The Forgotten Islands

Download or read book The Forgotten Islands written by Michael Veitch and published by Penguin Group Australia. This book was released on 2011-08-23 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The more I learned, the more I realised this was an Australia I hardly knew. This was stormy weather Australia, an Australia of shipwrecks and sealers; of brutality and extermination; of folly and heroism; of wild weather and explorers in flimsy boats; of thousand-foot cliffs and amazing birds and strange vegetation; of places well-trodden and others believed never to have felt the impact of a human foot. This was a truly gothic Australia, as real and as valid as the gold and the drovers and the deserts, yet known to almost no one.' Michael Veitch has long been fascinated by the islands of Bass Strait, between mainland Australia and Tasmania – a multitude of cold, dark isles, regularly pounded by atrocious weather and hardly visited, but rich in atypical Australian history. This is the story of his personal odyssey among them (plagued at times by appalling seasickness, airsickness and stinging nettles). The Forgotten Islands is an incredible, evocative read that shines a light on this little-known part of Australia and its extraordinary history.