Nineteenth-Century Travel Writing
Reverend David MacKenzie (1799 -1874), M.A. was an author, lecturer and landowner who published anautobiographical account of his time in Australia The Emigrant's Guide, or Ten Years' Practical Experience in Australia (1845). MacKenzie was recruited by Reverend John Dunmore Lang in 1834 to teach at his Australian College, located in Sydney. The Emigrant’s Guide was framed through his time in the Australian colonies, with the fourth edition including an introductory chapter containing the latest information regarding the colony. The work was interspersed with factual information about the soil, climate, and farming. MacKenzie noted that there are already a host of books about the Australian colonies, but observed a gap in these texts: according to him they were riddled with politics, private squabbles, or writtenby an author who had not travelled to Australia. Attempting to provide a faithful statement of what the colony was like, MacKenzie provided information for the emigrant, describing life in the bush, including ethnographic information about Aboriginal populations (relevant to perceptions in the 1840s). This work was reprinted several times, with the 1852 fourth edition titled Ten Years in Australia: Being the Results of his Experience as a Settler During that Period.
