A Past Denied

This story begins in Ireland in the late 1700s and concludes nearly a century later in the new colony of Victoria, Australia.It is a story played out against the historical events of the penal colony they called Botany Bay. It follows the lives of Mary Fitzgerald and Rosetta Johnstone, two Irish convicts sent to the colony in the early 1800s, and Nicholas McCann, born free in the colony to Mary Fitzgerald, who marries Catherine Johnstone, daughter of Rosetta. Their lives follow a tragic path set by the harshness of English justice at the time, and the privations of early life in the untamed wildeness of the Australian subcontinent. Botany Bay was a place few went to by choice. Yet those who stayed, prospered and created a vibrant life for themselves and those who followed. The strength and courage of those first immigrants unfolds across these pages, and in the end reveals a truth that has long been neglected by many. That of a past denied.