Sunday 8 January 2012

Picton and Queen Charlotte Sound

Queen Charlotte Sound - almost impossible to capture on film. The vistas and secluded coves go on and on and on. When we departed Picton it took an hours driving to escape the inlets which seemed to keep pursuing us.


So much water pounding through the valleys and repleninsing the already fat waterways.



And a clue to my great grandfather Lorenzo and his family's shipboard experience on their journey in 1881. The Edwin Fox was built in 1853 and travelled between Europe, Australia and New Zealand as a cargo and passenger ship (later a coal haulage vessel in New Zealand). It was the last ship to transport convicts to Australia (Western Australia) and carried 180 passengers in steerage class, 20 first class and a crew of 40.


Robert Louis Stevenson's wrote a vivid account of the life of the 'steerage class'passengers during his trip from Britain to Canada in the late 19th century. It was hell.

1 comment:

Jennifer said...

Well - sure some vistas are almost impossible to capture on film, in terms of the trip so many took in other times, a picture paints a thousand words. Just yesterday we were at the Art Gallery of Ontario and looked at a sculpture titled: "Migration" - many heads looking up over a the sides of a small craft, and thought about what such a trip must have been like.

Couldn't begin to imagine the hell.