Victoria Halabi
The Georgiana Molloy story
Triumphs and Tragedies
There was once a girl called Georgiana Molloy and she did something to become one of Australia’s Achieving women. Sadly her father fell of a horse and passed away when Georgiana was only 16.
The Worrier was the ship that Georgiana Molloy went on to arrive at the Swan River Colony with her husband Captain John Molloy. before she married at 24 she was Georgiana Kennedy.
She arrived at Flinders Bay and when they arrived there she knew that any moment then she baby so the Bussle brothers helped her to get on land and set up a tent.
Very soon after she landed at Flinder’s Bay in Augusta she had a baby That she had named after her 2 sisters Mary and Elisabeth. Therefor She had called her first and newest baby Mary-Elisabeth. Unfortunately Mary-Elizabeth passed away at 9 days old as she was not born in the Best conditions.
Mary Elizabeth
After Georgiana's baby tragedy, she decided to move on. She continued on with her life as a botanist in New Holland. As she continued she received a letter from John Mangles That said that he would like her to collect seeds and specimens And to send them back to England in a perfect condition for him to give them back to his scientists so that he could find out what he needed to.
She carried on with her duty to collect the seeds and send them to James Mangles.
Then she had another baby that did survive and she had 6 other babies!
She only had one baby boy and all the rest of her children were girls. Unfortunately the baby boy died at 16 months old because he drowned in a well.
GEORGIANA MOLLOY She’s remembered as the first internationally successful female botanist in Western Australia.
She is remembered by these things: Specimens from two of her collections, including Type specimens, are archived in Kew Herbarium. Other specimens have collected and have been put into Cambridge University Herbarium. Some of her letters and diaries have been found and put in Cambria Achieve Center in the UK and the JS Battye Library in Perth WA.
Georgiana’s life as a settler was one of hardship and tragedy, and for most of her 13 years in the colony she was nursing a baby. Her days were filled with farm work and domestic jobs from before dawn until late into the night, and yet she always found time for her botanical passion. A medical condition meant that she risked her life with the birth of each baby and soon after her seventh child was born she died, still desperately longing to successfully collect and send the seeds of Nuytsia Floribund and Kingia Australia to Mangles. She was thirty-seven. Many new items available now on a computer screen anywhere in the world.