Galloping Jones was a bare-knuckle-fighting larrikin who could tame any horse. Moondyne Joe escaped prison using an ingenious plan that made a whole colony laugh. Caroline Coleman was a settler who raised her children in Western Queensland, and buried her husband behind the store they built near the Thomson River. Nemarluk was an Aboriginal freedom fighter, who terrorised the Daly River region of the Northern Territory.

Based on the popular weekly Stories of Oz history posts, these sketches of Australia’s past will inform and entertain you. Above all, they will remind you of what life was like, in the days before highways and smart phones.