Quadrant Online
http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2009/9/views-of-darwin
Volume LIII Number 9
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Books
Views of Darwin
Evolution in the Antipodes: Charles Darwin and Australia, by Tom Frame; UNSW Press, 2009, $39.95.
As HMS Beagle approached Sydney in January 1836, four years out from England, the young Charles Darwin was looking forward to a break in a civilised country. “We all on board,” he wrote, “are looking forward to Sydney, as to a little England: it really will be very interesting to see the colony which must be the Empress of the South.” The reality was disappointing. Sydney in the middle of a drought-stricken summer was not a little England. The servant girls were vile-mouthed. The Aborigines “appear to me to stand some few degrees higher in the scale of civilization than the Fuegians”. There were no kangaroos to see.
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