The great novelist sent two of his 10 children to Australia to make their fortunes, and was still sending large cheques in the post to keep them going shortly before he died in 1870.

One of these cheques, for £100 and made out to his sons Alfred and Edward, is now on display in the National Library's Treasures Gallery, as a symbol of the writer's significant links to Australia.

Alfred, who had always been a financial drain on his father, migrated here in 1865, while Edward, or “Plorn”, the youngest and Dickens' favourite, followed in 1869.

The cheque is on display alongside a letter written in 1870 by Dickens to Alfred, expressing his worries that Plorn wasn't finding his feet.

Dickens died 19 days later, which meant the sons would have learned of their father's death before receiving the letter.

Curator Susannah Helman said the cheque, made out for a sum that would be worth about $13,000 in today's money, was bought by the library from a dealer earlier this year for about $10,000.

“We already have some great Dickens letter material relating to his family, [but] it's building our Australian connection,” she said.

Director of exhibitions Nat Williams said the story of the cheque – one of many such financial missives but, mysteriously, never actually cashed – was tinged with pathos because of the ongoing strain Dickens children had placed on him.

He said the writer was particularly worried about his children's welfare because his own childhood had been so, well, Dickensian, growing up in poverty and working in a blacking factory as a child.

“They didn't succeed brilliantly, and when you have a father like Dickens, who was a stellar figure, it's very hard to compare yourself, especially when you have so many siblings,” he said.

“Dickens felt that his children took a lot of husbanding and a lot of pushing and directing because they weren't naturally directed, with the exception of Henry who was an older son who did quite well. All the others dwindled a bit on the vine.”

Mr Williams said the cheque and the letter were also potent reminders of Dickens' personal – and literary - connections to Australia.

Just as he sent several of his fictional characters to the colonies – such as the mysterious returned convict Magwitch in Great Expectations and the scoundrel Uriah Heap in David Copperfield – he had high hopes for his own sons as they crossed the great distance by boat.

“He was very interested in Australia and he was an optimist for how Australia would turn out. Other people saw it as a penal colony, and who cares, basically, but Dickens thought that, like America, it had a great future,” he said.

“If you lived like Dickens did in the squalor of Victorian London, which was a filthy, depressed, difficult place if you didn't have money, to escape that to come out to a country at least where the weather was better and the food was easier to get and cheaper, you could have a better life."

His thoughts about Australia were not fleeting, "I think there was a sustained interest over a period of time in Australia, and then to commit to sending his boys here, especially his favourite son, was no mean feat.”

The cheque and letter also emphasised the tyranny of distance in Victorian times, and the anxiety – familiar even today – that parents have for their children.

“As much as Dickens didn't want them to fall into the trap of being the spoilt children of a wealthy, eminent father, how do you not, if you've got money?” Mr Williams said.

“If you added up all the money that he sent to Plorn and to Alfred when they were in Australia, today it would be tens and tens of thousands of dollars. I guess he had the money … but he had that sadness. Were they ever going to amount to anything? He despaired about them.”

As it turned out, Alfred lived in Australia for 45 years, and made a living speaking about his father's life in England and America. Plorn became a Member of Parliament in NSW.