Bill Gammage

The Sky Travellers is the story of an extraordinary journey of exploration - three thousand kilometres by foot, from March 1938 to June 1939, through the formidable mountains of the western highlands of Papua New Guinea. The Hagen-Sepik Patrol was Australia's last gret exploring expedition, and it marked the end of 450 years of European land exploration worldwide. It mapped and described unknown country, made first contact with many Highland peoples, established outposts, inluding Mount Hagen and found a major goldfield.

Presents an account of the part played by the Australian army in the First World War by following a "typical" soldier from training to trenches.

"Across Australia, early Europeans commented again and again that the land looked like a park. With extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands and abundant wildlife, it evoked a country estate in England. Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific fashion than we have ever realised. For over a decade he has examined written and visual records of the Australian landscape. He has uncovered an extraordinarily complex system of land management using fire, the life cycles of native plants, and the natural flow of water to ensure plentiful wildlife and plant foods throughout the year. We know Aboriginal people spent far less time and effort than Europeans in securing food and shelter ... . With details of land-management strategies from around Australia, The biggest estate on earth rewrites the history of this continent, with huge implications for us today."--Dust cover.

Social conditions under discriminatory laws using evidence from oral histories to supplement documentary sources; chapters by C. Edwards, P. Read, J. Carter, A. Haebich, A. McGrath and A. Markus have been annotated separately.