More on Donald Cameron.(Biography)

Donald Cameron was born in Armidale in 1845; his father was John Cameron and mother Ann. They were Presbyterians. according to the NSW Biographical index.

I thought I had discovered Donald's father, John Cameron, as one of the earliest settlers in the New England region, on the western slopes in northern New South Wales. He owned a property that was called 'Abington' some time in the late 1830s. He sold the property in 1841 during the drought and depression of that time. But now I am not at all sure he is the right John Cameron because this man married in 1850 in Brisbane to an Esmiralda and when he died he left six children under the age of nine. He is not listed as having a son Donald who had an older brother. I therefore have to continue searching for the 'real' John Cameron.

Donald Cameron grew up in a country area (possibly New England) and wrote and published an autobiographical piece called 'My Boyhood Pets and Rambles'. He had an Aboriginal boy as his friend who taught him how to climb trees Aboriginal style to capture birds. He had many birds as pets and particularly liked the sulphur-crested cockatoo mainly because it could talk but he liked all parrots. He also had a pet baby wallaby who was brought up from babyhood and was free to wander round the house but never ran away. He revealed that the house he lived in was made of bark and slabs because one small Kangaroo rat, another pet, escaped through a hole in the slab wall. He had school work to do when he would have liked to be in the kitchen where there was much laughter at the antics of one of the family animals.

Young Donald read a great deal, mainly wild western yams and popular fiction brought back by his older brother from Maitland. I assume that he grew up in the northern N.S.W, north of Maitland; the exact location I have not ascertained.

His story also indicated that he had a tutor, an old man who tried to teach him 'Caesar' (Latin) and 'Homer' (Greek). He did not go to school because there was not one close enough. He and his older brother were taught by an Aunt at least in their earliest years. She apparently lived with the family. He does not mention either his mother or his father; the latter was probably out in the paddocks with his flocks or herds

That is as far as I have managed to find out about Donald Cameron's early life. When he moved to Sandhurst (Bendigo), I do not know but his father may have taken the family there to search of gold in the 1850s. His first published work so far located appeared in 1866 when Donald would have been about twenty one and it appeared in the Australian Journal so he might have moved to Melbourne at that time. I have not located any earlier writing but I am still searching.

I have managed to check and read one of Donald's books published in 1873. It was published in Melbourne and called Mysteries of Life in Melbourne. It was set in the city of Melbourne and displays much detail of the middle class and lower life in that town.