'The letters of Banjo Paterson’s mother, Rose, paint a picture of country life in nineteenth-century Australia, writes Jennifer Gall'
My dear Nora,
I am in a state of semi-starvation for want of news. We might as well be on a desert island as here for all we know of the doings of the rest of the world or even of our own family … So ‘Pity the sorrows of the forlorn & shipwrecked sister’ & please write me a nice long letter straight off before you forget it, and let me be in earnest of more to come hereafter & yr petitioner as in duty bound will ever pray &ct &ct.
9 April 1873