The play was one of a series of radio dramas by Park about European exploration of Australia, others being Stormy Was the Weather (on James Cook) and I'll Meet You in Botany Bay on (Governor Phillip).
They combined the presentation of factual incidents with a keen imaginative perception of character under stress, an ironical feeling for the forlornness, anguish or disillusionment of persons born to a place in history, an appreciation of pioneering courage and achievement set against the failure of private life to fulfil its expectations.
These plays had the salt tang of the sea, the roll or pitch of wooden ships breasting through uncharted waters, as well as vivid or bitter personal emotions.
strength in the telling, and suggests a certain amount of authenticity as to fact, but it ends unsatisfactorily In that it brands him as a failure after his first voyage for not having discovered the Great South Land."
"[8] Reviewing the 1953 production the Adelaide Advertiser called it a "self-conscious attempt to draw a heavily realistic portrait, and that in striving for imaginative accuracy the writer had fallen into the pit of deliberate debunking...