The Bush is the Australian inland settlement where Daniel Peggotty and Emily Peggotty make a home after leaving England. In David Copperfield’s account, it is at once a distant refuge from the shame attached to Emily’s past, a demanding place of work, and the setting of a painful delay: Emily learns there, almost a year later, that Ham died in the Yarmouth storm. The settlement’s promise of a fresh start is real, but the family’s recovery is shaped by labor, grief, and the news withheld from her.

A distant refuge and a chosen beginning

For Daniel Peggotty, Australia offers a future beyond the reproach Emily might face at home. When David Copperfield asks about his plans, Daniel says their life lies across the sea; David understands that he intends to emigrate with Emily. Daniel hopes that in Australia nobody will reproach her and that they can begin again. The decision makes the Bush more than a destination: it is imagined as a place where Emily can live without being defined by the disgrace of her elopement.

The move follows years in which the Micawbers also searched for a way to make a living through relocation. Mrs. Micawber had urged that her husband use family connections to seek work in Plymouth, and later described their visit to the Medway to explore the coal trade. That prospect failed for want of capital, and the couple continued looking for an opening elsewhere. Their earlier schemes give the eventual migration a practical background: a fresh start is desired, but livelihoods and means remain central to the choices people make.

Passage and settlement

The departure is presented as a material undertaking, not simply a change of scenery. At Gravesend, David and his old nurse find the emigrant ship in the river, surrounded by boats and ready to sail in a favorable wind. Daniel is on deck; below, the emigrants share a crowded, dim space among berths, chests, bundles, and barrels. The voyage carries families, possessions, and the prospect of work toward a new life overseas.

The account later places Daniel and Emily in a solitary part of the Bush, among beautiful trees. Roses cover their dwelling to the roof. This sheltered domestic image contrasts with the crowded ship and the exposed, difficult beginning Daniel recalls: the family may have lived hard at first, but he says they worked as they ought and eventually prospered. The place is not described through a town’s institutions or amenities; its defining features are distance, a modest home, and the land on which the family establishes its livelihood.

Work, recovery, and prosperity

Daniel reports that the family has thrived through sheep-farming, stock-farming, and other work. His account allows for an initially difficult period, but presents prosperity as something built over time rather than secured upon arrival. The repeated movement from hardship toward better circumstances makes the Bush a setting of practical renewal: work, not merely distance from England, sustains the new life.

Emily’s recovery is likewise connected to what she does for others. After the family settles in the Bush, she is deeply low in spirits. Daniel believes she might have declined further had she known what David had compassionately kept from her. Instead, she cares for sick passengers and children in their company. Being busy and doing good helps her. The settlement thus gives her room to resume purposeful activity, while Daniel’s account makes clear that this recovery takes place alongside continuing grief and deliberate concealment.

The delayed news

Daniel keeps Ham’s death from Emily for nearly a year after learning of it. The truth reaches her through an English traveler, from Norfolk or Suffolk, whom the family welcomes, feeds, and gives drink. He has an old newspaper and another printed account of the storm. Daniel is away working the land when the traveler arrives; when he comes home that night, he finds that Emily knows.

The Bush’s remoteness gives this revelation its particular force. The distance that offers Emily protection also delays the arrival of news from home. The narrative does not follow the settlement as a broad account of Australian society: it shows the place chiefly through the Peggottys’ household, work, and response to loss, and gives no corresponding account of other inhabitants or the wider conditions of settlement. Within that narrow view, the Bush becomes both a site of genuine material success and a home where recovery cannot erase the past.