Our Country: Where History Happened by Mark Greenwood, Frané Lessac

Title: Our Country: Where History Happened

Author: Mark Greenwood, Frané Lessac

Genre: History

Publisher: Walker Books

Published: 1^st September 2023

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 40

Price: $26.99

Synopsis: The second title in the OUR COUNTRY series, celebrating and contextualising the richness of Australia’s history, and where it happened.

In every corner of Australia, history happened. The pages of this book are a journey through tens of thousands of years. Our history is recorded in ancient rock art, in the flag flown at the Eureka Stockade, by Burke and Wills’ tree. All around our coastline history unfolded in shipwrecks and ship arrivals. Sometimes tragic, often regrettable, always formative, history is commemorated from Tasmania and throughout the mainland at the sites of prisons and massacres. From the birthplace of a new federated nation at the beginning of the twentieth century in Sydney’s Centennial Park to Eddie Mabo’s struggle for acknowledgement of land rights in the 1990s, history happened all around Our Country.

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Australia has a rich and diverse history, a history that is starting to be explored deeply across the board, and this picture books starts to bring Indigenous history and post-1788 history together as they are not separate entities, but events that happened in the same place, and on lands that have Indigenous and non-Indigenous names. History is written in the landscape, the artefact, and the written word, and is tragic and formative at the same time as significant moments in history from each state and several places and moments of significance are explored across the forty pages. This book gives a cross-section of our history, and each entry has the Indigenous and non-Indigenous names included – so it is a chance to learn about these names as well.

The moments chosen are key and mostly well-known moments, but that give a different perspective, a fact that we may not have come across in other reading, or that shows the people and stories left out, and the roles that women and Indigenous people had throughout our history – ever since first contact was made. This is important to know, because our history is more than the stories of war or rebellion, and the men who drove these events or took part in these events. It’s not just rebels and bushranger or convicts. There are so many ways to see and understand our history – good, bad, and tragic. One event that this book touches on and acknowledges is the Myall Creek Massacre, and what happened to the white men who committed the crimes, and in this sense, it explores ideas of justice and the way it was dealt with and the differing circumstances that it was used in.

This book is aimed at readers aged seven and over, and I think is a great way to introduce some of this history and from there, individuals can go and explore things further. These days, there’s sure to be more information, and more diverse stories out there than when I studied this history. It is these books and stories that can enhance and build on what you learn from the text books and in class, because it fills in the gaps. For someone like me who always wanted more, I would have loved this series because it would have at least given me a starting point for the stories and people not included in my text books or lessons. They can form part of a range of lessons in class or in the library, and I hope it will be used broadly. I would have liked to, and I like that this series makes our history accessible to everyone.

Our entire nation is filled with history in a myriad of ways, through so many people, and it is diverse as well. The stories, the histories, the people and the events are always going to be there, always going to be referred to and they cannot and should not be separated from race or culture, because these are aspects that will always have a place in our history and who we are as Australians. I see books like this as a way of bringing us together and helping us understand everyone and where they have come from. It is an important series and I am keen to see what comes next.