More Pig Bites Baby!

Michael Connor (ed)

ISBN 1 876631 91 0

$20.00

Publication date: September 2004

Australia’s first newspaper, the Sydney Gazette, was bursting with fascinating stories. During the eleven-year reign of Governor Macquarie the face of the settlement was changed as solid stone buildings replaced the first tumbledown structures and the Blue Mountains were crossed, revealing tantalising glimpses of the great lands beyond.

Life went on in its own remarkable way. One man auctioned off his unprotesting wife in public, another was seen strolling through town carrying a human head in his pocket handkerchief. When the new convict barracks were opened, prisoners celebrated with a feast of beef, plum pudding and punch. During a trial in Hobart the accused cut the throat of a witness with his razor. Driving on the left was officially introduced.

It was a marvellous time of great achievement and excitement, when the colony was first called Australia, and there was a realisation that it could have a future greater than the prison it had been set up to be. That big story is told here in hundreds of small tales, capturing the tragedy, humour and adventures of ordinary lives.

“Early days in sin city … a picture of a wild place, where the bizarre routinely occurred … tells us more about what life was like than many conventional histories.”

Herald Sun, on Pig Bites Baby! vol 1