'The History of Australasia' by David Blair was one of three monumental publications he wrote. Written in 1879, this book takes the history of both Australia and New Zealand 'from the first dawn of discovery ... to the establishment of self-government in the various colonies' and 'covers the settlement and history of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia and New Zealand, along with some information of Fiji and New Guinea'.
The intention of this large book was that it was the first one-volume history of Australasia. The history starts with the early navigators who found and mapped Australia, then moves on to the explorers of the inland. There are physical descriptions of both Australia and New Zealand, as well as details of
climate, the natural production of the regions and animals and plant life.
Aborigines, the discovery of gold (including the Ballarat rebellion), the
governors of each colony, and the social history of each region are also
covered, together with so much more.
The beautifully coloured maps included for each Australian colony, and New Zealand, together with numerous sketches included throughout, make this book a wonderful overall history of Australasia.
High quality scanned images of the whole of the original book. This CD has been bookmarked for easy navigation, and pages can be searched, browsed, enlarged and printed out if required.
Click here to download a file of sample pages from this book
Right click on the link and select "save as" - to a location on your hard drive. The sampler can be opened, navigated and searched as with the full CD file/s.
Sample files usually contain the title page, contents, some introductory pages and sample pages from the body of the book. Often the complete index from the original book is included.
