In August 1844 a heavily-laden party led by Captain Charles Sturt set out from Adelaide to head into the unexplored vastness of central Australia. Amongst their equipment was a boat: as well as carrying out his mission of scientific investigation and mapping the topography, Sturt was convinced he would find the inland sea that was reputed to lie in the middle of the continent and so make his reputation. This is the first full publication of Sturt's original journals of the trip. They record the hardships of the journeying through the parched landscape, but also show how his efforts helped reveal the nature of much of the mysterious interior of Australia, and how, in a manner uncharacteristic of his times, he established respectful and co-operative relations with the Aborigines he encountered along the way.

In reading the book, parts of Howitt's character made my skin crawl, but the uncovering of his life was revelatory ... I believe the publication of Line of Blood will be at a very pertinent time. - Bruce Pascoe Line of Blood tells the full story of Australia's so-called 'ablest anthropologist'; the botanist, geologist, senior public servant and explorer Alfred Howitt - and ancestor of the author, Craig Horne. That Howitt was an extraordinary polymath is not challenged. And yet, his anthropological conclusions, coupled with his social and political influences, legitimised the murderous advance of white settlement upon the Australian landscape. For Howitt, the 'line of blood' that followed white settlement was nothing more than the iron law of replacement, whereby an 'inferior race' is inevitably usurped by a 'superior civilisation'. His disastrously racist ideologies facilitated a pattern of neglect and dismissal of Australia's First Nations peoples - the consequences of which reverberate today.

"A high-spirited, comic ramble into the savage Outback populated by irreverent, beer-guzzling frontiersmen." --Chicago Tribune "A fascinating insight into what we're all about on the highways and byways along the outback track." --The Telegraph (Sydney) Swept off to live in Sydney by his Australian bride, American writer Tony Horwitz longs to explore the exotic reaches of his adopted land. So one day, armed only with a backpack and fantasies of the open road, he hitchhikes off into the awesome emptiness of Australia's outback. What follows is a hilarious, hair-raising ride into the hot red center of a continent so desolate that civilization dwindles to a gas pump and a pub. While the outback's terrain is inhospitable, its scattered inhabitants are anything but. Horwitz entrusts himself to Aborigines, opal diggers, jackeroos, card sharks, and sunstruck wanderers who measure distance in the number of beers consumed en route. Along the way, Horwitz discovers that the outback is as treacherous as it is colorful. Bug-bitten, sunblasted, dust-choked, and bloodied by a near-fatal accident, Horwitz endures seven thousand miles of the world's most forbidding real estate, and some very bizarre personal encounters, as he winds his way to Queensland, Alice Springs, Perth, Darwin--and a hundred bush pubs in between. Horwitz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of two national bestsellers, Confederates in the Attic and Baghdad Without a Map, is the ideal tour guide for anyone who has ever dreamed of a genuine Australian adventure. "Lively, fast-paced and amusing . . . a consistently interesting and entertaining account." --Kirkus Reviews "Ironical, perceptive and subtle . . . will have readers getting out their maps and itching to follow Horwitz's tracks. . . . The internal journey is his finest achievement; he allows the reader into his heart, to go travelling with him there, sharing his adventures of the spirit." --Sunday Times (London)