Commandant Of Solitude: The Journals Of Captain Collet Barker 1828-1831
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Good
In the untamed wilderness of colonial Australia, Captain Collet Barker stood alone — a soldier, scientist, and reluctant pioneer whose remarkable journals illuminate a vanishing world. Commandant of Solitude presents the meticulously preserved personal writings of Barker, who served as commandant at remote military outposts including King George Sound and Fort Wellington between 1828 and 1831, chronicling his singular observations of the Aboriginal peoples, the alien flora and fauna, and the vast, indifferent landscape of a continent barely known to the European world. Edited and contextualised by distinguished historians John Mulvaney and Neville Green, this volume is far more than a historical document — it is a testament to one man's intellectual courage and humanity at the furthest edge of empire. Mulvaney and Green's authoritative scholarship frames Barker's entries with rigorous historical analysis, recovering a voice that was tragically silenced when Barker was speared to death at the mouth of the Murray River in 1831, just days before South Australia was to be explored in his name. The journals leave an indelible question: what further wonders might this extraordinary observer have uncovered, had history not intervened?
Author: John Mulvaney And Neville Green
Format: Hardback
Genre: Australian history
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Good
In the untamed wilderness of colonial Australia, Captain Collet Barker stood alone — a soldier, scientist, and reluctant pioneer whose remarkable journals illuminate a vanishing world. Commandant of Solitude presents the meticulously preserved personal writings of Barker, who served as commandant at remote military outposts including King George Sound and Fort Wellington between 1828 and 1831, chronicling his singular observations of the Aboriginal peoples, the alien flora and fauna, and the vast, indifferent landscape of a continent barely known to the European world. Edited and contextualised by distinguished historians John Mulvaney and Neville Green, this volume is far more than a historical document — it is a testament to one man's intellectual courage and humanity at the furthest edge of empire. Mulvaney and Green's authoritative scholarship frames Barker's entries with rigorous historical analysis, recovering a voice that was tragically silenced when Barker was speared to death at the mouth of the Murray River in 1831, just days before South Australia was to be explored in his name. The journals leave an indelible question: what further wonders might this extraordinary observer have uncovered, had history not intervened?