This ia a genuine people's history of Australia. When Australians were asked to name our unsung heroes and heroines, these are some of the people we chose. Their lives cover the last 200 years of Australia's history, a history that they shaped in the living of it. Their names do not appear in conventional histories - they did not direct what are usually regarded as 'great events' and are not history's traditional 'great men'. They are 'the people'. They are convicts and inner-city welfare workers, war heroes and mothers of twelve, children and old-age pensioners. They are bush nurses and fire-fighters, suffragettes and explorers, circus performers and poets. Some perform single acts of great bravery; other reveal different kinds of couragem enduring and surviving through years of hardship. Some of their stories are amusing, many are deeply moving. There are the stories of women, children, Aborigines, immigrants from many oother countries, 'ordinary' people. These are our stories. (Inside cover)