AustLit

19th-Century Australian Travel Writing

Francis Edmund Town (Frank) Fowler (1833-1863), journalist and author, later of Her Majesty's Civil Service in New South Wales, recounted his reminiscences of three years' experience of Australia in Southern Lights and Shadows. Fowler commented on the social, political and literary life in the Australian colonies, dedicating his travel narrative of the "land of golden harvests" to the seventeen hundred and sixty-seven citizens who at the 1858 election recorded their votes for the author (Fowler ran for the seat of Sydney in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly). According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Fowler “founded and edited the literary and critical journal Month which focussed on the development of a peculiarly Australian idiom.” He stated in the preface that his narrative was put together from his bunk during a three day voyage in the Falklands, and notes that it required revision as many lines read "flippant or flashy" and were untidy as the lurches at sea caused blots, blurs and salt-water stains. Through his narrative, Fowler described the classes of Australia in comparison to those in England, and provided a brief history of Australia, a Christmas ballad, descriptions of gold digging and of the bush in a conversational narrative that moves from one subject to the next without going into extensive detail.