In this book, Colin Dyer draws on the writings of French explorers from ten expeditions spanning the years between 1772 and 1839. His aim is ‘to enable readers to make as close an acquaintance as possible directly with the French explorers and the Aboriginal Australians during their encounters’. He presents the material with little contextual information or analysis, maintaining that he has ‘no personal axe to grind … no thesis or argument to prove, no preconceived conclusion to impose’. This stance, as we will see, has its advantages and its limitations.

In an introductory chapter, Dyer summarises the expeditions themselves and briefly alludes to the sources he uses. The expeditions were led by Marion Dufresne (1788), Lapérouse (1788), Bruny D’Entrecasteaux (1792 and 1793), Nicolas Baudin (1801, 1802 and 1803), Louis de Freycinet (1818 and 1819), Louis-Isidore Duperrey (1824), Hyacinthe de Bougainville (1825) Dumont d’Urville (1826), Cyrille Laplace (1831) and, finally, D’Urville once more (1839). Those charged with leading the expeditions had official instructions that stated clearly that they were to be respectful towards any native populations they encountered, ‘to endeavour to reconcile their friendship’, to act with ‘mildness’ and ‘humanity’, and in situations where the ‘natives’ were not willing to part with things, ‘never to employ force’. The absence of the kind of violence and brutality with which we have come to associate life on the ‘frontiers of civilisation’, and the attention of the French to the details and rituals of the Australians’ daily life, are noteworthy throughout.