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Emeritus Professor, Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University

Bill Gammage is an Emeritus Professor at the Humanities Research Centre, studying Aboriginal land management at the time of contact. He grew up in Wagga Wagga and went to Wagga High School, then to the Australian National University (ANU).

He taught history at the University of Papua New Guinea (1966, 1972-6), the University of Adelaide (1977-96), and the ANU (1997-2003). He wrote The Broken Years. Australian Soldiers in the Great War (1974+), An Australian in the First World War (1976), Narrandera Shire (1986) which won the ABC/ABA Manning Clark Bicentennial History Award in 1988, and The Sky Travellers.

Journeys in New Guinea 1938-39 (1998), which won the inaugural Queensland Premier's Prize for Non-Fiction in 1999, and that year was short-listed for the NSW Premier's History Prize.

In 2011, he published The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia.

He co-edited the Australians 1938 volume of the Bicentennial History of Australia (1988), and three books about Australian soldiers in World War One. He was historical adviser to Peter Weir's film Gallipoli and to about ten documentaries. He served the National Museum of Australia for three years as Council member, deputy chair, and acting chair. He was made a Freeman of the Shire of Narrandera in 1987. He and his wife Jan have many friends.

Experience

  • –present
    Adjunct Professor, Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University