The explorers of Australia tell their stories of courage and suffering, of dispossesion and conquest, of a moving frontier between European invaders and the Aborigines who had been living on the continent for thousands of years. The stories in this anthology document almost four centuries of exploration. They includes tales of weathering grotesque desert hear, the Maori chief Te Pahi saving the lives of condemned thieves in Sydney in 1805, the ruthless massacre of aborigines by the Jardine brothers in North Queensland.