by A. K. Macdougall 

'Australian history is almost always picturesque,' wrote the visiting American writer Mark Twain more than a century ago. 'It does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies... full of surprises, and adventures, and incongruities, and incredibilities, but they are all true; they all happened.'

An Illustrated History of Australia traces the history of the island continent from the age of the dinosaurs and the coming of the Aboriginal people to the arrival of the Europeans and the subsequent growth from unpromising beginnings as a convict colony to a nation that ranks among the most progressive and democratic in the world, and known to all as the 'Lucky Country'.

This is a treasure trove of a book, presenting the history of Australia with more than 600 pictures and a text that is bright, readable and rich in little known facts about our remarkable country.