Botany Bay Mirages

The first dozen years of European settlement of Australia are fixed in our minds by powerful images raised from an incomplete historical record. The reality was quite different. Alan Frost, after collecting a greatly expanded range of documents from archives around the world, sets the record straight. The images he challenges are immediately familiar: * overcrowded and unhealthy English prison hulks * the colony as a cheap solution to the convict problem * hasty decisions based on overly optimis