Walter Padbury: His Life and Times by John Nairn

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Ex library copy with external stickers and protective plastic covering. Stamps and writing on inside pages. Scratch to front endpage map. Dust jacket is in near fine condition. Signed by author.

When the colony of Western Australia was a year old, 1650 white settlers had arrived, men, women and children - 1650 stories. This is one of them.

Here, for the first time, Walter Padbury's (1820–1907) biography is revealed. He recounts much of this story through his diaries, which are supplemented with newspaper cuttings. But these do not do him justice, as he was a modest, unassuming character.

Padbury had sailed as a child with his father from England on the small barque Protector. Within a few months of his arrival, his father was dead. Walter was left penniless and unwanted. A homeless orphan in a hostile land. He worked as a builder's labourer, servant, roustabout, barman and shepherd. He was a contract fencer then a cattle and sheep trader and overlander.

He became the colony's first millionaire and most outstanding philanthropist. (book flap)