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Leichhardt Letters p2

READERSVOICE.COM continues with samples from the 1944 book Leichhardt Letters…

Ludwig Leichhardt describes Sydney in 1842:

Now there stands a town of 42,000 inhabitants surrounded on all sides by the portly homes of its wealthy inhabitants. She lies partly in a dale and partly built up along two hills, comprising, as a rule, large houses and wide streets. Sandstone, which is the dominating geological formation of the district, can often be seen in the streets, and, frequently, the latter are hewn out of it.

10 November, 1842:

I left that town and went by steamship to Newcastle. As a rule, the steamer leaves Sydney at 10 p.m. and arrives next morning at 7 a.m. in Newcastle. This is a small town, which clusters round the descending river banks. A wealthy squatter [a pastoralist, originally an illegal occupier of crown land, usually involved in grazing sheep for wool production, or in the cattle industry], whose acquaintance I had made in Sydney, offered me his hospitality during my stay, and I have been living with him for the past seven weeks.

August 27, 1843:

I saw the German missionaries in Moreton Bay [Brisbane], some of them originally coming from Berlin and Pomerania…I imagined myself to be back home when I attended their German church service on a Sunday. There are 7 families and two preachers; the whole congregation has now 22 small children who are probably better reared than any other children in the colony. [This was in the current suburb of Nundah in Brisbane. German missionaries came to Moreton Bay to convert the indigenous population to Christianity. Leichhardt wrote that the attempts were unsuccessful.] 

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