(Peter Macinnis, Pier 9, $34.95 hb, ISBN 9781741960488, November) ***1/2

When bushwalking, I often wonder who first discovered that a plant was poisonous? For Australia’s early European explorers, it was usually a case of finding out the hard way. Macinnis, a science and history writer known most recently for Kokoda Track: 101 Days, takes us on tour with those early explorers, rediscovering the hardships and tribulations they faced and the decisions they made. The story is an interweaving of the journeys of many explorers, comparing the situations that most found themselves in: finding food and water, relating to Indigenous Australians, mapping, trying to find the inland sea and dealing with the political situation back home. The excerpts from the journals of the explorers are proof of just how treacherous—and sometimes amusing—the expeditions were. The usual suspects are all present—Burke and Wills, Stuart, Oxley—but also the lesser known explorers: Creaghe (a woman), Horrocks (who died when shot by his camel Harry) and their Aboriginal companions and guides. This book is a ‘who’s who’ of exploring in Australia. It reads more like a novel than the average work of nonfiction. Readers with an interest in Australian history and exploration, not to mention bushwalkers and hikers, will relish it.

Tristan Blattman is special sales manager at UNSW Bookshop

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2007, Thorpe-Bowker