Join us for snacks and drinks in the RSSS Foyer as Emeritus Fellow Alastair Greig launches The Road to Batemans Bay (ANU Press, 2024). The book will be launched by Associate Professor Ruth Morgan and Professor Nick Brown.

The Road to Batemans Bay is the story of competing ventures to create ‘the Great Southern Township’ on the South Coast of New South Wales in the early 1840s. Following the stories of people who sought to make this vision reality, Greig gives a unique insight into many aspects of colonial life—including the worlds of Sydney’s merchants, auctioneers, land speculators, surveyors, map-makers and lawyers—as well as its maritime challenges. The Road to Batemans Bay is a chronicle of how Australia first developed its land-gambling habit and how land speculation led to the road to ruin.

Alastair Greig was formerly Head of Social Sciences in the Faculty of Arts at ANU. His previous books include The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of (Melbourne UP, 1995), The Australian Way of Life (Palgrave, 2013), Challenging Global Inequality (Palgrave, 2008) and Australian Inequality (Cambridge UP, 2004).