Thirty Years in Australia

I knew nothing whatever of Australia when I rashly consented to marry a young man who had irrevocably bound himself to go and live there, and, moreover, to go within three month...

The story of a sea-voyage thirty years ago, if it could properly be included in this chronicle, might interest the young reader, born since the era of the sailing ship, and to w...

It was not quite bush, to start with, because we travelled by railway to our immediate destination, and that was a substantial township set amongst substantial farms and station...

Our lodgings were very comfortable. Sitting-room and bedroom, with a door between, our other door opening upon a big plot of virgin bush, alive with magpies, whose exquisite car...

All my recollections of the first home, and the one succeeding it, embrace the figure of a friend who was virtually of the family while we lived in them. He has so long been dea...

On the 26th of July 1871 we moved into our second home--not more than a mile or so from the first--Dik again helping us. The chance to get a little more breathing-space and elbo...

It comes back to me, as if it were yesterday, the departure from Como. One of the numerous kind friends who seemed sorry to part with us lent us a roomy buggy, into which we pac...

This parish, although sparsely populated, was enormous in size; it stretched out in one direction more than a hundred miles as the crow flies. And when G. went that way he rode...

I often wonder what G. would have done if he had been a weakly man or an indifferent rider. There were lengthy periods during which he practically lived in the saddle, getting o...

Sad indeed was the breaking-up of that pleasant home at Y----. It followed upon, and was a consequence of, the death of our little daughter, when she was nearly a year old.

We left B---- in 1877. The diocese of Ballarat had been carved out of that of Melbourne, hitherto bounded by the boundaries of the colony; and the knife had lopped off a portion...

The charms of solitude at "The Old Parsonage" were outweighed by its disadvantages when I became that miserable creature, the confirmed invalid. The fire danger which made me ne...

I am not going to disgust the patient reader with sick-room talk. But certain facts connected with my hospital life bear directly upon the object of this book, which is to refle...

Towards the end of May 1886--against professional advice, to which we opposed our private opinion that the best way to get well was to get rid of the homesick cravings that were...

All I know of his breeding is that he had none. His mother, a drawing-room pet and the only acknowledged parent, was a little long-bodied, dainty bundle of silver-grey silk that...

This is another chapter that some readers may like to skip. If talk about a dog is too trivial for those who do not care for dogs, talk about strikes and such politico-industria...

In earlier times I paid little visits to Albury, just over the border. We drove from Y---- in our first buggy, which was bought there, taking the babies to a house that was full...

In 1893 our long country life came to an end. For years we had been hankering after a Melbourne parish, and at times, I must confess, had done a little canvassing for the vote a...

The eighth home was quite an imposing house--for us--too much so for my taste and the resources of the moment, insomuch that I had to leave the furnishing of the drawing-room to...

On the last day of 1900 I sat at my writing window to watch the drop of the time-ball that regulates all the Government clocks--the clocks which the morning papers had warned us...