"Bonwick begins his reminiscences with a detailed account of his years as a student and pupil-teacher, or monitor, at the Boro' Road School in London. He describes his emigration to Hobart Town in 1840 with his wife Esther, to take up an appointment of the British and Foreign School Society to teach in government schools. During his years in Hobart, he taught in both public and private schools, employed convicts and taught their children, met Father Therry, George Washington Walker. with whom he joined in the temperance movement, and Henry Melville, whose mystic ideas, he claims, had a great influence on his intellectual development. Bonwick felt a profound sympathy for the Tasmanian Aborigines, whom he saw as 'Children of Nature', grieving that 'civilised men from Christian lands... were instrumental in the poor creatures' deepening degradation, their reception of new vices and sorrows, ultimately leading to their annihilation as a People'" (Walsh and Hooton 22).
Source
Walsh, Kay and Joy Hooton. Australian Autobiographical Narratives : An Annotated Bibliography. Canberra : Australian Scholarly Editions Centre, University College, ADFA and National Library of Australia, 1993.
