I first heard of Elizabeth Macarthur when I was ten years old in Grade Five. I’d been in Australia for less than a year, but I was in my third Australian school by then, with the first teacher whose name I can remember and the only one I ever loved. Her name was Miss Baird. She was young and pretty and enthusiastic and kind, and when she asked us to do a project on wool I put my heart and soul into it, to please her. I sent away to the Wood Board for their ‘project kit’, learned ‘all about’ John and Elizabeth Macarthur, and proudly told their story on my project poster, complete with samples of fine merino wool . Miss Baird was so impressed with my efforts she showed it at some conference she went to – and even asked if she could keep it at the end of the year. I wonder what became of it!
At some time in Form One or Two when we did Australian history, John Macarthur stole the show. We learned that he was the Father of the Wool Industry, and though we got a sanitised history of his other more colourful activities such as deposing Governor Bligh, we heard nothing about his wife Elizabeth. My Oxford Dictionary of Australian History mentions her ‘greatly assisting’ her husband in the development of the Australian fine wool industry but says no more, and Thomas Keneally in Australians, Origins to Eureka mentions her quite a few times but mainly as a sensible woman who chronicled events starring her husband. Well, with the publication of Elizabeth Macarthur, a Life at the Edge of the World, no one will be able to get away with that any more. As Clare Wright says in the blurb:

Finally, Elizabeth Macarthur steps out from the long shadow of her infamous, entrepreneurial husband. In Michelle Scott Tucker’s devoted hands, Elizabeth emerges as a canny businesswoman, charming diplomat, loving mother and indefatigable survivor. A fascinating, faithful portrait of a remarkable women and the young, volatile colony she helped to build.

But Tucker does more than that, IMO, because in writing this lively, entertaining and profoundly empathetic biography, she has also brought other colonial women out of the shadows and told their story too.

As her daughter’s health improved, Elizabeth turned her energies and focus to the farms. That is not to say, with John away, she hadn’t already been working. Apart from a handful of aristocrats, Elizabeth and the other women of her era never stopped working. They worked every day of their lives and worked extraordinarily hard. The so-called ‘farmer and his wife’ were, in reality, both farmers and then, as now, the wife’s labour inside and outside the home was crucial to the running of the farm and the economic wellbeing of the family. Elizabeth Macarthur was no exception. She was, at that time, again, merely one of a number of women who had sole responsibility for their families’ farms. (p.208)

Tucker quotes Governor Macquarie in 1810 as he toured the outlying districts of Sydney and passed judgement on the state of the farms he visited. Some of them, already overgrazed and poorly maintained, did not meet his high standards. But others clearly met with his approval, including some that were managed by women – including a Mrs Bell and Mrs Laycock and her daughters:

That women are farming does not seem in any way remarkable to Macquarie; he merely notes the names and makes some comments in the say way he does for the men’s farms he visits. (p.209)

The fact is that Elizabeth Macarthur managed her farm for long periods of time in her husband’s absence overseas, and in fact it was she not John who despatched the first shipment of fine wool to Britain in 1812. He was away in England for eight years dealing with the fallout of deposing Bligh, while under her discerning eye, the Macarthurs’ pioneering breeding regime, for fleece rather than meat, was finally paying dividends. She got a good price for that first shipment but the financial gains were soon lost by John whose imprudence meant he was in debt and relying on Elizabeth to keep him in funds. It was Elizabeth who kept the first merino stud book, and – tougher than her foolish husband – she was the only married woman of the period in the records to sue in her own name for the non-payment of debts.
Tucker’s awareness of gender issues is refreshing...
To see the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/03/12/elizabeth-macarthur-a-life-at-the-edge-of-th...