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Though she’d followed a separate path and settled more than a thousand miles from her beloved Janet, Agnes never lost sight of the unflinching loyalty that had sustained them through their tumultuous coming of age. The two Scottish lasses had been through it all: the drudgery and filth of the wool mills, the degradation inside Newgate, a terrifying and treacherous sea journey, and finally the prison where Janet suffered the loss of little William. They would still endure tragedy from time to time.

In 1853, the year transportation ended in Van Diemen’s Land, there was little triumph for Janet. Within ten days in October, she lost two sons, eight-year-old James and three-year-old Arthur, victims of scarlet fever. By Christmas 1869, the now-greying redhead had given birth thirteen times, buried three children, witnessed the marriage of her two oldest sons, and welcomed into the world at least one grandchild. Her son William celebrated his heritage when he and his wife, Dinah, christened eleven of their twelve children with the middle name Freeman. With a touch of humor and perhaps a bit of irreverence toward British rule, they named their ninth child Charles Napoleon (Warrior) Bailey.

Ludlow, too, had relied on an unshakable bond, hers between mother and daughter. It had carried them from a Christmas inside Newgate Prison through their journey to a land “beyond the seas.” Though she’d been forced to suffer a five-year separation from Arabella in Van Die-men’s Land, Ludlow now heard the sound of laughter, from three generations, echo through the ironbark forest in Sandhurst, Victoria. Mother and child had arrived in Van Diemen’s Land with nothing, but by 1869, both owned property in a thriving township stirring with commerce from banks, hotels, watchmakers, grocers, music halls, and a bowling alley.41 After the miners’ rights were won, Arabella’s husband, Isaac, continued to work the diggings, while his expanded family settled down in a quiet country cottage just outside Bendigo proper. With Ludlow by her side, Arabella gave birth to five more children: four girls and a boy.

At age thirty-seven, Arabella became a widow in 1867, when Isaac passed away at age sixty-three. Twelve years later, she wed a widower named John Oliver. Her grandchildren, like many in Sandhurst, still found specks of gold in the dirt after a hard rainfall. Arabella lived to age eighty-eight, enjoying life as the matriarch of four generations and remembered in her 1918 obituary as “a well known and highly esteemed resident of the Golden Square district.”42

Pursuing ordinary lives twelve thousand miles from their homeland, Arabella, Ludlow, Agnes, and Janet helped shape an emerging culture with traits born of their extraordinary past. With iron wills forged in a crucible of greed, injustice, punishment, and prejudice, these survivors refused to be broken. When transportation ended, convict women and men constituted about 40 percent of Australia’s English-speaking population.

Bold women sent to a wild land against their will—Agnes McMillan, Janet Houston, Ludlow Tedder, and twenty-five thousand others—wove the rich tapestry for a nation’s future. Whether Irish, English, or Scottish, it didn’t matter where they were from or why they were transported. The winds of change had blown away much of the past. Under the Southern Cross, healing had begun. They were all Australians now.

APPENDIX 1

Agnes McMillan

Description List (Westmoreland, AOT CON 19-1-14 p. 438)

Transcription provided by Female Factory Research Group

Conduct Record

PoLICE No. 253

Millan Mc Agnes

Westmoreland 3 December 1836

Ayr Court of Justiciary 3rd May 1836 7 years

Transported for theft, habit, repute and previous convictions.

Gaol Report: twice before convicted, bad character, single.

Stated this Offence: robbing a shop; tried with Houstan on board, [previous convictions] once for Housebreaking 18 months, once 60 days for theft; 3 years on the town; single. Surgeon’s Report: bad.

22 March 1837 (Donahoo) Absent without leave & insolent - Crime Class