The initial knowledge of the materials contained in this book came to the writer from a broken run of Household Words which he first read as a child. It consisted of unbound weekly parts of the journal for the year 1853, a period during which the attention of England had been focused on Australia because of the gold strikes and consequent commercial boom. This story is told as evidence of the widespread currency of these journals and of the way in which a pioneering family in Victoria prized these pages which so often discussed their life in a harsh but fresh new world. Indeed, so fondly were these much thumbed pages regarded that, despite early removal to New Zealand and the wear and tear from several generations, they were preserved for the writer to read almost a century later.