Fifty years ago, Asa and Maria Townsend led their family on a migration from Florida to the Northern Territory. They settled and made the best of their new land. This book is dedicated to them.
Asa Townsend and his eldest son Ray flew into Sydney from Florida, arriving on 25 July 1956. Americans arriving with a purpose were newsworthy in Australia back in 1956 and local newspapers headlined the coming of the two men as ‘U.S. cattlemen seek ranch here.’
Australians were flattered when Asa said ‘The States, with its 160 million people, is getting mighty crowded. Why, here in Australia, you got some space to move around. My sons and daughters are married. They’d all want to come out here, sure they would.’ Back in 1956, many Australians confidently believed that their country’s destiny was to become just as prosperous and populous as the United States – after all, Australia and the United States were approximately the same size and their histories held many parallels. Now, here were two men who had lived the American dream saying they wanted to share the Australian dream!
The Townsends were frontier people, Asa Townsend often said. Now he was seeking a new frontier in Australia. Ever since Asa’s forebears had migrated from England to what were then the American colonies, successive generations of Townsends had moved southward to be on the newest edges of settlement. The movement took them from Delaware, to South Carolina, to Georgia, then to northern Florida and finally, in 1911 to Eddy, later called Felda, near LaBelle, in southern Florida……….
