Exelent Coliney, An: The Practical Idealists of 1836-1846

“They were the idealistic settlers who migrated freely to South Australia, and their letters and diaries are the true voices of the free people who settled this land to escape the strictures of the Old World.
Colin Kerr has collected many previously-unpublished writings from the intimate journals and letters of these pioneers sailing to, and then settling, their land of promise. They were the labourers, gentry, administrators, chemists, shopkeepers, brewers, housewives, nursemaids … in fact, a cross-section of the free people who sought their ideals in the colonies.
They bear witness to the long months on the sea, when there was such an appalling child mortality rate – when, too, there were the boredoms and the bickering, the duels and the romances. Then in the candlelight of their first crude dwelling, they tell of their achievements and their disillusionments, of forging their own opportunities. Yet their visions remained. The run-away sailor Ben Boyce captured their spirit when he wrote, ‘… I am not afraid to go from the smoke of my Mothers Chimney for I av a rovin commichon throo the world’. The title of this book is a quote from his rich letters.
Colin Kerr’s wry interpretations are both of these people’s personal and social fortunes; in this way he captures the full flavour of early colonial times.”
174 p., 16 p. of plates : maps on endpapers ; 22 cm. #0821 (Prev ownership name.)