history-of-australia

"Population and wealth will flow in upon us in copious, rapid and continuous streams ... A high and noble destiny awaits the long despised Australia, and she must now be treated by her haughty mistress, not as a child, but as an equal. In every point a great change must be, or Australia will know how to vindicate her rights."

"Australian history is almost always picturesque; indeed, it is also so curious and strange, that it is itself the chiefest novelty the country has to offer and so it pushes the other novelties into second and third place. It does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies; and all of a fresh new sort, no mouldy old stale ones. It is full of surprises and adventures, the incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all true, they all happened."

"... the wreck of the Batavia provides the greatest dramatic tragedy in Australian history, beside which the Mutiny on the Bounty is an anaemic tale."