painter, was born in Merton, Surrey. Always known as Ellen, she came to New South Wales with her parents, Captain William Ogilvie and Mary, née White, her aunt and her three brothers, on board the convict transport Granada which arrived at Sydney on 23 January 1825. According to her daughter Mary 's reminiscences, the family stayed at Government House, Parramatta, while Will Ogilvie went looking for suitable land in the Hunter River district, ultimately taking up 10,000 acres near Muswellbrook which he called 'Merton’ after the family home. There Ellen Ogilvie married Wellington Cochrane Bundock in 1841.
In 1845, after the birth of their second child, Ellen Bundock and the children left Merton for Wyangarie on the Richmond River, an extremely isolated property where Wellington and his brother had been living for over two years clearing the land, stocking the property and building a primitive homestead for the family. Their removal, however, was interrupted en route; at Grafton they discovered that the homestead had been burnt down and Aborigines were in possession of the property. Ellen and the children moved in with her brother, Edward Ogilvie, at Yulgilbar on the Clarence River for over a year until the house was rebuilt.
According to Mary, once established at Wyangarie her mother never saw a woman friend 'except on the very rare occasions when she went to see Mrs Wilson at Lismore’. For 18 years she is said never to have travelled farther from home than 'her brother’s place on the Clarence’, which she visited frequently. An oil view of the original mud-walled and thatched-roofed Yulgilbar homestead, its gardens, outbuildings and local inhabitants (both black and white) painted on the cover of a papiêr-maché writing case (ML) was made by Mrs Bundock as a present for her sister-in-law Theodosia Isabella, née de Burgh, who came to Yulgilbar with Edward in 1859 after their marriage in Dublin the previous year.
The Bundocks had six more children at Wyangarie. Ellen taught all six boys and two girls until they were old enough to go to boarding school, just as she and her brothers had been taught by her mother. Her husband held Latin classes for the boys and later on Mary, as the elder daughter, assisted in the teaching.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
