The Europeans who stepped ashore on 26 January 1788 knew next to nothing about the land that was to be their home.

Almost immediately they began to explore the region around Sydney Cove, pushing further and further out, uncovering the rich agricultural lands and the hostile, barren landscapes. They found their way across the Great Dividing Range to the vast plains where their sheep would flourish and their crops would grow in abundance.

Following closely behind the explorers were the settlers. These were hardy pioneers, each desperate to carve out their own slice of the new colonies. Some prospered, creating a particular type of person who knew the land and its possibilities well, but many failed.

This book shows how brave, sometimes foolhardy, explorers opened up the continent to the rest of the world. Names such as Evans, Hume, Hovell, Sturt, Mitchell, Cunningham, Oxley, Leichhardt, Gregory, Burke, Wills, Eyre, Stuart, Forrest and many others resound through this story.

The explorers who opened up the land and the settlers who followed them — visionaries and egotists, brave and cautious men — made the story of Exploration and Settlement in Colonial Australia.