Ever since the local op-shop ran a "two-for-the-price-of-one" sale and Padma bought two copies of "A Tale of Two Cities", I've done my own op-shopping - and look what I've found: "Matthew Flinders - The Life of Matthew Flinders" in mint condition, so mint in fact the sales docket was still inside.
Before Flinders arrived at Port Jackson, two names had been given to the vast empty spaces on the globe's southern hemisphere - New Holland and New South Wales. Travellers wondered whether a continent, two islands or perhaps even an archipelago occupied these unchartered waters. All this changed with Matthew Flinder's epic voyage of circumnavigation of the Great South Land.
It took Flinders almost a year - from 22 July 1802 to 9 June 1803 - to circumnavigate Australia. I hope to complete reading this 500-page tome in less time than that, even though I'm double-booked with yet another, equally thick book ("1421 - The Year China Discovered the World", if you must know) and also take time out for eating and drinking and sleeping and to occasionally reflect on the demise of "The Bay Bookshop", Batemans Bay's then only and now defunct bookshop.
The then "Bay Bookshop" sold this book for $59.95 on 23 December 2002, making it something of a rushed Christmas present which wasn't all that much appreciated since it finished up in the local op-shop for sale at $2.
