Yes, a chaperone, in the person of none other than Lady Collins, wife of the then current Sir William who ruled the family firm, cementing the family fortune by publishing the classic, improving tracts and various editions of the Holy Bible. Family history does not record whether Lady Collins was simply doing a good deed or if she felt like a trip herself. I like to think that in part it was a business trip and that Lady Collins was going to Sydney to check out the Aussie branch of the firm—or even perhaps set it up—and to ensure that the local bookshops were giving suitable prominence, promotion and position to the William Collins product. It also suits me to think of Lady Collins as a formidable Victorian of ample stature, well corseted and dressed in bombazines of subdued tone, with perhaps a riotous purple or mauve for dinners at the captain’s table. I know the voyage would have been first class. You don’t put a Lady Collins in steerage!

I hope the sea voyage helped the young widow. Can’t have been all fun and games dressed, as she would have been, in widow’s weeds. Those nights in the tropics must have been hell. Still, all good things must come to an end and Sydney loomed.

Just what happened to Mrs Hamilton in Sydney is veiled in the mists of time. I imagine the two women took up residence at a respectable George Street hotel. I imagine there was dinner, and maybe a weekend, with the Governor.

Undoubtedly, as was the custom, the first-class manifest of the ship would have been published in the social pages of the Sydney dailies. Can’t you just imagine the daily commotion in the foyer and public rooms of that respectable hotel? Every would-be, could-be Sydney-side novelist, poet and writer of improving tracts would have been paying court to the good lady, waving dog-eared manuscripts under her nose and generally importuning the poor woman. Good God, it wasn’t as if she had come to Sydney with the express purpose of unearthing the great Australian novel!

Escaping the ravening literary hordes by touring the bookshops was little better. There is a limit to how many bibles you want to inscribe To Bazza, Kylie and the kids, best wishes, God, pp Lady Collins! My sympathies, naturally enough, lie with my great-grandmother. There are only just so many times you want to go and gawk at the sites where the Harbour Bridge and Opera House will eventually stand. And when the cat’s away, sadly the mouse will play! And this is just what happened. I have a feeling that Mrs Hamilton would have faced anything other than a return sea voyage to the old country with the redoubtable Lady C.

Mrs Hamilton found husband number two: my great-grandfather, Francis Reeves.

Little is known of Francis. Understandable; he was a nineteenth-century Australian. I like to think that he may have been a convict, or at least the offspring of convicts…I imagine that he was inordinately handsome and sexy, because he did not have a great deal else to recommend him. For a long time among our family treasures was a small document signed by Mr Reeves: X, it says with admirable simplicity. And in parentheses: (Francis Reeves, his mark). Less than charitable souls may now be muttering under their breaths, ‘Aha! Must be from his great-grandfather he inherited his literary ability!’

Mrs Hamilton must have presented as heaven-sent to Francis, widowed himself and left with four young sons. Love at first sight and someone to rear the boys. They married—history does not record whether Lady Collins was matron-of-honour—and the new Mrs Reeves was whisked off up to the New South Wales and Queensland border to get on with married life on Mr Reeves’s property. I think it must have been a station and it must have been big. I have my Great-Aunt Emma’s word for it. It was a tough life for the young Mrs Reeves, but she had time to produce four daughters to complement her husband’s four sons. They were poor—according to Great-Aunt Emma—so poor that the kids went without shoes, trudging miles and miles barefoot to school through the snow. Barefoot in the snow was bad enough, but there were other perils—wild emus! The wild emus used to chase the little girls, chase them to and from school every day—I think the boys must have graduated by this time. They must have.