COOPER'S CREEK: The Opening of Australia

On 9/25, Atlantic Monthly kicks off its new ""Traveler Series"" with two originals (see Hodson, and Winternitz, reviewed above) and two reprints. First published in 1963, this stirring account from the (deceased) author of The Blue Nile, The White Nile, and Gallipoli chronicles the legendary (in Australia) Burke and Wills Expedition, the first to carve a route across that continent's ""ghastly blank"" from south to north, and back again--only for the expedition leaders to die in the bitter interior. Using diaries, and transcripts from a Royal Commission's inquiry into the Expedition's fate, Moorehead weaves a gripping tale--and a noteworthy complement to two recent Australia books, Robert Hughes' The Fatal Shore (1986) and Ross Terrill's The Australians (p. 913).