About “A Sketch of Boroondara”
Bonwick's Sketch of Boroondara was published in 1858. It provides the earliest comphrensive description of the area.
Unlike Barnard's "Jubilee History of Kew," which appeared a little over fifty years later, the Sketch is not too difficult to access. The Book Collectors' Society of Australia produced a limited edition facsimile of the booklet in 1968. This is available in many libraries and copies appear from time-to-time at secondhand book dealers and other markets. Most importantly, the State Library of Victoria makes the work available online.
However, there is no comprehensive index or searchable text, making it difficult to use for reference purposes. In addition, the State Library copy of the Sketch mysteriously omits the final page of the work! This online version of the Sketch makes available to everyone the contents of the booklet whether for formal study or simply to browse one of the earliest accounts of the region. The final page is also viewable here as an image or pdf: page 39.
Using the Google search box in the left side bar allows the full text of the booklet to be searched.
The layout of the online version of the Sketch is as close to the printed version as browsers allow. Original page numbers are shown as «x». This indicates the end of a page and that what follows is on page x.
The original spelling has been maintained. There are possible errors in the original book.
The online version was created using optical character recognition followed by extensive manual checking and correction. Whilst every care has been taken to ensure that the original text has been reproduced accurately, errors may remain. If you identify any errors, or if you have any queries, please contact me at
Full details of the original publication are given on the title page. It should generally be cited as: Bonwick, James, “A Sketch of Boroondara” Melbourne: J.J. Blundell & Co., 1858. If you wish to cite material retrieved from this web site, add “Retrieved from http://www.biostats.com.au/Bonwick on dd/mmm/yyyy” where dd/mmm/yyyy is the last date on which you accessed the material.
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