Examines Australia's history with enduring narratives of colonial discovery

Adventure was one of the grand narratives of colonisation, which saw European powers sending agents off to new and distant worlds. But their journeys didn't always go in a straight line. Some adventurers to Australia were shipwrecked, lost or marooned. Others tried to escape the colony as soon as they arrived- convicts made their way to Timor, China and South America, while bushrangers operated closer to home, antagonising colonial authorities.

Colonial adventures could be itinerant and meandering, often turning into misadventures. But when adventurers directly served the interests of colonisation, they could be violent, ruthless and brutally racist, in a global context of competing interests and the rapacious accumulation of wealth and property. Many adventurers went wherever ambition took them, killing and dispossessing Indigenous peoples and claiming ownership of the land. By examining colonial adventure narratives in all their rawness and complexity, this book asks us to reflect on the continuing legacies of colonialism in Australia today.