I would hesitate to call this book a history, but it is a narrative about the history of British settlement until World War 2. As such, it has several interesting aspects. It is a short book which tries to encompass all of the history of white settlement in Australia. This means it takes a long view, which leads it to some interesting conclusions (not necessarily backed up with evidence but as I mentioned this is not exactly history in the academic sense). The most interesting idea in the book is its notes on the effects of landscape on the national character. I will quote, as this is a rare-ish book:

"The continent took them and disciplined them, discarded some, moulded others. The discipline was passive and natural...the seasons, which depend on no symmetrical calendar, but on the uncertain incidence of dry spell and rain, the great distances, the loneliness of a land that cannot, for the most part, be closely settled, the monotone of the bush. These things, so large, so impersonal, so unescapable, moulded what they did not destroy...The dark people lived off the country by accepting its conditions. They conserved its resources by abstinence, by keeping their numbers low, by moving continually from food supply to food supply, never exhausting the country, never taking more than the natural tithe of the increase...Their adjustment was so complete, so intricate, so completely passed over into their legend and their unconscious mind that they, after thousands of years, had ceased to be interlopers, masters or slaves, and had become a part of the very soil's rhythym, their life a bush pattern".

The author doesn't go so far as to say that the destiny of European settlers in Australia will be to eventually follow indigenous ways. The book still assumes European superiority over the native people. There are two major changes to the traditional Australian way of life which have been brought in by European settlers. The first is the ability to import goods, species, people from outside the continent. The second, especially in the 20th century and beyond, is the use of technology to collapse the vast transportation and communication distances of the Australian continent and the consequent connection to (instead of isolation from) the wider world.

The author's prose is lyrical and concise; one can get something of an overview of European Australian history in a very short reading. ( )