Showing results by author "Janeen Ann O'Connell" in All Categories

With his parents deceased and his older brother deserting his family, William Blay is struggling with insolvency. After selling his farm in New Norfolk, Van Diemen’s Land, William packs up his wife and three daughters and absconds to Port Phillip. But life in the new Colony is dogged by the same dramas that hounded William in Van Diemen’s Land. A new start is not easy as it first seemed. Forced to deal with the First World War and the Great Depression, they fight to make ends meet.

When James Bryan Cullen takes on convict transportee Elizabeth Bartlett in 1796 as a housekeeper, his challenge is to convince her that life on Norfolk Island is worth living. But how do you come back from being wrongly accused of a crime, then exiled to the other side of the world? He is 32 years older, transported on the First Fleet, long a free man, a constable, a landowner. She’s pregnant; her life such as it was, in tatters. With nothing to lose, Elizabeth settles into an existence as a convict slave, waiting for her master to expect more than cleaning and cooking.

When Catherine Tedder’s husband dies suddenly in September 1822, she is left alone with two small girls, Margaret and Sarah. Accepting the proposal of James Blay Jr. sees her trapped in a marriage of convenience - for him. Struggling with the vagaries of her wayward husband, Catherine and the girls are forced to adapt to his tyranny. Moving them between Hobart and New Norfolk, James refuses to let the girls attend school. It's 1823, and Catherine's rights as a wife are limited.