Men and a River

Abstract

In mid 2011, as a then historian colleague of Louise Daley, I had been invited by the Richmond River Historical Society to write a 'Foreword' to their new edition of this classic frontier and settler text treating the exploration and settlement of the north-east region of New South Wales in colonial times. This work had first been published in 1966, and duly reprinted by the Sydney publishers, Angus and Robertson, in 1981. The ensuing edition of the book, that of 2011, was much expanded on its predecessor, with many relevant photograph plates, a fuller index, and also, a special feature, the book's editor, Robyn Braithwaite, contributing a fascinating biographical sketch of its American author, in 'The Amazing Mrs Daley' (pp. xxiii-xliv). This was an illuminating biographic portrait of the pre-Australia life of Louise Tiffany Daley. The new editor had been much assisted in the biographical writing by the descendants of Louise's first husband, but Robyn had included much less about the second husband. He was the early career historian, James Christy Bell (1889-1970), whom Louise, the Australian historian-to-be, had married in January 1932, by which time his career was much altered, being largely in banking, and then in diplomacy. (See 'The Amazing Mrs Daley', lac. cit., p. xxxi).