Charles Sturt was one of the most important people related to early South Australia. Sturt was born on the 28th of April 1795 in India. He lived in India until he was 5 when he moved to England to continue his education.

Sturt joined the British Army in 1813 and served in Spain, Canada, France and Ireland. In 1827 Sturt sailed to New South Wales to escort a group of convicts to Sydney, he then remained in Sydney for several years. He showed a keen interest in exploring the unmapped country and rivers so he set out to solve the country's mysteries with Governor Darling's approval. In 1828 Sturt discovered the Darling River and then in January of 1830 he discovered the Murray River which he followed downstream until he reached present day Goolwa. Sturt and is party continued on downstream and managed to reach the river mouth with the help of the local Aboriginies, they had hoped to get the boat into the sea but they couldn't and ended up having to walk over the sand dunes to see the water flowing into the sea.

Sturt had seen enough good land in South Australia and it was his report that influenced the decision for the British to colonise South Australia.

Soon after that Sturt served as a commander on Norfolk Island befor returning to England and leaving the army.

In 1834 he married Charlotte Green before returning to New South Wales where he was granted 5000 acres of land for his military service.

In 1835 Sturt did some surveying work in Adelaide for the South Australia Company. After Colonel Light retired he gained the position of South Australia Company Surveyor General. Soon after that Sturt left Adelaide for Sydney.

He then set off exploring once again, this time into Central Australia to settle the agreement over whether or not there was an inland sea.

He left Adelaide in August of 1844 and returned in January of 1946. This was a difficult trip for him as most of the time the temperature was over 45 Degrees Celcius (113 Degrees Farrenheit). In 1845 while on this expedition he discovered the Sturt Desert Pea near a creek he names Cooper Creek after South Australia's Chief Justice Sir Charles Cooper.

Later Sturt became a Registrar-General and Chief Colonial Treasurer at a pay of a meager $1000 a year.

Sturt and his Wife had a daughter on the 19th of January 1847 and Settled in Red Beds, Grange. Later that year Sturt returned to England where he published his well-known book, Narrative of a Journey into Central Australia. Sturt died on the 16th of June 1869 at the age of 84. After he died the Sturt Stony Seasert and Sturt River were named in his honour. He was a very important person in the early years of South Australia.

The American Civil War coincided with the Victorian era, one of the most morally repressive eras in history for women. Everything from a woman's dress to her education were tightly constricted by societal mores that governed her every action.

These Victorian values that women of the Civil War era abided by were certainly not set aside with the coming of war; a woman's contribution to the war effort was supposed to begin - and usually end - at home. However, as the war dragged on and more and more men left their jobs, homes, and lives for the war effort, women found themselves taking over farms, working in shops, teaching in schools, and otherwise taking over for the men who'd gone to war.

Yet many women refused to limit their assistance to their country to what could be accomplished close to home. These became nurses, worked to raise supplies for their troops, or even worked in armories. A number of these women supported their country in a more dangerous - and scandalous - way: they became spies.

Espionage was considered a dishonorable pursuit for a man during the Civil War era. For a woman, spying was tantamount to prostitution. However, as the war escalated, women both North and South flaunted the Victorian morality of time to provide their country the intelligence it needed to make tactical and practical decisions.

Easily the most infamous spy of the Civil War or the 19th Century, Belle Boyd. A Confederate spy, "La Belle Rebelle," as she came to be known, Boyd's espionage activities during the war - not to mention her ability to escape sticky situations unscathed - brought her fame and a modicum of fortune both during and after the war.

- Belle Boyd

Born Maria Isabella Boyd, Belle Boyd began spying for the Confederacy when Union troops invaded her Martinsburg,Virginia home in 1861. When one of the Federal soldiers manhandled her mother, Boyd shot and killed him. Exonerated in the soldier's death, an emboldened Boyd managed to befriend the Union soldiers left to guard her, and used her slave, Eliza, to pass information confided in her by the soldiers along to Confederate officers. Boyd was caught at her first attempt at spying - and threatened with death - but she did not stop her activities; rather, she vowed to find a better way.

Boyd's chance presented itself at her father's hotel. She eavesdropped on conversations the Union officers staying at the hotel conducted about military affairs, and learned enough to inform General Stonewall Jackson about their regiment and activities. This time, Boyd delivered her intelligence firsthand, moving through Union lines, and reportedly drawing close enough to the action to return with bullet holes in her skirts. The information she provided allowed the Confederate army to advance on Federal troops at Fort Royal.

However, Boyd's daring acts of espionage were drawn to a halt when a beau gave her up to Union authorities in 1862. She was held in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington for a month, then released, but found herself in the hoosegow again shortly. Once again, she managed to be set free, and traveled to England, where she married a Union officer.

Boyd wasn't the only female spy operating in Virginia. In the Confederate capital of Richmond, Elizabeth Van Lew, known as "Crazy Bet," was providing the Union with intelligence while allowing her Confederate neighbors to consider her insane.

Slave power is arrogant, is jealous and intrusive, is cruel, is despotic, not only over the slave but over the community, the state. Elizabeth Van Lew

Van Lew, born to a wealthy and prominent Richmond family, was educated by Quakers in Philadelphia. She returned to Richmond an avowed abolitionist, going so far as to convince her mother to free the family's slaves.

Her espionage activity began soon after the start of the war. To the distress of her neighbors, she openly supported the Union; soon she concentrated her efforts on aiding Federal prisoners at the Libby Prison, taking them food, books, and paper. Soon she began smuggling information about Confederate activities from the prisoners to Union officers, including General Ulysses S. Grant.

To hide her activities from her Confederate neighbors, Van Lew behaved oddly - dressing in old clothes, talking to herself, refusing to comb her hair - oddly enough that people began to think she was insane, and to call her "Crazy Bet." Far from insane, Van Lew was hailed by Grant as the provider of some of the most important intelligence gathered during the war. One of Van Lew's more inventive strategies involved a code she developed for disguising information, which she often sent to Union officers in hollowed out eggs. She also used former slaves in an espionage network, one of which, Mary Elizabeth Bower, was employed in the Confederate White House.

Belle Boyd and Elizabeth Van Lew are only two of the many women who aided their respective countries during the Civil War by spying. These women took a risk that they knew had longstanding ramifications; many who were outed as spies, such as Van Lew, found themselves shunned in polite society after the war. Their controversial efforts not only aided the war effort - they aided the progression of women for years to come.

Sure, you may not read things as fast as you'd like. But is it really possible to at least double your reading speed?

That's the claim made by many of the speed reading programs on the market. Some systems (such as photo reading) claim that you can read at about a page a second, but most speed reading systems aim to just help you read faster.

So, why speed reading?

Our reading speed - or lack of it - probably goes back to when we first started to read. Most of us read things "out loud" in our head. Some of us even move our lips as we're reading.

In order to speed read, you first need to get out of the habit of reading every word "out loud" in your head. You can practice this easily enough - just read some paragraphs and if you catch your lips moving, stop them from doing so!

Next up, we tend to re-read things. Maybe you weren't sure exactly what something meant, maybe you just lost your place. For whatever reason, re-reading stuff slows us down.

Incidentally, if you don't understand something the first time you read it, the chances are that the author will re-explain it again later in whatever it is you are reading. In fact, most things get explained several times in the course of an article let alone a book, so don't panic if something doesn't make sense at first, it probably will make sense later.

The easiest way to stop losing your place as you read is to use a finger or a pen or a pencil to trace the words as you go along. A bit like the way a karaoke machine works...

Tracing the words as you read them effects your reading speed positively because you don't go back and read words or even whole paragraphs or pages. Which is what often tends to happen when we're reading.

You can also gradually increase your reading speed simply by tracing along the words a bit faster.

Try these simple tricks and you'll be surprised by just how much they can improve the speed you read at.