19th-Century Australian Travel Writing
E. Katherine (Katharine) Bates, author of A Year in the Great Republic (1887) and other works on spiritualism, presented her global tour in Kaleidoscope: Shifting Scenes from East to West. Bates introduced her work with a series of comparisons between Australia and England, and Australia and America. First citing James Froude's Oceana (1886) as an example of fulsome flattery to the colonies (although one that served as a "red rag to the Colonial bull"), Bates then labelled Australia as a second- or third-rate England, and a caricature of America. Bates is critical of Australia for its lack of interest in art and preference for popular culture and curtails her visit. Bates admired her first destination, Tasmania, for its beauty, but observed the commercial depression and lack of desirable society (including an absence of men). In New South Wales, Bates travelled from Sydney to the Blue Mountains. Bates visited Melbourne and its fine buildings before departing for New Zealand (which she prefers to the Australian colonies), and returning home via Japan, China, Alaska and Canada. The edition held at the State Library of Tasmania was inscribed by A.W.F. Fuller, who interpreted this work to be a "poor globe-trotting book of little real interest."
