Introduction to Around the World

Having considered the situation in the Bundaberg of colonial Queensland in and about the 1870’s the question arises – why would people leave their home countries (voluntarily or involuntarily) – to settle in a location that they would have known little, or more likely nothing, about? Or, to put the question in another way, who would prefer to settle in an undeveloped patch of open eucalypt forest on the south bank of the Burnett River one hundred miles from nowhere with no existing telegraph, road or port access, rather than dwell back in the ‘civilized’ world of the time?

The answer to this question must lie in the conditions prevailing in the emigrant’s country at the time in question, and in the availability of the technology necessary for the ocean transportation required to deliver the emigrants to the remote island continent of Australia. It should be remembered that colonial Australia did not exist in a vacuum and events in other parts of the world could, and did, have a profound effect upon the developing colony. Such events would include the promulgation and subsequent repeal of the British Corn Laws, the Irish/Scottish potato famine, the developments in steam power technology and the American civil war.

While a detailed history of the donor countries would not seem to be required, and could be downright tedious in this context, an understanding of the conditions prevailing in the relevant countries as they effected the general population, and in the events mainly responsible for producing these conditions, could be illuminating.

The intention of this section of the book is to order and meld fragmented data into a simple, compact presentation giving an association of relevant events capable of ready comprehension; and further to present an everyman’s view of the historical landscape in the immigrant’s country of origin as it was at the time of, or not long before, Bundaberg’s early development.

Inevitably the mention of many happenings of a significant and/or tumultuous nature will be omitted or glossed over in attaining the objective of brevity. To those interested there are many good references available that can provide much more detailed information on the events and personalities of the time.