Overview

This highly readable account opens a fascinating window - and a fresh perspective -on the early European exploration of Australia. These French explorers and scientists kept journals, many of which, until very recently, remained obscure and untranslated. Their cultural insights are invaluable, sometimes shocking and always engaging. Here are to be found detailed descriptions of the Aboriginal peoples' physical appearances, their clothing, nutrition, dwellings, fires, canoes and utensils along with attempts to understand their character and language. The Aboriginal observers, however, displayed an equally keen anthropological interest in these strange apparitions arriving on their shores. Turning the cultural telescope around, this volume provides an unexpected and revealing glimpse of the French travellers through Aboriginal eyes.

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9780702235122

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Colin Dyer has a doctorate in history from the University of Caen in France, and is a research adviser in the School of Language and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. He has written several books in French, including La France revisitee (1989), as well as a number of works in English - most recently The French Explorers and the Aboriginal Australians 1772-1839 (UQP, 2005).

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