by Juliana Byers | Apr 14, 2024 | Australian History, Ballarat, Gold Rush, Military History, Political History, Pre-1900, Social History, The Eureka Stockade
Following on from my recent podcast, I want to talk a little more about why I think calling the Battle of the Eureka Stockade a rebellion is a misnomer. In the twenty-first century, particularly in countries with generally robust democracies (Australia among them),...
by Juliana Byers | Apr 14, 2024 | Australian History, Military History, Passchendaele, Post-1900, Travel, World War 1
…and then a shell burst slick upon the duckboards: so I fell into the bottomless mud and lost the light… – Siegfried Sassoon, “Memorial Tablet” (1918)1 In 2018, I realised a long-term dream of mine to visit Ireland. I’d been saving for years to go and had a wonderful...
by Juliana Byers | Apr 14, 2024 | Australian History, Conspiracy Theories, Political History, Post-1900, Social History, Vanishings & Missing Persons
“Look, Tony, what are the odds of a Prime Minister drowning or being taken by a shark?” – Harold Holt, to his press secretary Tony Eggelton, in 1967. When a young Harold Holt was seventeen, he decided that, one day, he would be the Prime Minister. At first glance,...
by Juliana Byers | Apr 14, 2024 | Australian History, Indigenous Australia, Indigenous History, Military History, Non-Fiction, Pre-1900, Recommended Viewing, The Australian Wars
In 2022, SBS released a fantastic documentary entitled “The Australian Wars” which told the story of Indigenous resistance to the British invasion of their land from 1788. It was a significant work, as for more than 200 years than standard narrative has been that one...
by Juliana Byers | Apr 14, 2024 | Australian History, Burke & Wills, Exploration, Podcast, Pre-1900, Social History
Oh Mr Burke‘Tis risky workTo seek the northern coastThen have a careOr else prepareTo be a desert ghost…1 On the 20th of August 1860, amid such fanfare as Melbourne had never seen before, the Victorian Exploration Expedition set off from Royal Park. They were...
by Juliana Byers | Apr 14, 2024 | Artefacts, Australian History, Colonisation & Invasion, Exploration, Indigenous History, Museum, Natural History, World History
Welcome, fellow skeptics, to Skeptical History: where we dissect the mystery that is history! I’m Juliana, I have a Bachelor of Arts in History & Writing, and am studying a Master of Research in History. My mission here at the Skeptical Historian is to challenge...
