Ryan Butta

Harry Freame was the first Australian soldier to win the Distinguished Conduct Medal at Gallipoli. He risked his life again and again to scout the battlefield, reporting invaluable intelligence and relieving stranded soldiers. Some say he should have got the VC but didn't because he was half-Japanese, a fact he tried hard to conceal. After the war, Harry (real name...

Separating the bulldust from the bush poetry, Ryan Butta reveals a gritty alternative history that defies the standard horse-powered folklore to reveal the untold debt this country owes to the humble camel, its drivers and the Afghans who brought them here. When Afghan entrepreneur Abdul Wade first brought his camel trains to the outback, he was hailed as a hero....

An important reckoning with Australia’s unspoken history of slavery. As a nation, we are becoming more accustomed to reckoning with the horrors and trauma of our colonial past, but one area has remained in the shadows: the Australian slave trade of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Known as ‘blackbirding’, this dark corner of our history has been evaded...