This immaculately and painstakingly researched book, through its biographies of Oxley, Evans, Fraser and Harris explains the impulses that drove these men to explore and map the colony, to collect, identify and categorise its flora. But it succeeds in doing more than that because it also elucidates the motivations that drove them to become colonial entrepreneurs, farmers and businessmen, who in the pursuit of individual wealth advanced colonial prosperity. This important book makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of Australia's European origins. - Emeritus Professor Richard Waterhouse