author
W. Bede (William Bede) Christie
An Australian surveyor and journalist with a taste for adventure, he turned real journeys and lively local history into engaging nonfiction. His surviving work offers a vivid glimpse of travel, settlement, and public life in Australia around the turn of the 20th century.
1 Audiobook
Christmas on the briny : The innocents abroad; or, A holiday trip to the Abrolhos Islands
by W. Bede (William Bede) Christie
About the author
William Bede Christie was an Australian writer whose career ranged far beyond the page. Sources describe him as a surveyor in the Mildura and Wentworth districts of Victoria and New South Wales, and later as editor of the Wentworth Advocate in the late 1880s.
He was also active in Western Australia, where local historical accounts remember him as a surveyor, lecturer, business proprietor, and a strong promoter of regional development. That unusually varied background helps explain the practical, observant tone of his writing.
Christie is best known today for Christmas on the Briny; or, A Holiday Trip to the Abrolhos Islands, a travel narrative about a holiday voyage to the Abrolhos Islands off the Western Australian coast. Even in brief, his story feels larger than one book: he appears as one of those energetic colonial-era figures who moved easily between journalism, public debate, and life on the ground.