Anna F. Walker, 'Family traditions and personal recollections', ca. 1900

C 195

fonds

[ca. 1900]

447398

Microfilm : CY 3505 (C 195)

0.01 metres of textual material (1 volume, 59 pages) - typescript

Anna Walker, botanical painter, was born on the 23 June 1830 at 'Rhodes', the family home on the Parramatta River at Concord, NSW. She was the third daughter of Thomas Walker and Anna Elizabeth, nee Blaxland, and a grand-daughter of John and Harriott Blaxland who had arrived in the colony in 1807. Thomas Walker had come to NSW in 1818 as assistant deputy commissary-general (he served in the stores at Sydney, Port Dalrymple in Van Diemen's Land, Parramatta and Windsor) and he and Anna Blaxland were married at St John's Church, Parramatta in 1823. The family went to live in Van Diemen's Land in 1832 on Thomas Walker's property, also called 'Rhodes', on the South Esk River near Longford. Anna Walker spent two years (ca. 1846-1847) living at 'Newington' the Blaxland family's home on the Parramatta River, where she had lessons in water-colour painting from Henry Curzon Allport. After Thomas Walker's death in 1861 the family returned to NSW to live at 'Rhodes' in Concord.

Anna Walker's narrative covers the period from ca. 1806 to the early 1860s and much of it concerns events that took place before her birth in 1830. She writes about the life of her mother Anna Elizabeth Blaxland and the Blaxland family at Newington, including descriptions of weddings and balls, of her father's experiences while serving in the commissariat in the Peninsular War, and of Walker and Blaxland family history. She describes life in Tasmania (including descriptions of the district, of neighbours, visitors and social occasions) and the period she was living in NSW with her grandmother at Newington. There is a detailed account of the aftermath of the wreck of the paddle-steamer 'Clonmel' which ran aground on a sandbar off the coast of Victoria, near present-day Port Albert, in January 1841. Anna Walker was not on the ship; her parents, eldest sister Harriott and three youngest siblings were among the passengers en route from Sydney to Melbourne. (Call No.: C 195)

David Scott Mitchell bookplate
Transferred from ML Q929.2
There is a manuscript version of this typescript in the Walker and Blaxland family papers located at MLMSS 462