Vagabond Country: Australian Bush & Town Life in the Victorian Age
Australian History Local History Social History Non-Fiction Colonial History Cultural Studies Victorian Era Studies
Michael Cannon’s first-edition hardback “Vagabond Country: Australian Bush & Town Life in the Victorian Age” is the book collectors reach for when they want the smells, sounds and raw opinions of 19th-century Australia, not the sanitized version found in textbooks. Drawn from newspaper columns of the era, these eyewitness reports by Australia’s original “vagrant” journalists—men who tramped from goldfields to shearing sheds, from crowded city lanes to remote bush pubs—record what ordinary folk really said about work, drink, race, politics and survival. The result reads like a time-travel documentary in print: brawling street gangs in Ballarat, Chinese market gardens outside Bendigo, Aboriginal missions, women running grog shanties, and the first flickers of unionism on the wharves. Because every sketch was filed on the spot, the book crackles with slang of the day and offers front-row access to colonial Australia you simply won’t find in official archives.
What makes this 1981 first printing especially desirable is its heavyweight reference value wrapped in a highly readable narrative. 225 pages are packed with period photographs, engravings and maps, all preserved beneath a crisp dust-jacket that announces “1st Edition” on the copyright page. The sewn binding is still tight, pages are spotless, and there is no writing, ex-libris plate, or dog-earing—only light shelf-rub to the jacket from three decades of careful ownership. For writers, genealogists, teachers or heritage buffs, the extensive index and chapter notes turn the book into an instant launch-pad for deeper research on topics as specific as shearers’ strikes, opium dens, or the price of a loaf in 1885.
Beyond academia, “Vagabond Country” is pure storytelling gold. Young-adult readers enjoy its fast, journalistic pace; adults appreciate the social history that explains modern Australia’s egalitarian streak. Whether you’re filling a gap in an Australiana collection, sourcing authentic detail for historical fiction, or hunting a special gift for a history lover, this illustrated first edition delivers a vivid, unfiltered window onto the Victorian bush and town life that shaped the nation.
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