Salmon Women Pioneers in Colonial New South Wales
Pride in their new country, hard work, entrepreneurship, love affairs and heartbreak are part of the story of four young women and their lives in colonial New South Wales.
Against the Tide is a true story of the three wives and sister of an educated convict, Thomas Armitage Salmon who arrived in Sydney in 1831 on the York. For his white collar crime, he served seven years as a clerk to the Superintendent of Stores at Emu Plains.
Thomas’s beautiful young wife Sarah and their four young children, accompanied by his devoted sister Mary Ann, followed on the Princess Victoria arriving in Sydney in 1834. After a year the enterprising Sarah opened the successful Rose Inn on the Western Highway in Penrith.
The vehement politics of the day were chronicled by another wife. She was Ann the widow of Robert Howe, of the Howe family newspaper dynasty. Her paper, The Sydney Gazette supported the liberal Governor Richard Bourke and her stand, and that of her lover, William Watt, saw many enemies made among the elites. Ann’s enterprising spirit saw her as one of the first settlers on the newly explored Macleay River.
This book follows the lives of these interesting women interwoven with the growth of the colony. It details the changes to self government and the law, the end of transportation, opening of large tracts of agricultural land serviced by road, rail and sea travel, public schooling, the arts and leisure.