This is the last in the year of blog-posts that have followed the emigration of my forebears, George Robertson Nicoll and Sarah Baird Nicoll, on their life journeys from Dundee in Scotland to New South Wales in I have learnt a great deal along the way: about my home city of Dundee, about emigration, about gold-digging and farming, about house-building and coastal shipping in New South Wales. Their children saw themselves as Australians through-and-through, and it is to them that we must look to see the real consequences of the emigration journeys of their parents.
But for now, it is time to look back and also to look forward, to think β what next for this story? I was hopeful that sharing his story would shed light on emigration as a personal, social and cultural journey, but, if I am honest, I was not at all sure how this might happen.
And yes, he had plenty of them! George was not only courageous, resourceful and insightful; he was also self-opinionated and, at times, downright arrogant. George and Sarah were, to a large extent, therefore, Dundee β he, the blockmaker who worked at the harbour; she, the mother and linen powerloom weaver who worked in a factory. The story of their migration is the story of every successful migrant that left Scotland for the new worlds in the nineteenth century; in the words of Anthony Trollope :.
In the colonies those who make money are generally Scotchmen. Both were people of their day and time, and their triumphs and defeats say as much about the human condition as they do about themselves as individuals.
I would now like to consider this more deeply in the context of his book and journal, at the same time reflecting on the wider literature on emigrant homecomings. Between and , 2. Many of those migrants β estimated at between one-fifth and one-third β returned to their homeland, either sooner or later op. Meanwhile, the number of British migrants returning from Australia in the period to was even higher.
