Bill Gammage

20th and 21st century Australian historian

William Leonard Gammage (born 1942) is an Australian academic historian, adjunct professor and senior research fellow at the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University (ANU). Gammage was born in Orange, New South Wales, went to Wagga Wagga High School and then to ANU. He was on the faculty of the University of Papua New Guinea and the University of Adelaide. He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences and deputy chair of the National Museum of Australia.

Gammage is best known for his book The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War, which is based on his PhD thesis written while at the Australian National University. It was first published in 1974, and re printed in 1975, 1980, 1981 (the year in which Peter Weir's film, Gallipoli came out), 1985 and 1990. The study revives the tradition of C. E. W. Bean, Australia's official historian of World War I, who focused his narrative on the men in the line rather than the strategies of generals. Gammage corresponded with 272 Great War veterans, and consulted the personal records of another 728, mostly at the Australian War Memorial. Gammage has written several other books about the experiences of soldiers in World War I, including three definitive books about Australian soldiers in the war. He also co edited the Australians 1938 volume of the Bicentennial History of Australia (1988).

In 1998, Gammage joined the Humanities Research Centre at the ANU as a senior research fellow for the Australian Research Council, working on the history of Aboriginal land management. His scope was cross disciplinary, working "across fields as disparate as history, anthropology and botany". In the subsequent 13 year period Gammage researched and wrote the book The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia, released in October 2011. It won the 2012 Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History in the Prime Minister's Literary Awards, the 2011 Manning Clark House National Cultural Awards in the individual category, was shortlisted for the 2012 Kay Daniels Award, the History Book Award of the 2012 Queensland Literary Awards and awarded the 2012 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards overall Victorian Prize for Literature on top of the non fiction category prize.

As a historical adviser, Gammage has worked on many documentaries and his writing is cited as an authoritative source on Australia's participation in World War I. For the film Gallipoli directed by Peter Weir, Gammage was employed as the military advisor and he worked on the text that David Williamson turned into the screen play of the film.

Bruce Pascoe has acknowledged the work done by Gammage (and also Rupert Gerritsen), which especially influenced his 2014 award winning book describing early Aboriginal settlements and agriculture, Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident?.

(1991) ANZAC's influence on Turkey and Australia. Journal of the Australian War Memorial 18; Presented as a keynote address at the 1990 Australian War Memorial history conference

– "Oral and Written Sources." In Oral Tradition in Melanesia. Ed. by Donald Denoon, Roderic Lacey. Port Moresby, New Guinea: University of Papua, New Guinea and Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies. pp. 115–24.