In the 1890s in a bizarre social experiment, a band of over 500 Australians – mostly men and just three single women – sailed to South America to create a communal Utopia, a New Australia, in the jungles of Paraguay. One of them was a red-headed schoolteacher Mary Cameron, a poet and feminist, who left the writer Henry Lawson behind, despairing on the wharf. Politics in the Australian colony were soon tumultuous. Mary, rejected by one man she loved, married another, had a son, and she and her...
In the 1890s after a period of social unrest, a brave band of Australians sailed from Sydney to found a communal Utopia in South America. Under the charismatic journalist William Lane, over 500 settlers, including poet Mary Gilmore, created a New Australia in the Paraguayan jungle. Their hopes soon collapsed. Many returned home. Others stayed, becoming part of the culture of their adopted country. They learned about Paraguay's Jesuit missions of the 17th and 18th centuries, perhaps the...
