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In a large box on the bed in the back bedroom are old and new photographs, newspapers, notes, files and letters all about my Dad's time in Australia back in the 1920s. He went there at 16 partly sponsored by Barnardos and stayed there for five years. He returned to England in 1931 (I think) and seldom talked about his time in Australia. We knew he was a jackaroo, swam rivers in flood, battled with snakes and could roll a cigarette with one hand while riding a horse but little of the privations he suffered. After his death we found an old photograph album naming places and people. Barnardos kindly sent me his file from Sydney full of intriguing detail.

In May of this year I visited Australia and my cousin Ingrid, who lives in Bathurst, and I drove through New South Wales visiting some of the places he had photographed and meeting relatives of people he had known.

My task now is to write up something of my Dad's history and some background history of rural New South Wales in the depression of the 1920s. I am doing this for the younger generation in our family and for myself. By visiting Australia and talking with people my perceptions of his time there have radically changed. I should like to put his experience and the effect it had on the rest of his life and the lives of his family into some kind of perspective. I am hoping that by starting this journal of my attempts to do this other people may see it and contribute. I am also hoping it may act as an incentive to me to organise that box and get started.

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