Overview

Friedrich Gerstacker, the most illustrious and prolific of German travel writers, set foot in Australia in March 1851, having walked across the Andes, traipsed the goldfields of California, and sailed over the Pacific in search of new adventures. Gerstacker found adventures aplenty in Australia. He rowed and trekked down the Murray, absorbed the excitement triggered by the discovery of gold, visited his countrymen in South Australia, and trained his outsider's eyes on a colonial society gripped by profound change. In this translated edition of Gerstacker's book Australien, his lively travelogue is made available for the first time in English. Rarely has Australia's colonial past been presented with such insight, humour and entertainment.

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9781743054192

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Friedrich Gerstacker was born in Hamburg in 1816. Inspired by the writing of Daniel Defoe, he set off for America in 1837 intending to become a farmer, and sent his mother a diary of his adventures. He returned to Germany in 1843 to discover that his mother had been publishing his diaries in a periodical to great popularity, and so his career as a best-selling writer began. Over the course of his adventurous life Gerstacker travelled to both the Americas, Tahiti, Indonesia, Egypt, and Australia. His trips were funded by a fruitful relationship with his publisher, and his considerable output was devoured by a legion of devoted readers, making Gerstacker a household name for many years. Friedrich Gerstacker died in 1872, suffering a stroke while preparing for a trip to Asia. Peter Monteath, a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, teaches History in the School of International Studies at Flinders University, Adelaide. His recent books include POW: Australian prisoners of war in Hitler's Reich, Red Professor: The Cold War life of Fred Rose (with Valerie Munt), Interned: Torrens Island 1914-1915 (with Mandy Paul and Rebecca Martin), and the edited collection Germans: Travellers, settlers and their descendants in South Australia.

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