According to the Oxford Companion to Australian Literature:
Adventures on a Journey to New Holland gives only a vague picture of the Australian colony. The characteristic features of Australian fauna and flora, staples in early English novels about the colony, are seldom mentioned; the colony itself appears to have been chosen solely because it provided a contrast between the natural virgin setting and its depraved convict inhabitants and was a suitable site for the confrontation between the protagonists, Rudolph, the French ex-revolutionary, and Belton, the Welsh ex-revolutionary, over the whole question of revolution itself.
