Botany Bay Mirages: Illusions of Australia's Convict Beginnings

by Alan Frost

The first dozen years of European settlement of Australia are fixed in our minds by powerful images raised from an incomplete historical record. Alan Frost, after collecting a greatly expanded range of documents from archives around the world, sets the record straight. The images he challenges are immediately familiar and include overcrowded and unhealthy English prison hulks, hasty decisions based on overly optimistic assessment of the land's fertility, a poorly equipped and managed First Fleet, subsequent neglect by Britain, callous treatment of Aborigines, and the opportunistic and aberrant use of the notion of terra nullius.

Genres: History, Australia

279 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Alan Frost is emeritus professor of history at La Trobe University. His books include Convicts and Empire, The Voyage of the Endeavour and The Global Reach of Empire. His latest work, Botany Bay: The Real Story, was
published in 2011.