John Hutchinson in Australia and Fiji.

WHEREABOUTS UNCERTAIN JOHN HUTCHNSON, described as "surgeon", was one of seven cabin passengers who left London in September 18521 on the first Australian voyage of the Washington Irving (900 tons, Captain John Jones).2 The voyage was recorded as "without untoward incidents and very pleasant" although one of approximately 270 intermediate and steerage passengers (including about fifty children) hanged himself in a fit of despondency. But excitement and tension must have mounted as the slhip negotiated the dangerous heads to Port Philip Bay and sailed to a crowded anchorage close to Melbourne on 11 December 1852. News of the startling gold discoveries in Victoria in 1852 had already created a migratory wave from England, for the most part of young, healthy, single men. In 1852, Dr. Hutchinson was but one of 45,000 arrivals from England amongst a total from all sources of nearly 80,000, which almost doubled the population of the district. Unfortunately, we know nothing of his impressions of the disorganized, turbulent, flamboyant and insanitary Melbourne during its dramatic period of transition from a village not two decades old to the "Queen city of the South". What were his reactions to the extortionate costs of landing and transporting his luggage to lodgings remarkable more for their rental than their comfort and service, or to the realization that his sterling pounds were transferable into local currency only at a discount of twenty per cent? Was he startled by the waterfront "Rag Fair", where disillusioned new arrivals sold their few possessions to raise the capital necessary to get them to the diggings, or appalled by the hasty development of Canvas Town, close to Prince's Bridge, housing several thousands of his fellow migrants for a week or so whilst they organized their resources?s