Exceedingly rare: this charming little Cork imprint contains an account of an Irish emigrant's life in Australia and especially his experiences on sheep stations and the gold fields. Not only are there are no copies listed in auction records or in library holdings, but a broad internet search also yields no traces of this book.
The work opens with some fairly disparaging comments regarding Indigenous Australians, but Murphy allows that "they make very good trackers. Their ear, eye and instinct are very sharp ..." It is then divided into two sections: the first thirty pages being "A Voyage to Australia" and the second, "Life in Australia."
The latter describes the rough and often partially nomadic life of the men working on the cattle and sheep stations and in the gold fields. While Murphy uses the literary trope of men reminiscing on a Christmas Eve and Day, he had obviously lived this life himself. The men, his friends and real-life characters, are described and they tell stories of their various experiences, rounding up catle and sheep, living in tents, working outdoors on stations, contesting with Chinese labourers etc. - one constant being heavy drinking.
Murphy includes a wonderful description of the men he worked with in Australia: "Now the life that those men lived was very rough in many respects, and many was the hard enduring trial that they might have to go through, for ginger bread men were not wanted. There was a kind of sociableness that existed among them, and a ready willingness to help one another, caused by the life they lived, which was not to be found in any other society; and many of these men were prodigals, well educated, keen and intellectual, who, perhaps after receiving a good education, and the sons of good, upright fathers and kind-heated mothers, did not act as they would wish them, sent them to the colonies to seek their fortune, so it was natural for them to have as kind a feeling as other men. Many of them rose to good positions, became wealthy men ..." There's every chance that this description might also have served as a potted biography of Murphy himself.
An Augustine Murphy is listed in Guy's City and County Almanac, Cork (1897) as living on Douglas South Rd in Cork city, who is probably our author.
Not in OCLC, not in Trove. We locate a single copy at the Cork City Library.
