When Niel Black, one of the most influential settlers of the western district of Victoria, stepped onto the sand at Port Phillip Bay in 1839 and declared Melbourne to be 'almost altogether a Scotch settlement' he was paying the newly created outpost of the British Empire his highest compliment. When he then writes in his journal of his servant's wife giving birth in a stable not fit for pigs, he provides both of the realities of early settlement: great personal hardship and danger and the promise of great wealth and success.""Strangers in a Foreign Land"" tells the stories of unknown settlers alongside the drama of Niel Black's renowned journal. There is the mother of a six-week-old baby perched on a wagon in the middle of the bush journeying out to her husband's station. There are Aboriginal women chased down by Black on horseback and Aboriginal warriors who threaten from the edges of the forest. There is Arabella Cooke writing to her sons being educated in England and trying to hold back the tide of loss she feels not having them near her. And there is the memoir of Jane Caverhill who remembers her childhood in the western district.Exploring the extensive collection of the Western District material from the State Library of Victoria, ""Strangers in a Foreign Land"" evokes the physical environment the sense of place and dislocation and the hopes and the anxieties that the early settlers carried with them as they journeyed to make their homes in the western districts.
