Our Antipodes

by Mundy, Godfrey Charles, abridged by D.W.A. Baker (2006), xvii+305pp., ISBN 1 74076 185 5.

AUD$31.78 (Including GST: AUD$34.96) (softcover)

Godfrey Charles Mundy's popular three-volume work of 1852, Our Antipodes, is an absorbing glimpse of colonial Australia, featuring squatters, bullock drivers, publicans, small settlers as well as members of the highest ranks of colonial society. Mundy's chatty and vivid anecdotal style also conveys the big social and political questions of the day such as convict transportation, the desirability of free immigration, the distribution of crown lands and relations with the indigenous population. Elegantly abridged and eminently readable, Our Antipodes is delightfully illustrated with Mundy's own drawings of the land and its people.