Terra Australis

Description

In this edited selection of his journals, Matthew Flinders, Australia’s greatest navigator and the man who named our island continent, describes in captivating detail his epic mission to map our shores between 1796 and 1803. Matthew Flinders was born in England in 1774. In 1789, defying his father’s wishes that he enter the field of medicine, Flinders volunteered his services to the British Navy. He became the greatest early navigator of Australia, and explored the Australian coastline with George Bass in his eight-foot long vessel Tom Thumb and later Tom Thumb II. His account of his journeys, A Voyage to Terra Australis, is one of the great achievements of our literature. Not written for children but may be suitable for older teens, can’t personally vouch.