The Modern World and Australia

On 16 May 2002, an old man died in his bed in Hobart. Alec Campbell had lived to 103 years of age. Born in 1899, before Australia had become an independent nation – Alec lived right through the twentieth century. During Alec’s life, Australia changed greatly. He lived through Two World Wars; the Great Depression; the Cold War; the beginning and the end of what was known as the White Australia policy and Australia’s shift from being a loyal outpost of Great Britain – to a modern multicultural nation, increasingly focussed on its position in the Asia-Pacific region. As we’ll see in this podcast series, the Australia in which Alec grew up and went to school, was very different to the Australia he finally left behind when he died in the twenty first century. Welcome to our series for Year 10 students on the Modern World and Australia. We are proud to be able to bring you the combined intellectual might of Professor Keir Reeves, Dr Ben Mountford, Dr Jolanta Nowak, Kat Avery and David McGinniss of the Federation University and the Collaborative Research Centre for Australian History, to help you in your studies.