CONNECTIONS

Some call Australia the world's largest island, but it is a true continent, one of the primary building blocks of planet Earth, with rock systems and history that extend back to the earliest recorded episodes of the Earth's development. Traditional stories of the Aboriginal people tell of the creation of this continent and of many of its landscape features. These stories run parallel to this book, because they emphasise the close spiritual relationship between all of us and the land to which we were born, or by which we were adopted, and which supports us.

This book tells how the rocks formed, and how the present landscape and climate developed over millions of years, from an Australian perspective. As the Reverend John Milne Curran wrote in one of the earliest explanations of Australian geology, in 1898, ‘Australia has a history far more ancient than any written by men – to read this history is one of the objects of geology – records preserved in the great stone-book of nature.’

Early progress

Australia was the last habitable landmass to be discovered by Europeans. Early exploration was undertaken happenstance by navigators and traders, mainly Dutch, reaching out to the spice islands of Indonesia. By the late 1600s much of the coast had been charted, but the first complete maps of Australia, resulting from the French exploration of Louis-Claude de Freycinet and the British voyage of discovery by Matthew Flinders, did not appear until 1811 and 1814. The much-later expedition of discovery by James Cook did more than just put Australia on the map. Thorough documentation of its eastern coast in 1770 provided the basis for the First Fleet and British settlement in 1788. At first the new colony was simply an outpost at the end of the Earth, addressing a perceived home-based social problem. But within 30 years an outward, trade-based outlook was in place, delivering Australian wool to Britain.