In Loving Memory of Mary Belshaw, May McRidge, and the Nyungar People of the Badjaling Mission, 1930-1954

Author: LONGWORTH, ALISON

Source: Journal of Religious History, Volume 31, Number 1, March 2007 , pp. 115-129(15)

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Abstract:

Using examples from his family and religious history, Patrick O'Farrell analysed the transition from Irish emigrant to assimilated colonial in what was perceived as vacant land. Like O'Farrell, this article will also use family history to address the issues of memory, religion, and assimilation. The Irish weaver Mary Belshaw (1879-1960) came to Australia in 1913 and was instrumental in the emigration of her family to Australia during the 1920s. She worked as a Protestant missionary among Aboriginal Australians from 1915, until her retirement in 1953. Although the grave she shares with her co-worker May McRidge (1882-1943) bears the words “Ever remembered by what she has done,” her story was largely forgotten by her family. In 1986, the Nyungar people erected a memorial stone to Belshaw and McRidge and the thirty-nine Nyungar families who lived at the Badjaling Mission in Western Australia from 1930 to 1954. This article will address the wider issues in twentieth-century Australia which contributed to the neglect of the story by Belshaw's Irish Australian family and then led to its recovery. It will reveal how an Irish heritage was rediscovered because the story lived within a Nyungar community who had survived terra nullius and assimilation policies to return to their land at Badjaling.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9809.2007.00548.x

Affiliations: 1: Murdoch University, Western Australia in 2005

Publication date: 2007-03-01