Harmon Price, around the age of 80, decided to write a memoir. He did this. thinking it might be interesting to his grandkids to know something of what things were like a couple of generations before they began discovering the world for themselves. He taught himself how to use a computer, and then how to research archives. He corresponded with relatives near and far. He collected old photos. The result was something pretty special. At least I thought so. Click on his portrait, taken about the time he was writing, and see for yourself.

Enter Text

Inspired by my father's memoir, I began to think it might be worthwhile doing something similar. I was about 70 at the time, and it occurred to me that if I lived another twenty years, as he did, I would be telling an incomplete story. But then, I wasn't really thinking of autobiography so much as rumination. Father had lived through tumultuous times, and acted in them - and I had not. Quite the contrary, I have been the beneficiary of a time of unique prosperity, discovery and restless change. It was this record of something that would never be repeated in the human story that I wanted to try and tell for my own grandchildren. As I'm still going strong, there might be some additions to my memoir from time to time.

In the new year of 1884, Thomas Parker, my great-grandfather, left his native land for good, and with his young family, sailed to Queensland to make a new life, as thousands had done before him. He kept a journal recording his experiences of the voyage, between January and March 1884. Reading the text now is interesting in a number of ways. It gives you some idea of sea travel and emigrant conditions in late colonial times; there are hints of how this emigrant thought about his prospects, and you can get to know our ancestor a little bit, from the way he expresses himself, and the things he chooses to notice.