Cirrus@Austlit

Nineteenth-Century Travel Writing

Thomas McCombie (1819-1869) Esq., was a journalist, merchant and politician. His second series of sketches of Australian life, McCombie published Australian Sketches in 1861. The first series, published 16 years earlier, delineated the different types of colonists in Australia. The second series was an attempt to write about different periods and stages of development of the colony of Victoria during the time that McCombie was in Melbourne. McCombie’s life in colonial society was extensive: he was editor and part proprietor of the Port Phillip Gazette from 1844-1851, and representative for Bourke Ward, Melbourne Town Council, from 1846-1851. In his prefatory advertisement, McCombie stated that he hoped the sketches proved interesting to British readers, and that some of his pieces had already been favourably received in British magazines. The work focused primarily on gold digging areas, convicts, squatters, diggers, Aboriginal populations, and travelling around the Horn. It was written in the first person, with a descriptive and conversational tone.