“Easy over the cobbles!” I hear that phrase in my memory, in mother’s voice, always said in jest to my father as we set off home in the car from whatever family outing we’d been on. “Home, James, and don’t spare the horses!” That was another. Even as a child, I understood the shared social […]
Everything happens somewhere. As a writer, I see the events I’m describing as they unfold and all I have to do is find the right words to help a reader see what I see. It’s unsurprising that the places I view in my imagination are sometimes the same places I’ve visited myself, often years earlier. […]
I’ve written before about the dramatic changes in Georgiana Molloy’s life when she arrived in the Swan River Colony but the research I’ve been doing this week has made me think about another time of great contrast she had already experienced, a decade earlier. (An extract from one of the documents I’ve been reading is […]
There are so many resources available in our wonderful archives, museums and libraries and, increasingly, many of them are also available online as digital images. Documents I’ve found using the Internet have been invaluable over the years but there’s really nothing that beats the pleasure of holding the real thing in your hand – whether […]
It’s happened again. As if I needed another reminder of the lesson I keep learning: never, ever give up on finding the elusive answer to a research question. It must be eight years since I first discovered the move that Georgiana’s parents made with their young family just before they went to live in newly […]
Leaving home (south of Margaret River WA) before dawn during the biggest storm of the year so far was ‘interesting’ and it was a six-hour drive to the small country town of York but I’m so glad I was able to make that journey to join the River Conservation Society on a wild and wintery […]
‘The language of flowers has recently attracted so much attention, that an acquaintance with it seems to be deemed, if not an essential part of a polite education, at least a graceful and elegant accomplishment.’ Flora’s Lexicon: an Interpretation of the Language and Sentiment of Flowers 1839 That was written in 1839, but interest […]
It’s a bit late for an update on the last year’s work but I really have been busy on other writerly things – not to mention the rolling wave of visitors who all come in January to escape the European winter. First, very good news, a new book being published later this year that will […]
The story of Mildred Kitty Ludlow is a sad one but it’s not so different from that of many other female servants during the early colonial settlement of Western Australia. Georgiana Molloy’s diaries and letters tell us about the last years of Kitty’s life and reveal some of Georgiana’s own personal views and values. I […]
‘Astronomy, universally acknowledged the most sublime and interesting of those sciences which admit of popular illustration, is doubly valuable for its powerful influence and effect in the general improvement of the human mind.’ Horace Wellbeloved on Mr Walker’s Astronomical lecture 1826 Since my biography of Georgiana Molloy’s life was published, I’ve been working nearly […]