Our Antipodes: or, Residence and Rambles in the Australasian Colonies (Second Revised Edition)

Colonel Mundy’s lively five-year account of the Australian colonies at the moment of the gold rush, illustrated from his own and his wife’s sketches.

Godfrey Charles Mundy (1804–1860) was the eldest son of a major-general and followed his father into the army, serving in India and Canada. In 1846 he arrived in New South Wales as deputy adjutant-general of the military forces in the Australian colonies. He toured the colonies with his cousin, the Governor-General Sir Charles FitzRoy, and left Australia in August 1851. His preface, dated London, 31 March 1852, explains that the book grew out of diaries he kept for more than five years in Sydney and on journeys through New South Wales, New Zealand, Van Diemen’s Land and Victoria, including the Bathurst gold field. He later served as under-secretary at the War Office during the Crimean War and as Lieutenant-Governor of Jersey.

The book is a traveller’s narrative of colonial life: the voyage out, convicts and emigration, the Aboriginal people, the neighbouring colonies and, in its final pages, the gold diggings. It was well received. The Spectator called the author “a lively, graphic, agreeable traveller”, though it thought three volumes bulky for readers who wanted their information quickly. It owes much of its appeal to its fifteen lithographs, twelve from Mundy’s own sketches and three from his wife Louisa’s. The best known shows the convict railway at Port Arthur. Bentley, the Queen’s publisher in ordinary, evidently saw demand. The work was revised and reissued within the year, and condensed single-volume editions followed.

MUNDY, Godfrey Charles. Our Antipodes: or, Residence and Rambles in the Australasian Colonies. With a Glimpse of the Gold Fields. In Three Volumes. London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty, MDCCCLII [1852].

Second Edition, Revised. Octavo, three volumes. Vol. I: 410 pp.; vol. II: 405 pp.; vol. III: 431 pp. Lithographed frontispieces to each volume and further lithographed plates throughout the set. Uniformly bound in blue cloth, blind-decorated, with a gilt vignette of a globe with polar markers to the covers and gilt titling to the spines. There is rubbing along the edges of all volumes, with wear to the corners and spine ends. The contents are generally very good, with sporadic marking and foxing. The bookplate of Henry White is on the front pastedown of each volume. A very good set.

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Catalogue Number: HH000799