Diary Of A Welsh Swagman

First published in 1975, and now reprinted from the 1992 edition, this diary records the experiences of a Welshman who arrived in Australia in 1869 at the age of 51 and spent the next 25 years working on farms in the Ballarat and Castlemaine area and as a street worker for the Maldon council. The diary has been abridged and notated by the author's grandson.

Biography of Joseph Jenkins (1818-98). Tregaron tenant farmer Jenkins was innovative and successful with an award for the best farm in the county, and was an influential figure, involved in local politics and the building of the Manchester and Milford railway through the area. Despite this, aged 50, he left his wife and nine children without a word, and traveled to Australia. For the next two decades he lived there as a swagman: an itinerant farm laborer. Despite having little formal education, Jenkins had a keen intellect and a thirst for self-improvement through reading, and was a poet in both Welsh and English, winning 13 consecutive prizes at the Ballarat St David's Day Eisteddfod for his englyniau (a specific form of Welsh-language poetry) so he is remembered also as a man of letters. The book draws greatly on the journals he kept in both Wales and Australia.

14 year-old Gunnie Danson spends the weekend at Wiralee Station, a cattle station that has been in the family since 1848. His late grandfather has left him a box containing a manuscript and a letter that is not to be opened until after Gunnie has read the entire story.

Pt. 2, p.35-36; Near Mount Quinn, brush fences set up to trap wallabies, native grave described; p.47-53; Water holes at Mount Luck, native camps; Pt. 5; Notes on previous explorers in the interior; employment of natives by expeditions; Native taken prisoner to act as guide to find water (Victoria Desert); Empress Spring - native camps, native cairns, 8 words listed with meanings; native well near Browne Range; Camp - implements - bark coolamons, wells, wind-breaks, camp lay-out, grindstones, yam sticks, plant foods; kurdaitcha shoes found; physical appearance of natives; method of cooking kangaroo rats, lizards; pearl shell pubic covering traded from coast 500 miles distant, firesticks carried, sporrans or tassels made of various materials; Chap. 11; Natives encountered at Wilsons Cliffs, searching for water, manufacture of chewing ball - native tobacoo; Helena Spring, 7 native words with meanings; Chap. 13; Shelter described, native with scarifications and painted body; native wells; spears, wommeras, shields and short throwing sticks carried by natives (near Southesk Tablelands); native village near Mount Ernest, wurlies, pronounced Jewish features of Aborigines, hair style; Chap. 17; Creek Aborigines treatment of prisoners - chains used; description od corroboree (Emu), body decoration; Appendix to pt. 5; Diagrams and description of weapons; Spears Kimberley and Desert - method of throwing; wommera; tomahawks - Desert; boomerangs; clubs and throwing sticks; shields, quartz knife, ceremonial sticks; rain-making boards, message sticks; brief notes on marriage laws (with tables); p.372; Method of catching ducks; p.374; 12 words with meanings from Sturt Creek area; p.380-411; Encounters with natives west of Mount Webb - wells, notes on trading.

I Recall: Collections and Recollections is a memoir by Robert Henderson Croll. Croll was an Australian author, lyricist, bushwalker, and civic servant. Excerpt: "Central Australia, where I have now been five times, was long a place of desire. When my Sister Elizabeth and her husband, Albert Watts, went to live at Quorn, a township sitting at the foot of the Flinders Range in South Australia, I paid her two visits. They quickened my wish to see more of the remarkable country on the edge of which Quorn is placed. That was some forty years ago. The first, a Spring journey, left two vivid memories. One is of the seemingly endless fields of young wheat which made much of South Australia so beautiful just then; the other is of a shooting trip to which we were invited. Our hosts were two young men of the district, tall and powerful, sons of a German settler. The conveyance was a light open cart with one fixed seat which held the two brothers. Behind them, a board rested its ends on the sides of the cart and was secured to the front seat by a stout rope."

This is the fully revised and expanded second edition of English - One Tongue, Many Voices, a book by three internationally distinguished English language scholars who tell the fascinating, improbable saga of English in time and space. Chapters trace the history of the language from its obscure beginnings over 1500 years ago as a collection of dialects spoken by marauding, illiterate tribes. They show how the geographical spread of the language in its increasing diversity has made English into an international language of unprecedented range and variety. The authors examine the present state of English as a global language and the problems, pressures and uncertainties of its future, online and offline. They argue that, in spite of the amazing variety and plurality of English, it remains a single language.