With Tim Flannery as our guide, we hear the voices of Arthur Phillip, Surgeon John White, Charles Darwin, Anthony Trollope, Elizabeth Macarthur, Nat Gould, Mark Twain and a host of others as they tell their stories of a metropolis, built on one of the world's most spectacular harbours, which began life as a dump for convicts.

'This selection of eyewitness accounts of the early history of white settlement, edited and introduced by Flannery, will seduce the most reluctant reader into a passion for Australian history.' Australian Financial Review