ABSTRACT
The clearance and settlement of the Australian rainforests was part of an international story. In the late nineteenth century, industrialisation and urbanisation in Europe and the United States generated tremendous demand for food. Euphemia Williams, Charles Bryde and Bernard O’Reilly were typical of thousands of settlers venturing into Australia’s rainforests in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The historiography of settlement in the rainforests has tended to be regionally focused and fragmentary. The nineteenth century fascination with rainforests has often been couched in terms of urban dwellers seeking an escape from the travails of modernity and overcrowded cities. While the cold temperate rainforests of Tasmania are different to the tropical rainforests of northern Queensland, they are both more similar to each other than to the grasslands and lightly timbered dry sclerophyll forests. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
