Robyn Annear: 4 books

Just a little way down Collins Street, beside Henry Buck's, is a perpetually dark but sheltered laneway called Equitable Place. Here you'll find a number of places to eat and drink. Settle yourself in the window of one, shut your eyes, and picture this scene of yore … In this much-loved book,...

Gold was discovered in Australia in 1851, and within a year the infant colony was transformed from a sump for convicts to a Land of Opportunity. Robyn Annear's lively history describes in detail life on the diggings: the mud of winter and dust of summer, the pluckiness of the women and children, the...

“Old landmarks fall in nearly every block ... and the face of the city is changing so rapidly that the time is not too far distant when a search for a building 50 years old will be in vain.” —Herald, 1925. The demolition firm of Whelan the Wrecker was a Melbourne institution for a hundred...

When Tom Castro declared himself to be Roger, the Tichborne heir, and headed for London to claim his inheritance, not even Roger’s mother could tell them apart. By 1871 he was the most notorious celebrity in Great Britain or Australia. But who was he? And what was his story?