In 1854, Rosa Aarons travelled with her family from London to the diggings on the Ballarat goldfield, where she met the Governor of the Colony, the leader of the diggers, Lady Macbeth, and a dog called Bonaparte. This is how Rosa would sum up what she learned in her first year in Victoria: \* Ships - How to explore them. \* Horses - How to ride them. \* Parents - How to understand them. \* Latin - How to speak it. \* Gold - How to pan for it. \* Friends - How to get to know them. \* Secrets - How to keep them. \* School - How to tolerate it. \* Stars - How to wish on them. \* Snakes - How to avoid them. \* History - How to make it.

Apparently we’re going to a demo. I’ve seen pictures of demos in the newspapers of course—people marching down the street, holding banners and bits of cardboard with signs on them ... But this demo sounded like it was just for women. I didn’t get it. Jan Packard starts a diary because she is bored, but she suddenly finds there is a lot happening around her. Everyone seems to be changing and doing things she never expected. Her mum is attending consciousness-raising meetings, her best friend has gone boy-crazy, she discovers her older brother was a draft dodger during the Vietnam war and there are protests and politics everywhere.

The year 1900 was a momentous one for Kitty Barnes. Bubonic plague, the Black Death, was killing large numbers of people; the country was on the verge of becoming a federation; Kitty's brother was in Africa fighting in the Boer War; and Kitty was finding herself somewhat attracted to Reggie, the boy down the road.

My story transported the diary of Elizabeth Australia 1970.

Charlotte McKenzie lives in Melbourne. It is the end of WW1 and as she assists the doctor next door, she finds herself experiencing close at hand the devastating effects of the influenza pandemic, that killed more people than in WW1 itself.

David Bellamy is a timid English orphan who starts a new life in Sydney with relatives he barely knows. It is the early 19th C., and David records daily life in this harsh colony as her perceives it, as well as events such as the Rum Corps rebellion.

Thomas dreams of escaping his bleak life in a small town and becoming a world-famous journalist. Guided by his adventurous spirit and insatiable curiosity, he smuggles himself aboard an American whaling ship, and finds himself caught up in one of the most daring escape plans in Australian history.

Part of the "My Story" series. Set in Sydney, 1937, this is the fictional diary of a young Aboriginal girl, a member of the Stolen Generation. She is given the diary by the Sister in charge of Bomaderry Aboriginal Children's Home and through its pages she describes her life - from her arrival there, aged five, through her struggle to understand why she was taken from her real mother, to her adoption at ten years of age by a white Catholic family in St.Ives. Mary Talence, birth name Amy Charles, is increasingly confused - and then ashamed - as she is taught that white skinned is good, black skinned is bad. She longs to understand why this is so but finds that logical questions - almost any questions - provoke anger and accusations of ingratitude from her white family. Her music - her beautiful voice and her ability to make up songs - is her greatest source of comfort. This is an honest, thought-provoking book that acknowledges the terrible wrong done to aboriginal children taken from their families whilst also recognising the combination of ignorance, genuinely good intentions and political convenience that brought about this dreadful policy. Very appropriate for integration with HSIE and highly recommended for general reading as a clear introduction to the reality of the Stolen Generations to primary students.

It only took a moment. It was a moment that Tom would always remember - that morning of 19 February 1942, when everything changed... ...changed from peace to war. When fourteen-year-old Tom Taylor moves to Darwin with his family, he hardly guesses that tragedy will soon change his life forever. Although Tom helps to dig slit trenches, and though the Japanese edge closer through Malaysia and Singapore, the war seems so far away.

The diary of Jack McLaren Longreach, 1919 - 1921.