Achille Ballière (1840-1905) was deported from France in 1873 to New Caledonia. Written in French, in a minute hand, Ballière’s journal begins on 1 January 1873 when he left the Citadelle de St Martin de Re, a place of detention on an island near Rochefort in the Bay of Biscay. Ballière sailed from Rochefort in the ship Orne and touched at Quiberon, Brest, Dakar, Melbourne and Noumea before reaching the Isle of Pines on 9 May 1873, where he lived for several months. Ballière escaped to Australia with several others in March 1874. He wrote about his experiences in two books: Un voyage de circumnavigation: histoire de la déportation par un des évadés de Noumea, illustrations by G. Save, London, Henry S. King, 1875; and La déportation de 1871: souvenirs d'un évadé de Nouméa, Paris, G. Charpentier et Cie, 1889.