Strangers In A Foreign Land: The Journal Of Niel Black And Other Voices From The Western District

Description

Drawing on the extensive collections of the State Library of Victoria, Strangers in a Foreign Land provides rare insight into the realities of early settlement in Victoria. When Niel Black, one of the most influential settlers of the Western District of Victoria, stepped onto the sand at Port Phillip Bay in 1839 and declared Melbourne to be 'almost altogether a Scotch settlement', he was paying the newly created outpost of the British Empire his highest compliment. His journal, reproduced here in its entirety, provides rare insight into the realities of early settlement in Victoria, detailing experiences of personal hardship and physical danger as well as the potential for accumulating great wealth and success. Drawing on the extensive collections of the State Library of Victoria, Strangers in a Foreign Land also includes glimpses into the lives of other settlers and the indigenous people of the area. It evokes the sense of place and dislocation that the early settlers encountered, and the hopes and anxieties they carried with them as they created new homes in Australia.

Maggie MacKellar was born in 1973. She has published two books on the history of settlement in Australia and Canada. She now lives in central western New South Wales with her two children.