A famous rarity: one of very few books written by a junior officer in early colonial Sydney and perhaps the only great published account of life in the New South Wales Corps apart from the Rum Rebellion trial. 'Part narrative and part encouragement to prospective settlers, Bond's account, in any edition, is a worthy and important addition to a collection' (Wantrup).

A famous rarity: one of very few books written by a junior officer in early colonial Sydney and perhaps the only great published account of life in the New South Wales Corps apart from the Rum Rebellion trial. 'Part narrative and part encouragement to prospective settlers, Bond's account, in any edition, is a worthy and important addition to a collection' (Wantrup).

Bond came to Port Jackson on the Barwell in 1797. In the course of the voyage he was implicated in an attempted mutiny – the rumour was that he dreamt of Mauritius – with the result that he arrived in Port Jackson in chains. Ordered to face a court-martial, his commanding officer Major Foveaux interceded on his behalf, and Governor Hunter agreed to accept Bond's resignation of his commission instead: it was an act of leniency Hunter regretted, because Bond stayed on in Sydney and remained friendly with some of the officers that were already antagonising the Governor, notably John Macarthur himself. Only later was Bond formally ordered home.

Eager to acquit himself, Bond took to print as soon as he reached England, publishing the very slight first edition of this book in Southampton in 1803 (no copy is known to have been sold in decades). To date, no copy is known of the 'second' or 'third' editions (there is still some question as to whether they actually ever existed). The fourth (Oxford, 1806), fifth (London, 1809) sixth (Dublin, 1810) and seventh (Cork, 1810 or later) editions are all very scarce, indeed rare on the market.

This book is an invaluable private account of Governor Hunter's New South Wales by an ensign in the Corps, particularly personal and aimed at a market eager for information about the colony. He includes some comments on the Aborigines and natural history, but his text is chiefly an important source for information about economic corruption in eighteenth-century New South Wales; he describes the operation of the convict system, and the early efforts to encourage free settlers. He thus presents the other side of the story of transportation to Port Jackson, highlighting the issues and points which were to evolve into the Bligh/Macarthur dispute and ultimately herald the arrival of Macquarie.

This is the fifth edition, the first to call Bond "Late Lieutenant of Marines" on the title-page – the fourth edition was still calling him a former Ensign in the NSW Corps, so perhaps he had joined the Marines in the interim? This change of career could well explain the widely-dispersed places at which different editions were later published.