Chequered Lives: John Barton Hack and Stephen Hack and the Early Days of South Australia by Iola Hack Mathews with Chris Durrant

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Ex library copy with no external stickers. no stamps and stickers on inside pages. RFID patch on back cover. Wear to book corners and edges, with tail corners now protected with book tape. Faint marks on tail foredge. Interior and binding are still very good.

Chequered Lives is the fascinating story of a Quaker family from England who camped on the beach in 1837 before the city of Adelaide was created but rose to own a 3000-acre estate in the Adelaide Hills.

Barton Hack built his first house where the Adelaide Railway station now stands, became a merchant who owned ships, a whaling station and the first vineyard in the Province, and was chairman of the first Chamber of Commerce in Australia. His younger brother Stephen became a grazier and explorer.

After they lost everything in the crash of 1841-1843, their lives took a very different turn.

When Barton's great-great-granddaughter, journalist Iola Mathews, opened a trunk full of their letters, diaries and memoirs, she knew she had to write the family's story. (back cover)