rT HROUGHOUT nineteenth century protean images of Australia were evoked and promoted by a wide range of interpreters. The huge and varied continent presented a complicated array of climates and landscapes to challenge practical and scientific skills as well as esthetic sensibilities of European inmmigrants and sojourners.1 Neither in Australia nor in Great Britain, major hearth, was there at any time a single image of antipodean colonies. Rather, there were many competing, complementary, or simply coexisting images. The images evoked and interpretations offered were closely linked to what were declared to be requirements of particular sections of population, if not of British public as a whole, and they were based on a profound and abiding ignorance of conditions in Australian colonies.2 The environmental differences between Great Britain and Australia were always a source of speculation, but occasionally a mutually attractive interpretation was accepted and functioned as a vital component in processes of migration and settlement. One example of this was a neoclassical interpretation of connection between climate and health by medical authorities which led to an assertion that Australian climate provided most effective for tuberculosis. Until contagious nature of tuberculosis was indicated by Jean Villemnin in late 186o's and until subsequent discovery of tubercle bacillus by Robert Koch in 1882, search for the cure was often frantic, for tuberculosis was major cause of death in Great Britain and in most of Western Europe throughout nineteenth century.3