The Coming of Strangers: Life in Australia 1788-1822

The Coming of the Strangers challenges our ideas about the European settlements of Australia.

Through a selection of the many documents, paintings and engravings held in the Mitchell and Dixson collections of the State Library of New South Wales, a picture of life in Australia is reconstructed- spanning the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 to 1822 when the first generation of white Australians had accepted the continent as their home.

Those who left no written records: the Aboriginal people; white women and convicts, have been brought to the foreground to give a balanced perspective of history during the earliest decades of European habitation in Australia.

The Coming of The Strangers accompanies a major exhibition being held at the State Library of New South Wales during 1988. In coordinating both this book and the exhibition, the Mitchell Librarian, Baiba Berzins brings to public view many letters, journals and works of art that have not been published or displayed for over a century.