Review

The Kimberley is an extremely rugged area in NW Australia extending over 170,000 square kilometers. It has always been one of the biologically unknown wilderness areas of the world. The presence of rainforest in this part of the continent was not even known before 1965. In 1986 a three-year exploration was started to unravel its mysteries. The results of this study are laid down in the present volume which deals with a variety of subjects, such as: soil, vegetation, floristics, landsnails, scorpions, spiders, insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals and nature conservation. The forest is of the monsoon type and consists of a number of patches varying from a clump of a few trees to 100 hectare. In many places these patches are continuous with mangrove or riverine forest. The total area of rainforest is only 0.005 percent of the Kimberley region. According to Malesian standards the flora is relatively poor: 453 species are on record. The fact that all but one (Hibiscus peralbus) of these are wide-spread in tropical Australia, most of them even outside Australia, suggests that this vegetation type is recent.