Title: Surviving Sydney Cove
Author: Goldie Alexander
Published: 05/01/2019
ISBN: 9781742769615
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Harvey was convicted of stealing a linen gown and a silk bonnet worth 7 shillings and transported to Australia on the First Fleet.
After swapping two onions for a journal, her diary begins in 1790 when she is thirteen and working as a domestic on Henry Dodd's farm at Rose Hill. Lizzie intends to post this diary to her younger brother Edward who lives in the Cotswolds in England. Because they have been parted these last four years, the entries interweave how she came to be in Botany Bay and present day happenings.
Orphaned at nine, Lizzie went to London to be an apprentice where she was unjustly accused of theft and sent to Newgate Prison. There she was befriended by Sarah Burke who became her staunch 'protector'. Lizzie describes her life in the hulks, the 252 day voyage on the Lady Penrhyn, the landing in Botany Bay and working as a domestic for Surgeon James Russell, his son Winston and little asthmatic Emily. Plus her first contact with the Aborigines.
Lizzy's account of life in the new colony takes place over 2 months during the very worst of the 'starving years'. It opens just before the foundering of the flagship Sirius (5th April 1790) and ends with the arrival of the 2nd Fleet. (June 3rd 1790). (Author website)
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