Author Description

This is the story of Wal Cryer, a freshly-minted letterpress printer from Sydney. In November 1913, at the tender age of 21, he packed his bags and jumped on board a steamer to try his luck working his way across America as a printer.It is a story about what society looked like at that time: that uniquely fragile era just before the Great War, which hovered tentatively on the brink of modernity, when, if you ventured out onto the road you could be trampled to death by a horse, or run over by a car. It is also a story with a romantic undercurrent, as he left behind a fiancé in Sydney, to whom he sent a veritable treasure-trove of postcards as he wended his way across the Mid-west, facing both unemployment queues and tough bosses - and getting work in Chicago before heading to New York and then via several ships back to Australia when the war broke out. (There is also the mysterious "L" which we will touch upon, ever so discreetly.)It is, therefore, the story of a collision of two cultures (America's and Australia's), which could not have been more different and which still are today!Finally, it is the story of how printing at that time was beginning to penetrate into the nooks and crannies of people's everyday lives, in ways both amusing and pervasive, that we now take for granted today. None of this would have been brought to light, however, if it wasn't for a remarkable discovery - not only the diary itself, tucked away in a long-forgotten cupboard, but also a much-battered album bulging with post-cards. This then is a look down a time-tunnel, 1914 under a microscope!There is, however, yet another deeper theme underpinning all this - what is the nature of the relationship we have with our grandparents?