Women of Colonial Australia: Volume 1: Towards a Better Life

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: 9780949531056

Book preview

Foreward

This volume of short stories celebrates the courage, resilience, and fortitude of our ancestors. Those Women of Colonial Australia whose contributions to the nation's history have often been overlooked or overshadowed. In our endeavour to showcase the lives of these women, we hope to unearth a forgotten chapter of female history and honour the legacy of those whose names may have too long gone unspoken, but whose impact resonates through generations. These are not just stories of women battling with new ways of life and landscape, but of struggles against the constraints of a world dominated by men. These stories serve as a testament to the indomitable spirit of the women who came before us, and in many ways remind us that the pursuit of equality and justice is ongoing and needing continuous dedication.

Before we embark on this journey through the lives of some extraordinary Women of Colonial Australia, I want to extend my gratitude to the authors who have contributed their passion, dedication, and creativity to bring these short stories to life. Their unwavering commitment to learning a new way to approach their family history research and their ability to infuse imagination into historical narratives have been invaluable in crafting these captivating tales. I also wish to thank the team at the Society of Australian Genealogists for their support and enthusiasm for this project. It is my hope that this collection not only pays tribute to women who had been lost to time, but also serves as a testament to the power of collaboration and the spirit of learning that continues to inspire us all. It has been my privilege to guide these authors on this creative and personal journey and to get to know the inspiring women from whom they descend.

I have a deep respect and admiration for the Women of Colonial Australia, and these women who have told their stories.

Rose Cutts, 2023

Note on Volume 1

These stories focus on those women who decided to come to Australia by assisted or unassisted passage. To invest in themselves and their futures by making the courageous and unknowable journey towards a better life, in the hope that opportunity, prosperity and security lay ahead of them in Australia, but with no guarantee it would be so. We honour these women, travelling from England, Scotland and Jersey, in this Volume. Their stories are aspirational and empowering. 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.

1

On Meeting the Ghost of Margaret Duncan

by Beverley Richardson

Image: Cooks River Road facing south, circa 1860 Credit: St Peters Cooks River History Group collection

Introduction

I began my family history research with one goal: to find the ancestor responsible for the Albinism gene which affects members of my family, some more severely than others. My search stopped with Margaret’s husband, John Duncan, a red-headed Scotsman from Aberdeen. The gene spread throughout the fishing communities of New South Wales as Margaret and John’s 14 surviving children moved north from Botany Bay.

At first, Margaret seemed to have lived an ordinary life: unpromising material for a 5,000-word story on a woman living in a colonial context. When I discovered, however, that at the age of 15 she bore an illegitimate child to a man with a record for violence towards women and then had entered a new relationship which led to her marriage, aged 16, I thought that I could write a piece of creative nonfiction if I used my imagination. Hence my decision to include a supernatural element in the story. Margaret as a ghost is more interesting than Margaret the domestic drudge. I could also include, I thought, an element of memoir as contrast, with the character of Anne a thinly disguised representation of my adolescent self, Margaret’s descendent, wishing to lead a normal life, but self-conscious because of her genetic inheritance.

I am indebted to my cousin, Chris O’Sullivan, for her assistance in research for this story.

Beverley Richardson, 2023

I was 16 years old and out of fashion: the 60’s had arrived! This meant sleepovers where my girlfriends and I listened to Beatles songs throughout the night. It meant long, shining brown hair, short skirts, tanned legs, bikinis and, for my friends, lying on the beach, their bodies glistening with coconut oil. At all levels, I, however, could not be part of this powerful new culture based largely on physical appearance, spending much of my time at home reading novels like Lady Chatterley’s Lover through my thick-lensed glasses, my old cat, Blackberry, asleep on my bed…

December 1969: school was over, and I was celebrating with the second case of measles I’d contracted in my lifetime, the first, a mild dose, hardly noticeable. My skinny body, covered in a rash, felt raw, the contagion having spread over my lips and into my nostrils and ears. The only remedy, a bath in Condes Crystals solution, made my skin appear even more inflamed. Mother, following my instructions to cancel my social life, told the boy who’d arrived at the door that I refused to see him. ‘I’ve had the measles!’ he protested, trying to rescue his dream: ‘I can probably cheer her up!’ But the idea of a male witness to my disfigurement sent me into a rage. The boy at the door was not my love match.

Later, it was Blackberry who stirred me into wakefulness on the hottest night of the hottest month in an Australian summer. Sleep had come fitfully; cotton sheets felt unbearable on my skin. The baby doll pyjamas mother had sewn were wet with perspiration. At around midnight, my cat woke me up with a stream of guttural howls: he arched his back. He spat and he hissed at something in the room.

Dragging myself up onto one elbow, I thought I was dreaming. Before me shone a chrysalis set in an aureole of light, transforming gradually, like a butterfly, into the figure of a woman dressed in a long gown, the fashion from a time past. ’A high neckline,’ I noted, ‘long sleeves, a pin-tucked bodice and a skirt that flared generously over the hips… a white dress patterned with tiny pink roses.’ I wondered at the face before me, the features reminiscent of family I had met in childhood before Father had died: a broad face, rather than long, with faint laugh lines at the corners of warm brown eyes. ‘Dark hair, a small straight nose and a generous mouth that could broaden into a wide smile,’ I thought. The details kept registering in my foggy mind.

Transformation complete, the vision spoke: ‘Anne,’ she said as if scolding an errant daughter. ‘After witnessing that scene you staged, rejecting the attentions of your handsome young man who’d dressed for you in his purple satin shirt, I’ve taken leave from Heaven to return briefly to Earth, to offer some advice; lessons learnt from experience, in my time. Young lady that is no way to treat a suitor, you may not get a second chance! You have not been taught how to behave when a boy shows interest. Good manners are required. If you persist in your present attitude, you will end up an old maid!’

With that, she took off her bonnet, spread out her skirts and petticoats, and sat on the chair beside my bed. ‘You are preoccupied with your appearance,’ she began. ‘I was a plain girl… my body was generally described as ‘stout.’ A dreadful word. You, in contrast, look like an English maiden, with your golden hair. Your blue eyes and fair skin remind me of a china figurine.’

‘And who are you to be giving me advice?’ I interrupted, indignant at this unsolicited intrusion into my life. ‘And how do you know what’s been going on in this house? He is not my young man!’ Blackberry stared with his long yellow eyes, his ears on alert.

‘I am your ancestor,’ my visitor declared, ‘and you are my descendent. To be more specific… your great great great grandmother, Margaret Duncan… but you may call me Grandma.’

‘Close your eyes, child,’ she continued. ‘Your lids are swollen and you’re feverish. I’m come because you’ve not had an easy childhood and our kin in the Otherworld are worried about you. Close your eyes and rest.’

I found the instructions of my ancestral grandmother impossible to refuse. At first, struggling and reluctant to surrender my self-control, I gave in at last to the delicious sensation of blessed coolness washing over my body, from my head to my toes and into my soul. I heard Blackberry purring as the supernatural force soothed him as well, into a deep slumber.

***

‘I hear your questions, Anne,’ Grandma Margaret began. ‘You are a curious child, with a thirst for education. At our first meeting, you immediately wanted to know everything about me. There is nothing I will keep private while telling you my story throughout this night that we have been granted, but you, of the 20th Century, must not judge me, born over a hundred years ago. Every generation has its challenges, Anne, and I made mistakes for which a heavy price was paid. I am lucky to be in Heaven but, alas, my talented mother of the Victorian stage could not reach the standard of penance required for entry through the Gates and into God’s Kingdom.’

To begin… a mere babe, one year old, was I when my mother, Catherine Mahoney, and father, James Walker, left their home in Middlesex for a new life in the Colony of New South Wales. Mother said that Father’s clan in Scotland, grown wealthy from their interests in the whisky production business, had a set against her lowly class as a dance hall girl, and were determined to sever the relationship between her, a ‘harlot,’ and their youngest son. My brother, William, their first child, had died in infancy and they feared for the lives of their living and future children in the squalid conditions of Tower Hamlets, a slum in the shadow of the great Tower of London.

Looking back on our early days it is my belief that my parents’ personalities complemented each other, my father posturing as the black sheep of a rich