This is an account of Australia - the people, the bush, the desert, the cities - as it was when the country was allowed to be itself, compared with what it has become. Its story is accompanied by numerous images of the Australian landscape, taken from the collections of the National Gallery of Australia. The settlement of Australia coincided with the invention of photography, and Conrad's word-pictures of the hot, aromatic, cicada-loud landscape are woven around 200 pictures.