AustLit

'Stretching for 1200 miles along the tropical coast of Australia, the Great Barrier Reef is the mightiest coral formation in the world. Arthur Clarke and Mike Wilson spent two adventurous years exploring the Reef - above and below water - and this book tells their story.

The Reef is a vast range of "underwater mountains", whose shifting moods strike terror in the hearts of sailors and can spell death for the careless diver. But the bizarre and challenging spectacles were irresistible to Clarke and Wilson: they saw the dreaded stonefish and the giant manta ray, the lovely fire fish, and the Australian shark, which unlike its relatives elsewhere, is a genuine maneater.

Their report - illustrated with rare underwater photographs - gives us our first look into a region of mystery, of boundless beauty and danger, one of the last and most intriguing unexplored frontiers on our planet.' (Source: back cover, Harper and Row, 1965 edition)