author
E. (Edward) Hulme
1818–1904
An English-born artist and settler, he turned decades of life in colonial Victoria into a firsthand memoir full of practical experience and personal grit. His work captures both the hardships and possibilities of building a new life in Australia.
1 Audiobook
A Settler's 35 Years' Experience in Victoria, Australia And how £6 8s. became £8,000
by E. (Edward) Hulme
About the author
Born in England in 1818, Edward Hulme trained as an artist and later emigrated to Victoria, Australia, with his wife and children in the mid-1850s. Sources on his life describe him not only as a writer, but also as a painter, lithographer, art teacher, farmer, and gold-miner.
After arriving in Melbourne, he found work connected with the decoration of the Victorian Parliament House and exhibited his art in Australian shows. His varied career helps explain the grounded, observant quality of his writing: he knew colonial life from many angles, from practical labor to artistic work.
He is best remembered in the book world for A Settler's 35 Years' Experience in Victoria, Australia, a memoir that looks back on life in the colony from 1856 to 1891. The book stands out as a vivid personal record of migration, perseverance, and everyday experience in nineteenth-century Australia.