Six centuries before the birth of Christ, people began to imagine an immense land at the bottom of the world, a land of marvels, of enormous wealth and mystery.
'Discovery' is the story of the quest that compelled men in small ships to traverse unknown seas and endure extraordinary hardships to slowly unveil the sixth continent. The story begins among Greek philosophers on the shores of the Mediterranean. It ends two millennia later in the vast Southern Ocean. Lucidly and concisely, Miriam Estensen tells an absorbing tale of map makers and lonely caravels, Spanish hidalgos and Dutch merchants, remote coasts and castaways, buccaneers and dreamers.
At the heart of 'Discovery' is the power of a myth and the adventures and sacrifices of those who pursued it, for this is the story of how an imagined place was made real, how the speculations of visionaries became Terra Incognita and then Australia.
