The son of a planter from Demerara West Indies, Walstab migrated to Victoria, aboard the Dinapore on 18th November, 1852. He served two years as a cadet in La Trobe's Victorian Mounted Police (1852-54). In 1857 he fought in India as a subaltern during the latter part of the Indian mutiny. After the mutiny he turned to journalism and worked as the sub-editor on the Calcutta Englishman (1862-65). In India he published his first, and so far only discovered, book Looking Back, or, Pique, Repique and Capot (Calcutta, Wyman and Co., 1864).
Walstab returned to Melbourne in 1865 and started the Australasian Monthly Review (March/April 1866). After this venture failed, he declared bankruptcy because of 'losses in establishing a magazine in 1865 and long sickness of self . . . making it difficult for him to obtain regular employment, sickness and deaths in the family and insufficiency of income, in consequence of intermittent illness to meet more than actual household expenses' (Age 30 Dec 1869: 3). His assets totalled £10; his liabilities totalled £2109.15s.
During the period 1865-1869, he wrote for the Australian Journal and contributed to Humbug, the Colonial Monthly and the Australian Monthly Magazine. He then moved to Castlemaine and edited the Castlemaine Representative and Chronicle. Upon returning to Melbourne, he joined the staff of the Melbourne Daily Telegraph. In 1872 he worked for the Melbourne Herald, but in December 1873 he changed careers and was appointed secretary to J. J. Casey in the Department of Lands and Agriculture.
Walstab's years in the Lands Department were chequered, and he was a victim of 'Black Wednesday's' civil service terminations. He rejoined the Melbourne Herald where he remained in various positions until his death on 9 February 1909.
(Source: Toni Johnson-Woods Index to Serials in Australian Periodicals and Newspapers : Nineteenth Century. Canberra : Mulini Press, 2001.)
