You're History, Mate! Dingbats, Dropkicks, Dills, Duds & Disasters in Australian History

Description

Among all the legendary bushrangers, stoic explorers, genius inventors and upstanding politicians in Australian history, surely there must be some losers in the pack? There are, and You're History, Mate! has found them all! There's the explorer who claimed to have found an enormous reef of gold, then lost it again (and lost himself in the process); the men who sold their shares in BHP just days before the mineral discovery that made it the richest mining company in history; the ugliest, least successful and unluckiest colonial bushranger you could ever hope to find; and the politician who drank a glass of herbicide to prove it wasn't poisonous! There are plenty of sneaky facts among the stories, but kids will be laughing so hard they won't care that they're learning Australian history along the way. History as it should be taught!

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.