Looking Back history feature: Elizabeth, the Thirroul convict woman

THE Thirroul district is said to have been cleared of scrub and timber by women convicts. This statement does not sound so fantastic when we read that Bungaribee, near Penrith, was built of bricks hauled in handcarts by women convicts from Sydney.

The camp was at or near the present site of Thirroul. The occupants were neither lovely nor refined, for the majority were born and bred in the slums of England, educated in the prisons and hulks, and finally, after some years of this intensive training, were professionally engaged in the Female Factories of New South Wales.

There was one exception to prove this rule of cultural deficiency. Elizabeth —- was cast in a gentler mould. She was neither snub-nosed or wide-mouthed, her hair was not wild and unkempt, nor did she enrich her conversation with many forceful and unmelodious oaths. She did not, indeed, engaged much in conversation…