THE ALLAN CUNNINGHAM PROJECT

BOOKS

Early Explorers in Australia
by Ida Lee

Ida Lee devoted much of her life to historical research and her book is an achievement of epic proportions. Not so much as a literary achievement, more as an act of supreme dedication. She transcribed most of Allan Cunningham's handwritten journals. His writing is very difficult to read and is full of botanic names. Her dedication and tenacity could only be matched by that of Allan Cunningham's. She would have spent hours and hours bashing away at a manual typewriter with his journals beside her. Possibly sitting at a desk in London's Natural History Museum where the precious journals are housed.

Phillip Parker King - A Most Admirable Australian by Brian Douglas Abbott

The life of Phillip Parker King was inextricably linked with the establishment of the colony of New South Wales. His father, Philip Gidley King, sailed to Botany Bay on HMS Sirius as Governor Phillip's second in command in 1787, and Lt. King was given the responsibility of establishing the penal settlement on Norfolk Island. King was born on Norfolk Island in 1791. He entered the Royal Navy in 1807 and served in the Napoleon Wars. His maritime exploration and survey work around Australia 1817-1822 has been well documented, and is also covered in this book.

King of the Australian Coast by Marsden Hordern

Phillip Parker King is perhaps one of Australia's greatest yet largely unsung early maritime surveyors. Hordern relives King's series of grueling voyages between 1817 and 1822 - from the maritime hazards of the reefs, shoals, tides and unpredictable weather to the unfamiliar wildlife and Aboriginal presence he encountered along the way.

Tracking and Mapping the Explorers
Volume I and II by John Whitehead

Volume I describes John Oxley’s 1817 Lachlan River journey when he and several men including George Evans and Allan Cunningham, explored beyond the Blue Mountains of New South Wales.

Volume II continues following Oxley and Evans in 1818 when they travelled along the Macquarie River and finish their momentous journey at Port Macquarie.

Cunningham's Tracks 1827
by Fay Cains and John Whitehead

Fay & Laurie Cains and John Whitehead followed in the footsteps of Allan Cunningham and his team of explorers, seeking to identify the places where they walked, envisage how they experienced and what they observed. This book gives the reader the opportunity to do the same from the comfort of their reading nook.

The Geology of the Warrumbungle Range
by John Whitehead

This book is a summary of the research carried out over the past 100 years.

Early Colonial House of New South Wales by Rachel Roxburgh

A comprehensive study of fifty of the best known houses built in New South Wales during colonial times, this book will be appreciated by all Australians with an interest in the buildings themselves as well as the people who lived in them.

Early Colonial Furniture in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land by Clifford Craig, Kevin Fahy and E Graeme Robertson

A substantial study of the furniture made in Australia before the 1850s. It examines the influences which were important to the development of the furniture styles of the period and how English styles were transferred to Australia.

Servant and Master, Building and Running the Grand Houses of Sydney 1788-1850 by Barrie Dyster

This book is a celebration of the everyday. It is an exciting and evocative journey into the past, and tells us how the forebears of the vast majority of Australians struggled and lived to establish the nucleus of what is now urban Australia

The Russians at Port Jackson 1814-1822
by Glynn Barratt

This book offers readers the fist English translations of the "Sydney sections" of eyewitness accounts by nine Russians who came to Australia with the ships Suvorov (1814), Blagonamerennyy, Otkrytiye, Vostok and Mirnyi (1820), and Appolon (1822) and now housed in museums in the USSR.

A Sense of the World
by Jason Roberts

He was known simply as the "Blind Traveller", a solitary, sightless adventurer who, astonishingly, fought the slave trade in Africa, survived a frozen captivity in Siberia, hunted rogue elephants in Ceylon and helped chart the Australian outback [in 1831].

The Governor's Noble Guest translated and edited by Marc Serge Riviere

This book is a translation of the private diaries kept by Hyacinthe de Bougainville during his stay in New South Wales in 1825. It was at his initiative that the monument to his hero, La Pérouse, was erected on the shores of Botany Bay. The Baron's visit in 1825 was not his first visit. In 1802 he was part of the Baudin expedition visiting Port Jackson, as a midshipman first class, in the Géographe. Feigning illness, he was repatriated back to France on the Naturaliste under the command of Louis-Claude de Freycinet.

Allan Cunningham, Australian Collecting Localities by Suzanne Curry, Bruce Maslin, John Maslin

Allan Cunningham was one of Australia's foremost botanist explorers. During his 17 years in Australia, he was responsible for collecting more than 3000 specimens of plants and exploring much of eastern New South Wales and southern Queensland. The focus of this publication is to provide precise locality information for the numerous localities visited by Allan Cunningham between December 1817 and April 1822.

Allan Cunningham, Botanist and Explorer by WG McMinn

Allan Cunningham was perhaps, with the exception of Robert Brown, the most accomplished of the botanists sent out from Kew Gardens during the golden age when Sir Joseph Banks was director. He also explored much of south-eastern Australia in the years 1817 to 1828.

Elizabeth Macarthur and Her World by Hazel King

Elizabeth Macarthur, with her husband John and their infant son, left England in the notorious Second Fleet and arrived in Sydney in 1790. When she first arrived, conditions were primitive, the food supply uncertain and little was known of the country beyond the tiny settlement, by 1850 when she died, settlement had spread over much of the colony of New South Wales and the staple export, wool, was well established.

The Admiral's Wife, Mrs Phillip Parker King by Dorothy Walsh

Dorothy Walsh's book, The Admiral's Wife, is made up of a series of letters "written by her great-grandmother Harriet, to her husband Phillip Parker King, sent from England, at sea and from New South Wales, telling of her experiences. Also, letters of great interest include two hitherto unpublished ones by Phillip Parker King and preserved by the families of the recipients in England until quite recently; one by Governor Philip Gidley King and the others by notable people of the mid-nineteenth century."

Joseph Lycett, Governor Macquarie's Convict Artist by John Turner

This well-written and thoroughly researched biography of a talented but flawed character tells the story of Australia's most successful, unsuccessful convict artist. Short of money in 1809 Joseph Lycett, an engraver, made some beautiful copies of The Bank of England's five pound notes so that he could live the life of the gentry. Lucky to avoid hanging, he was transported to Sydney in 1814 and in no time at all he flooded the town with excellent copies of five shilling notes.

King Bungaree by Keith Vincent Smith

Anyone who has worked in the field of early Australian race relations makes the acquaintance of Bungaree, whether as an example of significant collaboration between white and black in many different ways ranging from maritime exploration to the recapturing of escapees, or as a case study exhibiting the essential tragedy of Aboriginal history post contact. This book reveals the unexpectedly wide dimensions of this one Aboriginal life.

The Search for the Inland Sea, John Oxley Explorer by Richard Johnson

John Oxley Surveyor-General of New South Wales ranks among the great explorers of Australia. His expeditions along the Lachlan and Macquarie Rivers were feats of dogged endurance and persistence, as he pursued his dream of finding the mysterious 'inland sea' that he firmly believed lay in the Australian interior. This is the first biography of an important figure in Australian colonial history. The Search for the Inland Sea fills a major gap in our historical literature.

Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment by John Gascoigne

This book places the work of Joseph Banks in the context of the Enlightenment. It aims at a better understanding of Banks himself as well as seeking to provide an analysis of some of the major scientific and cultural preoccupations of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century British society.

The Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney, A History 1816-1985 by Lionel Gilbert

Dr Gilbert has written a history of the Gardens which leads the reader along the paths of administrative wrangles, into the hothouses of professional jealousies and reveals vistas of backbreaking labour and devotion. With and eye for the incongruous and the ability to season his story with a good anecdote, his delightful dry humour makes this an entertaining history of human fallibilities and stubbornness as much as that of the planning and nurturing of a now famous institution - The Royal Botanic Gardens of Sydney.

A Year At Kew by Rupert Smith

A Year At Kew is a revealing month-by-month journey, through Kew Botanic Garden in London, following the work of the multitude of dedicated gardeners, visionary scientists, enthusiastic botanists and talented landscape architects who work hard to maintain the unrivalled collections and their environments for future generations.

Foundations of Identity, Building Early Sydney 1788-1822 by Peter Bridges

"Peter Bridges accompanies us through the streets of Sydney. Years fall away, solid forms dissolve, and people we have never met appear in everyday scenes . . . His experience, knowledge, and wry humour invite us to see what he sees, the traces of the past which still direct our steps and catch our gaze." Source: quote from Lenore Coltheart on the back cover of the book.

The Mermaid Tree by Robert Tiley

"Almost two hundred years ago a young British sailor carved his ship's name, Mermaid, on a Kimberley coast boab tree - it is still there today, probably Australia's oldest living graffiti. It also marked the beginning of an extraordinary period of optimism and adventure in Australia's history."

An Irresistible Temptation by Carol Baxter

"In 1829 at the Supreme Court in Sydney, the bewitching Jane New was sentenced to death. Her crime: shoplifting a bolt of printed French silk. But was she guilty? Many had their doubts."

Breaking the Bank by Carol Baxter

"It was the largest bank robbery in Australian history, Sunday 14 September 1828."

Most Perfectly Safe by Granville Allen Mawer

"If you had to sail to Australia in the early nineteen century there were worse ways to travel than being transported as a convict. Your living conditions were better than those of the sailors who manned your ship. Discipline was harsher for the troops who guarded you. And, disease and mutiny apart, it was as the Admiralty claimed, 'most perfectly safe'. Until 1833. . ."

More books by Granville Allen Mawer . . .

Memoirs of George Suttor (1774-1859) FLS Edited by George Mackaness

"In September, 1906, the late Sir Francis Suttor, son of William Henry Suttor, who was the third son of George Suttor, as a tribute to his grandfather’s memory, edited from the original manuscript, the Memoirs."

George Suttor and his family arrived in Sydney for the first time in November 6, 1800. He travelled with a precious collection of plants supplied by Sir Joseph Banks for the New South Wales colony.

The Golden Decade of Australian Architecture The Work of John Verge by James Broadbent, Ian Evans, Clive Lucas with photography by Max Dupain.

This book discusses 27 properties built by John Verge in the 1800s. Of those, Allan Cunningham spent many pleasant hours in at least two. One was the home of Hannibal Macarthur, The Vineyard (built 1835) and the other was the home of his friend, the Colonial Secretary Alexander Macleay, Elizabeth Bay House (built 1835).

The Australian Colonial House by James Broadbent

The Australian Colonial House is a comprehensive history of domestic architecture in New South Wales during its first fifty years. It looks at the houses that were built, and the influences on their building - not only the stylistic influences of contemporary British architecture and the influences of climate and distance, but also the social influences which motivated their builders.

Contemporary paintings, rare nineteenth-century photographs and intriguing house plans, - many of which have never before been published - inform almost every page, guiding the reader through the development of Australia's domestic architecture from the late- eighteenth century to the disastrous depression of the 1840s.