Marsden Online Archive
It still amazes me that I can sit on my couch of an evening (fire crackling, tv blaring, #1 son immersed in the XBox) and yet the miracle that is the Internet means I can read a journal from 1814 in the original. Shall we pause for moment to consider how brilliant that is? The…
What were they thinking? The crazy cargo carried on Australia’s First Fleet
If you and about 1420 of your closest convict, marines and sailor friends were about to set off an expedition to Mars, what do you think you would take? That was the question faced by the British bureaucracy when provisioning the eleven vessels of the First Fleet in the late 1700s, before they set sail…
Saying Goodbye to your Children
This week I waved my son off to camp – he’ll be away for nine days. Elizabeth Macarthur waved her young sons off too, to be educated in England, for years at a time. I don’t think I can imagine how she felt. Or can I? Inga Clendinnen explored the problem at length in The…
Raffles and Marsden
This was going to be the best blog post ever. Well, best post since the last one anyway. I was going to include some photos of Fort Canning Park, in Singapore, which is near where I’m staying (yes, another work trip). And then I was going to mention how this park in the heart of…