Georgiana Molloy
Molloy, Georgiana (1805-1843) was a botanist and a member of a pioneering family in Western Australia. Her work was valuable in classifying plants in Western Australia.
Georgiana Kennedy grew up in Cumberland, England. Her father died when she was 16, and the family moved to Rugby. Georgiana became estranged from her family because of religious differences, and she left to live with the family of a friend at Rosneath, Scotland. While she was there she met Captain John Molloy, a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, who was at least 15 years older than her. The couple married in 1829, and shortly afterward sailed for Western Australia.
Once in Australia, the Molloys obtained a land grant of more than 12,000 acres (4,900 hectares) and settled on the smaller segment in Augusta, south of Bunbury. The land where they settled had long been the home of an Aborigine tribe. Relations between the Molloys and the Aborigines were friendly, and John Molloy made food and supplies available for them from government stores, in return for work.
Her husband was involved with the whaling trade, and Molloy developed an interest in the countryside in which she lived and the plants it contained. British botanists were interested in Western Australia's unknown wildflowers. Molloy cultivated a relationship with the Aborigines—almost unheard of for a white woman in those days—and considered them “much better auxiliaries than white people.” Molloy spent considerable time in the bush with them collecting seeds, leaves, and flowers, which she carefully packed and labeled. Molloy sent her collections back to England to a well-known botanist, Captain Mangles, who distributed them among the public gardens and parks there. In return, Mangles sent English seeds for Molloy's garden and botanical books, which greatly assisted Molloy in classifying her plants as well as extending her knowledge of Western Australian plants. She also collected for a visiting German botanist, Ludwig Preiss. Over the years, Molloy's botanical collections became large, particularly when the family moved northward to the Vasse River.