SYNOPSIS
Earl Grey's Daughters
Earl Grey's Daughters
The Women Who Changed Australia.
The Women Who Changed Australia.
Between 1848 and 1850, young girls were sent from the workhouses of Ireland to Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. Earl Grey's Daughters looks at why the Irish sent their children to the far side of the Earth and what happened to them once there.
Most of the girls were orphaned by the famine. All of them lacked anyone who could support them. They could not feed themselves. That was not because of any personal failing, but the result of a poisonous social system which resulted in enormous wealth for a lucky few and grinding poverty for most of the population. Ireland's problems were rooted in the way the land was managed and justified by the schism between Protestant and Catholic that went all the way back to the 16th century.
When they arrived in Australia they did not fall into the lap of luxury. There were dangers on all sides. Nevertheless, the country was beset with chronic labour shortages. In 1851, the year after the girls arrived, gold was discovered, putting Australia's economic growth on the fast track. Given the right attitude, it was possible to aspire to a decent life.
But the real significance of the arrival of so many young women was that they solved one of Australia's most intractable problems: a lack of marriage partners for existing male settlers.
Some of the girls who arrived in Sydney may have been so traumatised by their experiences they never recovered. But most were able to seize the opportunity they were given. Earl Grey's Daughters follows the fortunes of three of those who arrived in Sydney in 1850 and then settled in the New England region of New South Wales.
