Terra Australis - Matthew Finders

Matthew Flinders, Australia's greatest navigator and the man who named the island continent, describes in captivating detail his epic mission to map its shores between 1796 and 1803. Edited and introduced by Tim Flannery, Terra Australis is a vital step toward a new understanding of Australian history. Flinders tells of meeting and communicating with Aborigines and describes the scrub and wilderness. His descriptions of the difficulties that he and his sailors faced still bristle with energy and immediacy 200 years later.