A History of Australia: From Earliest Times to 1838, deals with the pre-white settlement era and the earliest years of European colonisation through to the establishment of an increasingly settled society and the expeditions of the great inland explorers. This is not a general Australian history-it does not attempt to cover all aspects-and it is not a definitive or quantitative analysis. It is a work of art, a living and breathing account of the remaking of a primitive continent, history come alive.