The Colony A History of Early Sydney

by Karskens, Grace

• ISBN13: 9781742373645
• ISBN10: 174237364X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-06-01
• Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Summary

'Grace Karskens writes with the passion and insight of a novelist, and the accuracy of a historian... To read it is to have one's imagination stretched.' - Thomas Keneally, Sydney Morning Herald. THE COLONY is the story of the marvelously contrary, endlessly energetic early years of Sydney. It is an intimate account of the transformation of a campsite in a beautiful cove to the town that later became Australia's largest and best-known city. From the sparkling beaches to the foothills of the Blue Mountains, Grace Karskens skilfully reveals how landscape shaped the lives of the original Aboriginal inhabitants and newcomers alike. She traces the ways in which relationships between the colonial authorities and ordinary men and women broke with old patterns, and the ways that settler and Aboriginal histories became entwined. She uncovers the ties between the burgeoning township and its rural hinterland expanding along the river systems of the Cumberland Plain. Enthusiastically received on first publication, this is a landmark account of the birthplace of modern Australia, and a fascinating and richly textured narrative of people and place.

Author Biography

Grace Karskens teaches Australian history at the University of New South Wales and is the author of The Rocks: Life in Early Sydney.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. x
Conversion chartx	p. iv
Introduction	p. 1
Deep time and human history: The Sydney environment	p. 19
Encounters in Eora country	p. 32
The Camp, the canvas	p. 61
Food from a common industry': Public farms and common lands	p. 83
Seeding and breeding	p. 98
Views from Flagstaff Hill	p. 58
Landscape artists: The Macquaries in Sydney	p. 189
The face of the country	p. 233
Nefarious geographies	p. 280
A very bountiful place indeed': Women and country	p. 310
Soft colony	p. 351
Taking possession	p. 386
War on the Cumberland Plain	p. 448
Aftermath	p. 517
Epilogue	p. 540
Abbreviations	p. 550
Notes	p. 551
List of illustrations	p. 612
Bibliography	p. 622
Index	p. 663
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