When in 1893 German immigrant Dr Edward Hoche was appointed medical officer in Birdsville there was only one way to get there: he and his wife, Nellie, and their three children under five made the six-day journey through the December heat by stagecoach and buggy.
They had been told what to expect in Birdsville: a little house made of corrugated iron, its detached kitchen too hot, as it turned out, to cook in. Nobody had told them about the typhoid epidemic.
Through original letters and meticulous research the couple's granddaughter, Helen Ferber, has crafted a vivid account of the Hoche's, their children and extended family both in Australia and far-off Germany. Their story is an entertaining and fascinatingly well researched insight into family life in pioneering Australia.
