Macquarie
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Macquarie
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Narrated by:
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Peter Byrne
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By:
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Grantlee Kieza
About this listen
Lachlan Macquarie is credited with shaping Australia's destiny, transforming a harsh, foreboding penal colony into an agricultural powerhouse and ultimately a prosperous society.
He also helped shape Australia's national character. An egalitarian at heart, Macquarie saw boundless potential in Britain's refuse, and under his rule many former convicts went on to become successful administrators, land owners and businesspeople.
However, the governor's ambitions for the colony brought him into conflict with the continent's original landowners, and he was responsible for the deaths of Aboriginal men, women and children brutally killed in a military operation intended to create terror among local Indigenous people.
So was Macquarie the man who sowed the seeds of a new nation or a tyrant who destroyed Aboriginal resistance?
In this, the most comprehensive biography yet of this fascinating colonial governor, acclaimed biographer Grantlee Kieza draws on Macquarie's rich and detailed journals. Ultimately, Macquarie laid the foundations for a new nation, but, in the process, he played a part in the dispossession of the continent's first nations.
Lover, fighter, egalitarian, autocrat, Lachlan Macquarie is a complex and engaging character who first envisaged the nation we call Australia.
©2019 Grantlee Kieza (P)2019 Bolinda PublishingWhat listeners say about Macquarie
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Rodney Wetherell
- 04-03-2020
Fine portrait of a remarkable man
I found Grantlee Kieza's Macquarie extremely interesting and well-told. Macquarie is a famous name to me, but I knew nothing at all about his career before he arrived in Australia, nor of his growing up on a rocky island in the Hebrides, and all this was well worth hearing. The conflicts he had to deal with in Sydney almost made me weep - at such an early stage of the development of NSW, it is a great shame that so many people such as Marsden fought Macquarie every inch of the way. Many of his ideas were remarkably enlightened for the time, and he saw that NSW would not make progress unless many of the convicts were given tickets-of-leave to become part of the building process. I was not entirely happy with reader Peter Byrne, who has a strange habit of pausing before key words - not only when he is introducing quotes. But generally he is pretty good in making the story easy to follow. Grantlee Kieza is to be congratulated for his careful research and good narrative.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 31-03-2020
Brilliant!
Brilliantly written. Brilliantly narrated.
Brilliantly describes the foundations of a nation and national character. Just Brilliant!!!
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 04-11-2020
A great read about a great man.
Without a doubt Australia would not be what it is today without the visionary of this man. A great insight to his efforts and his life.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Robyn
- 29-12-2024
Another winner from Grantlee Kieza
Another fine biography by Grantlee Kieza with his trademark scrupulous research, facility with words and the skill to spin a good yarn with, in this case, a pronounced Australian flavour. I can’t go past the Publisher’s summary of the book as far as it goes, but it is misleading in that there is no mention of the fact that Macquarie was almost 50 years old when he arrived in Australia and much of the book deals with Macquarie’s early years in Scotland and in military service mainly in the West Indies and India. It is often a difficult read, dealing as it does with wars and invasions to dispossess people of their land and wealth, brutal floggings, executions, and hideous racism. Macquarie’s personal life is a poignant theme throughout and a humane contrast to the horrors which are a constant background.
This book is marketed to an Australian readership which is logical as Macquarie is a prominent figure in Australia’s post-colonial history, and as evidenced by the publicity emphasising Macquarie’s role in Australia and the choice of Peter Byrne as narrator. Byrne narrates with a marked Aussie accent which is inappropriate given that nobody spoke like that in the 19th century and not all Australians speak like that two centuries later. Perhaps a Scots brogue emulating Macquarie's would have been a better choice.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Bradley
- 12-10-2023
Awesome Australian history
Very good detailed history of his life and the development of Australia as a nation. Clear explanations, good reading and maintained interest throughout
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- David Miles
- 24-06-2023
An excellent biography of The Father of Australia
This is a well researched, presented, and engaging portrayal of the life of Lachlan Macquarie - read with great style.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- PerryO
- 23-08-2020
The "Father of Australia" Indeed !!
Brilliant Man, Brilliant Book !!
Not too often I finish a book with enough pent up emotion to shed a tear, I loved it and We All Live Here Because of there's Pioneers.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Rev
- 27-01-2021
The father of Australia
The story of an imperfect man who brought imperfect direction to an imperfect colony. excellent.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 30-07-2021
loved it
if you like Australian history this was a fantastic book to listen to well read and well written loved it tremendously
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Jaidee
- 19-09-2021
Fascinating
Didn’t know as much as I probably should have known about Macquarie, now I do! Fascinating story of a remarkable man.
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