VI. Colonial Living, and Writing from the Colonies

The representation of colonial living in The Boy Colonists is unflinchingly accurate. Elwell’s account of station-building in the South Island is as honest as it is meticulous. Life is detailed exactly as it happened – almost as a play-by-play – rather than written with embellished fact or the need to create a sensational, plot-driven account – something more along the lines of what audiences might read today (such as a Jack Reacher thriller, or a Danielle Steel romance). This accurate focus is primarily down to the fact that depictions of colonial living – and building new societies overseas – were gaining traction throughout the 1800s. This was due to it becoming a popular reading topic, particularly for those whose loved ones actually were carving new futures or civilisations across the seas. New Zealand material, in particular, was “a very marketable commodity”, being so far away from the industrial centre of Europe (Bones 873). Of course, the family and friends of those who had travelled were in contact in the form of letters, but this still left a large population of the British public keen to learn about the New Zealand lifestyle.

Ethnographic writing in particular was the starting point that provided the British with understanding of new cultures, which the settlers had garnered from personal interaction and then recounted in the written word². This ethnographic approach in New Zealand was pioneered by the first French Marists and the British Anglican missionaries who made their way to the country, tasked with reporting their observations back to England. The missionaries took the tradition of ethnographic writing with which they had been armed, inspired by “a unique combination of colonial expansion and intellectual transformation”, and morphed it into more accessible, experience-based accounts (Rubiés 243).

While the depictions of these new settlements employed “many of the set-pieces and conventional tropes of exploration narratives”, the writing was different in its conflation of British social practises in a wilder, newer setting (Wevers, Country of Writing 34). It meant that writers were still intensely thorough in detailing every aspect of their findings, in order to maintain historical, colonial and scientific accuracy for audiences overseas, but now injected that with personal experience. Due to the monotony of early settler life in New Zealand, “initial reports” back home were “almost unbelievably boring, with their details of wool and tallow production” (Evans 20). Several accounts varied very little between each other, as each man encountered much of the same thing. However, tales from a ‘new world’ were still so extraordinary to hear about across the Pacific that a market for the content was steadily growing (21).

Concerning The Boy Colonists, the missionaries opened up a new facet of writing to feed back to their home countries from which Elwell was able to draw. Beyond simple nineteenth-century “exploration narratives” came the depiction of a specific way of life (Evans 20). These stories assessed both the writer’s external environments and the people they found within them, and Elwell was able to draw from this new style in writing The Boy Colonists. The hints of ethnographic writing – or a close resemblance – come in the descriptions of places and nature mentioned in the summary. Ernest consistently “examined the country around the hut[s]” he stayed in, describing in detail the native land (E. Elwell 36). While he begins his journey in Christchurch, Ernest’s work for the sheep stations takes him all across Southland in the South Island, often stopping in small settler towns to help expand their farmland. In these moments, several paragraphs are dedicated to explaining the changing landscape – from forest bush “full of birds” (29), to “table-land” rife with “large holes and chasms” (79). Even though Elwell discloses that Ernest (he) “knew nothing of geography”, he still writes to the best of his ability to detail his surroundings and situate the reader in the country (76).

Occasionally Elwell also elaborates on the function or history of certain aspects of the nature Ernest encounters, teaching his readers about his findings – a common practise in ethnographic writing. Audiences were not familiar with the content and appreciated in-depth explanations about form and function (Rubiés 237). Extensive passages are given to the “several purposes” of raupō reeds (E. Elwell 36), or the insect delicacies of the bush that Elwell feels “deserve some notice” in order to properly educate his readers (38). Even the job of sheep-shearing – which Elwell “thought to be miserable work” – is described in detail, so that the everyday consumers back in England would understand the processes of “tailing” or “waving” as they read (49). In these moments, Elwell refines the blend of ethnography and personal encounters that was pioneered by the first missionaries; it becomes a more holistic genre that both depicts the settler lifestyle and elaborates on the country that the settlers inhabited. The focus on nature and the physical experience within which Ernest is immersed is almost certainly inspired by the missionaries’ earlier work doing the same thing.

This increase in ability to write about the colonies was also somewhat attributed to the widening cohort of settlers who chose to depict their travels. Alongside those who travelled with the intention of recording their findings, were the large cohort of hopeful settlers who ended up doing the same through correspondence with their families. The publisher’s note that precedes The Boy Colonists notes that Elwell’s goal in writing this story was "‘to inform friends of the real nature of colonial life in the early days of the settlement of that Province” and is characterized by a cheerful acceptance of the hard work, primitive conditions, and the isolation endured on the sheep-stations” (E. Elwell ii, emphasis added). Settlers desired their writing to be truthful for the benefit of their families, which often lead to similar meticulous descriptions of the day-to-day that occur in Elwell’s story. The overall aim was to “provide a more realistic representation of what it ‘means’ to be [somebody living in New Zealand]”; therefore, texts written around the same time as The Boy Colonists also translated this emphasis on accuracy and peaceful acquiescence of a physically difficult life (Bones 863). It stemmed from a desire to reconnect with the homeland, to prove the legitimacy of their travels and to keep a relatively up-to-date log of their living conditions, which manifested in the written word.