Ensign Best's personal record of his sojourn in Australia, Norfolk Island and New Zealand with entries ranging from pig hunting in the Wairarapa to vice-regal balls in Sydney. Best was a member of the 8th Regiment, and his journal was intended as a personal record for his family; a volume in the Turnbull Library Monographs.
1st. As a junior Army officer Ensign Abel Best crammed a great deal into what was a comparatively short military life, although he rose in rank through Lieutenant and Captain and shortly after leaving New Zealand for service in India he was killed in December 1845, in an early battle of the Sikh War --- after surviving a shipwreck on the Andaman Islands nearing the end of the voyage from NZ to India. At that time he held the rank of Captain, but had yet to reach the age of 30 years. However, much of his early Army life was as an Ensign.
The Journal is thus the work of a young man contains his observations, while often astute and acute, provide graphic detail of his voyage out to Australia in a ship carrying convicts, leaving England in mid-1835 as part of the "escort" for these "passengers."
The journal is divided into four parts: the Voyage Out, New South Wales, Norfolk Island and New Zealand. While the major content of this large book is based around the Best Journal it is excellently backgrounded throughout by Nancy Taylor's careful editing, and explanatory explanations, of his jottings in what was basically a private diary. This does not diminish his powers of observation and perceptions throughout all sections of the book. It is these which make it so valuable by adding to the on-the-spot records relating to the experiences, opinions and assessments of so many aspects of early settlement in NZ and Australia. Best's record of those days has a freshness, freedom of thought and appeal. It can be said that this fine book provides much that remains thought-provoking today.
