A COMMENTARY OF THE LIFE OF SAMUEL THOMAS GILL, RENOWNED FOR HIS VIBRANT WATERCOLOUR PAINTINGS OF COLONIAL AUSTRALIA... The creator of thousands of watercolours, S.T. Gill was one of the most prolific of all Australian artists. Through Gill's images we can trace the social history of ordinary Australians living out their lives in the nineteenth century.

Art historian and critic, Robert Hughes, felt that Gill was exactly the right type of artist to record the activities of the gold rush:

"Everything on the goldfields was grist to his mill; in landscape, the scrubby gums, dark shafts and sunlit bullock-heaps, red clay banks, streams and sluices; the washing-troughs and racks of shovels, the furnaces and weighing-stations where miners brought their dust and watched out for rigged scales; the fights over claims, the diggers swinging picks or sleeping at the bottom of a shaft; the honky-tonk pubs..."

In this book, talented historical writer, Doug Limbrick traces Gill's life through his years in Australia, from his arrival in 1838 until his tragic death in Melbourne in 1880. With many of Gill's images included, readers will now have a window into the activities, events, people and places of nineteenth-century Australian life. The history of the Australian colonies as told by the author, come alive through Gill's beautiful images.