Mr Rounsevell's "gin-case on wheels"
In a reputation-shredding sentence, the writer of a letter to the Editor of the South Australian Register (dated 18 February 1867), remembered "reading a graphic account given by your special correspondent last May of the miseries of the South-Eastern overland journey as it then was". The original report, published 28 July 1866 and headed 'THE SOUTH-EAST DISTRICT. From our Special Correspondent. THE OVERLAND JOURNEY.', did indeed begin gloomily: "On a dull drizzling morning ― Monday, May 28 ― a little before 5 o'clock, I ascended at the door of Roger's Inn , Narracoorte, the somewhat nondescript conveyance provided by Mr Rounsevell for the conveyance of H.M. mails from the South-East to Adelaide. The appearance of the turn-out in the grey morning was anything but promising. The vehicle ― a square box on wheels ― looked very clumsy and suggestive of aching bones, and the couple of horses provided by the contractor were poor, rawboned, hungry-looking bru