A Sister Remembered

Being a transported convict, Michael had been torn away from his family and his home in Pontefract, Yorkshire. Within his journal and on the fly leaf of the gardening book he carried with him, Michael wrote of one family member in particular, his beloved sister Mary. Within the gardening book, he recorded her birthday in conjunction with the number of years they had been parted, while in his journal he wrote of the dreams he recently had of her. Both these books were held together with kangaroo skin, which Michael had sewn “very neatly with sinews”, with the gardening book being a most valued possession. In fact, he had “so studied it, as to have thumbed its covers off”, hence the need for him to replace it with kangaroo skin.