Media: paperback - 200 pages
Year: 1997
Authors: J. Casanova & K. Price

Publisher’s Introduction (Kenneth Bonamy Price)

Henry Price’s arrival in South Australia in 1841 and his early days in the Port Lincoln area have been written up in “The Price Family Record” edited by Charles A Price and Kenneth B. Price (Gould Publishing Services, 1993).

Our great grandfather, Henry Price, occupying land in the Port Lincoln area between 1845 and 1855, left a diary covering the years 1849 to 1853 of his life and experiences at Koppio, Tulka, and at his home at Port Lincoln. This diary passed to our grandfather Henry Archibald Price of “Tutuila” Crafers, and then to our father, Archibald Grenfell Price, KT.

Our father, an eminent historian and geographer, used the diary to research early family history.

To the reader, the diary presented certain problems, in that it was very difficult to follow. So, in 1992,1 asked John Love, who had spent a lifetime in the Adelaide Archives deciphering unreadable handwritings, if he would transcribe the diary into a readable form, which he did. His transcription notes are attached. My thanks go to him for his painstaking and accurate work, and to my daughter Pauline Price who typed up the transcript.

It was towards the end of the 1980s that I was first helped by two members of the Casanova family of Port Lincoln. The first was Laurie Casanova, who on learning that we were about to publish “The Price Family Record”, greatly assisted me with the section “Henry Price at Spalding and Port Lincoln”. Jack Casanova, Laurie’s brother, who had recently completed “Fading Footprints”, being the story of early pioneer families on the Lower Eyre Peninsula, heard about the possible publication of the diary and offered to edit it.

Jack Casanova, with his remarkable knowledge of the times, has contributed something of real value to the early history of the area and I am grateful to him for his diligence and his sympathetic understanding of our great grandfather Henry and great grandmother Isabella, and the problems which they faced.

There are two large gaps in the Henry Price Port Lincoln diary. The first is from 3 October 1849 to 28 August 1850: the second is from 21 December 1850 to 29 January 1851. The diary begins on 8 July 1849 several years after Henry and Isabella had moved into the Koppio area. It ends in July 1853 when the family returned to Adelaide.

I am immediately struck, when reading Henry Price’s diary by the hardships which our ancestors had to endure. The first is the health aspect. Henry and his brothers and sisters left Guernsey, I have been told, in order to seek a warmer climate in which to live. Although Henry lived to a ripe age, his lifestyle in the Port Lincoln area was far from healthy. On numerous occasions he appeared to sleep out in the open or in waterlogged huts. His diary makes constant reference to rheumatism or similar sickness, brought about by inclement conditions. Port Lincoln, of course, supported a Doctor from early times, but that was not much help to Henry in the day to day running of his properties.

The second point which emerges from the diary was the constant problems over insecurity of tenure. Tenants who held land under licence or short lease were never sure whether their tenure would be renewed, or whether some rival or partner with greater influence in Adelaide than they possessed, would be granted the holding at the termination of the licence or lease. Until tenure was secure, no sensible landholder would be prepared to spend money on property improvements.

I have compiled a diary of relevant events surrounding the life of Henry Price in the Port Lincoln area, also a limited family tree of the Price family from Guernsey, and the Young family from Leith in Scotland.

Contents
Publisher’s Introduction
Diary of Relevant Events
Bibliography
Transcription Notes
Introduction to the Diary of Henry Price
1849
1850
1851
1852
1853
Epilogue
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Appendix 4 Arthur Hardy’s Strawberry Hill-Green Patch Run, 1851
Appendix 5 Arthur Hardy’s Sleaford Bay-Tulka Run, 1851
Appendix 6 Life History of Arthur Hardy
Subject Index
Place Index
Name Index