What drove a hodgepodge band of clerics, lacking even a common language, to strike out for the wilds of Australia in 1845? History teaches us the official reasons - to minister to the two million "savages" in Western Australia - but this book - through personal letters and other first-hand accounts - tells a more human story. Thomas O'Malley has written an adventure story, plain and simple: the four months' voyage out, the daily struggle to survive in the bush, and the frustration of good intentions by misguided ambition. Students of colonial history will find a rich depiction of life in the very early days of Western Australia, a mere twenty-five years after the foundation of the western colonies. Readers who want a deeper understanding of missionary zeal will discover a moving
