sketcher and governess, was born in Coleraine, Ireland, only daughter of the poet, lyric writer and student of Aboriginal culture Eliza Hamilton Dunlop by Dunlop’s first marriage to James Sylvius Law, an astronomer. Her mother married a fellow Irish native, David Dunlop, at Portpatrick, Scotland, in 1823 and Georgina (as she seems to have been known) came to New South Wales in February 1838 with her mother, step-father and the four children of this marriage. Dunlop was appointed first police magistrate in the Penrith district and leased the old Government House at nearby Emu Plains for his family. On 7 July 1840 Georgina Law signed and dated a pencil view of the building (Mitchell Library). Another drawing, Sir John Jamison’s Factory, Emu Plains , inscribed 'Sunday 19th(?)/41 Mary G. Law’, a far cruder work, is perhaps a copy of Georgina’s (lost) original.
David Dunlop was subsequently appointed police magistrate and protector of the Macdonald River Aborigines. The family moved to Wollombi where Dunlop built a stone house, Mulla Villa, but Georgina Law became governess to the Hassall family. By the early 1860s she was headmistress of Sydney’s St Catherine’s Church of England School for the daughters of clergymen. Later she too lived at Wollombi with her mother (again widowed: Dunlop died in 1863), her half-sister Rachel and Rachel’s husband, David Milson, at Byora, the property David managed for his father. Georgina Law died at Wollombi in 1879 and was buried in the Church of England section of the local cemetery.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
