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Bill Gammage Bill Gammage i(A35883 works by) (a.k.a. Willian Leonard Gammage; W. L. Gammage)
Born: Established: 1942 ;
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 An Incident at Passchendaele Bill Gammage , 2023 single work essay
— Appears in: Overland , Winter no. 251 2023; (p. 39-45) 'Occasionally one encounters a story or situation that seems to reach out of the mass of historical fact and lend an individual shape to its anonymous suffering. In October 1917 one such remarkable incident took place on the battlefield of Passchendaele in western Belgium; it began a search for the relatives of the dead which has continued for more than a century.'
1 The Great Divide Bill Gammage , 2021 single work essay
— Appears in: Inside Story , July 2021;

'The debate about Dark Emu is trapped in a centuries-old European worldview, says the author of The Biggest Estate on Earth' 
1 A Laconic Colloquium Bill Gammage , 2020 single work biography
— Appears in: I Wonder : The Life and Work of Ken Inglis 2020;
1 3 y separately published work icon Dunera Lives : Profiles Ken Inglis , Bill Gammage , Seumas Spark , Jay Winter , Carol Bunyan , Clayton : Monash University Publishing , 2020 23789574 2020 single work biography

'The story of the 'Dunera Boys' is an intrinsic part of the history of Australia in the Second World War and in its aftermath. The injustice these 2000 men suffered through British internment in camps at Hay, Tatura and Orange is well known. Less familiar is the tale of what happened to them afterwards. Following on from volume one Dunera Lives: A Visual History (2018), Dunera Lives: Profiles continues the saga in life stories.

'This second volume of Dunera Lives presents the voices, faces, and lives of 20 people, who, together with nearly 3000 other internees from Britain and Singapore, landed in Australia in 1940. All over the world there were Dunera lives, those of men and women who passed through the upheavals of the Second World War and survived to tell the tale. Here are some of their stories.

'A contribution to the history of Australia, to the history of migrants and migration, and to the history of human rights, these two volumes put in the public domain a story whose full dimensions and complexity have never been described.' (Publication summary)
1 y separately published work icon The Boy from Boort : Remembering Hank Nelson Bill Gammage (editor), Brij V. Lal (editor), Gavan Daws (editor), Acton : Australian National University , 2014 7551603 2014 selected work biography essay obituary autobiography (for Hank Nelson )

'Hank Nelson was an academic, film-maker, teacher, graduate supervisor and university administrator. His career at The Australian National University (ANU) spanned almost 40 years of notable accomplishment in expanding and deepening our understanding of the history and politics of Papua New Guinea, the experience of Australian soldiers at war, bush schools and much else. This book is a highly readable tribute to him, written by those who knew him well, including his students, and also contains wide-ranging works by Hank himself. – Professor Stewart Firth, ANU.' (Publication summary)
1 Writing the Australian Landscape Bill Gammage , 2014 single work essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , June-July no. 362 2014; (p. 42-47)
1 The Boy from Boort Bill Gammage , 2014 single work biography
— Appears in: The Boy from Boort : Remembering Hank Nelson 2014; (p. 5-13)
1 Untitled Bill Gammage , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Reviews in Australian Studies , vol. 7 no. 1 2013;
— Review of William Hughes : Australia Carl Bridge , 2011 single work biography
1 'Sitting on a Tractor, Reading a Book' Bill Gammage , Ken Inglis , 2012 2012 single work obituary (for Hank Nelson )
— Appears in: Inside Story , February 2012;
1 14 y separately published work icon The Biggest Estate on Earth : How Aborigines Made Australia Bill Gammage , Sydney : Allen and Unwin , 2011 Z1917220 2011 single work non-fiction 'Across Australia, early Europeans commented again and again that the land looked like a park. With extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands and abundant wildlife, it evoked a country estate in England. Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific fashion than we have ever realised.

For over a decade, Gammage has examined written and visual records of the Australian landscape. He has uncovered an extraordinarily complex system of land management using fire and the life cycles of native plants to ensure plentiful wildlife and plant foods throughout the year. We know Aboriginal people spent far less time and effort than Europeans in securing food and shelter, and now we know how they did it.

With details of land-management strategies from around Australia, The Biggest Estate on Earth rewrites the history of this continent, with huge implications for us today. Once Aboriginal people were no longer able to tend their country, it became overgrown and vulnerable to the hugely damaging bushfires we now experience. And what we think of as virgin bush in a national park is nothing of the kind.' (Source: www.allenandunwin.com)
1 The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War 1914–18 Bill Gammage , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Writing Histories: Imagination and Narration 2009; 'I’ve been asked to talk on my thesis, ‘The Broken Years’, which I wrote at the ANU in 1967–70, and particularly to mention aspects which might help you. You know the basic rules, so I’ll talk about what to say. Every topic and set of sources has its own challenges and opportunities, but I urge you from the beginning to think constantly about what you want to say, and to ensure that what you say rises from and above your sources to comment on the human condition. Your thesis only begins as a sequence of well researched and arranged sources. No less than literature, art and music, it should end by having significance arching above your topic.' (Introduction)
1 y separately published work icon Herb Laughton Interviewed by Bruce Simpson and Bill Gammage in the Drovers Oral History Project Bruce Simpson (interviewer), Bill Gammage (interviewer), 2005 Z1201690 2005 single work interview
1 y separately published work icon Ted Egan Interviewed by Bill Gammage Bill Gammage (interviewer), 2003 9165704 2003 single work interview

'Ted Egan talks about: the attraction of Alice Springs and Darwin; Sydney Williams hut; white Australian prejudices, Catholicism; mixed-race friends; musical comedy society; Japanese bombing (1942), Chinese; Buffalo Lodge; Northern Standard newspaper; Vestey's strike; unions in Darwin; Jack McGuinness; Aboriginal rights, Kungarakan people; marriage of Alngindabu and Steve McGuinness; prospectors, tin, Lucy Mine; Litchfield National Park; intermarriage; Aboriginals Ordinance; the book Capricornia; the McGuinness family; Australian Rules Football and Rugby league; St Mary's Football Club; Tiwi players; learning Tiwi songs and language; coaching Aboriginal children; Darwin life; Aboriginal affairs; marriage; grass fighters; Piersscne family; Tiny Swanson; Steve Abala; Mainoru; Garden Point Catholic Mission; Missionaries of the Sacred Heart; Lutherans; Catholics; Jesuits; Methodists Overseas Missions; Anglicans; Roper River; Groote Eylandt; tobacco; Native Affairs personnel; polygamy; Wallaby Creek; his career and becoming a District Officer (1966); cyclone; Aboriginal desire for a traditional life; Manganese mining; Borroloola; David Attenborough; Roger Jose; Carnegie Institute; Arthur Calwell; Tank House; Fred Grey; Court cases; adoption of Aboriginal children; correspondence (1933-35); Marjorie Grey; Joe McGuinness; Melville Bay; Broome; conflict with the Japanese; trepang; the book, Justice all their own; Yuendumu; Baptists; John Guise; community self-sufficiency and investments; Central Land Council; finances; pay inequity; colonisation; Aboriginal education and employment; volunteers; Lingua franca; and Adelaide.' (Source: TROVE)
1 Mrs Aeneas Gunn Bill Gammage , 2001 single work essay
— Appears in: Storykeepers 2001; (p. 125-131)
1 1 y separately published work icon Crown or Country : The Traditions of Australian Republicanism David Headon (editor), James Warden (editor), Bill Gammage (editor), St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 1994 Z8565 1994 anthology prose biography
1 My Country of the Pelican Dreaming Bill Gammage , 1983 single work review
— Appears in: Aboriginal History , vol. 7 no. 1-2 1983; (p. 195, 196)
— Review of My Country of the Pelican Dreaming: The Life story of an Australian Aborigine of the Gadjerong, Grant Ngabidj, 1904-1977 Grant Ngabidj , Bruce Shaw , 1981 single work life story
1 y separately published work icon All That Dirt : Aborigines 1938 Andrew Markus , Bill Gammage (editor), Canberra : Australian National University , 1982 Z1575363 1982 selected work
1 The Life of Jimmy Governor Bill Gammage , 1979 single work review
— Appears in: Aboriginal History , vol. 3 no. 1-2 1979; (p. 163-164)
— Review of The Life of Jimmy Governor Brian Davies , 1979 single work biography Gammage notes that Brian Davies is a journalist, and The Life of Jimmy Governor is a journalist's book. The research is conscientious but stops once the story is told. This is a good story, with an awareness of the injustice with which white has treated black in Australia, but does not touch the deeper questions with which this treatment provokes...
1 1 y separately published work icon The Broken Years : A Study of the Diaries and Letters of Australian Soldiers in the Great War, 1914-18 Bill Gammage , Canberra : 1970 19374054 1970 single work thesis 'There has never been a greater tragedy than World War One. Other events, by leading valorous men to contest trivial causes and by encouraging the perpetration of base and noble acts, have been as treacherous to humanity; no event has involved so many, nor so blighted the hopes of men. The Great War engulfed an age, and conditioned the times that followed. It wreaked havoc and disillusion among everything its contemporaries valued and thought secure, it contaminated every good ideal for which it was waged, it threw up waste and horror worse than all the evils it sought to avert, and it left legacies of staunchness and savagery equal to any which have bewildered men about their purpose on earth. Among those who fought in the war were 330,000 Australians. They were civilians who volunteered for and were accepted into the Australian Imperial Force, soldiers who enlisted and sailed to defend King and Country, or for the novelty of it. Overseas a maelstrom caught them, and in four years swept most of their assumptions away. Although their spirits rarely were broken, they amended their outlooks to absorb the unexpected challenges they encountered, and returned to Australia the flotsam of old ways, but the harbingers of a new world and a new century. One thousand of these soldiers left the documents which inspired what follows, and the thesis considers none but them. Yet wider speculations readily assert themselves, and not merely about the A.I.F. at large, or about kindred soldiers from Canada or New Zealand or Scotland, or about men at war. It may not be possible to discern the nature of man, because each guesses at that from his own standpoint, and in describing others makes a puppet of himself, and dances to his own invention. Yet if these men do not answer great questions, they might be seen to raise them, for they too had to ask whether their actions prospered mankind or corrupted it, whether mankind itself is great or depraved, and whether men serve events or master them. Therefore I commend the chronicles they wrote to the reader. They are impressed with a tragic nobility beyond the ability of the following extracts to convey, and the spirit of an age moves through their pages far more perfectly than through mine.' (Thesis description)
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