19th-Century Australian Travel Writing
London born Hugh Munro Hull (1818-1882), was a civil servant. After arriving in Van Diemen’s Land in 1819, he held numerous positions, including as a clerk and librarian for the Colonial Secretary and Governor, police magistrate for Bothwell and Hamilton, Justice of the Peace, coroner and chairman of Quarter Sessions. In The Guide to Tasmania, Hull presented an instructional manual for emigrants, which was updated and reprinted for the following two years with the titles The Royal Kalendar, and Guide to Tasmania for 1859 and The Royal Kalendar, and Guide to Tasmania for 1860. He prefaced the first edition (1858) with the statement that he felt a duty to provide information respecting the colony, and that the work was intended for circulation among the peasant homes of his native country. Hull noted that his residency of forty years had provided him with the knowledge needed to write such a piece, however he anticipated that any unwitting errors would be pointed out as the world is "more prone to censure than to praise." The preface to the second edition (1859) highlighted the authorities he took his information from, such as the Survey Offices and Supreme Court. In the preface to the third edition (1860) Hull emphasised the revisions and improvements of the guide's content, and his intention to provide a useful book of reference to all classes wishing to emigrate to Tasmania. In all of these editions, Hull detailed information such as lands regulations and districts, convict law, taxes, fares, wages, costs for daily living, agriculture, quarantine, the Jewish community, pagans, quadrapeds, ragged schools, odd fellows, public institutions, and industry for all the districts of Tasmania, and includes charts and diagrams for matters such as climate and population. Hull later published The Experience of Forty Years in Tasmania (1859), Tasmania in 1870 (1870) and Tasmania as a Field for British Emigrants (1875).
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