We have here the first of two introductory texts in a four- or five-volume history of North Queensland, as shown on the maps of the region.
As such, it is, essentially, a settler narrative that forms part of what I see as, more or less, a biography of a region.
Sticklers and nit-pickers might dispute the notion of a biography of an inanimate object. However, I hope to trace the story of a landscape and the beings that inhabit it from the beginnings of time.
So, alongside Mapping The North, we have parallel texts that deal with the physical, human and historical environments.
As Origins, Indigenes and Antecedents, those texts join Themes and Variations and accompanying reference material to form a larger whole.
I might have labelled the whole thing something like North Queensland: Its Life and Times if I had started the project much earlier.
Instead, an initial intention to write something about The North has evolved into a sprawling and multi-faceted entity that will probably never be complete.