To be heirs forever - Hardcover

Mary Durack

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0094611009 ISBN 13: 9780094611009

Publisher: Constable, 1976

Synopsis

Eliza Shaw was a botanical painter and writer as well as an excellent pianist and needlewoman. She arrived with her family in Western Australia in February 1830. Eliza and William Shaw created connections & built relationships with their new environment and this was part of the process of how they came to feel a sense of belonging to the Upper Swan. However, they also developed feelings of attachment and belonging by forming relationships with the people around them and by creating a home. These colonists at the Swan River formed close social networks. In lieu of family support they shared equipment, food and information and they offered one another comfort and companionship. William and Eliza Shaw frequently shared their camp oven they used for baking bread and receiving presents, as a lamb, haunch or leg of kangaroo, spareribs, leg of mutton, quarter of kid, etc. Eliza Shaw also valued her friends at the Upper Swan: 'ours is the most friendly neighbourhood you can imagine…I am the richest person in the world possessing the best, the very best of friends in dear Old England, and certainly the most respectable, kind and worthy ones in Western Australia.' Eliza Shaw also developed strong ties to their property, 'Belvoir', & derived much satisfaction and strength from her children. When her children were scattered from 'Belvoir' and lived at Toodyay and Champion Bay she lamented the distances between herself, her children & grandchildren. Eliza's last letters and final diary entry when she was 85 convey the love she felt for 'Belvoir', and she wrote of this property as though her family had been there for centuries, rather than decades. In the 1870s the financial situation of their property was grim and Eliza was eventually forced to sell it. She expressed her sorrow in her diary: 'Oh! What a trial it will be to see it pass away' and 'Alas, how am I to write that poor dear Belvoir is advertised for sale.'

Edition details

• Publisher: Constable
• Publication date: 1976
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0094611009
• ISBN 13: 9780094611009
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 286