Canberra writer honours the hardship and humanity of early Australia
In 1818, the Friendship sailed into Port Jackson carrying my great-great-great grandmother Sarah Elizabeth Thatcher, aged four, together with her brothers but without her mother, who died on the voyage, or her father, who was already in the colony of New South Wales....
So begins No Time for Toys, the new book by Canberra writer Gail Annette Tregear about her ancestor Sarah Thatcher, who endured a hard, cold childhood in the colonies but, against all odds, lived to 89 and left a mighty legacy.
"I just thought it was a wonderful story and a life worth writing about,'' Ms Tregear said. "It was just extraordinary the things that happened to her.''
The book was a departure for the Canberra-raised writer who usually travels the world attending race meets and filing stories for racingandsports.com.au, where she also pens the Whistle Jacket column.
But the tale of that little girl arriving without her mother to the most foreign of worlds, was one she couldn't ignore.
"My grandmother's scrapbook had [Sarah's] obituary in it and there were all these sorts of stories floating around about all the different people involved,'' she said.
"Some of these stories were accurate; some of them weren't. Most of them weren't.''
The pithy 92-page book is published by Xlibris. It emphasises the hardship of early Australia by revealing the humanity behind what might otherwise have just been names consigned to history.
Then three-year-old child Sarah left England for Australia in 1817 with her mother Martha who had been sentenced to 14 years' transportation for forging a banknote. Sarah's two brothers were with them. Her father, Samuel Hale, was already in the colony. Martha died of dysentery during the voyage. Samuel was not allowed to look after the children until he was eligible for a ticket of leave, some five years later after the children arrived at Port Jackson on January 14, 1818.
Little Sarah Thatcher was sent to a foster mother, then the Female Orphan School at Parramatta. She was married at 14; widowed at 25 with four children. She remarried, had three more children, ran a market garden outside Melbourne and a greengrocer's shop in Little Bourke Street, later selling it "as she didn't think Melbourne was going to amount to much''.
Lured by the gold rush, Sarah spent 30 years as the postmistress at Wendouree, near Ballarat. She died in 1903, just a few weeks short of her 90th birthday.
There is a nod to the history of the Canberra region in the book. Sarah's father, Samuel, and brother, James, moved to the Limestone Plains,the area that would eventually become Canberra. Hale Street in Googong is named after Samuel.
Sarah and her second husband and the children followed her father to the Snowy Mountains area of the "Maneroo'', now the Monaro region. James married in Jerrabomberra.
Samuel and James also farmed for a time alongside ex-convict Timothy Beard on the banks of the Queanbeyan River in the late 1820s. The new suburb of Beard, east of Fyshwick, is named after him.
With a journalist's knack for spare writing, Ms Tregear also adds absorbing details, from the daily routine in the orphanage to tales of Sarah being "held up by bushrangers in St Kilda''.
Sarah could hardly rely on the men in her life. Her second husband beat her and later disappeared. With seven children, she had no choice but to find work wherever she could. She was a strong woman.
"I think she had no alternative and just got on and did things. She hadn't known any other way,'' Ms Tregear said.
"I think the book shows how hard life was in those early times.''
Ms Tregear moved to Canberra from Melbourne as an 18-month-old with her mother and father, who was a parliamentary officer. They lived in a house they built at 61 Arthur Circle in Red Hill. Ms Tregear now lives in Civic, in an apartment overlooking the Shine Dome, Telstra Tower and Lake Burley Griffin. She loves Canberra, loves travelling the world and her next book will be for children.
She feels like she has honoured the legacy of Sarah Thatcher. Does she think she has the same strength as her ancestor?
"I hope so,'' she said, her eyes twinkling with her smile.