While today’s kids are serious about Sugar Plum fairies and Santa Claus, the thoughts of ten year previous Mary Wade should have been vastly different. At Christmastime in 1789, Mary was the youngest convict aboard a ship bound for Australia: certainly one of 2 hundred and fifty or so girls, half approach to a wierd land. Their female convict ship The Lady Juliana, a part of the Second Fleet, had set sail from Portsmouth in July.

Months earlier Mary, (born in England in 1778), had been arrested and located guilty of stealing another child’s clothes. Her death sentence, commuted to transportation for all times, was bitter sweet. Mary had escaped the gallows but would by no means see her family again. She spent the spring of 1789 in horrendous situations at Newgate Prison. Mary was one of fifty girls fed bread and water in a cell that had neither beds nor bathrooms. However, once aboard The Lady Juliana, her state of affairs improved. All convicts have been moderately fed and given warm beds. Only five ladies and two kids died in the course of the eleven month voyage and the situation of those who arrived in the colony in 1790, had improved.

To relieve the strain on Sydney Cove, Governor Phillip despatched many new arrivals together with Mary, to a spot described by Captain Cook as, ‘a Paradise’ – Norfolk Island. There, at age fourteen, Mary gave start to a daughter. Mary Wade: The Littlest Convict had two extra kids with emancipated Irish transportee, Teague Harrigan and by 1806, the family was living in a tent on the banks of the Tank stream in Sydney. Harrigan joined a whaling ship but never returned.

By 1809, Mary had married and arrange house near the Hawkesbury River with convict Jonathan Brooker. Emancipated circa 1812, the pair took ownership of a thirty acre farm in Airds, Campbelltown and lived fortunately until Harrigan’s demise in 1833. Twenty six years later in 1859, eighty 12 months old Mary died at residence. She had given delivery to twenty one youngsters. In her lifetime, her family had grown to include 5 generations and over three hundred descendants. Now, Mary’s descendants quantity in the tens of 1000’s, including Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister of Australia.

At Christmastime in 1789, ten year previous convict Mary Wade was facing an uncertain future. Today, she is recognized as certainly one of Australia’s founding moms.