The Frolic

Edward Snell was born at Barnstaple in Devon in November 1820. Apprenticed at 14 to a foundry in Bath, he later was employed at the Swindon workshop of the Great Western Railway Company and progressed there to the position of head draughtsman and later assistant works manager. A financial crisis in 1848-49 affected wages at the works and Snell decided to emigrate to Australia.

He arrived in Adelaide on the Bolton on 29 November 1849 and spent the next two years in South Australia dabbling in surveying and painting, before deciding in 1852 to join the thousands of others trekking to the Victorian goldfields. Here he spent several months at moderately successful digging, before finding employment on the Geelong-Melbourne railway. He also undertook private work as a surveyor and engineer. From this work he made considerable money and in 1858 he returned to England. Edward Snell died in 1880.

During his time in Australia, Snell kept a diary which is profusely illustrated with detailed and humorous sketches of the world about him. Sketches of the scenes depicted in his watercolours can be found in the diary which is held by the State Library of Victoria and which was published in 1988. He comments on the events which motivated the drawings and which provide detail of the interaction with the local Aboriginal people.

Snell was on Yorke Peninsula from June to September 1850. Of the scene of kangaroo hunting on 18 August 1850 he wrote: '... we went out kangarooing again - killed 5 kangaroos and caught one young joey alive but he died soon after I got home and I skinned him intending to stuff him - we also killed a bandicoot on the way out. We cut off and kept the tails and skins of the kangaroos, giving all the rest to the natives ...'

Snell and the other men had several dogs which they used for their kangaroo hunts, and he recorded other occasions when they and the local Aboriginal men hunted together. They always shared the game, the white men keeping the tails for soup and giving the remainder to the Aboriginal people.

Snell had sailed to the Peninsula from Port Adelaide on the cutter Frolic. After several false starts they were finally successful on 14 June. Snell wrote: '... sailed at 8 o'clock with a stiff breeze from N.W. - got across this time and landed at Oyster Bay (Stansbury) at sunset- ...'

On the day recorded for the watercolour of the surveyors' encampment he wrote that the Aboriginal people visited the camp with fish which they bartered for tobacco. Snell's diary records the details of his visit to their camp later that day when he watched a corroboree and later sang English songs to them.

Permission to use this item for any purpose, including publishing, is not required from the State Library under these conditions of use.

Buy a high resolution copy.