Honeysuckle Creek reveals the pivotal role that the tracking station at Honeysuckle Creek, near Canberra, played in the first moon landing. Andrew Tink gives a gripping account of the role of its director Tom Reid and his colleagues in transmitting some of the most-watched images in human history as Neil Armstrong took his first step. Part biography and part personal history, this book makes a significant contribution to Australia's role in space exploration and reveals a story little known until now. As Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr, the director of flight operations for Apollo 11, acknowledged: 'The name Honeysuckle Creek and the excellence which is implied by that name will always be remembered and recorded in the annals of manned space flight'.

'So tightly packed were the crowds lining Sydney's streets on 1 January 1901 that they resembled a dense well-tended hedge. Early morning showers had followed a thunderstorm the previous evening and many carried umbrellas as they waited for the procession. Planning for this New Year's Day had been going on in earnest for about three and a half months, after Queen Victoria had declared it to be the day upon which the Commonwealth of Australia would come into being.' Andrew Tink's superb book tells the story of Australia in the 20th century, from Federation to the Sydney 2000 Olympics. It was a century marked by the trauma of war and the despair of the depression, balanced by extraordinary achievements in sport, science and the arts. Tink's story is driven by people, whether they be prime ministers, soldiers, shopkeepers, singers, footballers or farmers; men or women, Australian born, immigrant or Aborigine. He brings the decades to life, writing with empathy, humour and insight to create a narrative that is as entertaining as it is illuminating.

1940. Wartime Australia. Key members of Menzies' government die in a fiery plane crash. What went wrong and what happened next? In August 1940 Australia had been at war for almost a year when a Hudson bomber - the A16-97 - carrying ten people, including three cabinet ministers, crashed into a ridge near Canberra. In the ghastly inferno that followed the crash, the nation lost its key war leaders. Over the next twelve months, it became clear that the passing of Geoffrey Street, Sir Henry Gullett and James Fairbairn had destabilised Robert Menzies' wartime government. As a direct but delayed consequence, John Curtin became prime minister in October 1941. Controversially, this book also tells the story of whether Air Minister Fairbairn, rather than the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) pilot Bob Hitchcock, had been at the controls. Andrew Tink tells an engrossing and dramatic tale of a little-known aspect of Australia's political history.