In 18th century Isle of Man eleven-year-old Alice Moore, was seemingly abandoned by her mother, then thrown, penniless, into the street by the landlord and left fend for herself.
In her struggle to survive, she slept wherever she could find a bit of shelter and had to steal most of her food. Alice became an expert at evading capture, but at times she did not escape and on several occasions was sentenced to a term of imprisonment in Castletown gaol.
Eventually, she was caught trying to steal a loaf of bread and was sentenced to be sent to ‘a part beyond the seas’ for a term of seven years. After several months in the dreaded Newgate Gaol, she was dispatched, with the second fleet on a vessel – the Lady Juliana – which carried only female convicts, about half of whom were prostiutes. At all the ports they called at the ‘ladies of the night’ plied their trade to raise a nest egg for when they arrived in their new land, and earned the ship the nickname – The Floating Brothel.
A day short of a year after leaving Galleons Reach in London, and after a horrendous voyage Alice found herself in Port Jackson, in Australia, which was not the town she had expected, but just a scruffy scattering of tents and wooden huts.
An even more horrifying event unfolded, when a few days after her arrival, the rest of the notorious second fleet arrived.
Once again, she had to find a way to survive.
Over de auteur
The author was born in Scotland a year before World War II started, but swears she didn’t cause it …
In January 1968 she arrived in Australia as a ‘Ten Pound Tourist’ with her, then, husband and four children.
After the breakup of her marriage after twenty-five years the author was contacted by a man named Mike Kelly, whom she had known in her teens and had had no contact with for nearly thirty years. Mike’s marriage having broken up around the same time as the author’s. On learning she was ‘on the loose’, he obtained her phone number by courtesy of his mother – International telephone enquiries – and the author’s mother, so rang to see if she was okay.
One thing led to another, they were married in 1988 and returned to the Isle of Man to start a new life. On Mike’s retirement, five years later, they followed the summers and spent half their lives in Australia and the other half in the Isle of Man.
In their months on the island each year, they ran a daffodil and plant nursery and were well known throughout the island for their roadside stall, where they sold their daffodils and plants.
As age caught up with them, they realised it was time to settle somewhere permanently. Being the warmer country, Australia won, and they moved there in 2014, to live in a retirement village in Lakes Entrance – one of the prettiest spots in Australia.
This, they both feel, will suit them until they climb in their boxes (but not for a long time yet) and move on to higher places.
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