AustLit

'For more than a decade, Andrew Hassam has followed the movements of nineteenth- century migrants from Britain to Australia. He works from traces left by these men and women, as they recorded their impressions and made sense of their journeys. Through Australian Eyes is concerned with a reverse movement, that of Australian settlers revisiting their place of origin. Hassam has chosen seventy diaries of such journeys for the nineteenth century, mostly new and unpublished, the overwhelming majority of which were written by relatively affluent people who were either renewing contact with family, conducting business, or reorienting themselves to the imperial centre. A quarter of them were kept by women.' (Introduction)