A man who felt at loss without notebook and pen.
By Sienna Eddy
Diary 1852
Monday 5th 1852 we arrive in Australia from England. It was extremely hard especially without my note book. Tough the problem was I wasn’t aloud to go back to my home town until I had the money for our new house. It was so different here compered to England, it is so hot and there are to many fly’s.
Friday April 9th 1852, at night while I’ve been sketching, I’ve forgotten the damper and its burnt black as coal which was my food for the week, and there it is on the right hand side of the sketch as there is no one but myself to kick up a fuss with, and as I'm tired of sketching I’ll just light a fresh pipe and meditate about it.
Rosie Masson my new love
For a wile I had been keeping a record of daily events long before arriving in the gold field. My diary was characterized quite acutely if I do say so myself containing ramblings over my love affair with an Adelaide woman Rosie Masson. In fact, editor Tom Griffiths occasionally footnotes sections where I had crossed out whole pages relating to my new love Rosie. It is only when I had been cured of my love for Rosie, that my party and I joined the heavy road traffic towards the gold discoveries which was exiting to know I could be going home sooner than I thought. My diary My diaries were never written for an audience. From noting each instance that I cooked damper (until it Burt) to the tribulations of digging through wet mud soaked holes in winter, I also casually reveals much about gold digging and my own independent and light hearted, self deprecating character