Cirrus@Austlit

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. He also authored The Guide to Tasmania (1858, 1859, 1860), The Experience of Forty Years in Tasmania (1859) and Tasmania as a Field for British Emigrants (1875). In 1870 Hull published this short pamphlet under the title Tasmania in 1870 that was originally printed in The Mercury. It was updated and expanded upon the following year and published as Practical Hints to Emigrants Intending to Proceed to Tasmania: And A Full Description of the Several Counties and their Products (1871). This edition was accompanied with a paper on local industries by Edwin Cradock Nowell, Esq., government statistician and clerk of the councils. The 1871 edition has an epigraph that quoted his 1858 Guide to Tasmania and is prefaced with a statement of the growth of the colony since the 1870 edition. Both editions contain information on each town and county of the Tasmanian colony, the counties being Cornwall, Dorset, Devon, Buckingham, Wellington, Monmouth, Kent, Glamorgan, Pembroke, Arthur, Russell, Franklin, Montagu, Montgomery, Cumberland Lincoln, Somerset, and Westmoreland. It detailed industry and productions, and concluded with a list of banks and financial institutions active in the colony.