AustLit

Nineteenth-Century Travel Writing

Richard Semon (1859-1918) was a German zoologist, evolutionary biologist and writer. He illustrated a travel narrative that was originally published in German, and provided a study of Australian fauna, mammals, marsupials, and ceratodus. His zoological findings were published as a purely scientific text Zoologische Forschungsreisen in Australien und dem malayischen Archipel. Although In the Australian Bush was written in a scientific mode, it provided descriptions of Semon's travels through Queensland (and beyond to the Torres Strait, Papua New Guinea, and the Indonesian archipelago); the experience of camping; floods; and the Aboriginal communities he encountered.