Book

Details of the book

In 1862 a middle-aged couple, James and Frances Reed, accompanied by all ten of their adult children, left their established home in Sydney to restart their lives 800 kilometres away in the fledgling far western NSW town of Bourke. “All our tracks and ways” records their life stories and those of their parents and children, three generations of ordinary working people who forged a better life for their descendants built on kinship, initiative and enterprise.

The book provides a history of this pioneering Bourke family headed by a devoted, resilient and resourceful couple whose lives of initiative and enterprise helped to forge a better future for their descendants. It details the struggles and successes of three generations of ordinary people from rural England and Ireland throughout the nineteenth century. The background to their lives features the Napoleonic and Aboriginal Wars, the development of democracy in NSW and the experience of women on the Australian frontier.

Numerous details of the story are not otherwise known. The book examines the difficult decision to remain in Australia when the patriarch’s regiment was redeployed to India and then details a turbulent decade spent fruitlessly searching for advancement. It explains the societal forces that influenced their decision to move to Bourke, including the gold rush, the expansion of grazing, the displacement of the aboriginal population, the 15 year moratorium on settlement in the district and the land reforms of the early 1860s.

The middle chapters recount a Dickensian series of tribulations that beset almost every member of the family during the late 1870s, culminating in the gruesome death by fire of a treasured granddaughter. The later chapters cover the couple’s final years and feature family photographs, the cameleers’ arrival, Bourke’s central role in the shearers’ strikes that led to the formation of the Australian Labor Party, inundation by floodwater, a typhoid epidemic and the horrible heatwave of 1896 that killed 47 townspeople in two weeks. The Epilogue ties up the loose ends of this dynastic tale, including the experiences of nine grandsons in the Great War, where three made the ultimate sacrifice.

The main theme of this book is that the lives of ordinary people can illuminate the past in much the same way as those of society’s leaders.

Contents

The book is richly illustrated with 9 maps, 3 charts, 18 illustrations and 20 photographs. It provides an heirloom quality product with appeal to Reed descendants, past and present residents of Bourke and their descendants and readers with a general interest in the history of NSW. Here is the list of chapters:

1. James Reed's origins
2. Frances Heazle's origins
3. Married life
4. Emigration
5. Duty and discharge
6. Turbulent years
7. Inexorable expansion
8. Impetus for change
9. Bourke
10. Life on the frontier
11. Reunited
12. Work, save, invest
13. The Lame Horse and the Mountain Home
14. Jimmy, Alexander & Jane
15. The Mining Boom
16. The Bourke and the Overland
17. The worst of times
18. Life goes on
19. Flood and strife
20. Brassy skies and bare plains
21. Epilogue
22. Appendix 1. Bourke Hotels
23. Appendix 2. Family Group Sheets

How to buy

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