by Jenny Coates | 28 Jun 2019 | Ada Cambridge, North East Victoria, Wangaratta
After Ada Cambridge wrote about the people who became her closest friends during her short residence in Wangaratta, she took to observing the community and comparing it to life in England. And as for the cottage people - the marked thing about them was that they were...
by Jenny Coates | 14 Jun 2019 | Ada Cambridge, North East Victoria, Wangaratta
As we saw in Part 5 of this series, Ada Cambridge remarked on the egalitarian nature of early 1870s Wangaratta society, and mentioned a few friends who were from the "tradesfolk" class. After recalling the wife of a stationer - identified as Anne Bickerton (nee...
by Jenny Coates | 17 May 2019 | Ada Cambridge, Family Tree, North East Victoria, Surnames I am Researching, Wangaratta
After doctors, bankers came next in social importance in Wangaratta according to Ada Cambridge's memoir Thirty Years in Australia. She described them as "the backbone of country society", remarking how important it was that "they should be popular with their...
by Jenny Coates | 3 May 2019 | Ada Cambridge, North East Victoria, Wangaratta
After discussing the Police Magistrate who she considered the upper echelon of Wangaratta society in her memoir Thirty Years in Australia, Ada Cambridge tackled the doctors. Next to the P.M. in the social scale came the doctors. There were two, English gentleman both....
by Jenny Coates | 20 Apr 2019 | Ada Cambridge, North East Victoria, Wangaratta
Continuing on a study of the personal memoir of novelist Ada Cambridge titled Thirty Years in Australia we come to the first description of her social life in Wangaratta. The town of W-, where we spent the first year of our Australian year, was a typical country-town...
by Jenny Coates | 11 Apr 2019 | Ada Cambridge, North East Victoria, Wangaratta
Ada Cambridge was a well known, late 19th century novelist and poet. Born as Ada Cambridge in 1844 in Norfolk, England, she married the Reverend George Frederick Cross in Cambridgeshire in April 1870, and within five weeks the young couple had boarded a steamer...