On the left: the original cover. Think of this, if you like, as an adult version of Australian Backyard Explorer. It was written
several years earlier, and led the people at the National Library of Australia
to think that I was an historian. While it is true that I did, at one stage,
wish to become a pre- and post-Islamic mediaeval Javanese historian, I ended up
becoming a botanist. As one does...
This book is about Australia's colonial explorers and how they did
things. In large part, it is the story of the unexpected explorers, the women,
the teenagers, the convicts, the Aborigines, but it is also the story of how
the early Australian explorers did things. This goes into all the sorts of questions my teachers should have covered, but nuanced by the insights of a wilderness bushwalker
It looks at what they took with
them, how they planned their trips, how they navigated and surveyed and mapped,
how they found food and water, how they managed their animals and their humans,
how they mended the sick and broken, and how a few of them died when mending
wasn't enough.
On the right, the cover of the new edition. It does all of that and a great deal more. In both versions, the book began as a more serious study of how Australia was mapped,
starting in 1606 and coming up to the present, but in the end, I decided to stay
mainly with the more personal stories of the 19th century explorers, though I
make a few excursions either side, when there is a lesson to be learned, as in
the strange case of Kenelm Digby's scientifically wounded dog. Oh yes, and
there is some serious science and technology in there as well.An ebook in full colour for Kindle, $5 and
A print-on-demand paperback in monochrome (colour wasn't really needed) $25.
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