19th-Century Australian Travel Writing
Adelaide born Alfred Greenwood Hales (1860-1936) (a.k.a the "Smiler") was a novelist and war correspondent. His 1891 Wanderings of a Simple Child: Sketches of Australian Life had been previously published under the title Wanderings of a Simple Child, or Sketches of Life in the Back Country. The third edition (1891) was prefaced with favourable reviews from the Australian press. Written in first person vernacular narrative, it tells in "plain and simple English" Hales' experience of bush and city life in the "sunny south". It was introduced as an unromanticised account of real-life incidences, with a focus on mining, bush life, descriptions of towns, and leisure activities in the Colony.
