A Voyage to Terra Australis — Volume 2: Undertaken for the Purpose of Completing the Discovery of That Vast Country, and Prosecuted in the Years 1801, 1802 and 1803, in His Majesty's Ship the Investigator, and Subsequently in the Armed Vessel Porpoise and Cumberland Schooner

In 1801, a young British naval captain set sail with one extraordinary hypothesis: the great southern landmass was not two continents but one. Over the next three years, Matthew Flinders aboard HMS Investigator would prove himself right, and in doing so, give Australia its name. This is his definitive account of that voyage, and it remains one of the great exploration narratives in the English language. Flinders writes with the precision of a master navigator and the eye of a naturalist who finds wonder in every coastline. Here are the first European accounts of vast stretches of Australian shore, encounters with Aboriginal peoples ranging from hostile to hospitable, the terrifying wreck of the Porpoise on a coral reef, and the lonely determination required to chart an entire continent's coastline ship by ship. But this is more than adventure. It is a document of first contact, of a man who recognized the humanity of Indigenous Australians when most did not, and of the moment when the map of the world changed forever. For anyone curious about how we came to know the planet we inhabit, this book is essential.