AustLit

19th-Century Australian Travel Writing

Henry Hussey (1825-1903) was an evangelist, millenarian, printer and historian who printed the South Australian Register and the Adelaide Observer during the gold rushes. According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Hussey progressed from printing to publishing Evangelical and millenarian journals, and to bookselling at his Bible Hall and Tract Depot in Adelaide. In The Australian Colonies Hussey presented a detailed description of his fifteen-year residence in Australia. In the introduction Hussey explained that he pays particular attention to the colony of South Australia because this is where he had lived and it was this information that would be most useful to readers in Britain. This is followed by a narrative of his journey from Australia, through the Pacific, to America and Canada. According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography he won the 1862 Gawler Institute competition for a history of South Australia, a project that allowed Hussey access to government archives and the papers of George French Angas; this led to Hussey becoming Angas’ private secretary in 1865. Hussey's autobiography More than Half a Century of Colonial Life and Christian Experience With Notes of Travel, Lectures, Publications was published in 1897.