Escape Cliffs: The First Northern Territory Expedition 1864-66

by Derek Pugh

This is a true story of greed, exploration, murder, wasted efforts, life and death struggles, insubordination, incredible seamanship, and extraordinary bushmanship, amid government bungling and Aboriginal resistance, during South Australia's first attempt at colonising their Northern Territory in 1864. The South Australians wanted their state to be the premier state of Australia. The new settlement was expected to open up a trading route across the country to Asia and beyond, and exploit the agricultural and mining opportunities of the interior. It was to be at no cost to the state, as the land was sold, unseen and unsurveyed, to investors in Adelaide and London, prior to the first Northern Territory Expedition even setting out. The investors were already calculating their returns, but then, as the saying goes, the fight really started... "A fantastic insightful, cohesive, sequential, and well-paced. Loved it. Plenty of photos and maps to set the scene, with the addition of well researched complementary first-hand accounts and primary records. Pugh has captured the essence of the time, place and their personalities, hardships, successes and celebrations. I wanted to read it to find out what was going to happen next. Pugh's writing style is 'alive' and easy to read." - Jill Finch

242 pages, Paperback

Published March 13, 2018

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read with lots of well researched facts. A book i would call informative rather than entertaining. I was hoping for a well written story, along the lines of Christopher Richards' There were three ships, but this book proved to be more a statement of events, sometimes overlapping and disjoint.

Most oddly, for my money, is that it opens with a table representing the timeline of events concerning Escape Cliffs and the area in general. This is odd, usually such a table would be assigned to the Appendices. What is more strange is that the first paragraph of the text starts by referencing a date not actually in the timeline...

But having said those things, the book is a keeper and will go into my collection of such tomes.

[Diane B · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read for anyone keen to know more about Australia's Northern Territory, from avid history buffs to those with a passing interest in colonial place-names (and there are A LOT of 'ah, so that's where that name came from' moments). I'm certainly not the former but got drawn into tales of ill-fated explorations, bitter (often petty) disputes among the officers, and encounters between the newcomers and the Aboriginal people who occupied the region - which were predictably tragic but also warm and even amusing at times. This is an engaging book, easy to read and free from jargon but with enough detail to keep the interest of serious historians.