ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 gives an account of the ways in which visitors have experienced the Great Barrier Reef through direct embodied encounters. Drawing on original historical research and ethnographic observation, the chapter shows how direct sensuous interactions have diminished over time. Early twentieth-century visitors touched, smelt, tasted, heard and saw the islands and reefs through slow journeys, outdoor camps and fossicking and collecting on the Reef. In contrast, rapid transport, conservation restrictions and advances in photography restricted the sensuous diversity of visits to the Reef by the end of the twentieth century.
