Foundation of Australia’s Capital Cities

Anthony (Tony) Webster is adjunct senior lecturer of geology at the Centre for Ore Deposits and Earth Sciences (CODES), University of Tasmania and honorary senior research fellow at the Sustainable Minerals Institute (SMI), University of Queensland.

Webster has adopted a novel and extremely interesting approach in this book, which discusses the siting of the major cities of Australia. Tony has blended a plethora of rich historical accounts with a detailed discussion of the controlling local features of water supply, physiography, landscape and geology to provide a comprehensive and thought provoking account of the establishment and growth of our capital cities. I can highly recommend this book to all who are interested in Australian settlement history and the factors that affected the establishment of our major urban centres.

• Chapter 1. Sandstone Harbor: Sydney, New South Wales, 1788Chapter 2. On the Edge of the Graben: Hobart, Van Diemen’s Land 1803-04Chapter 3. Ridgelines and Waterways: Brisbane, Queensland, 1825Chapter 4. Limestone and Lakes: Perth, Western Australia, 1829Chapter 5. On the Edge of the Delta: Melbourne, Victoria, 1835Chapter 6. The Woodland Plain: Adelaide, South Australia, 1836Chapter 7. The Northern Outpost: Darwin, Northern Territory, 1869Chapter 8. Geology, Landscape and Australian Cities