Cirrus@Austlit

19th-Century Australian Travel Writing

Maturin M. Ballou’s Travels Under the Southern Cross presents a comprehensive account of travels to America, Australia, and New Zealand.  Ballou’s work (1890) covers an extraordinarily broad number of topics, including street scenes of capital cities, descriptions of native animals, the journeys between towns, and rural activities such as gold-mining and sheep-shearing. A writer, editor, and publisher, the American-born Ballou (1820-1895) had traveled extensively before writing this account of Australia, having already published on travels in Russia, Scandinavia, and Cuba. Travels Under the Southern Cross was reprinted several more times.