Georgiana Molloy Tragedy to Triumph

GEORGIANA MOLLOY- TRAGEDY TO TRIUMPH

By Evie Hewitt

This is a collage of some of the things that Georgiana would have done and seen in her life as a settler.

When Georgiana Molloy was only 16, she lived on a farm in England. Her father was riding a horse and got bucked off and killed. From then on her life changed forever and she moved to the town. She got married to captain John Molloy and they set off on a journey to the Swan River Colony. On the way they stopped off in cape town in South Africa because their supplies got washed off the ship.

It was 1830 and the Swan River Colony was full. It was hot and the conditions on the ship were terrible. There were flies, ticks and fleas everywhere. All the best land had been taken. Georgiana Molloy and her husband John Molloy were going on a three day voyage to Flinders Bay because there was more and better land down there. They went with two Bussel boys on the Emily Taylor, a whaling ship.

Emily Taylor

As Georgiana Molloy looked overboard, she saw the surf towering above the shore. Luckily, the Bussel boys were skilled skippers and managed to get Georgiana Molloy to the shore safely with her husband and belongings. When she went ashore, she realized that she was about to have a baby. Georgiana got into a small rowboat along with their livestock, servants and husband.

When they landed on the shore, the Bussel boys saw that Georgiana Molloy was about to have a baby. They decided they needed help her build her first tent. She then went inside, because it was raining. Her servants had to hold an umbrella over her because the rain started to come through the roof. She named her daughter Mary Elizabeth after her sisters that she didn’t particularly like and had left back home in England.

Mary was not a strong baby, so sadly she passed away at the age of nine days.

Georgiana found a blue flower and put it on her daughter’s grave. She did not know what kind of flower it was or anything about it, so this was how her interest in Australian flowers began. She began researching the flowers and doing her husband’s duties as well.

Mary Elizabe th

After her daughter died, Georgiana began collecting flowers for John Mangles to study back in England. Her hortus siccus (dry gardens) became well noted among English botanists for the precise and careful packing and the well-organized notes in the packages. She won many awards for her botany specimens. The flowers were so well preserved that they are still intact today, 200 years later!

Georgiana Molloy’s only son sadly drowned in a well when he was just 19 months old.

This was yet another tragedy in her life. She then went on to be a mother of six and a hobby botanist. The fleas, ticks and flies were annoying, but not as annoying as what they were in the Swan River Colony. It was also very hot for her coming from England.

Eventually, the Molloys gave up trying to clear the land in the blackwood river, and moved up to the town that is now Busselton. They lived in a shack and helped the earlier settlers clear the land. Georgiana’s last attempt was to successfully catch a specimen of the Nutsyia floribunda, a tree sacred to the aboriginal people with flowers that turn orange and yellow in Autumn. She did not succeed because the semi-patristic Nutsyia needs a ‘host’ plant to survive.

Never truly happy about leaving the area that is now Augusta, Georgiana died at Bussleton, Western Australia on 8th April, 1843 at the age of 38. she left behind seven children and died giving birth to her seventh child. She was buried at St Mary’s Church, Busselton.

Triumphs in Georgiana’s Life Georgiana Molloy is remembered as the first successful female botanist in Western Australia.

Some reasons that her life was so successful was that: 

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Some specimens in her collections, including her Type specimens, are still in the Kew Herbarium and the Cambridge Museum Herbarium. Some of her letters/ diaries are still intact, held at the Cumbria Archive Centre in Carlisle UK and the JD Battye Library in Perth WA. You can see her items such as specimens and diaries on a computer screen anywhere in the World.

The botanical work of Georgiana Molloy comes to life vividly through the pictures that are now available.

Combining the work of Georgiana’s diaries/ letters with online sources makes it possible for people to be able to trace some of her specimens from the day she collected them in the bush, their journey from collector to collector and to their current resting place in a herbarium.

Though her life as a settler was full of hardship and tragedy and for most of her 13 years in the colony she was nursing a baby, her days were full of domestic and farm work from before dawn into late at night and yet still she somehow found time for her botanical interest. A medical condition meant that she risked her life every time she gave birth, and soon after she gave birth to her seventh child she died. She was still desperately longing to collect and send the seeds of the Nuytsia floribunda and Kingia australias to Mangles. She died at 37 years old.

This is a collage of some of the flowers and plants that Georgiana would have studied.