spent five years exploring the tropical forests of Maluku, collecting and studying the
birds, butterflies, insects and other animal life of eastern Indonesia.
It was tectonic plate movement that brought these disparate worlds together and in
this book, we will follow the voyage of Continent Australia after its separation from
Antarctica until its collision with Asia, thus creating the biogeographic region first
observed by Alfred Russel Wallace and named as Wallacea in his honour.
It was my research into Wallacea and its unique position in the natural world that
led me to write about the connections between the epic voyages of natural history
taken by Joseph Banks, Charles Darwin and then Alfred Russel Wallace. Here we
follow ‘The Voyage of the Endeavour’ on its voyage around the world, which brought
Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander to the shores of Botany Bay, where they became
the first naturalists to describe the unique flora and fauna of the Australian continent.
We follow ‘The Voyage of the Beagle’ on its voyage around the world, which brought
the young naturalist Charles Darwin to South America and the Galapagos Islands
before reaching Australia, where he sat on the banks of the Coxs River in New South
Wales and began trying to understand the significance of his discoveries. We follow
Alfred Russel Wallace when he crosses the narrow strait between Bali and Lombok,
we follow him on his ‘Voyage to the Aru Islands’ in search of birds of paradise and his
recognition of the significance of the Australian marsupials he found there. And we
follow the famous ‘Letter from Ternate’ that Alfred Russel Wallace wrote to Charles
Darwin in February 1858, which forced Darwin to finally publish his landmark work
On the Origin of Species.
10 Where Australia Collides with Asiahttp://www.ebook3000.com