Guide to the Papers of Charles Holmes (as filmed by the AJCP)
M1860
National Library of Australia View Catalogue Record
Created: 2018
Online Items
Diary kept by Holmes on a voyage from Plymouth to Rockhampton on the Earl Granville (119pp.), 13 December 1880 - 14 April 1881 (File 1)
A very detailed account of the voyage, written for his family in England, and referring inter alia to conditions on the ship, food, clothing, the segregation of the single women, music and dancing, ill-treatment of seamen, a quarrel between the captain and surgeon, editing of a ship's newspaper, drill by rifle volunteers, surgeon's account of life in Queensland, sail-changing, weather and storms, whales, porpoises, albatrosses, advice to emigrants, sighting of Tasmania and N.S.W. coasts, arrival and early days at Rockhampton, prices, employment at hospital, and prospects.
Eight letters written by Holmes to his parents in Cambridge from Rockhampton, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, 1881 - 1884 (File 2)
The letters deal with Holmes' arrival in Australia, prices, travels in bush, work as ship's steward and with Brisbane Newspapers Company, temperance movement, climate, Indigenous Australians, music, illness (consumption) and hospitalization in Melbourne, breakup of marriage, unemployment, work as street minstrel, Test cricket, and family news.