Discovering the antipodes

Recent work on the past of Australia and New Zealand is surveyed in terms broadly relevant to the many evolving geographies of European settlement overseas since the eighteenth century. Although there was uncertainty about the future of historical geography in the antipodes during the late 1960s, a good deal has been accomplished in the last six years. Recent work has been strongly empirical as historical geographers, and others, have sought to understand the complexity of local development. In this process of discovery, there are immense possibilities for further work. New questions asked of new sources, incisive analyses and thoughtful syntheses will reveal much about the development of society and setting in these outposts of nineteenth-century European expansion.