings up some good material.
Ask students to use Trove to look into the likely origins of the wearing of ‘kangaroo’ feathers. (p. 127)
A simple search on <“kangaroo feathers”> will get results.
Ask students to use Trove to discover the origins of Anzac Day. (p. 133)
As you can learn from http://timyurl.com/ozlingo, the first Anzac Day wasn’t even on April 25.
Ask students to research the three Australian generals, Bridges, Chauvel and Monash, and decide who the most effective general was. Firstly discuss with the students how you would measure effectiveness in generals. (pp. 136–138)
Ask students to use Trove to investigate the history of the tank. (p. 138)
The search string that seems to work best is <trenches tank caterpillar war>, restricting articles to the decade 1910–1919.
We now begin to approach times where students’ grandparents may have some recollections, at least at second-hand. They would be a good resource to tap into. (‘Our Glad’ (p. 152) kissed the author once on the cheek as a small boy. Who knows what students might find, if they dig.)
Discuss with students what the major technological and scientific advances in the first half of the twentieth century were. (pp. 152–155).
Ask students how prickly pear and rabbits became such big pests, and how science combated the problems. (p. 154)
Ask students to work in groups to develop a set of interview questions to ask their grandparents (or great-grandparents or older people they know) about the programs they listened to on the ‘wireless’; what making telephone calls was like; how they travelled to other states; what happened at the wharf when people were farewelled. Have students report back after the interviews. (p. 153, p. 156)
Wireless programs included world news (which came from the BBC by short-wave, to be re-broadcast by the ABC), serials, quiz shows, test cricket and other sporting events, and the broadcasting of coronations and funerals from Britain. Get students to ask about crystal sets, which were used as late as the 1950s. Students should ask about trunk calls and telegrams, and about interstate travel by train or by steamship. Get them to ask what people sang on the wharf (The Maori Farewell) and about the streamers they threw.
Ask students in groups to write a short play to be presented on the wireless. Brainstorm with students the scenarios they could use and how a wireless play would differ from a program on television. (p. 152)
Students need to think about how to do sound effects and how to stop scripts rustling during recording. These days, most of those noises can be edited out, but there is one trick to remember: never have a paragraph running over two pages. That way, the reader ends a paragraph, pauses, turns the page, pauses again, and then reads on. This makes it much more possible to edit out the rustles.
Ask students to research the story behind one of the scientific achievements mentioned on this page. (p. 155)
Organise a debate on the statement: Radio is better than TV. (p. 152)
Ask students to calculate and compare the average speeds of Harry James and Charles Kellow in 1908 and Francis and Clive Birtles and M.H. Ellis in 1917. (p. 158)
Ask students to use the newspapers in Trove to compare the speeds of aircraft and motor vehicles during the first half of the twentieth century. Were motor vehicles ever faster than aircraft? (p. 161)
Two Trove searches make this task comparatively easy: <"motor car" "miles an hour"> and <"ground speed" "miles an hour">. Students will get fewer hits with "miles per hour".
Ask students to run a search in Trove on <“utility truck”> and look at the number of instances of articles using that term per decade. Ask students to account for the drop-off in instances of ‘utility truck’ in the 1950s. (p. 159)
While this could be in part due to increased use of ‘ute’ or ‘utility’, the major cause is probably that many papers are digitised only to the end of 1954. So, while the search method described is useful, there are pitfalls. They can compare their findings to those they get when entering the phrase (without quotes) in http://books.google.com/ngrams.
Chapter 12: The Great Depression
With students, discuss what caused the Great Depression and what effects it had on the everyday lives of people. (p.163)
Ask students to look at the top picture on page 162, and list the property the people own. Do the same for the pictures on page 163 and pages 168 and 169. (pp. 162, 163, 168, 169)
Ask students to explain what the Day of Mourning was about. (p.173)
Ask students to imagine that they are an MCC official. They have to write a letter to the editor of a newspaper, defending bodyline bowling to the Australian public (who were outraged). (p. 172)
Ask students to trace the history of Phar Lap, in Trove or elsewhere, and to create a timeline of the horse’s life. In the process, get students to discuss why Phar Lap was so important at the time. (p. 171)
Phar Lap brought hope in a time of hopelessness.
Ask students to show the bag in the right-hand picture on page 165 to their grandparents, great-grandparents or an older neighbour to find out what it was called. Ask students to also find out the source of its name and what sort of people used them. (p. 165)
It’s a Gladstone bag, named after nineteenth-century British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, and ‘working men’ carried them to work, but most men owned one. ‘Gladstone bag’ is another phrase that shows an interesting pattern of occurrence in http://books.google.com/ngrams.
Ask students to find out more about Captain Francis De Groot and the reasons why he slashed the ribbon at the opening ceremony of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.(p. 167)
Ask students to find out whether there are any shacks or shelters near where they live that were built in the Depression. (p. 168)
In a few places, Depression shacks still exist—one example is Crater Cove on Sydney Harbour, near Manly.
Ask students to list all the ways people ‘scraped a living’ during the Great Depression. As a class, discuss whether people could scrape a living using the same ways if there was a similar depression today. (pp. 168–169)
The picture on page 164 shows the cover of some sheet music. Ask students to look at the incidence of the phrase ‘sheet music’ by decade in Trove, and speculate on the reasons for the pattern that is revealed. (p. 164)
Perhaps the gramophone and wireless/radio played a part in the decline in the use of ‘sheet music’. Note that students need to click on <more …> to see all of the decades, as some are hidden. Try <sheet music> also in http://books.google.com/ngrams where the trend is different. You could ask students why they think this is so.
Chapter 13: Defending Australia
Before World War II, war had been something that Australians went away to fight, not something that happened at home. In World War I, there was some hysteria about German spies in our midst, port defences had been built up during and after the Crimean War, and novelist Anthony Trollope had heard Sydneysiders talking of possible American attacks in the 1860s. (They were referring to the ‘Trent affair’, when U.S. Captain Charles Wilkes stopped an English ship, the Trent, on the high seas to capture two Confederate agents during the US civil war. One night in 1838, Wilkes had sailed a US frigate into Sydney Harbour and dropped anchor. The next day, he boasted that he could have blasted Sydney, had he so wished.)
Nobody really expected Australia to be attacked in war, but people had seen newsreel footage of the Germans fighting in Spain in the Spanish Civil War, and they had certainly heard of Japanese atrocities in China. Even civilians knew they might not be safe, even in Australia. Still, when the call came in 1939, it was a matter of sending Australians to defend England—at first.
Ask students to imagine that they are a military person or a civilian who headed south after the bombing of Darwin. Then, as that person, have them write a letter to a friend or a relative, justifying why he or she left. (p. 186)
Ask students to write a short radio play, where a witness who has seen the Japanese submarines in Sydney Harbour tries to persuade officials to take him seriously. (p. 187)
Students need to think about how to do sound effects and how to stop scripts rustling during recording. These days, most of those noises can be edited out, but there is one trick to remember: never have a paragraph running over two pages. That way, the reader ends a paragraph, pauses, turns the page, pauses again, and then reads on. This makes it much more possible to edit out the rustles.
Ask students to draw up a timeline for the first 101 days of the Kokoda campaign, with entries for all of the key events. (pp. 184–185)
For Kokoda Track: 101 Days, the author needed to draw up a timeline (which gave the book its title), from Day 1, first contact between Japanese and Australian troops, to the day when Australian troops re-entered Kokoda village. It made the story easier for the author to tell and for readers to follow.
Ask students, in small groups, to prepare maps showing the main places where Australians were sent to fight around the Mediterranean. (pp. 179–181)
There were many Canadians in the D-day landings in Normandy in 1944, but no Australians. You could ask students why there were no Australians there. (This was because the Australian Army was fighting the Pacific war.) When they have worked that out, mention the large numbers of Australians flying in Europe: that side is often forgotten.
Ask students, in groups, to make up their own secret coding system and use it to write some ‘Japanese naval messages’, ordering the Japanese war ships to go to particular places and to collect fuel, food, equipment etc. Have groups swap these messages and try to decode them. (p. 183)
Have students ask an elderly Australian woman (or perhaps someone who knows something about their mother’s or grandmother’s life) about what she and her friends did during World War II. Get students to share their findings. (p. 188)
Ask students to interview an elderly Australian about rationing during the war—what was rationed, how did ration cards work, in what ways did rationing affect him or her, is there a particular ‘rationing’ incident that he or she remembers. Ask students to report back to the class on their findings. (p. 190)
Students could start with older relatives, then older neighbours, with an introduction like ‘I am trying to find out what rationing was like during World War II. Did you have any experience of rationing, or did you hear any stories about it when you were young?’ Failing that, students could search the newspapers in Trove, but firsthand accounts are better. In Trove, search strings like <ration coupons blackmarket> or <ration coupons breach> will uncover some interesting stories. Replacing the last word with <fraud> or <forgery> is also interesting.
Ask students to identify the training planes used in the Empire Air Training Scheme. (p. 178)
The Tiger Moth is mentioned on page 178, but you may need to give students ‘Wirraway’. A search using <Wirraway “Tiger Moth”> results in the addition of the Wackett trainer to the list. We also made Bristol Beauforts during the war. And then, how did wartime pilots progress from a biplane like the Tiger Moth to a Spitfire or a bomber?
Ask students to compare the list of the combatant countries in World War II with those in World War I. (p. 179)
Ask students to draw up a table of wars, anywhere in the world since 500 BCE, going from the longest war to the shortest. They should include information such as start and end dates, combatants, rough location, duration and any other information they think is interesting. Ask them how the Korean War rates in the table. (p. 193)
Students will need to exercise judgement here as some of the ‘wars’ are a bit dubious, as to their validity. Wikipedia may be useful as a starting place, but all claims need to be cross-checked. The start date of 500 BCE was deliberate, as it was chosen to include the wars between Greece and Persia. There are knotty questions about what makes a string of battles into a single war (think of the ‘Hundred Years War’ in France!), and what ends a war (like the one between the Netherlands and the Scilly Isles—or the Korean War).
Ask students to do an online image search for ‘Rats of Tobruk’ medals. See how many different designs they can find. Ask them why they think the author chose the one shown in the book. (p. 180)
Ask students to do an online search for eye-witness accounts of the bombing of Darwin and compile a list of references.
They could search Trove for newspaper accounts, library catalogues for books or the Australian War Memorial's website http://www.awm.gov.au/. There is a search box on the Australian War Memorial's website at the top right, and a search on <Darwin> or <Darwin bombing> or <Darwin air raids> brings up good material.
Chapter 14: Building for the Future
From a Trove search, the phrase ‘populate or perish’ dates from 1906, but it only became popular when Billy Hughes took it up. This chapter tells the story of how people began to take the catchcry seriously—though some now say we have gone too far, that Australia has exceeded its sustainable carrying capacity. We can’t turn back the clock, but perhaps there are some ways we can build for the future, without growing too much more. If there are, a study of the history will show us the way.
Ask students to list the rivers that were involved in the Snowy Mountains Scheme. (pp. 198–199)
Ask students to ask their grandparents or older neighbours about whether they used to use corner shops, what these corner shops sold and how often they went to them. Ask students whether there any corner shops near where they live. (p. 202, p. 203)
Ask students to ask their grandparents or older neighbours how they kept food cool when they were children. (p. 204)
Some people had refrigerators which ran on coal gas, and some had refrigerators that ran on kerosene. There were also ‘ice chests’. These are all some of the soon-to-be-lost memories.
Ask students to ask their grandparents or older neighbours about when television came to Australia, how people reacted to the novelty of television, what sorts of programs they watched and how it affected their lives. (pp. 204–205)
Some people will recall standing outside television shops, watching a set running in the window at night, watching the Melbourne Olympics.
The illustration on page 200 is from an Avis car-rental advertisement (see page 282). Ask students what looks wrong about the road in the background. Were roads really like that? Discuss with students how they could find out. (p. 200)
In those days, roads had, at the very least, white posts on the drop-off side.
The survey could include amount of time spent watching TV, programs watched (these could be divided into different genres), how they decide to watch a particular program, parental supervision and house rules etc.
Ask those of your students whose families were postwar migrants to gather some recollections of what it was like to come to a strange land. Have students write down these memories. (p. 197)
Ask those of your students whose families were not postwar migrants to gather some recollections of what it was like to have new cultures in their midst. Have students write down these memories. (p. 197)
It might be a good idea to have students formulate some questions beforehand.
Talk to students about using reliable sources of information. An effective string for search engines is <"number of telephones" Australia>. In the Trove newspaper collection, the string <"number of telephones"> is useful, and when ordered with earliest first, reveals some hilarious references to ‘telephonic stations’. You may need to advise students not to get too side-tracked by the engaging snippets, and perhaps to find one or two extra filter words. This activity may best be done as a team exercise where teams have periods of (say) five years to search, pooling the most reliable reports.
Chapter 15: Controversial Issues
Ask students what they think are controversial issues in Australia today. Ask them whether they can remember any controversial issues from the past.
Organise students to watch Babakiueria, available on Youtube and also as a DVD from the ABC Shop, and ask them whether they think Mr Rudd was right to say ‘Sorry’. (p. 218)
Ask students to ask their grandparents or older neighbours about the Vietnam War: what it was about, whether or not they agreed with Australia’s involvement, how conscription worked, how they or other people got involved in either supporting or objecting to the war. Have students report back to the class on what they learned. They could also write a report on what they learned. (pp. 208–209)
Warn students that the issue divided Australia then, and for some people, it still does.
Ask students to ask their grandparents or older neighbours about ‘The Dismissal’: what it was, why it happened, whether they have any personal memories of the time Have students report back to the class on what they learned. They could also write a report on what they learned. (pp. 210–211)
Again, warn students that the issue divided Australia then, and for some people, it still does.
Ask students to compile a list of songs about the controversial issues raised in this chapter and then, as a class, select the three that are the most effective at getting their message across and the three that are best to listen to.
Web searches such as <"protest song" Australia> will get students started, but they will need to think up their own, and when <song "saying sorry"> has too many false hits, change to <song "saying sorry" Australia>. Once they have identified a few singers, they can burrow sideways. But don't forget The Band Played Waltzing Matilda!
Ask students to find out about the leadership struggles involving any two of the following: Robert Menzies, Joseph Lyons, William McMahon, Paul Keating, John Howard, and any Labor leader since 1996. Ask students to determine whether there were allegations of treachery in either situation that they have researched. (p. 221)
Web searches in the Trove newspaper collections will turn up material on the earlier cases (note that The Canberra Times now goes to 1995, which makes things easier). Suggested strategy: <Name leadership>. Another useful search to find cases to study is <treachery leadership>.
Ask students to each write two cases: one from the point of view of a farmer who wants to keep a piece of land which is of cultural significance to Aboriginal people, and one for the local council which wants the land for its own use. (p. 214)
The big question is usually who should pay the costs, if land is to be returned to Aboriginal ownership?
Students will need to do some clever searching to see how, in the past few years, protests and revolutions have been organised through social media in a number of countries. Tweets, texts and Facebook can all be used to coordinate movement more rapidly than the authorities can move to block them. In some cases, the best indicator of the effectiveness of social media comes from authorities switching them off or jamming them in times of unrest.
Here is a case study from the past, provided to the author by somebody who was there:
In the 1960s, protesters marched along city streets in an orderly way, and the police would form a cordon to stop the protesters going where they weren't wanted. That changed when somebody, now a senior political reporter asked somebody, now an aging writer of histories, to wear a suit to a demonstration.
On the day, when the police blocked the marchers from reaching their target, the two were able to cross the cordon as they appeared to be office workers rather than scruffy students and, on the other side of the road from a line of protesters 100 metres long, they unfurled a banner that one of them carried in his brief-case. Seeing the banner, the line of protesters turned right, crossed George Street on a broad front, and headed up Martin Place. The police were unable to head them off, but that sort of stunt would have been much easier with Twitter!
Chapter 16: Dealing with Disasters
Poetry would go well at this point. The author suggests the following. The second verse of Dorothea Mackellar’s My Country of course, and P.J. Hartigan’s Says Hanrahan, which covers all sorts of problems, as does Henry Kendall’s On the Paroo in a more serious way. C.J. Dennis’ delightful Song of Rain does not mention floods, but it could be used. Henry Lawson’s The Ballad of the Drover features a fatal flood, his Past Carin’ has all of the troubles of life, but his The Fire at Ross’s Farm has a bushfire with a happier ending. Then there is Adam Lindsay Gordon’s From the Wreck and, for drought, try Banjo Paterson’s Song of the Artesian Water, or Lawson’s Out Back or his The Shearers.
With students, make a list of the kinds of disasters that are natural and ones that are caused by humans.
Discuss with students the environmental factors that result in an area being at high fire risk, and explain how each one contributes to the risk. Discuss also how fire risk could be lessened at different levels—individual homes, suburbs, cities, farms, bushland. (p. 226)
The factors should include a lack of earlier control burning, standing fuel levels, temperature, wind and low humidity.
This would include the plan for their homes and also what they would take them.
Have students choose one of the poems in the introduction to this chapter’s teachers’ notes and either present it as a dramatic reading and/or illustrate it.
Have students find images of disasters and then choose one to use as inspiration for writing their own poems.
Ask students to use Trove to identify some major cyclones, storms, floods and droughts of the past and write about one of them. (pp. 224–226)
Ask students to prepare a list of the worst transport accidents in Australia, with brief notes on, for example, what sort of transport was involved, who or what caused each one, where and when the accident took place, what damage it caused. (p. 227)
Ask students to prepare a list of the floods in their area (or state) and indicate what damage it caused. (p. 225)
As a rule, <Rivername flood> or <Townname flood> will get students started, but this is one of the cases where the amazing cooperative efforts of Trove users come to the fore. Tell your students to look top-left for any lists that useful stories have been added to.
There are many, many public lists, and quite a few deal with floods. To access these, you need to be inside a list first, then you search on <floods>, but this can be difficult to do, so here are some of the best:
Floods (general) <http://trove.nla.gov.au/list?id=4439>
Central West NSW Floods <http://trove.nla.gov.au/list?id=22565>
1893 Brisbane Floods <http://trove.nla.gov.au/list?id=7077>
Murrumbidgee River Floods <http://trove.nla.gov.au/list?id=4449>
Gundagai District Floods <http://trove.nla.gov.au/list?id=4438>
Phoenix Park (Hunter) <http://trove.nla.gov.au/list?id=5417>
Ask students what Australians they associate with the following sports: water polo, riding, surfing, cricket, tennis, swimming, athletics, soccer, Aussie rules, rugby, sailing, hockey, netball.
Ask students to ask their grandparents or older neighbours about when the Olympics came to Australia. Ask them how the Sydney Olympics (2000) was different from the Melbourne Olympics (1956). (p. 230)
Ask students to ask their parents where they were when Cathy Freeman won the 400-metre gold medal in the Sydney Olympics, and what they remember about the race. (p. 243)
Ask students to ask their parents where they were when Australia won the America’s Cup, and what they remember about the race. (p. 246)
Organise students, in groups, to discuss whether the Olympic Games makes the world a better place. As a class, collate their arguments for and against.(pp. 230–231)
Isabel Letham would be a good choice, as there are pictures available of her. When students search the newspapers in Trove, get them to scroll down and, on the right, they will see photos of Isabel Letham (or of another person they are researching).
Ask students to use Trove to trace the later career of Douglas Arkell, who lost his left leg to a shark in 1919, and who was still in the news in 1919, as Doug Arkell. (p. 240)
Arkell appears to have still been active in 1951. Other searches on <"D. Arkell"> or <Arkell shark> will find different stories.
In 1862, according to the Ballarat Star, there was a race at the Copenhagen Grounds, Ballarat, over 100 yards between two ladies in crinolines. Ask students to use that information to find out from Trove how the race ended. (p. 242)
The women both gave up at the half-way mark. There would not be proper women’s races until they had more sensible clothing to run in.
Ask students to prepare a list of unusual sports in which Australians have been champions in the past. (p. 249)
This is a nice little take-home problem, because there are probably no relevant books and no on-line references. Perhaps your students could produce a web page and change that.
Ask students to locate the swimming baths shown in the illustration on page 90. They are to the left side of the picture, east of the Domain. Have them compare this image with a modern satellite view (e.g. Google Earth) to see how the two segregated baths are now one. (p. 237)
Ask students to track down the proposed rules of football that were published in The Argus in 1859, and compare them with the modern rules. (p. 244)
There were 26 articles mentioning <football rules> in The Argus in 1859, but only five of those stayed in when hacking was added to the filter (<football rules hacking>, while seven were there when <football rules tripping> was the search string.
Ask students to use Trove to identify some of the earliest cricket matches that were played in their state. (p. 232)
This is where students need to know that, with an advanced search, they can choose only to search papers from one state, or even just one newspaper. They can also limit the search period, but looking at the results as ‘earliest first’ will work just as well.
Ask students to use Trove to locate early examples of lawn tennis in Australia. (p. 235)
With the search string <tennis AND (ball OR racquet)>, the earliest find is the burning down of a tennis court in Hobart in 1828—this would have been a real (royal) tennis court, as lawn tennis was only invented in 1859. The search string <“tennis ball”> is a bit more useful, but still gives many hits earlier than 1859. The earliest hit under <“lawn tennis”> is from 1874.
Chapter 18: Embracing Multiculturalism
Ask students to identify areas in the nearest city where particular ethnic groups have concentrated in the past. Ask students what has happened to those residents—are they still there? (p. 255)
Ask students to find out the languages that students in the class speak at home. How many different languages are there altogether? Then ask them to get equivalent results for the language(s) spoken in their grandparents’ homes, if they are still alive. (p. 258)
Perhaps students could also find out the language profile of the whole school.
Ask students to discuss the point made in the box on page 259 that there is no such thing as a single ‘Aboriginal culture’, any more than there is such a thing as a single ‘Aboriginal language’. (p. 259)
Ask students to explain how the dictation test operated and why it was introduced. Ask students the name of the policy that the dictation test was part of. (p. 252)
A Trove search on “dictation test” will provide a flood of data. Suggest that students sort by relevance, and watch out for the curious case of Mr Macarthur-Onslow, who was deported from Norfolk Island in 1934, after being given a test in German. That in turn may lead them to the 1936 case of Mabel Freer, a British woman, born in India (described at the time as “white”) who was tested in Italian.
Ask students to suggest the qualities in people that go towards making a multicultural Australia work. (p. 257)
Respect, tolerance, friendly interest, sharing on both sides. See also the keys to reconciliation. (p. 259)
Ask students to use resources from everywhere, including illustrations from Gold Rush times onwards, that they can find online and print, to create a collage to reflect the multicultural nature of Australia, or to reflect the multicultural nature of their community.(p. 258)
A Trove search on <“dictation test” Kisch> will reveal, in the first four stories, two separate cases and some clear admissions by the Attorney-General, Mr Menzies, that the test was used as a tool to block undesirables, rather than as a genuine test of literacy. Those four articles also cover the parallel but lesser-known case of a New Zealander called Griffin, who was given his test in Dutch! Later, Mr Menzies learned to be less detailed in his comments. Certainly the Freer and Macarthur-Onslow cases (mentioned above) brought protests from politicians and the press.
Chapter 19: On the World Stage
Organise the class into groups. Give them a time limit and have them brainstorm the names of as many Australian writers, singers, dancers, artists, actors and other entertainers and performers (past or present). As a class, collate their lists.
Ask students to identify and list some of the many Australians who made their homes for a while in Earls Court in the 1960s to 1980s. (p. 262)
The reign of Australians in Earle Court is no more: in 2010, the author called in at the ‘Prince of Teck’ (a pub in Earls Court Road) and found that the stuffed kangaroo in the bar, still there during the 2006 World Cup quarter-final, was gone—and the bar staff had never heard of it!
Ask students to list as many Australians who have received Nobel Prizes as possible. (pp. 263–265)
Ask students, in groups, to decide on three Australians who they think should win Nobel Prizes in the future. Have groups present their choices to the class and give their reasons for these choices. (pp. 263–265)
Have students draw up a questionnaire that includes the following questions, such as: Who’s your favourite Australian author/actor/painter/singer. Brainstorm with students any other questions they would like to include. Have students circulate and record the answers of 10 other students. As a class, discuss the results.
Ask students to choose a well-known Australian and research him or her. Have students either write a short biography of that person and find some images to go with it or give a presentation about that person.
Ask students to nominate Australia’s top 10 Australian authors/painters/ dancers/ films. Then get them to compare their lists. (p. 265, p. 272, pp. 275–276)