Vagabond Country: Australian Bush & Town Life in the Victorian Age
Australian History Local History Social History Non-Fiction Colonial History Cultural Studies Victorian Era Journalism History
Vagabond Country: Australian Bush & Town Life in the Victorian Age is a scarce 1981 first-edition hardcover that sweeps readers into the 1880s through the eyes of the colonial “Vagabond” journalists who roamed the outback and city slums to expose what life was really like for shearers, miners, larrikins, immigrants and Aboriginal people. Michael Cannon—one of Australia’s most respected social historians—has stitched their forgotten newspaper sketches, diary snippets and eyewitness reports into a vivid, story-driven narrative that still feels astonishingly fresh. The result is a 225-page illustrated time-capsule that lets you smell the gum-tree smoke, hear the pub pianos and feel the dust of Cobb & Co. coaches without ever leaving your armchair.
Collectors prize this volume because it preserves the raw voices of ordinary Australians rather than the official record of governors and parliaments. Cannon supplies just enough context to link each Vagabond article to its larger historical moment—land selection, the shearers’ strikes, the rise of the bush ballad—so the book works equally as immersive bedtime reading or as a scholarly reference for senior school or university Australian-history courses. Period engravings, town maps and early photographs appear on almost every other page, turning the book into a visual gallery of bush architecture, street fashion and colonial commerce.
This copy is clean, tight and unmarked inside; the dust jacket shows only light shelving rub, so it presents beautifully on a shelf yet is sturdy enough for repeated reading. Because it was printed in Australia in a modest first-edition run and never reprinted in this exact illustrated large-format hardcover, it surfaces online only rarely in collectible condition. Whether you’re hunting for a unique gift for an Aussie-history buff, filling a gap in a heritage library, or curating a Victoriana shelf, Vagabond Country delivers the colour, humour and grit that made the colonial frontier uniquely Australian.
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