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Diary of a swagman
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Pity The Swagman. The Australian Odyssey of a Victorian Diarist
Bethan Phillips, Y Olfa, £16.99
ON a cold December evening in 1868 Joseph Jenkins, a Welsh tenant farmer aged 50 had had enough. He abandoned his wife and eight surviving children and trudged overland to Tregaron Station, thence to Aberystwyth, on to Liverpool and bought a one-way ticket to Australia.
The proximate cause of this sudden departure wasn’t economic, and he wasn’t leaving to remit funds back home. Joseph was good at farming. Despite the Welsh winters his cattle were prize winners. He was a renowned poet, much in demand for verses at weddings. He was instrumental in getting rail services into Cardiganshire. A faithful agent of the aristocracy he canvassed in elections for the preferred landlord class.
But he wasn’t an easy man to live with in and May 1868 his family severely beat him up.
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