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As Fry in his introduction notes, "Just three years after the landing of the first fleet at Sydney Cove Mary Ann Parker became Australia's first tourist (in 1791). Her journal of the voyage out and back, A Voyage Around the World in the Gorgon Man of War, is the first account of the new colony to be published by a woman... A route which took Gorgon to Capetown, Port Jackson, Norfolk Island, round the Horn to Capetown again and back to England was certainly no pleasure cruise... For Mary Ann Parker, with two young children left at home, it was an opportunity to expand her already broad horizons. Her narrative makes clear that she relished the adventure, delighting in discovering new sights and meeting new people, dwelling only briefly on the effects of storms and gales which, as Parker's log details, plagued much of their voyage. Her fortitude at sea on the 'very favourable but boisterous passage' is all the more remarkable when the reader learns at the very end of the book that she had been pregnant for the long return voyage, conceiving while at Port Jackson and giving birth to a son just days after returning to England..."