Placing the historical background here keeps it out of the main texts’ footnotes.
The Ancient World: The Ancient Greeks and their notions about the globe provide a logical starting point for a history of world exploration in general and the Southern Hemisphere in particular. This section delivers a narrative up to the point where Alexander of Macedon crosses the Bosporus and sets out on what may have become a quest for the ends of the Earth.
Iberians: With the Reconquista complete and their homelands freed from the Moors, Portuguese and Spanish navigators set out into the Atlantic. The back story sheds light on subsequent developments, particularly on the Treaty of Tordesillas.
England and France: Relative latecomers to the narrative, one of whom moves on to become a significant player.
The Netherlands: Dutchmen provide four out of Six Voyages, but the back story starts well before the Dutch Revolt and the Eighty Years War.
Australia: The national back story leading into Queensland’s separation from New South Wales provides one strand here. Others will emerge as the narrative progresses.
Queensland: With the murri background covered in Indigines: On the Surface: The Human Landscape, here is the migaloo background from the beginnings of the Moreton Bay penal settlement.