Thursday, January 20, 2022

Thirty Years In Australia

 In 1870, after only a few weeks of marriage, Ada Cambridge left England to live in Australia with her husband who was a rector. Every few years they traveled to a new parish. Ada describes the beautiful sounds of the birds, the wild flowers and the people. She and her husband usually had servants but life in Australia was hard and sometimes dangerous. In her memoir, Thirty Years In Australia, Ada details her impressions of her life as a rector's wife. She thought the church demanded too much of her because she often had to play the organ during the service plus lead the singing and entertain during the week. She writes about the births of her children. She writes about the furniture she had to get rid of before moves and the new furniture she had to get at her new outpost. I thought her writing was  oddly stilted story regarding the people but eloquent when it came to the noisy cockatoos or the lively tree possums. I can tell she liked nature. Ada writes about her writing that she sold to local newspapers. I thought this book gave me a new perspective on Australia.


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