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NLA News - home March 2003 Volume XIII Number 6
A Pen Dipped in Drama and Gossip
A watercolour painting of Port Adelaide, South Australia by S.T. Gill

S.T. (Samuel Thomas) Gill (1818–1880)
[Port Adelaide, South Australia] [184-]
watercolour; 22.5 x 34.2 cm
Pictures Collection T1260 NK208; nla.pic-an2984553

Commercial salesmen in the nineteenth century led rather more exciting lives than their twentieth-century counterparts as Judy Cannon discovered when she read the 1867–1868 travel diary of Frederick A. Edelsten

When he landed at Adelaide from England in October 1867, Frederick Edelsten had an eye for business, but he also took time to collect botanical specimens and to record in a diary descriptions of the countryside through which he travelled.

A lithograph print of Adelaide, South Australia, North Terrace  [1841?] by J. Hitchen
J. Hitchen
Adelaide, South Australia, North Terrace  [1841?]
lithograph print: hand col.; 
sheet 42 x 51.4 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an7832564

He is in good—even illustrious—company. The National Library holds originals and copies of such historical material by famous names like Captain James Cook, William Bligh, Captain of the Bounty and later Governor of New South Wales, explorers such as William John Wills and Robert O’Hara Burke, and people from all walks of life in the habit of keeping diaries and records.

Now secure in the bosom of the Manuscript Collection, these diaries range from descriptions by Stanley Leighton (1868) of Australian statesmen, squatters, the bush and fauna, to Ann Williams’ 1882 journal reflecting the social conditions of Canberra and the Monaro area.

There are also the happy memories of Englishman William Barringer, who wrote about the 1870 Melbourne Cup and his trip to bushranger country, and letters by New Yorker W. Anderson about Sydney’s 1879 International Exhibition, which together with the city’s architecture he praised handsomely, at the same time dumping liberally on the city’s tatty cabs. (Both Barringer and Anderson have featured in previous issues of the National Library of Australia News.)

To return to Frederick Edelsten and his diary (a microfilm copy of which is held in the Manuscript Collection of the Library at MS837)—our scribe, here to sell manchester, relates his adventures in South Australia and southern Western Australia and his impressions of both the bush and the people he met, enlivened by a peppering of drama, gossip and fear of the unknown.

A pencil and wash drawing of Sand Dunes, The Coorong] [184-? by George French Angas
George French Angas (1822–1886)
[Sand Dunes, The Coorong] [184-?]
pencil and wash drawing; 19.8 x 26 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an2887993

He wrote in a difficult-to-read sloping handwriting, perhaps not helped by the jog of the coach or sway of a vessel. Occasionally it is necessary to guess what he wrote but after a while the pattern of his phrases becomes easier to anticipate. Altogether his diary runs for 168 pages.

He and his fellow commercial traveller, whose name appears to have been Cussin, toured the south-east region of South Australia and later left for Western Australia, in May 1868, sailing between Adelaide and Albany, and then taking a coach to Perth. They returned the same way.

Along the route, they put up at hotels when they could, but were otherwise content to camp in the bush and take their chances with snakes and the other wildlife Edelsten so avidly anticipated in his diary.

While in South Australia, Edelsten much enjoyed a visit to Penola. Subsequently, he and Cussin set off for Narracoote, some 30 miles away:

How cold it was driving that night and how dark, how difficult to keep to the track, the ‘Bush’ on a dark night is awful—the stillness is overpowering and every object on the road looms gigantic in the distance—ghostly forms too seem to flit through the trees and the excited imagination recalls long forgotten stories of dreadful deeds.

He must have been surprised (and maybe a little disappointed) to arrive safely at Narracoote, for once there he wrote:

… we rushed to the hotel, almost got into the fireplace, so cold were we. A good tea got us into a proper state of body and mind and after smoking gravely for a while, we began to spin yarns which carried us on till bedtime.

A lithograph print  of Adelaide, South Australia, from West End of Hindley Street by J.B. Austin
J.B. (John Baptist) Austin (1827–1896)
Adelaide, South Australia, from West End of Hindley Street 1849
lithograph print; 20 x 30 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an7837293

They managed to sell all their ‘samples’ at Narracoote and boarded the mail again. Not long from the start, they found ‘the jolting was something fearful’ and they soon discovered why. A bar had broken and nearly upset the coach, so on-the-spot repairs had to be carried out before they could resume the journey.

On another day, they left early ‘for Robe when we had to pass through some very rough country—all the bad parts have been christened and we drove through Purgatory Hills’. They also went through ‘an immense forest of mighty trees, the haunt of birds of every hue. We reached our midday camp where, thanks to Crosse & Blackwell’s, we made a hearty lunch from a tin of potted beef.’

Down the track at McGrath’s Flat, they later came across some fellow travellers bogged since early morning because the coach had moved off course in the dim light and was stuck up to its axles in swamp.

Luggage and people had been unloaded and the horses taken out, and ‘all set to work and turned it [the coach] over and over until they reached terra firma, and everything being speedily put to rights, they drove off in high glee’.

Edelsten’s own coach reached Salt Creek at dinnertime. He wrote (and a reader might conclude he was enjoyably spooked),

The house we dined in is many miles distant from any other—the man keeping the hotel was murdered by his wife’s paramour who subsequently married her … suspicion attached to him at first but there was not sufficient evidence for the jury to convict. Shortly afterwards the barmaid went missing and after a search the body was found fearfully mutilated—the man was immediately arrested and confessed to both murders.

A etching print of the Old Whalers Hut at Robe, S.A. [193-?] by J.C. Goodhart
J.C. (Joseph Christian) Goodhart (1875–1952)
Old Whalers Hut at Robe, S.A. [193-?]
etching print; plate mark 17.8 x 23.3 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an7837309

The murderer apparently had been after the barmaid’s savings of £30. Edelsten did not say what sentence the man received, but added, ‘The woman was acquitted on both charges as there was a scarcity of the sex—it was considered unwise to prevent the possible increase of population.’

After driving alongside an area of water, Edelsten was thankful at the coach’s entry into the Coorong because the route became level, even if water lapped into the coach. After dark, he enjoyed glimpses of the water ‘as it sparkled in the starlight’.

When in Western Australia, they came upon a station, ‘such a pretty place most pleasantly situated’, and they soon struck up an acquaintance with the squatter and his wife. After a rubber of cards, they retired at about 10pm, but not before taking the opportunity to ‘examine our beds and satisfy ourselves they were free from snakes and centipedes’.

Edelsten enjoyed gathering botanical specimens and eventually collected about 250 dried plants. He sadly regretted that they had trampled ‘some magnificent flowers’, but was openly disappointed he had no gun when he spotted several black swans.

Journeying from Albany to Perth, riding in a four-horse covered wagon, the companions travelled day and night over 256 miles and reached it in six days.

A watercolour of Fremantle with Rottnest Island in the distance, 1859 by W.S. Hatton
W.S. Hatton
Fremantle with Rottnest Island in the Distance, 1859
watercolour; 18.1 x 27.1 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an5924537

Arriving in the city at 6am, they had to wake the hotel landlord with ‘a good deal of knocking’. Edelsten recounted:

We retired to our bedrooms, removed the travel stains from our appearance—on taking off my shirt (I had not undressed for eight days) I found that the fleas had been feasting on me and had left their marks all over my body—without exaggeration I could shake them out of my shirt.

Ever the consummate travellers, he and Cussin were still able to present themselves respectably at breakfast—to a young lieutenant en route for his regiment, and also to ‘a mining engineer from Ballarat with a woman who certainly was not his wife’.

Later Edelsten had his own moment. One night, when the companions camped, it became extremely windy and they could not put up the tent; so Edelsten used it to create a wind barrier, securing it between the wagon and a tree. They bedded down on gum leaves and slept comfortably until midnight, ‘when the violence of the rain compelled Cussin and myself to get in the wagon, where we had to sleep between two women: such is bush life’.

JUDY CANNON is a freelance writer based in Brisbane.

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