Girt: The Unauthorised History of Australia by David Hunt (3.5 stars)

Really refreshing to read a version of Australian history different to the whitewashed version taught in schools. In Hunt's history, no-one is safe from sarcasm, irony, and a darker view on white settlement of Australia.

Some favourite quotes:

No other nation can rival Australia for sheer maritime girtitude.

Each sailor was given a pint of 94 per cent proof rum a day, except for the ship’s boys, who had to make do with half a pint.

So Nepean offered the job to Arthur Phillip, a doggedly unexceptional performer most noted in Royal Navy circles for having two first names. Phillip was the man you would want in your corner if you’d run out of paperclips or your workmates had left unwashed cutlery in the office sink – a man who could boldly requisition new stationery or prepare a dishwasher roster without fear or favour.

Richards insisted that the weevils in the cheap flour he proposed to feed the convicts were a protein supplement and that the government should pay extra for them. The convicts found an unlikely champion in Phillip, who threatened not to leave port unless they were given better rations and luxuries such as clothes.

When the Dutch got adventurous, they’d name their discoveries after bits of the Netherlands and, when they were really on fire, insert the word Nieuw (New) first. The Netherlands is small, which meant Dutch explorers gave the same names to lots of different places. They had christened their Brazilian territories New Holland in the 1630s but Tasman, stuck for ideas, happily recycled the name a decade later. Tasman went on to discover New Zealand, which was named after the Dutch province of Zeeland, or the bit of New Guinea the Dutch had previously named New Zealand, or perhaps Zeelandia, which is what the Dutch called their settlement in Taiwan.

3.5 stars