Peter Good was one of a remarkable team assembled by Joseph Banks for a voyage of HMS Investigator, captained by Matthew Flinders, to survey the coast of New Holland in 1801-03. It also included botanist Robert Brown, botanical artist Ferdinand Bauer and landscape artist Wiliam Westall.
Good pursued his role as seed collector for the Royal Gardens at Kew with that keenness known to many who have the chance to explore unknown places. He kept a journal that complements those of Brown and Flinders, with lists of the seeds collected at each of the many landings. Sadly, he died in Sydney at the end of the circumnavigation, but his collections made it to Kew where they were recorded in the Gardens' Inwards Book. All these are included in the present work, as well as records of the many plants thus introduced successfully into English horticulture.