The begetting of Australia as we know it was a very protracted process, the pathway of which is written in the rocks. This is true of every continent, and for each the pathway was unique, although many of the treads were shared. The last steps in the Australian journey were of special importance, because they gave rise to the unique environmental attributes which characterise this island continent.

This volume tells the story of how Australia came to be the way it is. It gives a time and process context to the rich and involved preceding history – a forever-fascinating tale. Its main parts are long known and well established, but the story is embellished every year by new research. The pace of change, both in the unfolding of new parts to the story and in the achievement of a tighter focus on broad-scale perspectives, is considerable. In just the seven years or so since the second edition of The Geology of Australia was crafted, much new information has come to light through research undertaken in universities, by government agencies and in the private sector.

The considerable physical assets of Australia are indelibly vested in its origins. These have exerted a powerful influence on the development of Australia as a nation. Two complementary streams of discovery have been running. One is pure research, knowledge for its own sake, which has unlocked the begetting pathway, the types of rock systems involved and the nature of the Earth's processes that applied in their origins. The other is the discovery, documentation and utilisation of Earth resources – minerals, rocks, oil and gas, along with soil and subsurface water – with economic ends as the drivers. These two knowledge-based streams have intertwined from the days of early European settlement to the present. Their interaction has been highly productive, in discovering both how Australia came to be and how best to use its physical assets in nation building. The outcome has been to place Australian geoscience as top tier on a global scale, one of very few home-based science disciplines to achieve that international standing.