Joseph Jenkins

The three Australian faces of Joseph Jenkins: Swagman, rural labourer and man of letters. He had the photos taken in March 1871 to post home to Wales in explanation of the life he was leading. Each role was amplified by an accompanying descriptive poem of over 20 lines.

Joseph Jenkins (Bardic name: Amnon II) (27 February 1818 – 26 September 1898), was an educated tenant farmer from Tregaron, Ceredigion, mid-Wales who, when aged over 50, suddenly deserted his home and large family to seek his fortune in Australia. The Australian Dictionary of Biography says that "Jenkins's noteworthiness stemmed from the rich documentation of his experiences and thoughts that has survived". He was a consistent diarist for 58 years of his life and an award-winning poet.

He achieved fame posthumously from publication of some excerpts of his Australian writings. The compiler, his grandson Dr William Evans, a Harley Street cardiologist, coined the title Diary of a Welsh Swagman by which name he is familiar to generations of Victoria school students for whom the book became a prescribed history text in 1978. In 1846, he married his second cousin Elisabeth (Betty) Evans of Tynant. They purchased the lease of Trecefel farm, Tregaron and had nine children, the last of whom, John David, was born in April 1868.

Jenkins commenced education under a disciplinarian private tutor and later attended a small Unitarian church school at Cribyn, a five-mile walk from home. Throughout his life, he bewailed his lack of more formal education. However, his thirst for knowledge, religious temperament, and passion for reading and writing, proved a firm basis for continuing self-education. The Eurynome was an 1163-ton sailing vessel, transporting casks of beer to Australia on the clipper route, with 12 passengers in a first-class saloon and 21 (including Joseph) who paid a much lower price to share frugal and unhygienic steerage accommodation on the voyage of 140 days, including three terrifying weeks of gales in the Roaring Forties.