Quite an interesting facsimile reproduction book from 1883, published in London, about, well, the title's got it down: town life in Australia. He covers Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, with the interesting observation that Melbourne is the biggest and brightest of the three, with Sydney a boring and unpleasant second, and Adelaide a pleasant third. How things change. Certainly Adelaide has fallen well behind. It focuses in depth on the ordinary aspects of life back then. Things like mortgages, household furniture, servants and household workers, and numerous other minutiae of life that you don't find in most history books.

A broad look at colonial Australia, omitting Tasmania and Western Australia