A social, cultural, political and economic history of Australia set in a global context, from the times of the first explorers to the anxious border controls of the 21st century For tens of thousands of years, humans have imagined, visited and inhabited Australia as a place in which to make a future. From the first explorers, who sailed and eventually settled into the inlets and river mouths of the northern coast some sixty or eighty thousand years ago via the transportations of the eighteenth century to the anxious border s of the twenty-first, and through the great migrations of the centuries in between, Australia's story-and its place in the world-have been shaped by movement and mobility. Mark Peel's History of Australia is an event- and issue-based history of Australia with a clear chronological narrative which succeeds brilliantly in bringing to life the ideas, hopes and journeys - both physical and otherwise - of Australians past and present.