While British soldiers and settlers colonised Australia, French scientists continued to explore its coastlines and study its strange flora and fauna. First published in 2007, this winner of the Victorian Premier's Award for Non-Fiction is an exhilarating expedition through a key period in the history of science.Danielle Clode's work includes essays, natural history writing, science-writing, historical fiction and best-selling children's books. Her books have won the Whitley Award for popular zoology and have been shortlisted for the Children's Book Council of Australia awards. Her 2010 examination of Australia's complex relationship with fire, A Future In Flames, is also in the Untapped Collection. For more information visit danielleclode.com.au

'Have you met Mrs Edith Coleman? If not you must - I am sure you will like her - she's just A1 and a splendid naturalist.'In 1922, a 48-year-old housewife from Blackburn delivered her first paper, on native Australian orchids, to the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria. Over the next thirty years, Edith Coleman would write over 300 articles on Australian nature for newspapers, magazines and scientific journals. She would solve the mystery of orchid pollination that had bewildered even Darwin, earn the acclaim of international scientists and, in 1949, become the first woman to be awarded the Australian Natural History Medallion. She was 'Australia's greatest orchid expert', 'foremost of our women naturalists', a woman who 'needed no introduction'. And yet, today, Edith Coleman has faded into obscurity. How did this remarkable woman, with no training or connections, achieve so much so late in life? And why, over the intervening years, have her achievements and...