Dimensions
135 x 215 x 20mm
When Captain Cook made his landfall in Tahiti in 1769, the population was around 40,000 people; half-a-century later, the figure was down to nine thousand. When Captain Phillip's first fleet of eleven ships carrying about eight hundred convicts sailed into Botany Bay the aborigines were virtually the only human beings on the Australian continent; today they have been reduced to around 250,000 in a populatin of over 18 million. When Cook discovered South Georgia, he was amazed by the wealth of bird and marine life; in the ensuing fifty years the killing of whales and seals reached such a pitch that there was virtually nothing left to kill. These three facts form the tragic basis of Alan Moorehead's classic study of the invasion of the South Pacific between 1767 and 1840.
