Introduction by Tim Flannery
‘At 2.00 pm on Sunday, 6 July 1835, a giant of a man shambled into the camp left by John Batman at Indented Head near Geelong…’
In 1803 the convict William Buckley, a former soldier, escaped from the first official settlement in Victoria, near Sorrento on Port Phillip Bay. For three decades the ‘wild white man’ lived with Aborigines around the bay, before giving himself up in 1835. First published in 1852, The Life and Adventures of William Buckley is the ultimate survival story of early Australia and provides an extraordinary insight into pre-contact indigenous society.
‘This account, in Buckley’s words…has all the elements of a Boy’s Own yarn: convicts, savages, privations, wars, cannibalism, survival, treachery and the founding of a colony.’
‘Flannery has done us a service first by reissuing the story of a fascinating adventure from 200 years ago, and then by setting these events in perspective with his lucid introduction.’