| In December 1838, TLM-P travelled to [[wp>Gravesend|Gravesend]], at the mouth of the Thames River, and boarded the //Roxburgh Castle// to sail from England to Australia. He had turned 19 only a month previously and, not unusually, the trip involved a lethal outbreak of disease and a near shipwreck. It took five months to arrive in New South Wales, a penal colony where the land was being brutally wrested from its Aboriginal inhabitants. TLM-P had limited money; no family in the colony; and knew no-one other than an 'old friend', Dr Charles Scott, his cabin-mate on board ship.((TLM-P, Draft memoirs of a voyage from London to Sydney on the 'Roxburgh Castle' [c.1879], MLMSS6576 (copied from Praed papers, Oxley Library.)) What motivated him to take such a dangerous journey? Why would any parents risk their son in a venture that meant they may never see him again? How did he survive, and thrive, largely on his own at such a young age?\\ | In December 1838, TLM-P travelled to [[wp>Gravesend|Gravesend]], at the mouth of the Thames River, and boarded the //Roxburgh Castle// to sail from England to Australia. He had turned 19 only a month previously and, not unusually, the trip involved a lethal outbreak of disease and a near shipwreck. It took five months to arrive in New South Wales, a penal colony where the land was being brutally wrested from its Aboriginal inhabitants. TLM-P had limited money; no family in the colony; and knew no-one other than an 'old friend', Dr Charles Scott, his cabin-mate on board ship.((TLM-P, Draft memoirs of a voyage from London to Sydney on the 'Roxburgh Castle' [c.1879], MLMSS6576 (copied from Praed papers, Oxley Library.)) What motivated him to take such a dangerous journey? Why would any parents risk their son in a venture that meant they may never see him again? How did he survive, and thrive, largely on his own at such a young age?\\ |