Backhouse and Walker arrived in Hobart on the 8th of February 1832. Their aim was ‘to discharge a duty of Christian love’. Over the next six years they travelled extensively around Van Diemen’s Land, made two visits to New South Wales, and visited the new colonies of Victoria and South Australia. Throughout this time they worked tirelessly to improve conditions for convicts, protect the Aborigines, and promote morality.

James Backhouse University of Tasmania Special and Rare Materials Collections

George Washington Walker: University of Tasmania Special and Rare Materials Collections

Backhouse’s A Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies provides valuable evidence of life in Van Diemen’s Land in the early nineteenth century. He recorded conversations with people who had been part of the first settlement in 1804. A young woman who had been a child at the time recalled being left in the care of Aborigines, while an ex-marine who had stayed on in the colony to earn a good living hunting kangaroos and emus, recalled confronting a giant forester kangaroo, nine feet high, on the site of the barracks in Hobart and often falling in with bands of Aborigines, ‘in whom there was then no harm’. He told Backhouse that the Aborigines hurt no one until two white men, charged with murder, escaped from Port Dalrymple and ‘got among them’. 11

Backhouse and Walker visited the Aborigines on Flinders Island and showed an interest in their welfare. 12 They did not share the disdain voiced by most colonists. When they came together socially, Walker observed, the Aborigines ‘are like so many brothers and sisters’. 13 He denied their intellectual inferiority. ‘They exceeded the Europeans in skill, in those things to which their attention had been directed in childhood’, he wrote, ‘just as much as Europeans exceeded them in points to which the attention of the former had been turned in the culture of civilization’. 14 He believed they were the just possessors of the land. ‘This priority of claim’, Lady Franklin noted after reading Backhouse’s letter on this matter to Governor Bourke, ‘must be admitted by anyone who wants equity and common justice’. 15

The Quakers spent most time observing the convict system, and ministering to as many convicts as were willing to join them in their meetings. Sir George Arthur, Lieutenant-Governor, facilitated their travel, giving them permission to interview convicts in road-gangs and to visit the notorious prison-camp at Macquarie Harbour. They likewise visited New South Wales and the penal establishment at Moreton Bay and Norfolk Island. Though critical of the abuses and casualties of the system, and ever ready to plead the cause of the unfortunate and repentant, Backhouse and Walker remained broadly supportive of policies that were designed, in theory if not in practice, at rehabilitation and reformation.

Walker saw the convict system in all its incarnations. In 1845 he had great hopes for the convicts who arrived in Hobart on the Sir George Seymour . The products of the new Pentonville system of discipline and reform, they bore themselves well and looked set for rehabilitation. Unfortunately, as he related in a letter, it all turned sour. Assigned to the backbreaking labour of the road gangs rather than agricultural work, and disappointed in their expectation of early employment on the land, the ‘Pentonville men’ fell back into misconduct and vice. Walker assured his correspondent that the failures should not be attributed to the system, but to mismanagement and conditions in the colony. He spoke feelingly of ‘the blighting influence of the “hope deferred which maketh the heart sick” and the constant influence and weight of the temptations to evil by which men under such circumstances are but too surely surrounded.’ 16

Detail of a trifold plate from A Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies depicting a chain gang 'originally drawn from the Hulk Chain Gang, Hobart Town'. inaccurately entitled by the engraver as 'Convicts going to work, nr Sidney [sic] N.S.Wales' as explained by James Backhouse in his introduction to the book

Convict Settlement, Sarah Island, Macquarie Harbour from a watercolour drawing in the possession of James Backhouse Walker : made by a prisoner at the Settlement and given to George Washiigton Walker on his visit there in the year 1832.

Bakery bill for the Walker family, 1883. University of Tasmania Special and Rare Materials Collections	Pencil sketch of Sarah Benson Walker by her daughter Mary : University of Tasmania Special and Rare Materials Collections
Part of the Quaker grey teaset belonging to George Washington Walker and his wife Sarah : Society of Friends' Meeting House Collection	The life and labours of George Washington Walker of Hobart Town, Tasmania by James Backhouse, London : A.W. Bennett, York, T Brady, 1862. University of Tasmania Special and Rare Materials Collections

Entrance to Port Davey, VDL. etching from a sketch by James Backhouse
from his book A Narrative of a visit to the Australian Colonies

Map of the travels of Backhouse and Walker in Van Diemen’s land - [shown by red lines]. Backhouse and Walker travelled extensively throughout Van Diemen’s Land, visiting every settlement,gaol and convict gang on the island.

Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur
(portrait from the original in the Mitchell Library, Sydney)

Letter from Govenor Arthur to James Backhouse and George Washington Walker, 1832 from James Backhouse's Letterbook. University of Tasmania Special and Rare Material Collections

Original Essays on Convict Discipline by Captain Alexander Maconochie, 1837, with some letters etc. in further illustration of the same subject by J. Backhouse and G.W. Walker 1937, University of Tasmania Special and Rare Materials Collections

A narrative of a visit to the Australian colonies by James Backhouse.London : Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1843.
Copy 'presented to the Tasmanian Society by the Author (James Backhouse)1844" University of Tasmania Special and Rare Materials Collections
http://gutenberg.net.au/dictbiog/0-dict-biogBa.html

Inscription - A Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies by James Backhouse, London, Hamilton, Adams and Co., 1843 : University of Tasmania Special and Rare Material Collections

James Backhouse - University of Tasmania Special and Rare Materials Collections