A Travellers' History of Australia

A Traveller's History of Australia is essential reading for tourists, or anyone interested in Australia and its amazing diversity. This book gives a complete account of that great southern democracy from the arrival of the earliest Aborigines some fifty or sixty thousand years ago, to the present day. The ancient Aboriginal way of life is described; the vast deserts and fertile coastal plains, treacherous climate and peculiar marsupial animals; early European sightings; and the establishment of the British convict colony in 1788, which dragged the continent into the modern world.

The dynamic story of Australia is continued into the twentieth century with its role in two world wars, the post-war discoveries of huge mineral deposits, and the influx of Southern European migrants who changed the country's ethnic make-up. Australia's courting of Asia in recent decades, the return of vast areas of land to the Aborigines and its confident cultural vibrancy in wine, food, film and art are all analyzed in the final chapter. A Historical gazetteer highlights the chief places of interest for tourists. The book concludes with two intriguing appendices: why boomerangs return and the peculiarities of kangaroo physiology.