The Bushman

Edward Wilson Landor was one of the early colonists in the Swan River Colony, what is now Western Australia, and The Bushman is his book about that experience, published in 1847. The text mixes personal memoir with broader description of the colony’s geography, indigenous peoples, agriculture, and the difficulties faced by the early settlers.

Landor wrote with the assumptions and prejudices of his time. The portrayal of indigenous Australians is mostly that of a settler observing what he assumed was a doomed people, and modern readers should approach those sections with that historical context clearly in mind.

With those caveats, the book is a useful primary source for the early colonial period in Western Australia. The descriptions of practical conditions, agricultural failures, the relationship between officials and settlers, and the daily texture of colony life have value that academic histories often summarize but rarely quote at length.

For readers in Australian history or postcolonial studies, this is essential primary material.