Samuel Lindsay

Samuel Lindsay's Story

Sam Lindsay provides a unique take on life in Australia as seen through the eyes of a naive young Belfast boy in the 1880s and later. With limited education he struggles to learn about life and survival as a would-be swaggie in the Australian Outback only 20 years after the Burke and Wills expedition, a tragedy that made a huge impression on young Sam. Finding work wherever he can, Sam is in turn a grocer's assistant, cattle driver, hawker, manager of a herd of Afghan camels, politician, and driver in the Australian army, among other occupations. Sam has a prodigious memory, and he recalls the names of the people he meets throughout his travels, often adding a shrewd appraisal of their character as he recounts tales about them. Their descendants today, in Australia and elsewhere, may recognize their forebears in a decidedly new light. Whether Sam joins the army in the First World War out of commitment to the cause or as a solution to his financial problems we may never know, but he is well over age when he joins. He is posted to Egypt and has first-hand experience of the travails of war. He recounts his experiences with humour and philosophical acceptance. On his return from the war he tries politics, but leaves when disillusioned with the hypocrisy of politicians. Compiled probably in the late 1920s from notes he must have kept, this memoir tells of Sam's travels, encounters with all manner of people, hardships, and adventures as he assimilates all that he has learned and develops his ideas on the role of taxation in commerce and the importance of social justice.