Charles Ridgway came to Australia in the second half of the nineteenth century, strongly suggested by the content and time frame of his novellas set in Australia during the Gold Rush. (On page 50 of Gympie Creek he writes: 'During the whole of my stay in Australia, I had been in the habit of wearing my hair long', and on page 1 of Married and Didn't Know It he states: 'It was late in the autumn of 1867, some two years after my arrival in Australia').
By 1895, according to his Preface to Married and Didn't Know It (1895), written in Philadelphia, Ridgway was 'afflicted with blindness'. At this time he described his adventure tales as being 'culled from my diary of thirty years' experience in foreign lands'. The Preface to Gympie Creek (1912) was addressed at Sydney, so he probably made a number of trips to Australia. Ridgway wrote several other autobiographical novellas based on his travels throughout the world, including Snatched From the Jaws of Death: A Thrilling Story of Modern Japan (1895), The House That Jack Built: A Modern Version: A Remarkable Temperance Story of Shangai (1917), Through
the Golden Gate: A Story of Remarkable Adventures in California and Along the West Coast of America (1923), La Journee harmonieuse de M. de Marnac (1922) and Les amis de madame de Seriselles (1924). He also published a selected work of poetry Ballade gothique (1927).
