Welcome
Between the years 1932 and 1941, my father kept these journals of tramps and vacation trips he and others took together. These twelve journals are all labeled by some variation of "Random Ramblings".
The journals are mostly A4 exercise books covered in brown butchers' paper. The entries are written in small script using ink pen and pencil and are often hard to read now. Interspersed throughout are small (82x56mm) black and white photos drawings and newspaper cuttings.
These boys and young men lived in a different world from us. In those days the hikes of Rover Scouts into the Southern Alps were duly reported in the city newspaper both before and after the event. The entries reflect a simple joy in being alive and in living in such proximity to such a magnificent landscape. It was a wonderful lightness of being that would be so cruelly taken from them all in the years that followed.
I hope to add the journal entries incrementally to this site as I
have the time. Subscribe to the RSS
channel to
see when a trip is added.
Enjoy a work in progress.
Graeme Black
September 2006
