Northern Australia has been largely written out of Australian history. Partly this has to do with issues of scale and order. To avoid getting tangled up in Australia's vast geographical expanse and different jurisdictions, many historians have written history as if most major Australian events and trends originated in metropolitan centres in the south-east of the continent. This paper will argue that Australian history on a national scale needs to be re-written to more fully appreciate the occasions when Northern Australia influenced the South, and the ways in which the North followed a different path to the rest of the continent. This paper expresses the belief that as more academic historians focus their studies on the North, a more complex and significantly deeper understanding of the Australian continent and its people will emerge and our history will be painted on a larger, more satisfying canvas.