Imagine if the men and women from the First Fleet era had taken photos of all the exotic animals, birds and plants they saw.
Back in Britain, patrons, friends and relatives would have been astonished when they checked their email to discover photos of colourful parrots, an angry dingo, lying chained around the neck, black swans gliding across the water and wide-eyed owls staring out from the page.
But rather than cameras, the men and women who arrived in Australia in 1788 were equipped with paper and watercolours and produced hundreds of magnificent botanical pictures that depicted the animals and landscape as accurately as a photo.
A new exhibition, Artist Colony: Drawing Sydney's Nature, presents a lavish showcase of 100 rare natural history drawings from the first decade of Europeans in Sydney.
"These drawings were like little ambassadors for Australia back to Europe," says the NSW state library's pictures curator, Louise Anemaat, speaking ahead of the exhibition.
"It was like spreading the idea of NSW back in England."
New investigations by the library of the drawings of Australia's flora and fauna has uncovered a rich back-story that questions our understanding of the first 12 years in the colony.
The colony was a far richer cultural community than was previously known, says Anemaat, who spent months trying to unravel the genealogy of drawings in the exhibition.
"We are used to hearing stories of the floggings, hunger, isolation and the brutality of the time, and these are all true," she says.
"But, out of the harshness and homesickness emerged an artist colony where Europeans, in awe of Australia's natural world, eagerly sought to draw the astonishing variety of new and exotic species they encountered."
One of the big fears of men and women of the First Fleet era was that they would be forgotten and sending drawings and specimens back was "like a little cry not to be forgotten", she says.
However, it seems these watercolourists, for the most part, have been lost to history, due to the majority of the drawings being unsigned.
"The lack of signatures is one of the things that makes it really difficult to piece drawings and stories together."
The exact number and identity of many artists who drew in the early days of the colony in Australia may never be known.
"That naval officers and convicts, relieved from the usual demands of convict labour, contributed to the artistic record is certain," Anemaat says. "Precisely who they all were is not."
However, after a significant amount of time considering and comparing the paintings, Anemaat believes she may have finally solved one mystery - who painted some dozen pictures that have been held by the library for years.
William Dawes, an officer, astronomer, botanist and student of the Aboriginal language, was "possibly" also an accomplished First Fleet watercolourist responsible for 12 of the unsigned paintings, she says.
These pieces, which include a stunning depiction of a golden donkey orchid, carry the words "possibly William Dawes" in the title card.
* Artist Colony: Drawing Sydney's Nature is a free exhibition at the State Library of NSW, from March 1 to May 11.
* Natural Curiosity: Unseen Art of the First Fleet by Louise Anemaat (NewSouth Books, $39.99), will be launched to coincide with the exhibition.
