The Great Barrier Reef, Australia's most outstanding natural feature, has captured the interest of scientists and tourists from around the world. Yet surprisingly, despite its immense attraction, scientific importance and heritage value, no single, comprehensive account of its fascinating history has ever been published.

My own interest in the Reef, arising from a lifetime of involvement with coastal and marine environments, was initially aroused by the Great Barrier Reef conservation conflict of the 1960s. During an academic career that included extensive publishing in the history of ideas and environmental thought, the present study was commenced as a visiting Professorial Fellow in the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies of the Australian National University from 1984 to 1989. In that stimulating context the task was conceived as a project to bring into the public record the history of the Great Barrier Reef since its discovery by Europeans.

This became a challenging collaborative research project with Dr Margarita Bowen, scientist and historian. Following the original conception we worked closely together, guided by her wide experience in ecological studies and competence in the study of the development of scientific thought, originally presented in her impressive study of scientific ideas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Empiricism and Geographical Thought (1981). Published in the prestigious Cambridge Geographical Studies series, that work still challenges much ecological theory today.