"At Ballarat I visited Mr Roberts the photographer, and asked him to take my portrait…"

wrote Joseph Jenkins in March 1871.

During 1874 Joseph was taken ill and spent nearly two months at this hospital in Maryborough. Even while he was sick in hospital he continued to write in his journal.

Castlemaine was a thriving gold mining town in the 1850s and 1860s when Joseph Jenkins lived and worked in the area. Jenkins stayed at this hotel during one of his visits to Castlemaine.

Photograph: albumen silver carte-de-visite.

Joseph Jenkins moved around Victoria, working as an agricultural labourer. Many men were required to harvest grain and hay before these tasks were mechanised.

This photograph was taken near Lake Bolac in Victoria.

Negative: glass.

In 1875 Joseph worked at Spray Farm on the Bellarine Peninsula:

"I find that the working hours are three or four shorter every day than where I was before, also the living is ten times better, in fact this place is too good for an unfortunate man like myself..."

Maldon at the time that Joseph Jenkins lived and worked there.

Castlemaine was a thriving gold mining town in the 1850s and 1860s when Joseph Jenkins lived and worked in the area.

One of a series of postcards showing swagmen and other characters of the Victorian bush.

During his time in Australia Joseph Jenkins did a variety of different forms of manual labour including wood cutting and clearing, similar to the work of these men in the forests of Gippsland.

This is a wood engraving published in The Illustrated Australian News.

One of a series of postcards showing swagmen and other characters of the Victorian bush.

Swagmen or swaggies have been a feature of the Australian rural environment since before Joseph Jenkins hitched his swag in the 1860s.

As unemployed or itinerant workers, they moved around the country following available work. These images depict the unchanging life of the swaggie at different times over the last 100 or more years.

The swagman was sometimes known as a 'sundowner'.