The Tyranny of Distance is one of the quintessential texts for anyone attempting to understand Australia. It is creeping up to its 50th birthday, so we shouldn't assume Blainey's analysis is infallible now, but his view of how isolation impacted the first colonial settlers, how it helped conjure up the conservatism, the complicated relationship with the motherland, the social values, and the relationship with the land beneath our feet (or, often, out of sight beyond the edge of a city), remains deeply insightful. Every Australian historian must live in his shadow, perhaps alongside that more socially passionate troika of Manning Clark, Inga Clendinnen, and Robert Hughes.

It should be said that this is not a "history of Australia" in any traditional sense. Sturt and Eyre do not appear in the index, nor do Barton or Deakin; Arthur Phillip and Matthew Flinders receive only a couple of pages; while Aboriginal Australians receive only passing references. (These subjects would be dealt with in the other two books in Blainey's unofficial "trilogy": [b:A Land Half Won|2470548|A Land Half Won|Geoffrey Blainey|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1634615640l/2470548._SY75_.jpg|2477745] and [b:Triumph of the Nomads: A History of Aboriginal Australia|545260|Triumph of the Nomads A History of Aboriginal Australia|Geoffrey Blainey|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387742432l/545260._SY75_.jpg|532540] respectively.) The book has a broad scope, from mining and international trade to the rise of the railway, but it is filtered through Blainey's hypothesis: that the continent's isolation from its Western allies in the 19th and early 20th centuries, combined with its sheer size, played crucial roles in forming the development of the country, its industries, and its people's mindset.

For readers of my generation, we are apt to view Blainey in light of his perceived failures as a man rather than as an historian. Although he remained a potent force throughout the 20th century (and even into the 21st), he occasionally nailed his colours to less-than-savoury masts. His public concern about levels of Asian immigration is - strangely enough - at odds with the final chapters of the revised edition of this very book, in which he notes the regional importance of our ties to Asia. Ah, humankind! But, as Lawrence Durrell once said, if things were always what they seem, how impoverished would be the lives of man.

But with my rational book reviewer hat on, I don't think that can justify ignoring this key volume. It remains a crucial text in the teaching of Australian history, although - in line with its academic origins - a few chapters can get a touch dry. Extensive lessons on the manufacture and resourcing of flax, for example, would drive even a student of accounting to start eating the book just to be rid of it.

In a way, we have all absorbed Blainey's teachings already, so you probably don't need to read this book. Still, without him, we would know ourselves less well, and that would surely be a shame. ( )

1st edition

(Notes from my reading in 2001) Excellent history of Australia, especially economic history.

(further notes, 2013) I particularly liked the descriptions of winds and seaborne navigation to Australia. ( )

This book takes and curious and fascinating approach to the history of Australia. It presents and argues a thesis that distance was the most important element in the forming of the Antipodes - discovery, settlement, transport links, trade and migration. Distance influenced why the south eastern tip was settled, why convicts were followed by free settlers, how the latest technology in shipping affected life in Australia, trade and migration, why links between the north and south Americas was important, why railways worked and didn't work, why the large variation in railway gauges across the country was no understandable, why the short distance between Australia and Asia was no lesser than that between Australia and Europe (especially Britain), why motor vehicles were an important element in the breaking the barriers of distance.
It is a history without barely the mention of a name of a person, and then usually only incidental to the narrative. For example, Edmund Barton, is mentioned not because he was Australia's first Prime Minister, but in the context of Australia's links with south America - his birthplace was Chile.

Geoffrey Blainey is one of the foremost Australian historians, along with the late Manning Clark and Geoffrey Bolton. This book, written in the 1960s, is one of the well known books of Australian history and literature. The title of the book has become a popular term in Australia culture. ( )

This is a significant study. From sailing ships to QANTAS ( )