I'm slow ploughing though this,(along with a few other early Australian histories). This is a collection of extracts from several diaries of people who were part of the early colony. Finding that current historians ideas about the time are glossing over the hardships both the convicts and government officers suffered. The sea voyages were brutal but more recent historians say they were not. Seems brutal when almost half the early convicts died or were extremely ill on arrival - that has to be a brutal trip and not well provisioned for in terms of food and even clothing.. ( )