AustLit

'Arthur Bowes Smyth was chief surgeon on the Lady Penrhyn, the one of the eleven ships of the First Fleet that carried exclusively female convicts. As well as writing a regular diary for the round journey to Australia and back from 1787 to 1789, he ensured the best health of the convicts and crew by a programme of meticulous cleanliness and good order. As he was not a regular employee of the Royal Navy, but on loan with the ship from the East India Company, he could express  independent views in his diary, though he kept several copies with his more acid comments deleted from the ones most likely to be submitted to his superiors.' (Introduction)

'Where have all the brolgas gone? John Hunter, intrepid Scottish seafarer and sometime governor of the infant colony of New South Wales, recorded these majestic 'native companions' as if they were regular denizens of early Sydney. Which they were, along with much else in the natural world that has been lost. We only know about them because the many-talented Hunter kept a comprehensive sketch book of the fauna and flora of early Sydney, Norfolk Island and surrounds.' (Introduction)

'This thoroughly entrancing volume falls somewhere between an antiquarian treasure and a nineteenth century graphic novel. It is also possibly the best and most valuable ethnographic work of the last two centuries. Most of it consists of worked up photographs with explanatory captions, depicting intimate and intricate details of Aboriginal life in the lower Murray in the 1850s recorded by the eccentric Polish-German researcher William Blandowski and his team. Blandowski worked among Aboriginal people at a critical time, while the old ways still persisted despite the encroachments of the pastoralists.' (Introduction)