'An astute observer, throughout her life Caroline Thomas kept detailed diaries recording the joys and sorrows of family life in London and the Australian bush. Her diaries provide an insight into the busy social life of a girl in comfortable family circumstances at the time of London's Great Exhibition in 1851 and following her father's disgrace and flight to Australia, her forced migration to Sydney. Caroline's Diary reflects the fragility of life and her ability to adapt, whether it was the dangers of pregnancy and birth, the deaths of several of her eleven children, the chronic illnesses of her husband and the death of her sister in the Siege of Lucknow. The husband she adored moved her, often without notice, from the city life she had always known to the bush. We read how she made a comfortable home as a young bride at Buckinbah, Wellington, as a young mother at Saumarez in Armidale and later, with her growing family at Wivenhoe at Camden.' (Publication summary)
