Minerva Journal Of John Washington Price

John Washington Price was the surgeon of the transport Minerva, which sailed from Cork for Sydney in 1799 carrying two hundred convicts. Many of them were United Irishmen transported for their role in the 1798 rebellion. When Price set sail he was twenty-one, well educated, with a keen awareness of the world around him. His journal is lively, copious and detailed. He was an acute observer of people and his journal is full of minutiae about convicts, sailors and soldiers, and the flora and fauna encountered along the way. A highlight of the journal is the inclusion of Price's twenty-nine watercolour illustrations. These exquisite little works include unique and important scenes of Sydney, the first Government House, the indigenous people and the native fauna. In Sydney, Price was a frequent visitor to Government House. He met such leading figures as Bennelong, Dr Balmain, D'Arcy Wentworth, George Barrington and the Reverend Samuel Marsden, and his observations of town life contain a great deal of previously unrecorded information.