Dimensions
147 x 174 x 11mm
This book records the opinions of one hundred of those who saw the land in its unchanged state one to two hundred years ago, and the cities as they developed.
The book remakes the conception of Australia. Henry Lawson, Adam Lindsay Gordon and others wrote well enough to daub a permanent drab coat over the loveliness that was Australia. They saw it through the eyes of settlers trying to build farms with insufficient land, insufficient money and insufficient knowledge.
The casual first observers of country and city found them beautiful. They transform the modern notions of a harsh landscape into a garden of wildflowers. They transform the wood-and-canvas huts fronting streets of mud and dust of early towns into buildings both costly and economical of extraordinary elegance.
They transform the European people from drunken and licentious convicts and opportunists into members of a society intelligent, vigorous, adaptable and proud. They transform Aboriginal Australians into highly intelligent people with great artistic ability.
