Publisher's Synopsis
Between 1788 and 1880 some 1.3 million free emigrants arrived in Australia from the British Isles. It was a huge transition, both geographically and culturally, and one way of dealing with this appears to have been to write a diary. The surviving diaries offer snapshots of the lives of and experiences of many ordinary people who emigrated.;In this study the author analyzes these journals and diaries to attempt to answer the question "how did writing a diary help diarists make sense of such a momentous and absolutely alien experience as emigration by boat to a continent bout which they probably knew almost nothing?" The stories which emerge are as much to do with the process of life-writing as they are a historical snapshot of a bygone time.
