AustLit

Nineteenth-Century Travel Writing

Right Reverend Francis Russell Nixon, D.D., (1803-1879) was the first Bishop of Tasmania. His The Cruise of the Beacon is an illustrated chronicle of his two months travel in 1854 to Goose, Swan, Preservation, and Flinders Islands, as well as time spent in George Town, Launceston, and Circular Head. The preface stated that the purpose of his travel to the islands in Bass Strait stemmed from his awareness that "the few families settled therein were entirely deprived of the means of grace and the ministrations of the Church" (1). Written in a diary form, this somewhat sensational text detailing the response of the inhabitants to Nixon's ministrations, the Aboriginal populations, and the landscape and scenery of the places visited.