Reconstructing changes in the Great Barrier Reef - The Great Barrier Reef: An Environmental History - page 22

Records of early European explorers were generally in edited form; however,
copies of some original works were consulted. However, the records of some
early European explorers, such as the account of the voyage of the Astrolabe ,
were not used as no English translation was available.
Scientific texts used in my research included historical books dealing with
the scientific description, investigation and analysis of the Great Barrier Reef.
Studies by Saville-Kent, for example - including his extensive study of the Great
Barrier Reef (Saville-Kent, 1893) - represent some of the earliest scientific
work devoted to the ecosystem. The scientific papers and books relating to the
1928-1929 Royal Society of London expedition to Low Isles form a significant
source of data (British Museum (Natural History), 1930-1968; Yonge, 1930).
Other important scientific texts included the many geological studies published
and the early scientific reports of the Great Barrier Reef Committee (GBRC);
those documents were searched comprehensively for evidence of changes in the
Great Barrier Reef, including comparisons between studies of the same locations
(Agassiz, 1898, 1913; Hedley, 1925; Hill, 1960).
An extensive body of literature categorised in the 'Queensland description
and travel' genre describes the landscapes, human activities and development
of Queensland during much of the colonial period. This literature also includes
observations on, and recollections of, travel in the region; therefore, it offers
some rich descriptions of the condition of the Great Barrier Reef written by
European and Australian explorers, tourists, journalists and beachcombers. An
example of this genre is The Confessions of a Beachcomber , by Edmund Banfield
(1908), describing Dunk Island and surrounding islands. Similar books -
such as On the Barrier Reef (Napier, 1928) and Destination Barrier Reef (Lock,
1955) - include descriptions of specific locations along the Queensland coast
at different times. Therefore, those works were included in my data collection
strategy; however, they were extremely numerous, and their titles gave little
indication of their scope or content. Some more general, national-scale works
about description and travel in Australia contained brief references to the Great
Barrier Reef, but that category was sampled and found to reveal scarce useful
information about the ecosystem.
The collection of documentary data from historical works of fiction
was informed by Sharp (2000), who considered the use of literary fiction by
geographers and argued that the social construction of fictional texts has been
less well understood than the construction of scientific texts. She argued for more
careful analysis of the content and form of fictional texts and for the distinctive
voice of literary fiction to be recognised in geographical studies. Sharp (2000,
p329) acknowledged the danger of misinterpreting fictional texts and stated that
'geographers are still drawing from literature those elements that reinforce the
position to be argued'. She highlighted the fact that researchers may select from
fictional texts only those parts which reinforce a pre-existing interpretation. In
this respect, she echoed Cronon's (1992) view that environmental historians
are narrators who may inevitably reach the conclusions that they expect to find.