Women of Colonial Australia: Volume 3: Convict and Currency

Women of Colonial Australia is a collection of short stories focussing on women from the nation's colonial past, with each author breathing life into a tale of one of their ancestors. Through this, each narrative, woven with meticulous research and imagination, brings to life the diversity of experiences that these wome

• Language: English
• Publisher: Society of Australian Genealogists
• Release date: Dec 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9780949531070

Book preview

Note on Volume 3

For the women in this Volume, their place in Australia was determined by fate rather than intent. Our convict women, exiled for crimes of circumstance and necessity, vilified by an unjust and harsh penal system. The currency lasses, this strong-willed first generation of Australian women born to convicts and free settlers alike. None of the women in this Volume became Australian by choice, but they infused spirit, determination, and resilience into the nation. Their stories uplift us. Each story concludes with an Ancestor Biography, representing the few known facts each descendant had to work with to imagine and craft their story. The stories in this Volume appear in the order of arrival in Australia, where known. In the case of currency lasses, this is their birth.

1

Grace Walker's Indian Odyssey

by Jennifer Perry

Image Credit:iatsun. Stock illustration ID:815163466

Introduction

Grace Walker is my 4th great-grandaunt and is the daughter of an Irish convict sent to New South Wales. She was born in 1805/1806 and died in 1833. I found the story of a 16-year-old poor illiterate currency lass from New South Wales travelling over to India fascinating. More than that, I wanted to bring her life out of the shadows and back home to the family today. Grace’s story shows a woman in my family line who questioned the dominant expectations for her gender and class and decided to see what might be possible outside that square. I wish I had her courage when I was her age.

Jennifer Perry, 2023

The ridges in the landscape that is known now as Rouse Hill gradually give way to flat country dotted with small farmland acreages amidst patches of native bushland. While one group of convicts serve as conscripts to the war waged by the Penal authorities against nature’s hold on the ancient landscape, other convicts and their families struggle to eke a living out of the newly cleared blocks. Their ramshackle homes stand as a testament to the hopes and dreams of the inhabitants, the foundation of a bright future.

One such house, a slabbed structure of just one large room, sits amid an array of animal pens for pigs and cows. Several well-worn tracks weave throughout and around some crops of corn and a small orchard of fruit trees. In a small vegetable garden surrounded by a crooked fence, chooks roam wherever they choose. Built onto the back of the home is a wide lean-to roof, and beneath the roof are round slabs of timber that serve as seats and another long piece of timber takes on the role of a table.

A girl sits alone at the table peeling potatoes to be placed in a large, blackened iron pot sitting over an outdoor kitchen fire. Her name is Grace Walker.

‘Fecken hell!’

Grace winced as the blade pierced her hand, flesh smarting at the sharp stinging sensation. The knife dropped to the floor. Quickly she brought the wounded hand to her mouth to stem the trickle of blood.

‘Aww you bein’ an eejit sure enough,’ she reprimanded herself. She wiped her lacerated hand with a rag, then did the same with the half-peeled potato at the centre of the incident before hurling it into the old iron pot on the flame.

She waved the rag of cloth at the dog, who was checking what all the palaver was about.

‘And you can be off yourself, Biddy,’ she snapped at the curious canine.

Grace resumed her seat on the wooden bench near the fire and started chopping some carrots on a thick plank of wood that served as a chopping board. Yesterday’s killed rooster and these veggies would make a decent feed for everyone this evening. When done, the young cook grabbed a handful of kindling from the nearby woodpile and stoked the fire. Adding the carrots, she gave the contents of the pot a massive stir and placed the lid back on top before plonking herself back on the wooden bench. Biddy took her place at the twelve-year-old girl’s feet. Grace’s attention was now taken with watching her younger brother, Charles, and their Ma planting seeds in the furrowed lanes left by the horse and plough, driven by her stepfather Henry. Biddy raised her head level with Grace’s hand, which automatically and somewhat absent-mindedly began stroking the coarse hair on the old dog’s head.

Grace pondered about how many years of her life she had seen Ma working her fingers to the bone like this. There were times when Ma and everyone had reaped some rewards, but not nearly as often as you’d think the efforts would reflect. Grace recalled one occasion when Ma, Charles and herself had to spend some time in the Factory at Parramatta because there was not enough food to feed them. While it had been good to see Ma chatting with old friends, and them all talking sassy to the overseers, Grace had felt there was a lot of sorrow in the lives of everyone there. All those women struggling to make some sort of life for themselves and their little ones. Like her Ma, they too were doing whatever needed to be done to keep a roof over everyone’s head.

Henry had stayed working the farm until it could again produce enough for the family to make a living.

Ma had been living with Henry since Grace was about five. Before you knew it there was baby brother Charles. Grace’s older sister Elizabeth and her brother John soon made their way out into the world. Elizabeth had married a man and was expecting a baby of her own now. John was apprenticed to a wheelwright, the best in the colony so people said. Ma seemed happy enough with Henry, though Grace couldn’t think why. Life just seemed heavier than usual when he was around, Grace was quite certain he did not want her living in his house. She didn’t know how she knew, just a feeling.

As the sun settled further in the west, Grace saw the silhouetted outlines of Ma and Charles walking back to the house. She readied the table with plates and things for supper for everyone. Henry soon followed, after he had unhitched the plough from the horse and washed ready for the meal. And so, another day, pretty much like any other day on the family farm at Rouse Hill, came to a close.

Life went on just the same for what seemed forever for young Grace.

Four years later, however, she decided to take things into her own hands. She was now nearly 16 years old and giving some serious thought to her place in the world.

It was the day of the big market day in the centre of Parramatta. People came from everywhere to sell cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs, as well as hay, pumpkins, corn, and all sorts of produce. Parramatta felt like a carnival on this day every year. Ladies sold their home-made jams and cakes, and there were always lots of dresses and other apparel for the eager shoppers. Ma said the place was ‘jammers’, so many folks she’d ‘not seen for an age’. Grace could not bring herself to be so excited. A walk by the river was more fitting for her current state of melancholy.

The packets were busier than usual on the river. These hardy little boats ferried all sorts of produce and passengers from Sydney to Parramatta. Occasionally passengers waved and Grace responded in kind. She wondered where they might be going, or perhaps they were returning from somewhere. So many journeys happening right now. Grace wondered what it was like to go on a trip somewhere, ‘anywhere really would do,’ she thought. She recalled hearing Ma and some other women talking about the sailing ship that brought them from the other side of the world. There’d often be tears accompanying the stories, and at other times a raucous laughter would explode from the women. Young Grace never tired of listening to these stories, imagining them all as some sort of adventure. A loud splash brought Grace back to the present moment. A fish had jumped high out of the water and back down again narrowly escaping the beak of a bird swooping down for a feed. She smiled; it was like another world. Just then a mob of rowdy young fellas came sauntering down the riverside on their way into the town centre.

‘Hey ya, Gracie Walker,’ one cheeky bloke called, ‘fancy a night out?’

‘Aww gibbers, it’s that crazy cabbage hat mob,’ Grace thought, ‘thinkin’ they all clever and daring with their cabbage hats and yelling and chiakking in the streets.’

‘May the Saints protect us if you’re a girl’s only option,’ Grace muttered, just loud enough for them to hear.

A little further on Grace found a bench facing out to the river. The perfect spot for a girl to ponder what pickings life might provide for a Parramatta currency lass. The sound of the water splashing against the packets, the noises of birds attempting to assail the boxes of produce and the angry responses from the men guarding the goods faded far away as Grace’s mind dissolved into thought.

She loved her family dearly, and being around Parramatta was the only home she had known. Elizabeth and her brothers John and young Charles were settled here, and everything they did was to make their sense of home here even stronger. Grace felt different, they could all read and write, and she couldn’t. It felt like she didn’t fit in the world like her siblings.

Grace wondered if marrying one of the blokes from Parramatta and having her own family was the way through this cloud of despair. But whenever her thoughts wandered down that path the sunshine all but disappeared. The way Grace figured, it was just more of the same as she had grown up with, and that thinking only encouraged the melancholy to set in deeper.

‘Surely a girl’s got to be able to look forward to more than this,’ Grace mused, ‘I know Ma and my family are happy enough here, but I’ll be beggared if I can find anything about the place with even a chance of lifting my spirits. I just want to go away.’

And that is exactly what Grace did. At the beginning of 1822, she got a job and moved into lodgings in Sydney. Helping a washerwoman ply her trade was not Grace’s idea of a dream job but she had high hopes of finding better opportunities in this new location. To be sure it was only a couple of hours from Parramatta, but it immediately felt like the makings of a new life.

One afternoon Grace’s landlady was reading out aloud the advertisements in the newspaper. Grace enquired if any jobs were going for young ladies such as herself. The landlady read several vacancies to Grace. Most were no better than what she was doing now, but there was one that grabbed her attention immediately. A certain Mrs Jacob was a lady of some refinement, and her husband held the rank of Lieutenant in the Bengal Infantry. They were looking for a young lady of good character to act as a nursery maid to their child, in return for a free trip to England. A free trip to England!!

Unfortunately for Grace, the position went to another woman, however, the Jacobs knew another couple also seeking to employ a young lady.

Captain Campbell and his wife had married a few months previously in Sydney and were soon to be sailing to India where the captain served in the elite Native Infantry Army. Grace’s eyes widened; it had not entered her head to go to India! Stories she had heard of India raced through her mind. Exotic foods and spices, colourful fabrics worn by the