Antecedents
The Ancient World: The Ancient Greeks and their notions about the globe provide a logical starting point for a history of world exploration in general and the Southern Hemisphere in particular.
Iberians: With the Reconquista complete and their homelands freed from the Moors, Portuguese and Spanish navigators set out into the Atlantic.
Englishmen and Frenchmen: Relative latecomers to the narrative, one of whom moves on to become a significant player.
The Low Countries: While the Dutch provide four out of Six Voyages, the back story starts well before the Dutch Revolt and the Eighty Years War.
Australia: The national back story leading into Queensland's separation from New South Wales.
Queensland: With the murri background covered in Indigenes: The Human Landscape, here is the migaloo back story from the beginnings of the Moreton Bay penal settlement.
