The Heather to The Hawkesbury

The Heather... LARGE PRINT

Follows Mary Macdonald and her family; her brother Fergus MacKenzie; sister-in-law Caro MacLeod; cousins the Fraser and all their families who have had to emigrate from the Isle of Skye during the “Clearances”. The story follows the four families from Scotland, on the ship out and to the NSW colony in 1850’s. Mary does not cope with the changes and losses that occur in the first months in the colony. The other women in the family rely on her and she nearly crumbles. Through accidents, losses, trials, floods, and hard work the families struggle together and forge a strong bond with their new country.

The Third of the Australian Colonial Trilogy.

Loosely based on the family history of both the Author and her husband who both had Scottish Highlander ancestry! Much of their family history has been woven into the many sagas these characters experience. The adventures that these families experience were typical of what many others lived through. Don Charlwood follows many of the ships out to Australia in The Long Farewell. He refers to the unhygienic lifestyles of the uncouth, illiterate Highlanders on board the ships. Although the family Highlanders were of this class of illiterate people, the families in this story are of a slightly better educated class of Scots. Often the Highland Laird educated some of the children of the estates, so they could later take employment roles on the Estate. These were also sometimes the 'right sort' of families chosen for sponsoring by the Laird by the Highland and Island Society. There was no education to Australian ways of life for these people before they left their homes and Motherland! Once landed, these same people were left to their own devices and often with disastrous results. John Dunmore-Lang and his wife set up a sort of 'farm school' for these Scottish folk on their farm at Morpeth. Our own family, John and Grace McLean went there and their son Donald Hugh McLean was born there and it was his grandson Norman McLean Hunter who married Sheila Hunter. The gold field stories come straight from oral history on the Macdonald Family of Ballarat & Clunes in Victoria.

Sheila was a nurse and was intrigued with how the colonials dealt with disability and of course makes it into the story too.

The inset Photo used for the cover of 'The Heather to The Hawkesbury' is of Deb Cox and her family, taken at Old Sydney Town, Somersby NSW. This photo is Copyright ©Deb Cox.

The Painting in the Back ground of the Cover is :- Joseph Lycett (engraver), English c.1775–1828, worked in Australia 1814–22, View of Windsor, Upon the River Hawkesbury, New South Wales 1824, plate no. 15 in Views in Australia published by J. Souter, London. Hand-coloured aquatint 23.5 x 33.0 cm. State Library of Victoria, Melbourne (30328102131561/16)