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The Great Race
- The Race Between the English and the French to Complete the Map of Australia
- Narrated by: Paul English
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
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Banks
- By: Grantlee Kieza
- Narrated by: Patrick Harvey
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Explorer, naturalist and president of Britain's Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks was a larger-than-life character best known for his promotion of science. In 1768 Banks joined Captain James Cook's expedition to the South Pacific. The 30,000 specimens he brought back generated enormous interest, as did the sometimes racy written account of the journey, which chronicled his frequent amorous exploits.
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Splendid biography of a great man
- By Rodney Wetherell on 09-02-2021
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Convict Colony
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- Narrated by: Conrad Coleby
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The New World of the 18th century was dotted with failed colonies, and New South Wales nearly joined them. The motley crew of unruly marines and bedraggled convicts who arrived at Botany Bay in 1788 in leaky boats nearly starved to death. They could easily have been murdered by hostile locals, been overwhelmed by an attack from French or Spanish expeditions or been brought undone by the Castle Hill uprising of 1804. Yet through fortunate decisions, a few remarkably good leaders and, most of all, good luck, Sydney survived and thrived.
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Fantastic
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The Last Charge of the Australian Light Horse
- From the Australian bush to the Battle of Beersheba - an Epic Story of Courage, Resilience and Derring-Do
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Richard Bligh
- Length: 16 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On 31st October 1917, as the day's light faded, the Australian Light Horse charged against their enemy. Eight hundred men and horses galloped four miles across open country, towards the artillery, rifles and machine guns of the Turks occupying the seemingly unassailable town of Beersheba. What happened in the next hour changed the course of history. This brave battle and the extraordinary adventures that led to it are brought vividly to life by Australia's greatest storyteller, Peter FitzSimons.
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A great story of a great Australian event
- By Russell on 22-02-2024
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Convict-Era Port Arthur
- Misery of the Deepest Dye
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- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
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Performance
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Story
Detailing the development of the prison and its outlying stations, including its dreaded coal mines and providing an account of the changing views to convict rehabilitation, Convict-era Port Arthur focuses in on a number of individuals, telling the story through their eyes. Charles O'Hara Booth, a significant commandant of Port Arthur; Mark Jeffrey, a convict who became the grave digger on the Island of the Dead and William Thompson, who arrived just as the new probation system started and who was forced to work in the treacherous coal mines.
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Well Researched, Average Narration.
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Mutiny on the Bounty
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Performance
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Story
The mutiny on HMS Bounty, in the South Pacific on 28 April 1789, is one of history's truly great stories - a tale of human drama, intrigue and adventure of the highest order - and in the hands of Peter FitzSimons it comes to life as never before. Commissioned by the Royal Navy to collect breadfruit plants from Tahiti and take them to the West Indies, the Bounty's crew found themselves in a tropical paradise. Five months later, they did not want to leave.
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Just as yesterday
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Great South Land
- By: Rob Mundle
- Narrated by: Paul English
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For many, the colonial story of Australia starts with Captain Cook's discovery of the east coast in 1770, but it was some 164 years before his historic voyage that European mariners began their romance with the immensity of the Australian continent. Between 1606 and 1688, while the British had their hands full with the Gunpowder Plot and the English Civil War, it was highly skilled Dutch seafarers who discovered and mapped the majority of the vast, unknown waters and land masses in the Indian and Southern Oceans.
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great read/liston
- By Anonymous User on 10-06-2019
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Banks
- By: Grantlee Kieza
- Narrated by: Patrick Harvey
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Explorer, naturalist and president of Britain's Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks was a larger-than-life character best known for his promotion of science. In 1768 Banks joined Captain James Cook's expedition to the South Pacific. The 30,000 specimens he brought back generated enormous interest, as did the sometimes racy written account of the journey, which chronicled his frequent amorous exploits.
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-
Splendid biography of a great man
- By Rodney Wetherell on 09-02-2021
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Convict Colony
- The Remarkable Story of the Fledgling Settlement That Survived Against the Odds
- By: David Hill
- Narrated by: Conrad Coleby
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The New World of the 18th century was dotted with failed colonies, and New South Wales nearly joined them. The motley crew of unruly marines and bedraggled convicts who arrived at Botany Bay in 1788 in leaky boats nearly starved to death. They could easily have been murdered by hostile locals, been overwhelmed by an attack from French or Spanish expeditions or been brought undone by the Castle Hill uprising of 1804. Yet through fortunate decisions, a few remarkably good leaders and, most of all, good luck, Sydney survived and thrived.
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-
Fantastic
- By Bruce Hill on 02-09-2021
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The Last Charge of the Australian Light Horse
- From the Australian bush to the Battle of Beersheba - an Epic Story of Courage, Resilience and Derring-Do
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Richard Bligh
- Length: 16 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On 31st October 1917, as the day's light faded, the Australian Light Horse charged against their enemy. Eight hundred men and horses galloped four miles across open country, towards the artillery, rifles and machine guns of the Turks occupying the seemingly unassailable town of Beersheba. What happened in the next hour changed the course of history. This brave battle and the extraordinary adventures that led to it are brought vividly to life by Australia's greatest storyteller, Peter FitzSimons.
-
-
A great story of a great Australian event
- By Russell on 22-02-2024
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Convict-Era Port Arthur
- Misery of the Deepest Dye
- By: David W. Cameron
- Narrated by: Ant Neate
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Detailing the development of the prison and its outlying stations, including its dreaded coal mines and providing an account of the changing views to convict rehabilitation, Convict-era Port Arthur focuses in on a number of individuals, telling the story through their eyes. Charles O'Hara Booth, a significant commandant of Port Arthur; Mark Jeffrey, a convict who became the grave digger on the Island of the Dead and William Thompson, who arrived just as the new probation system started and who was forced to work in the treacherous coal mines.
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Well Researched, Average Narration.
- By Liss and Pen on 28-06-2022
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Mutiny on the Bounty
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Michael Carman
- Length: 22 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The mutiny on HMS Bounty, in the South Pacific on 28 April 1789, is one of history's truly great stories - a tale of human drama, intrigue and adventure of the highest order - and in the hands of Peter FitzSimons it comes to life as never before. Commissioned by the Royal Navy to collect breadfruit plants from Tahiti and take them to the West Indies, the Bounty's crew found themselves in a tropical paradise. Five months later, they did not want to leave.
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Just as yesterday
- By luke.oconnor on 05-02-2020
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Great South Land
- By: Rob Mundle
- Narrated by: Paul English
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For many, the colonial story of Australia starts with Captain Cook's discovery of the east coast in 1770, but it was some 164 years before his historic voyage that European mariners began their romance with the immensity of the Australian continent. Between 1606 and 1688, while the British had their hands full with the Gunpowder Plot and the English Civil War, it was highly skilled Dutch seafarers who discovered and mapped the majority of the vast, unknown waters and land masses in the Indian and Southern Oceans.
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great read/liston
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Island of the Lost
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Auckland Island is a godforsaken place in the middle of the Southern Ocean, 285 miles south of New Zealand. With year-round freezing rain and howling winds, it is one of the most forbidding places in the world. To be shipwrecked there means almost certain death. In 1864, Captain Thomas Musgrave and his crew of four aboard the schooner Grafton wreck on the southern end of the island. Utterly alone in a dense coastal forest, plagued by stinging blowflies and relentless rain, Captain Musgrave inspires his men to take action.
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excellent!
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Eureka
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- Narrated by: Robert Meldrum
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In 1854, Victorian miners fought a deadly battle under the flag of the Southern Cross at the Eureka Stockade. Though brief and doomed to fail, the battle is legend in both our history and in the Australian mind. Henry Lawson wrote poems about it, its symbolic flag is still raised, and even the nineteenth-century visitor Mark Twain called it: "a strike for liberty". Was this rebellion a fledgling nation’s first attempt to assert its independence under colonial rule? Or was it merely rabble-rousing by unruly miners determined not to pay their taxes?
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Australian history which put me to sleep
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Captain Cook’s Epic Voyage
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- Narrated by: John Gregg
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
In 1768 Captain James Cook and his crew set out on a small British naval vessel in search of a missing continent. 2020 marks the 250th anniversary of that voyage, and Cook's 'discovery' of Australia. Captain Cook's Epic Voyage reveals the hardships and adventure of this remarkable quest, and the euphoria of discovering new lands.
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Captivating!
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James Cook
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- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
The name Captain James Cook is one of the most recognisable in Australian history - an almost mythic figure who is often discussed, celebrated, reviled and debated. But who was the real James Cook? This Yorkshire farm boy would go on to become the foremost mariner, scientist, navigator and cartographer of his era, and to personally map a third of the globe. His great voyages of discovery were incredible feats of seamanship and navigation.
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I really enjoyed this one
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Burke and Wills
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- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Michael Carman
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- Unabridged
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Performance
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The iconic Australian exploration story - brought to life by Peter FitzSimons, Australia's storyteller. 'They have left here today!' he calls to the others. When King puts his hand down above the ashes of the fire, it is to find it still hot. There is even a tiny flame flickering from the end of one log. They must have left just hours ago. Melbourne, 20 August 1860. In an ambitious quest to be the first Europeans to cross the harsh Australian continent, the Victorian Exploring Expedition sets off, with 15,000 well-wishers cheering them on.
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Returned
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A Shorter History of Australia
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- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
After a lifetime of research and debate on Australian and international history, Geoffrey Blainey is well-placed to introduce us to the people who have played a part and to guide us through the events which have created the Australian identity: the mania for spectator sport, the suspicion of the tall poppy, the rivalries of Catholic and Protestant, Sydney and Melbourne, new and old homelands, the conflicts of war abroad and race at home, the importance of technology, the recognition of our Aboriginal past and Native Title.
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What happens when two ancient civilisations collid
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Robinson Crusoe
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Performance
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Story
Widely regarded as the first English novel, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is one of the most popular and influential adventure stories of all time. This classic tale of shipwreck and survival on an uninhabited island was an instant success when first published in 1719, and it has inspired countless imitations.
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excellent listen
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Kokoda (by Peter FitzSimons)
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Story
For Australians, Kokoda is the iconic battle of World War II, yet few people know just what happened and just what our troops achieved. Now, best-selling author Peter FitzSimons tells the Kokoda story in a gripping, moving story for all Australians.
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Compulsory listening...we must know this.
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Australia's Secret Army
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- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Established after World War I by the Royal Australian Navy, the Coast Watchers were a loose organisation of several hundred European settlers, missionaries, patrol officers and planters living in British and Australian Pacific Island territories whose job it was to observe and report on the enemy. They were mostly all unpaid volunteers whose job it was simply to observe and report on foreign shipping and aeroplane movements. It was never envisaged that the Coast Watchers would do any fighting, nor operate inside enemy-occupied territory.
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Truly engaging
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The Incredible Life of Hubert Wilkins
- Australia's Greatest Explorer
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Robert Meldrum
- Length: 21 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Sir Hubert Wilkins is one of the most remarkable Australians who ever lived. The son of pioneer pastoralists in South Australia, Hubert studied engineering before moving on to photography, then sailing for England and a job producing films with the Gaumont Film Co. Brave and bold, he became a polar expeditioner, a brilliant war photographer, a spy in the Soviet Union, a pioneering aviator-navigator, a death-defying submariner - all while being an explorer and chronicler of the planet and its life forms that would do Vasco da Gama and Sir David Attenborough proud.
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incredible
- By Bruceframe on 10-05-2022
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Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Richard Aspel
- Length: 26 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Known to millions of Australians simply as "Smithy", Sir Charles Kingsford Smith was one of Australia's true twentieth-century legends. In an era in which aviators were superstars, Smithy was among the greatest and, throughout his amazing career his fame in Australia was matched only by that of Don Bradman.
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Great story let down by awful narration
- By Matthew Sant on 16-03-2019
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Batavia
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Richard Aspel
- Length: 17 hrs
- Unabridged
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The story begins in 1629, when the pride of the Dutch East India Company, the Batavia, is on its maiden voyage en route from Amsterdam to the Dutch East Indies, laden down with the greatest treasure to leave Holland. The magnificent ship is already boiling over with a mutinous plot that is just about to break into the open when, just off the coast of Western Australia, it strikes an unseen reef in the middle of the night. While Commandeur Francisco Pelsaert decides to take the longboat across 2,000 miles of open sea for help, his second-in-command Jeronimus Cornelisz takes over....
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Batavia - the worst voice ever
- By Karen on 25-02-2016
Publisher's Summary
On the afternoon of 8 April 1802, in the remote southern ocean, two explorers had a remarkable chance encounter. Englishman Matthew Flinders and Frenchman Nicolas Baudin had been sent by their governments on the same quest: to explore the uncharted coast of the great south land and find out whether the west and east coasts, four thousand kilometres apart, were part of the same island. And so began the race to compile the definitive map of Australia.
These men’s journeys were the culmination of two hundred years of exploration of the region by the Dutch - most famously Abel Tasman - the Portuguese, the Spanish and by Englishmen such as the colourful pirate William Dampier and, of course, James Cook. The three-year voyages of Baudin and Flinders would see them endure terrible hardships in the spirit of discovery. They suffered scurvy and heat exhaustion, and Flinders was shipwrecked and imprisoned - always knowing he was competing with the French to produce the first map of this mysterious continent.
Written from diaries and other first-hand accounts, this is the thrilling story of men whose drawings recorded countless previously unknown species and turned mythical creatures into real ones, and whose skill and determination enabled Terra Australis Incognita to become Australia.
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- Michael
- 24-02-2016
Thank You Flinders & Baudin
What a fantastic book for an Aussie to read. Don't miss this important part of our history.
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- Anonymous User
- 22-12-2022
Great story
Learned heaps about Flinders and indeed the story of Australia
Great listen recommended listening for any Australian
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- Anonymous User
- 08-09-2021
Great Book
This is a excellent book if you are interested in the history and politics around the discovery of Australia.
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- Ben
- 09-07-2021
history on europeans exploration of aus
super interesting stuff here. going through the dutch, french and english exploration of australia. concludes with matthew flinders circumnavigation. didn't realise the french beat him to publishing there own map. seems like we were pretty close to being a lot more like canada if the french were better able to defend their declarations here.
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- Anonymon
- 03-07-2019
Very interesting
I love the exploration history of Australia and this added further to that interest. I was not aware of the English and French almost simultaneously setting out to map the coast of Australia. At one stage toward the middle of the book I almost gave up because of the many and varied French names of explorers and ship names. It’s a book that can easily be heard twice,since it contains so much information.
Paul English is a great narrator, who makes a huge difference to a story.
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- Amazon Customer
- 24-06-2019
very informative I enjoyed listening to the whole
I love listening to the whole book you gave me great insight into the coastline that I have lived on and voted on for many years and the extraordinary lives of those who navigated and Maps around it
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