Standing on the docks at Liverpool in May 1854, 21-year-old Maggie Brown Howden was thinking of one thing only: her fiancé, dear Jamie. James Johnston, Ballarat’s assistant commissioner. Her farewells from her native Scotland were behind her. The last calls, the settling of accounts, the shopping and packing and being driven to the station by tearful relations. Maggie was sad, but stoic: we cannot know what changes may take place, she wrote in her diary, [but] never shall I forget my dear home.
Despite the fact that hundreds of ships were setting sail for Victoria, departures for the three-month ship journey were cause for intense emotion and grand ceremony. The decision to emigrate to the other side of the world was never taken lightly, for it was often the last time that loved ones would ever see each other.
The departing McLeish family was surrounded by weeping friends who all believed they were bidding us a final good-bye, which indeed they were. Anxious relatives would hear no news of their kin for at least six months; that is how long a return letter would take to arrive.
MARGARET JOHNSTON (NEE HOWDEN)
A HAPPY CAMPER
THE HONEYMOON FROM HELL
BORN Duns, Scotland, 1833
DIED Buninyong, 1888
ARRIVED August 1854, on the Hurricane
AGE AT EUREKA 21
CHILDREN Pregnant at Eureka with first of fifteen children.
FAQ Married Assistant Gold Commissioner James Johnston in August 1854 and went straight to Ballarat Camp. Lived in Camp during Eureka. Kept a diary.
ARCHIVE Diary, SLV MS 13610
Thomas and Frances Pierson left Staten Island, New York, to shouts of hurahs, cheers, waveing handkerchiefs, hats tc tc fireing of pistols and farewell music. Frances took her photographic equipment aboard; Thomas took his characteristic bad mood. There had been little else but news of Australia in the American papers for months, and Frances and Thomas were lucky to get a berth. Nearly every nation of the world is represented on our ship, wrote Thomas.
Merchant Robert Caldwell described the cosmopolitan flood of immigrants onto Victoria’s shores:
The swart Briton walks shoulder to shoulder with the flat-faced Chinaman, the tall and stately Armenian, the lithe New Zealander or South Sea Islander, the merry African from the United States, the grave Spaniard, the yellow-haired German, the tall, sharp visaged Yankee, and the lively Frenchman. Every state in the world has its representatives…
The passengers came in every hue and occupied every station in life. From the poor farm girl, her passage paid by the government, to large families with money and discontented spirits. As their ships finally pulled away from sobbing relatives and fading band music, they set their sights on one thing: a far off land of Promise, where they may find wealth, social distinction and domestic happiness.
THOMAS PIERSON
THE WHINGER
IF THERE’S SOMETHING TO COMPLAIN ABOUT, COUNT ON THOMAS
BORN Philadelphia, 1813
DIED Ballarat, 1911
ARRIVED February 1853, on the Ascutna
AGE AT EUREKA 41
CHILDREN One son, 15 years old.
FAQ Married to Frances Pierson. Freemason. Book binder. Worked as a digger while Frances ran a store. Kept a detailed diary from the ship voyage through the early years on Ballarat diggings.
ARCHIVE Diaries, SLV MS 11646
Well, that was the plan anyway.