The historian Ros Pesman has produced a subtle, erudite and fastidiously researched account of Australian women's travel from the 1870s - when travel in Europe became popular - until 1970, when jet travel altered the concept of this key Australian rite of passage. Drawing on innumberabletravel diaries and letters and interviews, and mindful of her own decision in the 1960s to leave Australia as soon as she possibly could after leaving university, Pesman analyses the different needs and expectations of Australian women of all types and generations. For many, she argues, Europe -Britian in particular - seemed to promise a kind of 'finish' or sophistication they could not attain in Australia; for some, presentation at Court and a refined accent offered a kind of nirvana, guaranteeing security and acceptability; for others - artists and intellectuals like Stella Bowen,Christina Stead, Henry Handel Richardson, Margaret Preston, Shirley Hazzard, Jill Kerr Conway, Jill Neville, the extraordinary Doris Gentile - it promised a kind of personal, sexual, political, intellectual freedom.Genteel notions of class and femininity were reinforced, while for others new ways of living were made possible. The lives of many of these women are largely unknown, and often astonishing in their variety and daring. What is surprising is the scale of the travel many Australian women undertook. Thewife of one Tasmanian premier made 33 separate visits to Europe. In the 1930s three times as many women were going to Europe as were men. After reading Pesman, it is difficult to think of a key Australian artist, intellectual or public figure who was not affected in some way by her adventuresabroad.