In January 1788 the First Fleet arrived in New South Wales and a thousand British men and women, some of them convicts and some of them free, encountered the people who would be their new neighbours—the beach nomads of Australia.

‘These people mixed with ours,’ wrote a British observer soon after landfall, ‘and all hands danced together.’

What followed would shape relations between the peoples for the next two centuries.
324 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. (chiefly col.), map, ports. ; 20 cm. #030322