A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia

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A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia

3.47 of 5 stars 3.47 · rating details · 306 ratings · 51 reviews

It was 1786 when Arthur Phillip, an ambitious captain in the Royal Navy, was assigned the formidable task of organizing an expedition to Australia in order to establish a penal colony. The squalid and turbulent prisons of London were overflowing, and crime was on the rise. Even the hulks sifting at anchor in the Thames were packed with malcontent criminals and petty thieves. So the English government decided to undertake the unprecedented move of shipping off its convicts to a largely unexplored landmass at the other end of the world.

Using the personal journals and documents that were kept during this expedition, historian/novelist Thomas Keneally re-creates the grueling overseas voyage, a hellish, suffocating journey that claimed the lives of many convicts. Miraculously, the fleet reached the shores of what was then called New South Wales in 1788, and after much trial and error, the crew managed to set up a rudimentary yet vibrant settlement. As governor of the colony, Phillip took on the challenges of dealing with unruly convicts, disgruntled officers, a bewildered, sometimes hostile native population, as well as such serious matters as food shortages and disease. Moving beyond Phillip, Keneally offers captivating portrayals of Aborigines, who both aided and opposed Phillip, and of the settlers, including convicts who were determined to overcome their pasts and begin anew.

With the authority of a renowned historian and the narrative grace of a brilliant novelist, Thomas Keneally offers an insider’s perspective into the dramatic saga of the birth of a vibrant society in an unfamiliar land. A Commonwealth of Thieves immerses us in the fledgling penal colony and conjures up colorful scenes of the joy and heartbreak, the thrills and hardships that characterized those first four improbable years. The result is a lively and engrossing work of history, as well as a tale of redemption for the thousands of convicts who started new lives thousands of miles from their homes.

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Hardcover, 400 pages

Published October 3rd 2006 by Nan A. Talese (first published 2005)

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Oct 28, 2008 Colette rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: history buffs, Kenneally fans

Recommended to Colette by: me mum

This was a great read--so well-researched that Kenneally isable to skillfully characterize the diarists he used, and this brought the history to life. I loved the way he switched perspectives from the Europeans to the Eora/Aboriginal peoples. I felt he represented the latter's view intelligently and compassionately without painting the Europeans as complete or constant villains. More of a tragedy.

My main criticism of the book is that it doesn't have a decisive conclusion. The colony limps along...more

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Jun 19, 2012 William Thomas rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: bland, blah

Zzzzzzzz...zzzzzz... Oh, what? No, I'm sorry Mr. Keneally, but I didn't hear a word you said after 'the'. You put me right to sleep. I know I'm not supposed to sleep in class. I'm not trying to be funny. Now wait just a minute, sir. Don't blame me for your tone and monotonous droning. I won't tolerate it. I love history, always have, always will. It's not the history to which I'm opposed- its you. Had you decided to make this introductory lesson entertaining I could have kept my eyes open. Had y...more

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Ruth Bonetti I am struggling through this book as research for colonial history. Unfortunately it seems Keneally has an excellent research assistant whose work he...more
Oct 21, 2012 08:26am

William Thomas I put it down at page 150. I'd also try 1788 by David Hill. The thing about Fatal Shore is that, although bulky, it feels like a breeze to get through...more
Oct 21, 2012 12:44pm

Ruth Bonetti William Thomas wrote: "I put it down at page 150. I'd also try 1788 by David Hill. The thing about Fatal Shore is that, although bulky, it feels like...more
Oct 21, 2012 03:50pm

Aug 10, 2012 Mike rated it 2 of 5 stars

Dry, and never looking at the bigger picture, Keneally is really trying to tell the story of Arthur Phillip's four years at Botany Bay during the start of the New South Wales prisoner transport. That is the single narrative thread that flows through the book, all the rest of the characters and happenings seem and read like tacked on "oh yeah this was going on too." Constant references to inevitable clashes between the convict-colonists and the natives are hinted and teased, yet the story stops l...more

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Sep 18, 2012 Gwen rated it 2 of 5 stars

Recommended to Gwen by: browsing at the library

Shelves: history

First impression: this book reminded me a little of Battlestar Galactica's problems in establishing a new society so far removed from what they knew. How should we reestablish a civilization using our past experiences but mindful of the physical and social limitations currently in place?

In theory, this could have been a fascinating book--how Australia got its start and how its founding affected the national character. However, I got very, very bored about halfway through this book, but I kept r...more

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Sep 10, 2012 Steven rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: australia, history

Half way in, and so far it's terrific. It lacks a little critical reasoning and historical discipline but it is not a dry academic history either (and I've read plenty of them).

I'd put it ahead of anything by, say, Peter Fitzsimons. Tom Keneally has the superior intellect and is a better writer of longer tomes; he also has the advantage of being a very accomplished novelist.

Robert Hughes's 'The Fatal Shore' falls into this category of the birth of Australia via a reasonably well-reserached, ta...more

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Dec 13, 2009 Pamela rated it 3 of 5 stars

The settling of Australia seems to have been against all odds since the environment made cultivation difficult near Sydney. Amazingly, the outpost had to receive food supplies from England for years. Too, the idea that it was a temporary settlement for prisoners seemed to delay the establishment of a permanent settlement; it appears the convicts actually became settlers by default. Altogether, the harshness of the first voyage, nine months in length, and the harshness and near starvation of livi...more

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Oct 30, 2012 Ruth Bonetti rated it 1 of 5 stars

I thought of buying this book as research for colonial history - topic of my next book - but so glad I borrowed it from the library instead. I had to renew it as it was such a struggle to plough through, it's taken two months, the last hundred of pages skin-reading. Much of that was the search for his longest sentence; I think the record is 82 words on page 62. Not surprisingly, one has to reread such convoluted passive voice mazes several times to get the drift, but soon gives up on such effort...more I thought of buying this book as research for colonial history - topic of my next book - but so glad I borrowed it from the library instead. I had to renew it as it was such a struggle to plough through, it's taken two months, the last hundred of pages skin-reading. Much of that was the search for his longest sentence; I think the record is 82 words on page 62. Not surprisingly, one has to reread such convoluted passive voice mazes several times to get the drift, but soon gives up on such efforts.

Apparently Keneally is blessed with excellent research assistants who gathered masses of information and he's strung that together. He made an effort with his first sentence though its 64 words are harbingers of what is to come. The first paragraph takes up all but two lines of the first page; similar transgressions would see slush pile manuscripts rejected on that first page. But no, Keneally has track record and is above other authors' multiple rewrites. So the opening chapters plod along, as if this is material that must be covered. I tossed the book aside several times. Sometimes he throws out teasers that we are too weary to wait around for answers: 'Mary would come to pay such a phenomenal price of loyalty to her spouse...' But we really don't get to know any characters enough to care.

Note the word 'would.' Possibly this is Keneally's most overworked word, sprinkled through his clunky tenses: 'She would be one of the women who would face the lash in the colony then in prospect (?), but had she known about it, she would have shrugged it off in defiance.' (p.93)

Passive voice reigns. 'As Ayres had been taking the spear in his back...' (p. 174).

As the fleet nears Australia Keneally emerges from his own ennui to look at the horizon in Chapter 6. But surely this tautology could have been edited out: 'They were close now, on 16 January in the New Year.'

Yes, there's interesting information about aboriginal life. But there is little real tension for all that. Structure seems ragged, it does not keep the reader - or this one - turning pages.

Sure, borrow it from your library. Don't encourage Keneally by buying it.
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Mar 10, 2010 Jennifer rated it 3 of 5 stars

I find it fascinating how Australia came to be. That England could contemplate sending their criminals away to a barely discovered continent is amazing. This non-fiction account includes information from the diaries of many of the people who were involved in the initial settling of Australia (not counting the Aborigines, which is an intriguing side story). It was, at times, difficult to follow the story because we would jump back and forth between characters and locations. However, I enjoyed rea...more

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Oct 04, 2012 Danielle rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, travel, danielle-recommends

I'd been meaning to read this since it came out several years ago because the title sounds so interesting. Also, I have some ancestors who joined the LDS Church in Australia in the mid 1800s (preeety sure they were in Australia voluntarily), but I was curious about the timeline of the nation's founding. So, I was excited to get into this.
I almost gave it up in the first hundred pages because the writing was so dry. It wasn't necessarily boring, it just gave a lot of backstory about the penal co...more I'd been meaning to read this since it came out several years ago because the title sounds so interesting. Also, I have some ancestors who joined the LDS Church in Australia in the mid 1800s (preeety sure they were in Australia voluntarily), but I was curious about the timeline of the nation's founding. So, I was excited to get into this.
I almost gave it up in the first hundred pages because the writing was so dry. It wasn't necessarily boring, it just gave a lot of backstory about the penal colony's first governor, which I had a hard time appreciating because I didn't yet know or understand what he was going to do. He was just some guy. Luckily, the story picked up considerably once the author started talking about convicts. I was fascinated to learn about what prisons were like in England in the late 1700s (privately run, overcrowded, disease-ridden, and a capitalist dream, where convicts could pay for a range of "luxuries" including mattresses (for the ground), better food, beer, and prostitutes).
I was also surprised to learn that everyone who ended up in New South Wales (the original name for Australia) had originally been sentenced with death. The English "justice" system placed a disproportionate emphasis on theft, with hanging being the most common sentence for even minor thefts. Even so, many convicts didn't consider "transportation" to New South Wales a better outcome for their cases than hanging. And considering what happened on some of the ships that carried convicts over, you can't blame them. Since managers were paid per convict loaded on in England, with no bonus for getting them to Australia alive, the earlier in the voyage the convicts died, the greater their profit. The author compared this to the slave trade, where at least the ship managers had a vested interest in getting their cargo to their destination in a healthy state.
Of course, the actual landing in Australia (with only Captain Cook's observations, made 18 years earlier, as a guide), the setting up of the colony in Sydney, the constant struggle for food, and the settlers' interactions with the native people are all covered in detail. The author follows the colony with progressively less detail until Governor Phillip's departure around (I'm guessing) 10 year after their original landing. The epilogue summarizes what happens after that in broad strokes, taking the time, however, to offer a "what happened to...?" for basically every individual mentioned in the book (at least a hundred). If I'd been able to keep track of that many people (most of them convicts) I would have found that interesting.
Anyway, not a quick read, by any means, but if you're curious about how Australia came into being, you're sure to find this book fascinating.(less)

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Jul 10, 2012 Amblingbooks.com marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: available-on-audio, history, audiobooks

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Jan 28, 2010 Mia rated it 5 of 5 stars

The limited scope of Kennealy's story, focusing on the first few years of the Australian experiment, allows for a really nice degree of detail in his telling about those years. The narrative style he uses makes this a very enjoyable history as well as a thorough one.

Not knowing much about aboriginal life and culture before the colonial period, I appreciated the information the author unobtrusively presented about the belief systems and values of the native people and how they shaped early intera...more

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Dec 15, 2012 Casey Wheeler rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

Years ago I read “The Fatal Shore” by Robert Hughes and felt like reading again about the beginning of the great British experiment that became Australia. This caused me to pick up this book.

While not as detailed as Hughes effort, Keneally does a very good job of addressing the first four years of the non-aborigine history of the continent. He focuses more time on the time in England than Hughes, but uses it to describe the squalid conditions on the prison ships parked in the Thames and elsewher...more

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Jan 14, 2012 Red Rocky rated it 4 of 5 stars

Started off wondering if I could actually finish this very dry read. With pages where Keneally lists the number of horses, convicts, soldiers, bags of flour (you get the picture)etc, loaded onto the boat or being offloaded, I really had to push myself through it. And I'm glad I did. What a fascinating, informative and well researched book.
I'd recommend Jackie French for a more personal story of convicts arriving in Australia on the first fleet, ie. Tom Appleby: Convict Boy. While I bought this...more

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Jan 09, 2013 Tim Corke rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: australia, non-fiction, bio-journal, travel-adventure, historical, international

Few have experienced the responsibility and authority to create a new colony. Fewer have experienced the creation of such a place on the opposite side of the world in a new land with the population made up largely of convicts. This is the beautifully written account of Governor Arthur Phillip and how he set about colonising Port Jackson and dealing with this strained challenge.

Keneally has created a book that should be considered by all as testament to the early years of Australia as we know it...more

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Dec 18, 2008 Marian Willeke rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, non-fiction

This book, fascinating and thorough as it is, received 4 stars instead of 5 simply because it was a bit difficult to follow with the writing style presented. There were several instances where I had to re-read sections to understand Keneally's point. That being said, however, it was extremely informative and provided a deeper perspective of Australia's birth that I did not have previously.

The book clearly started and ended with the recruitment, governornship and death of Arther Phillip, otherwis...more This book, fascinating and thorough as it is, received 4 stars instead of 5 simply because it was a bit difficult to follow with the writing style presented. There were several instances where I had to re-read sections to understand Keneally's point. That being said, however, it was extremely informative and provided a deeper perspective of Australia's birth that I did not have previously.

The book clearly started and ended with the recruitment, governornship and death of Arther Phillip, otherwise serving as Captain in the British Navy and finally climbing the ranks to Rear Admiral during the Napoleanic Wars. Although the book clearly outlines the start New South Wales and how Phillip's managed it until his departure, it doesn't necessarily focus on Phillips. It's more of a calendared narrative of the circumstances and details of the felons transported, and the impact New South Wales had on the Aborigines.

I wanted a more concise ending to the book for what happens to Australia, but in the author's defence, we know how it ended. The crucial read would be his epilogue, which was the informative and required step from the starvation to success. The author provided many short biographies of the beginning successes in early Australia.

Something that enlightened me greatly was that these felons who developed families brought forth a different perspective to their children than they otherwise could have in England. Child labour laws and the impossible class situations that led to many of the felon issues did not occur in New South Wales simply because they had a new chance at life with flattened classes. That doesn't mean you can simply drop a bunch of felons on an island and expect automatic reform, but with the hard work and dedication of the leaders of such reforms, it was a resounding success - giving hope to many families that would had otherwise died, had been imprisoned in the hulks of England, or simply had never existed.

The storey of how it all came about is heartrending, simply because it was an extremely difficult way of life. I know that I could have never lived in that period and survived, no matter the country. However, the book showed a clear picture of survival, ending with the obvious picture of the success ahead.(less)

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Apr 15, 2008 Bruce rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: history buffs and adventure tale readers

This book, albeit somewhat awkwardly written (see examples below), is a chronicle of the first four years of Georgian Britain's Australian settlement -- the establishment of convicts at Sydney Cove. (Thanks, Lord Sydney!) The selection of period comes across as a bit arbitrary. It covers the term of Sydney's founding Governor (Arthur Phillip), but doesn't use Phillip as a focus for the narrative. The ebb and flow of the book (which after all only follows chronology) is fairly repetitive: convict...more This book, albeit somewhat awkwardly written (see examples below), is a chronicle of the first four years of Georgian Britain's Australian settlement -- the establishment of convicts at Sydney Cove. (Thanks, Lord Sydney!) The selection of period comes across as a bit arbitrary. It covers the term of Sydney's founding Governor (Arthur Phillip), but doesn't use Phillip as a focus for the narrative. The ebb and flow of the book (which after all only follows chronology) is fairly repetitive: convict settlers and marines arrive, are assigned tasks, suffer gradual reductions in rations as stores are depleted, and just before real starvation kicks in and deprivation-inspired chaos ensues, receive temporary respite in the guise of a new shipment of settlers with additional rations. It's a bit hard to follow the actual timeline (until near the end of the book, I didn't even realize that the covered span was a mere 4 years), but the book gains inordinately from including and sympathizing with the perspective of imminently-displaced aborigines as well as some fascinating anecdotes (such as the one about the poor Third Fleet Irish who tragically wander off on foot in a misbegotten search for China using pencil-drawn compasses as a navigational aid).

I'll cite two typical examples of the text to provide a flavor of what makes Keneally's prose so ungainly. The first is a paragraph whose premise is never substantiated, the other, two paragraphs that appear grafted together from separately-prepared content.

From pp. 324-325: 'The case of Private William Dempsey, one of the marines who in October 1791 decided to remain in New South Wales as a settler, is interesting in the light of comments that those who remained were chiefly influenced by attachments to unsatisfactory women convicts. Dempsey had been the victim of an attack by marine Private Joseph Hunt in 1788, in the famous court-martial that split the officer corps. At Norfolk Island, farming sixteen acres at Cascade Stream, Phillipsburg, he was by 1794 selling grain to the public stores, and the same year married a young Lady Juliana convict, Jane Tyler. She had been seventeen when sentenced to death at the Old Bailey in April 1787 for stealing money from her master, a Gray's Inn Lane victualler, and was one of the seven women who caused a sensation by refusing the King's offer of pardon on condition of transportation for life. "I will never accept of it to go abroad," she had declared.' The next paragraph goes on to tell us that the couple moved to Van Diemen's Land (an island off southwestern Australia), adopted a child, and eventually died. All of this may be moderately interesting as trivia about a character who fails to register as even tangential to the narrative (you be the judge), but surely not for the reason cited?

And from p. 99: 'The last couple to bespeak Parson Johnson that day were as exceptional as the Kables. They already had a child between them. Or at least Mary Braund or Broad, a handsome Cornish girl in her early twenties had given birth to a daughter whom she named Charlotte, the same name at the transport she and her new husband, Will Bryant travelled on, and it was presumed Charlotte was Will's child. Mary had been guilty... of ambushing a Plymouth spinster and robbing her... [and:] sentenced to hang. [Her sentence was:] reduced to seven years transportation. On the Dunkirk hulk, Mary had met Will Bryant, a Cornish fisherman about twenty-seven years of age, convicted exactly two years earlier than Mary....' The 'Mary had met Will Bryant' construction forgets that we've already been introduced to Master Will mere sentences before. Never mind the fact that the circumstances which make the Kables so remarkable aren't introduced until p. 130 (and there only implied) and those that make the Bryants fascinating characters not taken up until p. 251 (and then sporadically thereafter). In each instance, the principal characters that populate the book are introduced as though new and their personal stories are subordinated to the indifferent chronological sweep of events affecting the entire colony. This significantly dilutes their impact and dulls the overall read.

That said, the book did leave me with sufficient enthusiasm for the period and the people to encourage me to pick up Colleen McCullough's Morgan's Run. Further and apropos of nothing, fans of "Sweeney Todd" might also be thus intrigued... Benjamin Barker was after all a transportee who escaped and returned under an assumed name (a story that doesn't fit in with the Australian chronicle, so perhaps Sweeney was rescued by Anthony en route to somewhere else). However, (and this bears no real relation to Keneally, but should rather be read in connection with my in-process review of the too long-winded McCullough), it is telling that Sweeney's entire backstory of wrongful conviction (for "foolishness") is subsumed in a single song. So you see that if only in terms of compression, Sondheim and Keneally have it all over McCullough.(less)

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May 06, 2008 Emily rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-books, 2008

A history of the founding of Australia (or New South Wales, as it was originally called). A fast-paced telling of the sailors and criminals that set out to create a living prison. Unlike America, where people came to flee oppression and were determined to start a better life, the criminals that worked the farms and the fishing ships and did all the labor in New South Wales were there under conscription. So it made for an interesting dynamic, where these people with looser morals than would be fo...more

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Nov 10, 2012 Maureen rated it 2 of 5 stars

I wanted to know more about the founding of Australia Well, this is the book. But it only looks, in excruciating detail, at the first convict transports and their initial stabs at surviving in what we think of today as a sweet paradise but back then was inhospitable to the point of starvation Way too much detail but I suppose you do get many main actors and many mundane actions if it's real history instead of fiction

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Jan 28, 2011 David R. rated it 2 of 5 stars

Neither terribly interesting or revealing. This is more a narrative of the tenure of Governor Arthur Phillip of New South Wales (who first led the penal colony 1786-92) than an account of early Australia per se. And that narrative is an endlessly repeating cycle of problem colonists (no surprise there), bad relations with the Eora aborigines (again, no surprise), and food shortages (ditto). Keneally doesn't take things anywhere and the book eventually peters out.

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May 03, 2011 Matthew Bushnell rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Any Australian or anyone interested in the formation of our nation.

Shelves: australian-history

This was a very interesting read regarding the early years of the formation of "white" Australia, from the movement of prison ships in England to the transportation of the First Fleet to Australia. There is a large focus (and rightly so), in this book, on the interaction between the European settlers and the indigenous Australians. A very knowledgeable and thoroughly enjoyable read.

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Nov 21, 2012 Matthew rated it 3 of 5 stars

A very well written history of the founding of Australia. Too be honest there was nothing in here I had not read before. The author doesn't throq up any really novel interpretation of Australian history but he tells it like a story with chracters we get to know and that technique really brings history alive. I enjoyed it.

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Aug 14, 2009 Eric rated it 3 of 5 stars

Good book! Got a solid understanding of the founding of Australia as a penal colony and a glimpse of 18th century Great Britain. The author Tom Keneally (same author of Schindler's List) brings Authur Philips adventures at Sydney Cove and interactions with the aborigines to life through quotations of his journal entries.

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Mar 25, 2012 Vivian rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: history-and-science

The book was interesting, a nicely balanced view of the convicts, military and natives. I suspect I'd have gotten a touch more out of it if I knew more about Australia going in, there were many references to the children of so-and-so being the famous whomevers.

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Jun 16, 2011 Claire rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: summer-reading

A good introduction to the history of colonial Australia. It could have been improved by less run-on sentences and a condescending tone that was clearly meant to convey knowledge to "the common people." Some images and a map that actually showed important landmarks would have been nice as well.

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Jan 17, 2012 Michael T rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Interesting read, great facts, confusing style. yes America, the criminals were sent to you before you spit the dummy, so no more "Australia was founded by criminals unless you hold up the mirror too.

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May 25, 2011 Batesharbuck rated it 3 of 5 stars

Okay, I now know waaaay more than I ever thought I wanted to know about the convict ships to Australia. He did give a little more of the Aborigine point of view than you normally get and that was good.

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Dec 17, 2012 Tracey marked it as to-read

Shelves: pop-history, recommended-tcpl

Interest in topic after reading The Wake of the Lorelei Lee: Being an Account of the Adventures of Jacky Faber, on her Way to Botany Bay

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Oct 12, 2012 Wes added it

I got to meet Thomas Keneally shortly after reading this and told him how much I enjoyed it. He said "you must have been bored"

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Apr 24, 2010 Bill Gordon rated it 5 of 5 stars

The narrator of this audiobook does an excellent job providing the quoted participants with different voices. If you like history I think you'll find much to enjoy with this one. I loved it.

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Mar 08, 2011 Jenny rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Interesting to hear about the British convicts that first came to Australia. Didn't care for the writing style.

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About Thomas Keneally

Thomas Michael Keneally, AO (born 7 October 1935) is an Australian novelist, playwright and author of non-fiction. He is best known for writing Schindler's Ark, the Booker Prize winning novel of 1982 which was inspired by the efforts of Poldek Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor. The book would later be adapted to Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Life...more Thomas Michael Keneally, AO (born 7 October 1935) is an Australian novelist, playwright and author of non-fiction. He is best known for writing Schindler's Ark, the Booker Prize winning novel of 1982 which was inspired by the efforts of Poldek Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor. The book would later be adapted to Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Life and career

Born in Sydney, Keneally was educated at St Patrick's College, Strathfield, where a writing prize was named after him. He entered St Patrick's Seminary, Manly to train as a Catholic priest but left before his ordination. He worked as a Sydney schoolteacher before his success as a novelist, and he was a lecturer at the University of New England (1968–70). He has also written screenplays, memoirs and non-fiction books.

Keneally was known as "Mick" until 1964 but began using the name Thomas when he started publishing, after advice from his publisher to use what was really his first name. He is most famous for his Schindler's Ark (1982) (later republished as Schindler's List), which won the Booker Prize and is the basis of the film Schindler's List. Many of his novels are reworkings of historical material, although modern in their psychology and style.

Keneally has also acted in a handful of films. He had a small role in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (based on his novel) and played Father Marshall in the Fred Schepisi movie, The Devil's Playground (1976) (not to be confused with a similarly-titled documentary by Lucy Walker about the Amish rite of passage called rumspringa).

In 1983 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO). He is an Australian Living Treasure.

He is a strong advocate of the Australian republic, meaning the severing of all ties with the British monarchy, and published a book on the subject Our Republic in 1993. Several of his Republican essays appear on the web site of the Australian Republican Movement.

Keneally is a keen supporter of rugby league football, in particular the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles club of the NRL. He made an appearance in the 2007 rugby league drama film The Final Winter.

In March 2009, the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, gave an autographed copy of Keneally's Lincoln biography to President Barack Obama as a state gift.

Most recently Thomas Keneally featured as a writer in the critically acclaimed Australian drama, "Our Sunburnt Country".

Thomas Keneally's nephew Ben is married to the former NSW Premier, Kristina Keneally.
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