Although Australian coasts were charted in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the first permanent European settlement established in New South Wales in 1788, exploration of the interior of the continent was entirely a nineteenth century phenomenon. During the 1800s a great number of intrepid (and sometimes foolhardy) adventurers, prospectors, surveyors and naturalists crisscrossed the continent in all directions, more than a few of them losing their lives along the way. This website comes about as something of an accident. While involved in research on the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), I happened upon a wonderful map published in 1893 for inclusion in Wallace's regional study Australasia, Volume 1: Australia and New Zealand. Prepared by the master London atlas-maker Edward Stanford, it neatly summarizes the routes taken by the period's major explorers of the Interior. The map was so charming that I decided to make it the central feature of an Australia exploration-focussed service; to reveal its detail we have reproduced it in three overlapping panel sections that, hopefully, retain most of its original feel. The three sections of the map can be accessed by clicking on the thumbnail versions below. Each map section includes a copy of the key used to distinguish the explorers' routes. One can move directly from section to section by clicking on the arrows placed at the top of their left/right margins. We have also sought out Web-based information on the explorers. Links to such appear both in the left-side panel on this page, and at the bottom of each map section (for those explorers whose routes are actually found on that particular section). Since so little online material exists for some individuals, however, we have supplemented this information with related text from 1893 Wallace included in the part of his book reviewing Australian history. [self-description]