The Inland Sea and the Great River: The Story of Australian Exploration by J H L Cumpston

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Ex library copy with external stickers. Borrower card pocket on inside front cover and stamp on title page. Sunning to foredges. Dust jacket is in fair condition with a rip to the front book flap. Sticky tape stains on the underside. Buckling to cover. Now enclosed in a glossy protective cover. Body text and binding are still very good.

An inland sea and a great internal river were persistent, elusive mirages throughout the entire history of Australian European exploration. The search for them provides the main theme for this book.

This is a strange story. The original speculation was both right and wrong.

There was no great strait dividing the continent, though in geological times there had been. There was no great river leading far into the continent with an open navigable estuary, but there were two great river systems - the Murray and the Cooper-Diamantina-Finke river system. There was no inland sea, only a fantastic travesty of one: there was no great Australian desert, but there were vast areas of desert and semi-desert country intermingled with stretches)