Road to Botany Bay [Hardcover]

Paul Carter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 12, 1988

The Road to Botany Bay, first published in 1987 and considered a classic in the field of cultural and historical geography, examines the poetic constitution of colonial society. Through a far-reaching exploration of Australia’s mapping, narrative description, early urbanism, and bush mythology, Paul Carter exposes the mythopoetic mechanisms of empire. A powerfully written account of the ways in which language, history, and geography influenced the territorial theater of nineteenth-century imperialism, the book is also a call to think, write, and live differently.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this "spatial" and cultural history, the British-born Australian author, editor of a Melbourne magazine, seeks the origins of Australian civilization in the journals, letters home, unfinished maps and other narratives by its explorers, soldiers and emigrants, including tall tales and accounts of escapes by convicts who helped settle the vast territory. Carter devotes much attention to the motives of explorers' selection of geographical names, and reflects upon the role of boundaries and grids to distinguish town from bush and balance nearness with distancea horizontality that developed into Australia's ubiquitous suburbs. He evokes in philosophical and poetic terms the loneliness of the early travelers crossing endless forests, plains and deserts, and the welcome of a candle in the window, celebrated in Australian literature. Carter explains that, because of the language barrier between invaders and aborigines, he views the latter only through the eyes of the former. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Paul Carter is author of many books, including Dark Writing (2008) and Material Thinking (2004). He is creative director of Material Thinking, a place-making research and design studio based in Melbourne, Australia.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First American Edition edition (March 12, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394570359
• ISBN-13: 978-0394570358
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #791,019 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential Spatial, Narrative, and Geographic Theory, November 29, 2006

By 

D. McConeghy (Santa Barbara, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History (Paperback)

Book Review: Paul Carter's The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History.

The Skinny: Buy this out-of-print book right now before they are all gone. Who? Everyone, but especially anyone who works with narrative, history, landscape, colonialism, empire, and even linguistic theory.

This masterful work by Paul Carter revisits Australia's beginnings. Carter rejects previous Australian histories because they fail to understand the founding and exploration of Australia as one of the primary mechanisms of the colonial enterprise. Reframing Australian history in terms of the how explorers experienced (and dealt with their experiences of) Australia, Carter is able to show how even the simple act of naming attempted to incorporate Australia into the European imagination. Thus, explorers of the inner continent used imported Western geographical terms to describe Australia's unique environments. Early narratives of exploration, such the famous voyage of Capt. James Cook, demonstrate this point very well and are extremely enjoyable to read. Take this passage as an example:

Almost the greatest barrier to Australia's spatial history is the date 1788. On the one side, anterior to and beyond the limits of Australian 'history', lies a hazy geo-historical tradition of surmise, a blank sea scored at intervals down the centuries by the prows of dug-outs, out-riggers and, latterly, three-master; it is a 'thick horizon', a rewarding site of myth and speculation. But it lacks substance....

Carter is talking about Cook's journey--and suggesting that Australia's history prior to its discovery by the west is largely unrecoverable in historical terms--but it is lyrical and playful. This is probably because Carter also happens to write poetry, which is fairly evident throughout the text because of his sensational metaphors. His writing is sometimes repetitive, but he attacks Australian history from multiple angles, which often means revisting earlier material in creative ways. Creativity is the key here, for this work has too many intriguing theoretical contributions to list here. This volume is jam-packed with insights and observations that specialists and generalists will enjoy. Let me highlight what I believe is the most significant theoretical contribution that can easily be taken away from this volume: the distinction between explorers and taxonomists. Explorers approach a new land as something new and outside their experiences. When the map says "Here be dragons," they are eager to find out if they're there. Explorers are open to discovery, finding something genuinely new. Taxonomists, on the other hand, hope to incorporate whatever new items they find into their pre-existing taxonomy. This is, of course, the central point of Carter's text. Taxonomists are locked into seeing the world through European eyes. They fail to account for the new on its own terms. They can only bring what they already know. Australia is not a "new place," but one which has merely been extended into the West's geography. In other words, taxonomists are cheeky little monkeys who don't play nice with Australia.

Carter frames this history through an analysis of landscape and space, which makes this work essential reading for anyone who wants another work of theory to build from. If you've already read Keith Basso's Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache, then this should be next on your list. Carter's contribution will change the way you think about history, landscapes, places, names, colonization, empire, exploration, and Australia. Grab a copy of this seminal out-of-print book before they all disappear!

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Out of print book. Quick Delivery., March 11, 2007

By 

B. Fraval (Melbourne Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History (Paperback)

This book was hard to find or buy in book stores in australia. I found the seller reliable and provided the book in perfect condition and the delivery was quick.