And of course whaling is now a dirty word and the romance of the era is scorned by us conservationists, but it’s no use blubbering over split sparmacetti, the whales have gone and so have the men who took them. In Bert Egan’s story there is something larger than the facts themselves. He remembers the grandeur and the meanness of the men of the past. He paints his picture on a broad canvas and history is made up, not of times and places, but of people who were there when those times and places happened, so the Eden Museum is not just a yarn about relics, but a story about the courage, spirit, folly and ridiculousness of human cn deavour and told by a man who has seen all of it.