Sheila HUnter - Co-Winner of 1999 NSW Senior Citizen of the Year, In the Year of the Senior Citizen
Mattie
Coming of Age in Convict Australia
Woodslane/Hand in Hand Publications ISBN 9780994578204
Twelve-year-old London street urchin Mattie Paul is convicted of petty theft and sentenced to seven years of transportation to the penal colony of Port Jackson, NSW. Peg, another female convict, takes Mattie under her wing and gives her a chance to make something of her life by teaching her to read. Mattie seizes every opportunity that comes her way. Though life is not particularly kind to her, she battles through earning her freedom, marrying and becoming a mother in her homeland. On this journey, she encounters bushrangers, is widowed, and becomes an entrepreneur in the Bathurst goldfields. She mixes with escaped convicts, but her spirit is indomitable, and she becomes a pillar and much-loved treasure of her adopted community. Mattie may be a fictional character, but her experiences are only too real and invest us in immersing ourselves in the lives of those remarkable women who helped to make Australia what it is today.
ISBN 9781925403404 - Brown Woodslane Press edition
