A biography of unprecedented expedition under sail, from Australia's master of maritime history. The role of the sailor through history should never be underestimated. Over centuries battles were won and new lands discovered and settled by their skills and nerve. Rob Mundle is back on the ocean to tell one of the great stories of an expedition under sail: the extraordinary eight-month, 17,000-nautical mile voyage of the First Fleet.

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.

The story of the clipper ships, and the tens of thousands of migrants they brought to the Australian colony of the 19th century, is one of the world's great migration stories. For anyone who travelled to Australia before 1850, it was a long and arduous journey that could take as much as four months. With the arrival of the clipper ships, and favourable winds, the journey from England could be done in a little over half this time.

Lachlan Macquarie is credited with shaping Australia's destiny, transforming a harsh, foreboding penal colony into an agricultural powerhouse and ultimately a prosperous society. He also helped shape Australia's national character. An egalitarian at heart, Macquarie saw boundless potential in Britain's refuse, and under his rule many former convicts went on to become successful administrators, land owners and businesspeople.

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.

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.

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.

The Pacific with Sam Neill is the companion audiobook to the Foxtel documentary series of the same name, in which actor and raconteur Sam Neill takes a deeply personal, present-day voyage to map his own understanding of James Cook, Europe's greatest navigator, and the immense Pacific Ocean itself. Voyaging on a wide variety on vessels, from container ships to fishing trawlers and sailing boats, Sam crosses the length and breadth of the largest ocean in the world to experience for himself a contemporary journey in Cook's footsteps.

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.

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.

Just after Christmas 1803, convict William Buckley fled an embryonic settlement in the land of the Kulin nation (now the Port Phillip area), to take his chances in the wilderness. A few months later, the local Aboriginal people found the six-foot-five former soldier near death. Believing he was a lost kinsman returned from the dead, they took him in, and for 32 years Buckley lived as a Wadawurrung man, learning his adopted tribe's language, skills and methods to survive.

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....

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.

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.

A lively history of the 'First Fleet' which took convicts from Britain to Australia in 1787; Sydney's early years as 'an open-air prison'; and the colonisation of New South Wales. 

The story of modern Australia begins in 18th-century Britain, where people were hanged for petty offences but crime was rife and the gaols were bursting. From this situation was born the Sydney experiment, with criminals perceived to be damaging British society transported to Sydney, an 'open air prison with walls 14,000 miles thick'.  

Eleven ships were dispatched in 1781 and arrived in Australia after eight hellish months at sea. Tom Keneally describes the first four years of the 'thief colony' and how, despite the escapes, the floggings, the murders and the rebellions, it survived against the odds to create a culture which would never have been tolerated in its homeland but which, in Australia, became part of the identity of a new and audacious nation.