“Going into this project I knew that there would be a predominance of wealthier diarists, which comes down to a combination of education, leisure time, and social expectations of how ladies occupied themselves. But there are also examples from less well-off women, some of whom struggle to write well or even coherently, who buck this stereotype and provide valuable descriptions of the lives of hard-working women in city and country alike.

Still, the diaries can only reflect the experiences of certain kinds of women. They are of course all literate to varying degrees, and entirely of British or European heritage. The window into nineteenth century life that these diaries give us will therefore never be a holistic view of colonial Queensland. With few exceptions we are lacking input from the women with less access to education, the manual labourers, the ones without access to writing materials, those of a non-English speaking background, and those who do not come from a culture which performs diary-keeping as a pastime.

While not a direct voice, the women writing these diaries at least describe the lives of non-diarists, and this is important knowledge even if it is coloured by the bias of the observer. For example, several of the diarists records their interactions with and opinions of the First Nation Peoples of Queensland and Northern New South Wales. These external observations are no substitute for the histories and voices of FNP themselves. They do however give us valuable insights into the uniqueness of individual relationships between colonists and Aboriginal persons. They tell us of the expectations of colonist women regarding their interactions with FNP, particularly the women from the local communities. The reactions of these diarists are sometimes predictable – patronising, disrespectful – but at other times reveal a deep empathy and describe attempts to respect and learn from the Custodians upon whose land they are living.

While my focus is on the diaries themselves, I have also attempted to give them further context by using other primary and secondary sources such as newspapers and genealogical records.  These sources help to fill out our understanding of these women’s lives, by placing them in the context of their general environment – the locations, politics and major events of colonial Queensland help us to understand how their concerns and hopes fit into the wider social landscape.

I hope you enjoy hearing about some of these women, and I hope that these diaries open some windows into what life was like and inspire readers to keep digging into the history of Queensland.”