Dr Jessica White: From the Miniature to the Momentous: An Ecobiography of Georgiana Molloy

Event date: 
Wednesday 15 July to Thursday 16 July
Time: 
13:00

Dr Jessica White: From the Miniature to the Momentous: An Ecobiography of Georgiana Molloy.

Please click HERE to go to the online talk

Georgiana Molloy (1805-1843) emigrated from Carlisle, England, to Augusta in south-west Western Australia with her husband, arriving in 1830. Just prior to her emigration, she spent time with her friends the Dunlops at Keppoch House, between Helensburgh and Cardross, and with her friend Helen Story at the manse at Rosneath. She also kept a journal of a tour she made of the lochs from Rosneath to Inveraray. As someone who was taught about the natural world since her girlhood, Molloy was particularly moved by Scotland’s environment.

In Australia, Molloy was initially resistant to her surroundings, which were dramatically different to those in England and Scotland. Following the death of her son in 1837, however, she began collecting seeds and botanical specimens for Captain James Mangles, a botanical broker in London. Collecting became a passion for Molloy, to the point where she considered it a vocation and referred to it as ‘the real cause that enticed me out to Swan River.’

Three biographies have been published on Molloy, but these are traditional cradle-to-grave biographies and do not account for the remarkable transformation in Molloy’s sense of self prompted by her engagement with the flora of south-west Western Australia. This paper discusses the use of ecobiography, or the representation of a self’s entwinement with their environment, to better articulate the role of the other-than-human in shaping human lives. It charts Molloy’s networks with the area’s traditional custodians, the Wardandi Noongar people, and with botanical connoisseurs in England through her correspondence with James Mangles. In doing so, it draws attention to the importance of south-west Western Australia, one of two biodiversity hotspots in Australia. It also underscores that, if we want to write about human lives in biography, it is imperative that we write about the lives that support us.