Ludwig Leichhardt is Australia's most intriguing explorer. Born and educated in Prussia in the early 19th century, Leichhardt was a polymath, a man fascinated by the natural world and possessed by a longed for adventure and exploration. Australia was then almost completely unexplored apart from the colonies clustered on its coastline-the interior a vast and mysterious blank. It was a continent and a time ripe for amateur naturalists and explorers, and Leichhardt took up the challenge.

His expeditions were to begin in triumph, then dwindle into acrimony, despair and misery before finally ending in disappearance and death and giving rise to one of the enduring mysteries of the Australian history.