Robert Murray is a professional historian. His major publications include: The Split : Australian Labor in the Fifties (1970), Fuels Rush In : Oil and Gas in Australia (1972), The Confident Years : Australia in the 1920s (1978), From the Edge of a Timeless Land : A History of the North West Shelf Gas Project (1991), Go Well : One Hundred Years of Shell in Australia (2001), 150 years of Spring Street : Victorian Government : 1850s to 21st Century (2007), Sandbelters : Memoirs of Middle Australia (2011), and The Making of Australia : A Concise History (2014),
With his wife Kate White, also a professional historian, Murray has published such books as The Ironworkers : A History of the Federated Ironworkers' Association of Australia (1982), Research for Writers (1985) and Dharug and Dungaree: The History of Penrith and St Mary's to 1860 (1988).
Murray also contributed an article on the Argus newspaper with Jim Usher for the Companion to the Australian Media (2014).