19th-Century Australian Travel Writing
Robert Walker's holiday notes The Five Threes were set out in diary format, including the date and temperate in each daily entry. As Walker observed in his preface, his travel writing did not follow a regular plan, but was written as the events occurred. Walker travelled to Australia via Italy, arriving in South Australia. The diary is eclectic in its subject matter, with accounts of the flora, fauna, living standards, and behaviour of colonial society, with underlying political suggestions of how the colony should progress. The diary was illustrated with crude sketches that also work as social commentaries. Walker’s notes also contain poems, riddles and puzzles that appear to have been designed as ways of passing time on the lengthy voyage to Australia.
