A Different Earth: Cornish Pioneer Miners to Australia: The Story of Jane Dunstan and Her Family: Cornwall to Burra and Overland to Gold by Max C S Beck

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges. Front cover right tail corner is now protected from further wear by book tape.

Based on a true story, A Different Earth is an epic tale of a resilient, pioneering woman. On the threshold of starvation, when the potato blight hits Cornwall, Jane Dunstan decides to rescue her family from desperate poverty and her husband, Richard, from the dreadful conditions in the mines.

She successfully applies for a "free passage" to migrate to South Australia. The family arrived in 1849 only to travel 100 miles north of Adelaide by bullock wagon to the Burra copper mines.

At Burra they live in an underground dugout in the banks of the Burra Creek and Richard, with his three eldest boys, works in the mine. To Jane, it's a dramatic time, with floods, a new baby born underground and the tragic loss of her husband and two daughters.

On discovering gold in Victoria in 1851, Jane hires a bullock dray and driver to take her remaining six children on a courageous six-week, 550 mile overland trek to the Victorian goldfields. On arriving at the diggings, Jane is horrified by what she sees but ultimately remarries and has three more babies, bringing her total issue to eleven.

She eventually has fifty-nine grandchildren. (back cover)