Land Boomers

Boom or bust? What was the truth of the great land booms that swept Australia in the 1880s and 1890s? How was it that some speculators amassed prodigious fortunes, while others went so spectacularly broke? Seventy years after the events, historian Michael Cannon began sifting through thousands of records and documents, long since filed and forgotten. He pieced together an incredible trail of corruption and roguery, rarely if ever equalled in any parliamentary democracy. When the bare bones ...