Sir Henry Parkes was born to extreme poverty and difficulty in England. After a hard-scrabble life as a boy, Henry learned a variety of important manual skills. Desperate to educate himself, he began studying British poetry and used his new-found writing skills to court his first wife. After poverty and the death of two of their children left them eager for a new environment, Parkes and his wife emigrated to Australia. After years of backbreaking poverty, Henry found his niche as a politician when it was discovered that he had excellent oratory skills. He struggled to stay afloat financially with a series of newspapers and books, but his passionately patriotic writings and inflammatory rhetoric drew widespread support. He then managed to climb up the slippery rope of politics in a key colony, becoming the prime minister five different times. Unfortunately, Parkes badly mismanaged his private finances and often had to leave his wife and children behind, mired in deep poverty under heavy debts. Using his bombast and stature as an elder statesman, Parkes was a strong advocate for his adopted homeland and helped shape several key political ideas that coalesced soon after his death with the creation of the Commonwealth of Australia