Thomas Mitchell, Surveyor General of New South Wales, made four journeys of exploration at a time when white squatters were poised to extend their runs over eastern Australia, dispossessing untold thousands of Aboriginal families of their land in a monstrous and incomprehensible disaster. D. W. A. Baker reveals that Mitchell's attitude towards the Aboriginal people he and his men encountered was ambiguous, even contradictory. Trust and admiration vied with fear, even disgust. He co-operated with them and he killed them. Sometimes conscious and regretful of his complicity, he was more often blinded by his conviction of the superiority of British civilisation. The Civilised Surveyor is a seductive blend of scrupulous history and spare, elegant storytelling, ever alert to irony.