'With a trembling boldness we venture before the Australian public. Our object is not to provide the honey of literature for the favoured few. It is not to amuse the pampered and luxurious. It is not to while away an evening hour in aristocratic halls. But it is to spread the feast for the many. It is to please the careworn sons of toil. It is to recreate the moments of rest in the cottage and the tent.
We seeks the ear of those who labor amidst privations that call for sympathy, and who are altogether out of the reach of the ordinary means of intellectual amusement and instruction. But, mindful of the gold digger, we would not forget a word of kindness and counsel for the wife and children he has left behind him. This little magazine will thus be the connecting link between the gold fields and the cottage home.
Though we write for the whole of the Australias, yet the colony from which this emanates, the geographical centre of these southern settlements, and the golden focus of our hemisphere, will necessarily appear most prominently in the periodical.' - (Bonwick, James. 'The Conductor's Introductory Address', from facsimile of front page Vol 1., No. 1, in The Davidson Collection (2007), no. 413)
