… the Great Barrier Reef is still the closest most people will come to Eden.

–Judith Wright

The Great Barrier Reef lies off the coast of Queensland: 2000 kilometres of spectacular coral reefs, sand cays and islands, Australia’s most precious marine possession. Teeming with life, it covers 350,000 square kilometres.

In the late 1960s the Reef was threatened with limestone mining and oil...

After arriving in Australia with her young son in 1855, Mary Fortune went on to become Australia’s first female crime writer. Lucy Sussex’s detective work reveals something of this remarkable woman, but Mary Fortune’s writing is her best testimony. Its verve and quality recreate Melbourne in the grip of gold fever and of life on the goldfields. She depicts the harshness of life in her time,...

Through their letters home and their diaries, the first European women who came to Australia were literally writing a new world. A lively and provocative history of two hundred years of Australian settlement as seen through the records of women writers. With characteristic verve and style Dale Spender challenges received wisdom. She presents over 200 women writers and an image of a country...