Book. ALEC H CHISHOLM COLLECTION. A 60 page book of Australian poetry by Hugh McCrae. Selection and introduction by Douglas Stewart. Published in 1966 by Angus & Robertson 'Australian Poets' Series and printed the Halstead Press, Sydney. Catalogue sticker ''2109 MCC'' on front cover.Hugh McCraebooks, collections, poetry, alec h chisholm collection, hugh mccrae, douglas stewart, poetry

non-fictionMelbourne 1841-1865 Georgiana McCrae was the grandmother of the poet Hugh McCrae and one of the most graceful of Australia's early diarists. In 1841, only six years after Melbourne was founded, she arrived in the Port Phillip district where she was to spend forty-nine of her eighty-seven years. Her journal is not only a fascinating personal document but an invaluable reflection of the social life and history of the infant settlement. As well as being an artist of considerable talent—even genius (she had been a favourite pupil of the water-colourist John Varley), Georgiana had been an indefatigable diarist since she was a little girl; and to this cultivated and therefore perhaps lonely young woman in the embryo town that was Melbourne her journal was her confidant and companion. Whether she is telling how Bishop Broughton "exonerated the Popish party from the blame in the Gunpowder Plot", or how her son was within an inch of treading on a snake which I killed with the stick of my parasol", whether she is spring cleaning, combating a grasshopper plague, or making a velvet bonnet for her daughter, she is always perceptive and arresting in recording her daily life and the affairs of the colony.georgiana mccrae, melbourne (vic.)