Colonial tourism in Victoria,Australia, in the 1840s: George Augustus Robinson as a nascent tourist

Using the private journals of George Augustus Robinson as a lens, this paper is concerned with generating insights into the emergence of tourism in colonial Victoria, during what Towner calls its ‘tourism era of discovery’. Robinson was the Chief Protector of Aborigines and is generally regarded as the most travelled man in Victoria in the 1840s. Robinson was reconstructed as a ‘nascent tourist’ whose gaze was mediated by British conventions of the picturesque and panoramic, confirming that new world tourism in Australia in the nineteenth century is rendered in old world paradigms. The role played by private landholders in creating ‘nascent private tourism’ and the nexus between explorers, travellers and tourists were also highlighted. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.