Mermaid Tree, The: How A Tiny Unknown Ship Opened Australia’s North And West To Development, Dreams and Disappointment

First Edition.Almost two hundred years ago a young British sailor carved his ship’s name, Mermaid, on a Kimberley coast boab tree – it is still there today, probably Australia’s oldest living graffiti. It also marked the beginning of an extraordinary period of optimism and adventure in Australia’s history.The race to survey and settle Australia’s west and northern coastlines was the equivalent of last century’s ‘space race’, as France, Britain and Holland competed commercially for antipodean bases after the end of the Napoleonic Wars.As Port Jackson slowly evolved from a mere prison to a commercially respectable settlement, more expeditions visited Australia’s northern shores than during the golden era of exploration. There were the dreams of a second Singapore on the north coast and a new Gibraltar at Torres Strait; the failures at Melville Island, Raffles Bay and Port Essington; and the dangers of charting the Barrier Reef, Torres Strait and the unknown realms of New Guinea. Individuals seized these chances for fame and fortune despite the massive danger.Robert Tiley’s The Mermaid is the extraordinary story of the little known successors to Cook, Bligh, La Perouse, and Flinders, why they did it, what they got out of it and the haphazard global politics they had to endure. King, Freycinet, d’Urville, Wickham, Stokes, Grey, Blackwood, Yule, Kennedy and Stanley are not well known, but all were key to unlocking so much of Australia’s development. And it started with Mermaid.History of the hydrographers and explorers from France, Britain and Holland who, in the years 1815-1850, continued and expanded the original explorations of the Australian coastline by Captain Cook, Bligh, La Perouse and Flinders, with particular attention to the north westerncoastlines. pp. 297 illusts #0318 Western Australia