G.A.S. in Australia: Hot Air Down-Under?

Abstract

On Boxing Day 1884 world-famous English journalist and littérateur George Augustus Sala (1828-1895) set out from Liverpool, bound for Australia and New Zealand, via the United States. Like many other celebrities of the time, he was eager to cash in on the lucrative lecture circuits they offered. However, this was not his only aim, he was also travelling in his official capacity as 'special correspondent' to the London Daily Telegraph, having been commissioned to write a series of articles on his impressions of 'Australia and the Australians'. This was something he was particularly well equipped to do, since for the past twenty-five years he had been a regular and informative commentator on foreign affairs for the press, the 'special' being a role he had himself created when Charles Dickens had sent him to Russia to report on the aftermath of the Crimean War for Household Words in 1856. His lectures were to be based on this facet of his long career as a journalist.