Georgiana Molloy - In Her Own Words

We know Georgiana Molloy as Western Australia’s first internationally successful female botanist and yet her work collecting plant specimens for Captain James Mangles began just six years before she died. Her gardens in Augusta and Busselton, and the native plants she found around her in the bush, were her passions but life as one of the first European settlers in the colony meant that she rarely had time to devote to botany. Fortunately for us, many of the letters she wrote and some of her journals have survived.
Drawing on historical information from her own writing, this talk will consider her life, work and the world around her, including botany, early colonial settlement in the southwest and the significance of viewing history through the lens of nineteenth century emigrant letters and diaries.
Bernice Barry is a writer and historian with a professional background in languages, literature and education. She has spent fifteen years researching the life of Georgiana Molloy, locating sources and settings in WA, England and Scotland. Her book, Georgiana Molloy: the Mind That Shines (Picador/Pan Macmillan 2016) is a biography that also includes information about the research process. It solves mysteries, corrects misconceptions and answers questions that had lingered for 150 years.