Where History Happened

Peter Spearritt, NLA Publishing, $39.99

SUBTITLED The Hidden Past of Australia’s Towns and Places, this book is packed with riveting anecdotes, from an iconic surf town’s rough and bloody origins as a whaling station to the remote desert settlement that’s home to one of the country’s oldest mosques and is also the site of a landmark trade union victory. Author Peter Spearritt, a history and social science professor at the University of Queensland, brings the past to life memorably.