Among the ancient stories told by people of the Australian north coast is one of the Shark that left its ocean home to make its mark on the shore. The ocean-borne power of the first Europeans in Australia, in and after 1788, had some of the savage mystery of the Ancestral Shark. In the first volume of his major new multi-volume history of Australia, Alan Atkinson covers the first impact of European power on Australia. He argues that the Europeans were not simply conquerors, that their own cultures were infinitely complex, thickly woven with ideas about spirituality, authority, self and land, all of which influenced the development of Australia.