Giant in the Sun

Australia is the only nation whose boundaries encompass an entire continent, so geologically ancient that the time-worn landscape seems often to belong to another planet.

It is an eerie, hauntingly beautiful place, cut off from the rest of the world some 60 million years ago.

But this strange continent, which for centuries none but a few Stone Age nomads seemed to want, held other secrets. Beneath its arid surface lay a treasure house of minerals and much of its wasteland soil needed only water or a dressing of inexpensive chemicals to grow crops and pastures in wonderful abundance.

This book takes a look at the continent’s western third.