Social Sketches is a book about the lives and times of ordinary people who lived in Australia from 1888 to 1975. Unlike conventional histories, the book is not concerned with a succession of ministries, torn-up treaties and failed constitutional amendments.
Instead, through little known accounts from regional histories, pen portraits, anecdotes, diaries and photographs, the book conveys the richly varied experience of everyday-life—what people wore and ate, what sorts of houses they lived in, what they learned at school; and how they were affected by bushfires, diseases and working conditions in the developing industrial society.
Extensively illustrated with many hitherto unpublished pictures, Social Sketches is a fascinating (and often astonishing) account of the last hundred years 'McQueen's style is positively exciting. Wry, cynical, perceptive, paradoxical and plain funny all that and more.'
'Valuable, intriguing material.' Sydney Morning Herald
The Terrible Twenties
The Bolshevik revolution Australian conservatives had two reasons for hating the Russian revolutionaries. First, they were a threat to their wealth and power.
Second, they had signed a separate peace agreement with Germany in March 1918 which almost let the Germans win the war. No attempt at truth was made in newspaper reports of Russia.
The Bolsheviks were always wrong. Tales of great horror were reprinted even if they were clearly silly and self-contradictory.
So bad did reporting of Russian events become that one Brisbane paper printed this spoof: Envious of the startling newspaper 'copy' the morning daylies (sic) were getting from Russia about the Bolsheviks, Truth cabled for despatches to Mr Hustleovitch Tellieski, the well-known Russian journalist, who, unable to see eye to eye with the bad Bolshevics, is seeing them from afar, so to speak, and while himself residing at Stockholm, has a direct sleigh service between that city and Moscow.
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