Surgeon John White
John White 1756-1832
A naval surgeon, White was appointed chief surgeon to the First Fleet, later serving as Surgeon-General to the new colony of New South Wales during the troubled first years of its existence.
As a keen amateur naturalist, White took an intense interest in the unique flora and fauna of his new surroundings, keeping a journal, begun on the voyage out, which was published in London in1790, as Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales with Sixty-five Plates of Nondescript Animals, Birds, Lizards, Serpents, curious Cones of Trees and other Natural Productions, thus making it one of the earliest published accounts of the new settlement. The book was published in two versions, one incorporating plates which were left uncoloured, the other with plates which had been hand-coloured.
Although White spent almost seven years in the colony and became a landholder there he left for England, in late 1794, never to return.
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