The title suggests something rather weighty, but the presentation is hardly that. It is beautifully and lavishly illustrated, and would meet the needs of a good coffee table book.
For a reader attempting to read with continuity Dr Slee's text, it proved to be interrupted frequently by said lavish illustrations, and excerpts from the diary, written in 1840 by a convict, John Ward.
The value of the diary itself, only recently discovered, is not in question. John Ward at the time of writing was imprisoned on that ''Botany bay of Botany bay'', Norfolk Island. That he was enabled to write a diary that actually contained some pretty negative material was due to the more liberal and humanitarian governership of Captain Alexander Maconochie at that time.
Writing the diary Ward goes back to the beginning of his troubles, a rift between himself and his ''stern'' mother and ''indulgent'' father. John, possibly a rather ''spoilt'' child, is nonetheless not allowed, at 17 years old, to marry his great love Rose.
He turns to alcoholism, debauchery and crime, is caught, convicted and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment and transportation. His description of the Hulk, named York, on which he waits for 18 months for passage to Australia, gives a dreadful picture of the conditions and the hard labour that form part of his punishment.
There is interesting historical comment on the British government's problems with large numbers of convicts at that period, complicated by the fact the inhabitants of New South Wales decided they would accept no more convicts.
Also it is timely perhaps to recognise the cruelty and inhumanity of attitudes of the time, while recognising that a death sentence would have resulted a few years earlier, and to wonder perhaps how much has changed.
All of this and more is in the text and many transcriptions of John Ward's diary in this ultimately worthwhile and decorative book.
- Margaret Bannister is a retired Dunedin psychotherapist and science teacher.
