Curious Minds

by Peter Macinnis

A look at some of the naturalists and natural history painters who visited Australia over two centuries, and made Australian flora and fauna known to the world, and incidentally, to the Australians as well.

They pickled echidnas, they pressed flowers, the killed crocodiles, they gathered up spiders, and sometimes, they died.

Genres: Australia, Nonfiction

214 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2012

About the author

During 2021, Macinnis has republished revised versions of all of his out-of-print books. The website listed above tells you how to get them. In 2024, he published The Lesser of Two Eagles, where you can learn that in an auction, you get something for nodding

Happy grandfather, travels, writes for adults and youngsters, mainly history or science. Published by the National Library of Australia (Australian Backyard Naturalist May 2012, another book Curious Minds October, 2012, Big Book of Australian History, 2013, 2015, 2017). Talks on ABC (RN), translated into 7 other languages. Winner of the W.A. Premier's Prize for Children's Literature 2013 and other awards.

Writing blog Old Writer on the Block. Google it and say g'day!

McManly on most social media. His Kokoda Track: 101 Days was a 2008 Eve Pownall Honour Book in the CBCA 'Book of the Year' awards. His Australian Backyard Explorer was the 2010 Eve Pownall Book of the Year (listed in 2011, in the prestigious international White Ravens list of children's literature). In 2012, his Australian Backyard Naturalist won a Whitley award, and the WA Premier's Children's Literature Award in 2013. After a few busy years doing other stuff, his Australian Backyard Earth Scientist won the long-winded Educational Publishing Awards Australia prize for best "Student Resource – Arts/Science/Humanities/Social Sciences/Technologies/Health and Physical Education/Languages ".

He has had half a dozen titles rated as "Notable Books" by the Children's Book Council of Australia: that's equivalent to short listing.

Reviews

[Vireya · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice book to browse, with lovely illustrations and interesting snippets of info. But the link between the illustrations and the text is frequently unclear, and at times the information is frustratingly shallow.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Curious Minds, by Peter Macinnis, is a lovely book. I stumbled across it when I was at the library picking up a book I’d reserved (Simone Lazaroo’s (2006) The Travel Writer) and I’ve been reading it on and off over the weekend.

Australians often forget just how odd our flora and fauna seem to Europeans. That Wallace Line which defines the boundary between our fauna and what’s in the rest of the world was only recognised in 1859, but long before that travellers’ tales were full of strange rats, greyhounds that hopped (i.e. kangaroos), swans that were black in defiance of Aristotle*, and double-ended reptiles. Curious Minds is the story of the naturalists who came to our shores and began to identify and classify our strange animals. It’s fascinating reading.

It starts with my favourite ‘pyrate’ and his ‘hippototomus’. William Dampier (subject of Dampier’s Monkey by Adrian Mitchell) visited Australia twice in the 17th century, and most importantly for science, wrote a book about his travels afterwards. In A Voyage to New Holland (1699) he wrote about a massive shark that his men captured, which had in its mouth an animal still seen only rarely today :

Its maw was like a Leather Sack, very thick, and so tough that a sharp knife could scarce cut it, in which we found the Head and Bones of a Hippototomus, the hairy Lips of which were still sound and not putrified, and the Jaw was also firm, out of which we plukt a great many Teeth, 2 of them 8 Inches long and as big as a Man’s Thumb, small at one End, and a little crooked, the rest not above half so long. (cited on p. 14)

A dugong!

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2013/04/21/c...