'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)
'This is a splendidly readable and meticulously transcribed book of extracts from the colonial Australian diaries kept by Caroline Thomas from 1851, at age 19, to 1895, at age 63. She died seven years later in 1903 aged 70. It is a fascinating, authentic and valuable addition to our intimate knowledge of a courageous pioneering woman. Social and colonial historians will devour it for its details of daily life, and local and family historians, particularly Armidale ones, will be glad of her first hand responses to the early settlers during her sixteen years here. This review concentrates on Caroline Thomas's seventeen years at Saumarez, just west of Armidale airport, from 1857 to 1874' (Introduction)
'This is a splendidly readable and meticulously transcribed book of extracts from the colonial Australian diaries kept by Caroline Thomas from 1851, at age 19, to 1895, at age 63. She died seven years later in 1903 aged 70. It is a fascinating, authentic and valuable addition to our intimate knowledge of a courageous pioneering woman. Social and colonial historians will devour it for its details of daily life, and local and family historians, particularly Armidale ones, will be glad of her first hand responses to the early settlers during her sixteen years here. This review concentrates on Caroline Thomas's seventeen years at Saumarez, just west of Armidale airport, from 1857 to 1874' (Introduction)
