The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888

This book captures the extraordinary era when European explorers pushed into the unknown heart of a continent. Favenc, writing in the late 19th century with access to journals, reports, and personal accounts now lost to history, traces the hundred-year arc from the first faltering steps around Sydney Harbour to the final mapping of Australia's vast interior. The narrative follows the obsessive quests to find mythical inland seas, the grueling crossings of the Blue Mountains, the encounters with Aboriginal peoples whose knowledge of Country was both essential and routinely ignored, and the rivalries between explorers racing to claim rivers and routes for empire. Favenc gives space to the official expeditions backed by colonial governments alongside the desperate private journeys of men whose names history nearly erased. This is a document of its time, a Victorian attempt to construct a coherent narrative of "discovery" from the chaotic, violent, and often accidental process of colonial expansion.