Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Editorial Note
- Introduction
- Virtual Voyages
- Chapter 1 Real and Imaginary Voyages
- Chapter 2 Blank Spaces for the Imagination
- Chapter 3 Exoticism and Romanticism
- Chapter 4 Finding Paradise and Utopia in the Pacific
- Chapter 5 Australia's Mythic Inland
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Editorial Note
- Introduction
- Virtual Voyages
- Chapter 1 Real and Imaginary Voyages
- Chapter 2 Blank Spaces for the Imagination
- Chapter 3 Exoticism and Romanticism
- Chapter 4 Finding Paradise and Utopia in the Pacific
- Chapter 5 Australia's Mythic Inland
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Index
Summary
The Meridian of the Antipodes is likewise passed; every league, thanks to our good fortune, which we now travel onwards, is one league nearer to England. These Antipodes call to mind old recollections of childish doubt & wonder. Even but the other day, I looked forward to this airy barrier as a definite point in our voyage homewards; now I find it & all such resting places for the imagination are like shadows which a man moving onwards cannot catch.
– Charles Darwin, diary entry, 19 December 1835, on the BeagleBorn out of an ancient geographical theory of balance, the term ‘antipodes’ was first used to refer to the vast uncharted underworld of the southern hemisphere from a northern perspective. The principle behind this belief, as described in the Quarterly Review in the nineteenth century, was ‘that all the land, which had till then been discovered in the southern hemisphere, was insufficient to form a counterpoise to the weight of land in the northern half of the globe’. The idea of the antipodes as a counterbalance, though now remembered only as a peculiar, discredited theory, has been surprisingly influential as an imaginative concept. An antipodean expectancy filled minds, maps, novels and utopian plans, laying the foundation for perceptions of Oceania and Australasia that continue to impact on how this part of the world is seen from a distance as well as from within. The region of the antipodes has been occupied by European settlers and their descendants for a relatively short time.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Virtual VoyagesTravel Writing and the Antipodes 1605–1837, pp. xvii - xxivPublisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2010