ABSTRACT
When Tuscan diplomat Giovanni Branchi landed in King George Sound in 1870, he experienced ‘[t]he greatest pleasure […] to touch Australia for the first time’. He writes in his account:
I still remember the moment when, as I left the ship’s dinghy, amongst the expressions of happiness of the other passengers […], I felt inside me that peculiar and indefinite sentiment of satisfaction and curiosity which one has entering a new world. My head full with the beauty of the Australian nature […], I ran to all the bushes I could see shouting, we have this also in Europe, this one there isn’t, and collecting, like a kid, all the flowers that I could find. 1
