AustLit

'This is a splendidly readable and meticulously transcribed book of extracts from the colonial Australian diaries kept by Caroline Thomas from 1851, at age 19, to 1895, at age 63. She died seven years later in 1903 aged 70. It is a fascinating, authentic and valuable addition to our intimate knowledge of a courageous pioneering woman. Social and colonial historians will devour it for its details of daily life, and local and family historians, particularly Armidale ones, will be glad of her first hand responses to the early settlers during her sixteen years here. This review concentrates on Caroline Thomas's seventeen years at Saumarez, just west of Armidale airport, from 1857 to 1874'  (Introduction)