History,Geography and Picture book List-Homeschool Resource

Australian History, Geography and Picture book list

Our Sunburnt Country Our Sunburnt Country was first published in 1964. Since then it has been a popular ‘living book’ for teaching Australian history to homeschooled children. Now as an updated version it is even more useful. Arthur Baillie has reviewed the book again and added new information. Use this book as the backbone or spine to your Australian studies. This book is an easy read alone (age 10 and up) or read aloud (age 6 and up). Take the opportunity to combine it with geography and culture of the time. Available through homeschool publisher Downunder Literature

I have put together this short list of living picture books, Five-In-A-Row style, that you can also use for teaching Australian history and geography. Some are out of print but you should be able to get them from your library.

A family travel around Australia in their campervan.

Aboriginal dreamtime legend as told by the Margaret River Aboriginals.

A child looks back 200 years ago. Each illustration depicts the little Aboriginal girl and the girl telling the story in the same place but at a different time in history. Set in South Australia along the Murray River. The book is filled with beautiful nature illustrations.

This is based in the Northern Territory. Follow the seasonal calendar of the Gundjeihmi speaking people of Kakadu. Look at the changes each season brings to the plants, animals, insects and birds of this rich inspiring land.

My Place – Nadia Wheatly & Donna Rawlins

A home in Sydney and its inhabitants is traced back 200 years.

I Wish I’d Sailed with Captain Cook by Leonie Young

Tells the life of Captain Cook as a boy and how he ended up being chosen to sail the Endeavor.

Written for the school as a record of history, when white settlers came into central Australia and how that affected the Aboriginal people that lived around the region.

This book traces the journey of Charles Sturt in the outback of Australia. It shows how the explorers struggled with the harsh climate and how the animals who live there cope.

Based on the diary of a free British settler, Hugo Munro Hall, who travels around Tasmania in 1845.

Life in the Goldfields of Victoria of the 1850’s.

Set in Victoria Ballarat during the Eureka Stockade.

Moondyne Joe was a bushranger in the 1850’s in Western Australia.

Bright Star - Gary Crew© 1996
Set in 1881, Windsor, Sydney. When Alicia goes to school and meets John Tebbutt, the Australian astronomer, her potential is noticed and Tebbutt invites her to come to his observatory. Ages: 7 upwards

Australia’s national anthem coupled with famous Australian art works such as; Drysdale, Roberts, McCubbin, Preston and Namatjira.

In Western Australia in 1903 a water pipeline was constructed. This book tells the story.

A book based in war times.

A little girl goes to visit her Grandmother in Melbourne in 1942.

Set in World War II. Two soldiers, an Australian, and a Japanese, are wounded in combat. Both men think of their families as they lie next to each other wounded. One soldier survives.

Set in central Australia. Mary, an Aboriginal woman, tells about her early life on the Papunya mission station, in the 1959.

This book is hysterical! Based on life in the 1950’s.

A young Aboriginal boy in Arhnem land makes a spear with his father. Age 4 and up.

Isabella’s Bed by Alison Lester

A grandmother who left her home country in South America talks about what she left behind when she came to Australia.

For a list of other living history books for older children see http://cmandfriends.bravehost.com/aust_history.html