The Reid brothers grew up very happily on a sheep and wheat property in Cootamundra. Their father, John, had been a builder in Sydney but became disillusioned with the proliferation of project homes and decided to move to the Riverina region in the mid-1960s with his wife, Marie, and try his hand at farming.

Stuart was 3½ and Cameron was six months old when the family moved to the country “so our whole upbringing was on a farm”. They went to a primary school in Eurongilly that was run by a husband and wife teaching team and boasted about 30 students.

While Cameron always wanted to be a farmer, Stuart was born with a love of woodwork.

“As early as primary school, I’d drag Dad’s tools out and make something,” Stuart recalls. “It was usually pretty bad, but I just loved it. I got a natural pleasure from working with wood. No one really encouraged me, but no one discouraged me.”

The brothers started at Cootamundra High School, but when it seemed likely that Stuart wasn’t destined for a life on the land, he was sent to board at Knox Grammar School in Sydney. He did very well at woodwork, but that subject wasn’t available for study beyond Year 10.

“By that stage I’d decided I was going to be a cabinet maker. I did some work experience with some builders, but I hated it because there was no precision. Dad encouraged me to do some work experience with some furniture making firms and I thought: ‘Yes, this is it.’”

After high school, Stuart spent four years doing his apprenticeship and then, like so many Australians, he went to the UK for a working holiday.

“I needed to earn money and the first job I got was as a cabinet maker with Peter Hall & Son in the Lake District. They made only bespoke pieces and it was an epiphany for me. The English, with their respect for crafts and centuries of tradition, did things so much better than we did. In Australia we were very good at making furniture at a production level, but the English were so superior at making beautiful, bespoke, hand-made furniture. And that’s also where I fell in love with oak.”

Stuart returned to Australia and, as luck would have it, he met a young woman named Sue from the Lake District who was on a working holiday in Sydney. He followed her back to London, where he found work with another firm of cabinet makers, and the next year he and Sue were married.

Cameron, meanwhile, had followed Stuart into the world of wood.

“Mum and Dad always said that before we could be farmers, we had to do something else first, so we were a bit more worldly. I went to visit Cam in the boarding house at Knox just before his HSC. He knew the rules about doing something else before farming and I said I could get him a job where I was working. That made it easy for him and he decided to do it. He thought he’d do a trade for four years and then be a farmer. It turned out that Cam is a much better furniture maker than me.”

When the Reid brothers were younger, they would visit relatives in The Southern Highlands around Christmas time.

“It was hot and dusty on the farm in December, but it wasn’t that hot in the Highlands and it was still reasonably green. Dad used to say that when he and Mum sold the farm they would move here – and they did, in the late 1980s.”

Soon after their wedding, Stuart told his wife Sue that he wanted to have a go at starting his own business, based in the big shed his father had built in Bundanoon. It was only decades later, not long before he died, that John Reid admitted to his son that he had built such a large shed because he hoped his sons might use it.

“We were so naïve,” Stuart says. “We started a business in a shed in a Bundanoon paddock, intending to make the best furniture you could get. And it was 1992, so we were in a recession. But we put our Reid Brothers shingle up and gave it a go. We are both perfectionists and we were determined from the beginning to be the best. We want our furniture to be functional art – to do its job but to be as lovely to look at as the paintings on the wall above it.”

This striving for excellence was inherited from their father.

“As a farmer, Dad had a reputation for producing very high quality lamb and wool. He thought if you are going to do something, you have to make sure it’s really good. And Cam and I can’t do something that’s just ‘good enough’.”

Their first customers were “sympathetic family and friends who gave us little jobs like wall units and TV cabinets”. Their reputation slowly spread by word of mouth, but it took five years to become consistently busy so that they could justify employing a third person. Reid Brothers today still only has seven employees, including the two brothers, and they have no desire to grow larger.

“Labour is expensive and skilled labour is very limited, so most joinery firms have become computerised. That means you have to dumb down the designs and we don’t want to do that. We are not in any way businessmen, we’re still tradesmen, and we are not at all savvy about how to promote ourselves apart from doing a job well and being honest.”

For their first 25 years, most of their clients were based in Sydney. But since 2018 they have been able to be more selective and almost all their customers are now based in The Southern Highlands.

Stuart and Cameron are pleasantly surprised there is still demand for their custom-designed, hand-made, premium quality furniture. In fact, their pipeline has never been stronger.

“I think it’s because we’re getting old. When we started, in our late 20s, we weren’t that confident and we were asking people to invest a significant amount of money in furniture when we could only show them the drawings. Now we are more confident – and I’ve got wrinkles and I’m bald.”

Stuart is 60 and Cameron is 57, so succession planning is front of mind. They both have three children, but all six are pursuing other careers – in law, nursing, teaching, geology, physiotherapy and farming – and have no interest in carrying on the family business.

“They think this is a mad way to make a living,” Stuart laughs.

They say they are in a “purple patch” with their current team of skilled workers at Reid Brothers, several of whom have been with them since they were apprentices, but while they all love their career in the workshop “none of them wants to run the show”.

Stuart and Cameron recently attended a Lost Trades Fair which focused on lost and rare trades and crafts.

“We went because we discovered that cabinet makers were on the list – and that’s very sad.”

To read more about Reid Brothers (who are not related to Michael Reid in any way) visit reidbrothersfurniture.com.au

Beaumont now lives in The Southern Tablelands but she grew up in The Southern Highlands after her parents moved there from Sydney when she was two years old. 

“I had a very happy childhood,” she says. “My parents spent decades transforming a large paddock into a beautiful garden and I grew up with plants and birds and space.”

She is softly spoken and not very comfortable talking about herself. 

Art and creativity have been a constant in her life. “When I was five years old, I sold my first art work on the main street of Bowral for five cents. A friend and I were selling our drawings outside a shop that her mum worked in. I’ve always drawn and painted and I’ve always loved making things. At primary school we had a pottery studio, and I loved that, and I went to art classes where I made miniature shops, and also fruit and other objects to go in them, out of ceramics.” 

Beaumont studied art at high school and her art teacher entered one of her paintings in a competition when she was in Year 11. She came runner up “and that painting is now hanging on a wall at Frensham”.

Despite her love of art, and her clear talent, when she finished school Beaumont studied Law at the Australian National University. 

“I wanted to study art, but I didn’t really understand that you could be an artist.” 

She worked as a criminal lawyer for five years, first in Melbourne and then in Brisbane and Darwin, and her employers included the Director of Public Prosecutions, Legal Aid and Aboriginal legal services.

During these years of studying and lawyering, Beaumont continued to draw and paint at night and on weekends. When she moved to Brisbane, she had a two month break from work and the house she was living in had a spare room. This allowed her “to paint a lot more and begin to create what could be close to a body of work”.

In January 2018, Beaumont and her partner Mal went on a multi-day hike through the Western Arthurs Traverse in Tasmania’s Southwest National Park. The adventure and the magnificent scenery inspired her to produce a large painting of one of the park’s glacial lakes. It was titled Descending into Lake Oberon.

“I submitted it to an art prize in Tasmania and was amazed when it was selected,” Beaumont recalls. “I actually got Highly Commended, which was quite a shock.”

With characteristic self-effacing modesty, Beaumont doesn’t mention that the competition was the Glover Prize for paintings of Tasmanian landscape, one of Australia’s most significant awards for landscape painting and open to artists from anywhere in the world.

Her Glover Prize experience, which included meeting some very encouraging people, gave her greater confidence and motivation.

“I found myself in an environment with other artists and I could see that this was a thing. I didn’t go to art school, and I don’t have many friends who are artists, so it’s a world that I’m still learning about.”

In late 2019 Beaumont moved back to Canberra. “I was turning 30 and I had set myself the challenge of having a show on my own. It was in my sister’s Pilates studio [Scout Pilates in the inner Sydney suburb of St Peters] which is like a warehouse space.”

The exhibition was titled Painted Desert and consisted of about 20 drawings and paintings produced after a visit to that spectacular region in the far north of South Australia. 

“The night before the opening I was thinking what a terrible idea it was and that no one will want to buy anything,” she recalls. “I had a bit of a freak out and was convinced I should pull the show. But I didn’t – and they all sold.”

COVID and its lockdowns had its benefits for Beaumont because she didn’t have to travel for work or study. She continued to paint and sell some works online and she was selected as a finalist for the 2020 Tony White Memorial Art Prize for “a young, emerging Australian artist” (part of Kangaroo Valley’s “Arts in the Valley” festival). 

Beaumont’s first daughter was born in December 2020 and while there was little time for art in the first six months after the arrival of Olearia (the proper name for the plant commonly known as daisy bush), she decided to enter the inaugural National Emerging Art Prize in 2021. NEAP had been established by its founders “to provide a highly visible national platform to identify, promote and support the most promising emerging visual and ceramic artists in Australia”.

Although Beaumont was not selected as a finalist for the NEAP in 2021, the Director of Emerging Art for Michael Reid galleries, Amber Creswell Bell, invited her to participate in a group show titled ACB Selects. As we have learned, that led to an invitation for a solo show at Michael Reid Southern Highlands in May 2022.

“As the curator of the NEAP, I have the great pleasure of reviewing each and every submission before they go to the selection panel for judging,” says Creswell Bell. “During this process, invariably some artists really capture my attention – and quite often not the judges. I will take note of those artists and later pull those that I think are worthy of attention into an online show called ‘ACB Selects’, of which Elle was one. I was so convinced of Elle’s ability as a painter that I very quickly also offered her a solo show at our Southern Highlands gallery.

“Elle has a fabulously sophisticated sense of mark making. She knows exactly when to hold back, not overwork a painting. Her compositions and sense of colour are just beautiful and she is able to work at a variety of scales, which is harder than it looks. I couldn’t love her work more!”

Until now, Beaumont’s work has explored the plants and landscapes that have been part of her life.

“I tend to focus on painting the environment around me at the time. When I was in Brisbane I was painting a lot of coastal heathland, in Darwin there was a lot of desert painting, when I returned to Canberra the bushfires had a major influence and now here in Carwoola it’s a very different landscape.”  

However Beaumont’s second solo exhibition at Michael Reid Southern Highlands, which opens on 27 July 2023, is titled: I Came Looking for Birds and I Found Them.

“I’ve been trying to paint birds for a long time,” Beaumont explains, “but I’ve found I can’t force a bird into my painting, it just doesn’t work. 

“Then a couple of months ago I cleaned a large window and the next day a Scarlet Robin flew straight into the window and died. It’s such a beautiful, black and orange bird – and it just popped into my painting. I’ve now created an environment to allow other birds from around here to come through into my paintings. There are so many and they have a rhythm – they come at different times of the day and different times of the year. That’s what the show is about.”

Beaumont, whose achievements across a range of disciplines are extraordinary, started studying psychology at the University of New England two years after she completed her law degree. She recently completed a Masters of Psychology through Macquarie University and works three days a week as a psychologist in a Canberra hospital. She considers herself “a painter with a part time job”. 

This Renaissance Woman is only in her early 30s but worries about how little time she has left in her life to produce all the paintings she wants to create and, being unjustifiably critical of herself, she wants to produce a lot more good paintings.

“When Olearia was born I put ‘artist’ as my occupation on the birth certificate,” she says. “I’m going to hold myself to that.”

In November 2021 a group of women gathered in The Southern Highlands for a writing retreat titled “True Life Stories”. The retreat leaders were Kate Forsyth and Belinda Murrell, the great-great-great-great-granddaughters of Charlotte Atkinson and the authors of Searching for Charlotte: The Fascinating Story of Australia’s First Children’s Author.

The retreat was the catalyst for the formation of Wingecarribee Women Writers which has joined a global movement that celebrates women’s voices and stories. Their first initiative is The Charlotte Project, a public fundraising appeal to raise $80,000 to erect a bronze statue of Charlotte Atkinson in Berrima’s Market Place Park.

Lynn Watson, Chair of Wingecaribee Women Writers, hadn’t heard of Charlotte before she attended the writers’ retreat just over 18 months ago.

“Charlotte did some mighty things and she was so courageous – her story just appealed to me on so many levels,” Lynn says. “I have five daughters and I’ve always been interested in women having a voice. I have also always been conscious that a lot of women’s stories, and women’s contributions, have been lost or discarded. 

“When we visited Charlotte’s grave and saw her name wasn’t on it, we raised some money to get a new plaque. But we realised more should be done to shine a light on her story. We said: let’s go for a bronze statue.

“A year later and we are well on our way to reaching our target. We are overwhelmed at how generous people have been.”

According to Professor Clare Wright, convenor of A Monument of One’s Own, less than 4% of Australia’s statues represent historical female figures. (Mary Poppins is honoured with a statue in nearby Bowral, but she was probably fictional). There are more statues of animals in Australia than of real women.

The patron of Wingecarribee Women Writers is Paula McLean, a philanthropist and former Deputy Chair of The Stella Prize, a major literary award celebrating Australian women’s writing.

“We have a history of failing to recognise the achievements of women and we need to redress this,” Paula says. “The Charlotte Project is very much aligned to the work that I did as Deputy Chair of The Stella Prize. Both of these projects are to celebrate the voices, the stories of women. Public monuments are a very important part of recognising the achievements of people all over the country and we need to recognise the achievements of Charlotte Atkinson. A statue of her will be a wonderful gift to The Southern Highlands community.”

Bowral-based sculptor Julie Haseler Reily volunteered her time to design and make the sculpture. Julie graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art, has a Diploma of Visual Arts from TAFE Queensland and has studied at the National Art School, the Ceramics Centre at TAFE Hornsby, and Gaya Ceramics in Ubud, Indonesia.

“This is a great honour for me,” Julie says. “I wanted to breathe life into Charlotte’s story, because she was such an extraordinary woman. A theme in some of my work is “the heroic feminine” and I was intrigued with Charlotte the woman and Charlotte the heroic mother figure. I feel I now know Charlotte very well, having spent so many private hours alone in my studio with her. 

“I hope she will be an ornament for Georgian Berrima and a portal to history, providing a fuller understanding of that time and place along with her personal story of courage, resilience, daring and triumph against the odds.”

So who was Charlotte Atkinson?

She was born Charlotte Waring in London in 1796 and emigrated to Australia aboard the Cumberland in 1826 after being employed as a governess by Maria and Hannibal Macarthur. On the voyage she met James Atkinson, an author and agriculturist who was returning to his Australian properties after writing An Account of the State of Agriculture & Grazing in New South Wales.

Charlotte and James were married a year later and settled at Oldbury in Sutton Forest, a property named after James’ father’s estate in Kent. Charlotte and James had four children between 1828 and 1834 and they were a very happy and formidable couple in Berrima District. But then James died suddenly in 1834, aged just 39, after “a painful and lingering illness”.

The Australian Dictionary of Biography notes that James’ death “left his widow to manage a large holding, run far-flung outstations, control convict labour in a district beset by bushranging gangs and care for her children”.

On 3 March 1836 Charlotte married George Barton, who was the superintendent at Oldbury. The marriage changed her legal position from being custodian of Oldbury to being merely the lessor’s wife. Barton proved to be a drunkard, violent and mentally disturbed and in 1839 Charlotte left him and took her children to an outstation at Budgong, south-west of Kangaroo Valley. A year later she moved to Sydney and applied for legal protection from Barton. Atkinson v Barton became a long-running legal battle that challenged the patriarchy and made her a pioneer of women’s rights in Australia.

Charlotte was now not receiving any money from the Atkinson estate, so in 1841 she wrote A Mother’s Offering to Her Children, which became the first children’s book to be published in Australia. The author was “A Lady Long Resident in New South Wales” and it was written as a collection of instructional stories from a mother to her four children. It featured Australian flora and fauna, Australian landscapes and the lives of First Nations people – and this was the key to its immediate and widespread popularity. A first edition sold recently for $70,000.

Charlotte returned to Oldbury in 1846 and died there in 1867. Her determination to educate her children was most notably rewarded by the achievements of her daughter Louisa – the first Australian-born female novelist, journalist and botanist. 

The sculpture of Charlotte is currently being cast at the renowned Crawford’s Casting foundry in Sydney and Wingecaribee Women Writers hope it will be unveiled before the end of the 2023 calendar year.

Charlotte will be seen reclining on the ground, holding out a copy of her famous book to four sandstone block seats that both represent her four children and allow visitors to engage with the sculpture.

“Thousands of school children stop off at Berrima’s Market Place Park each year for a break on their journey,” Lynn Watson notes. “Besides having a run around and a swing, they will see a statue of this colonial woman in this colonial village. We hope that teachers will explain who she is and it might spark interest in Charlotte and the significant contribution that so many women have made to our history.”

For more information, and to make a donation to The Charlotte Project, visit www.womenwriters.org

In November 2021 a group of women gathered in The Southern Highlands for a writing retreat titled “True Life Stories”. The retreat leaders were Kate Forsyth and Belinda Murrell, the great-great-great-great-granddaughters of Charlotte Atkinson and the authors of Searching for Charlotte: The Fascinating Story of Australia’s First Children’s Author.

The retreat was the catalyst for the formation of Wingecarribee Women Writers which has joined a global movement that celebrates women’s voices and stories. Their first initiative is The Charlotte Project, a public fundraising appeal to raise $80,000 to erect a bronze statue of Charlotte Atkinson in Berrima’s Market Place Park.

Lynn Watson, Chair of Wingecaribee Women Writers, hadn’t heard of Charlotte before she attended the writers’ retreat just over 18 months ago.

“Charlotte did some mighty things and she was so courageous – her story just appealed to me on so many levels,” Lynn says. “I have five daughters and I’ve always been interested in women having a voice. I have also always been conscious that a lot of women’s stories, and women’s contributions, have been lost or discarded. 

“When we visited Charlotte’s grave and saw her name wasn’t on it, we raised some money to get a new plaque. But we realised more should be done to shine a light on her story. We said: let’s go for a bronze statue.

“A year later and we are well on our way to reaching our target. We are overwhelmed at how generous people have been.”

According to Professor Clare Wright, convenor of A Monument of One’s Own, less than 4% of Australia’s statues represent historical female figures. (Mary Poppins is honoured with a statue in nearby Bowral, but she was probably fictional). There are more statues of animals in Australia than of real women.

The patron of Wingecarribee Women Writers is Paula McLean, a philanthropist and former Deputy Chair of The Stella Prize, a major literary award celebrating Australian women’s writing.

“We have a history of failing to recognise the achievements of women and we need to redress this,” Paula says. “The Charlotte Project is very much aligned to the work that I did as Deputy Chair of The Stella Prize. Both of these projects are to celebrate the voices, the stories of women. Public monuments are a very important part of recognising the achievements of people all over the country and we need to recognise the achievements of Charlotte Atkinson. A statue of her will be a wonderful gift to The Southern Highlands community.”

Bowral-based sculptor Julie Haseler Reily volunteered her time to design and make the sculpture. Julie graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art, has a Diploma of Visual Arts from TAFE Queensland and has studied at the National Art School, the Ceramics Centre at TAFE Hornsby, and Gaya Ceramics in Ubud, Indonesia.

“This is a great honour for me,” Julie says. “I wanted to breathe life into Charlotte’s story, because she was such an extraordinary woman. A theme in some of my work is “the heroic feminine” and I was intrigued with Charlotte the woman and Charlotte the heroic mother figure. I feel I now know Charlotte very well, having spent so many private hours alone in my studio with her. 

“I hope she will be an ornament for Georgian Berrima and a portal to history, providing a fuller understanding of that time and place along with her personal story of courage, resilience, daring and triumph against the odds.”

So who was Charlotte Atkinson?

She was born Charlotte Waring in London in 1796 and emigrated to Australia aboard the Cumberland in 1826 after being employed as a governess by Maria and Hannibal Macarthur. On the voyage she met James Atkinson, an author and agriculturist who was returning to his Australian properties after writing An Account of the State of Agriculture & Grazing in New South Wales.

Charlotte and James were married a year later and settled at Oldbury in Sutton Forest, a property named after James’ father’s estate in Kent. Charlotte and James had four children between 1828 and 1834 and they were a very happy and formidable couple in Berrima District. But then James died suddenly in 1834, aged just 39, after “a painful and lingering illness”.

The Australian Dictionary of Biography notes that James’ death “left his widow to manage a large holding, run far-flung outstations, control convict labour in a district beset by bushranging gangs and care for her children”.

On 3 March 1836 Charlotte married George Barton, who was the superintendent at Oldbury. The marriage changed her legal position from being custodian of Oldbury to being merely the lessor’s wife. Barton proved to be a drunkard, violent and mentally disturbed and in 1839 Charlotte left him and took her children to an outstation at Budgong, south-west of Kangaroo Valley. A year later she moved to Sydney and applied for legal protection from Barton. Atkinson v Barton became a long-running legal battle that challenged the patriarchy and made her a pioneer of women’s rights in Australia.

Charlotte was now not receiving any money from the Atkinson estate, so in 1841 she wrote A Mother’s Offering to Her Children, which became the first children’s book to be published in Australia. The author was “A Lady Long Resident in New South Wales” and it was written as a collection of instructional stories from a mother to her four children. It featured Australian flora and fauna, Australian landscapes and the lives of First Nations people – and this was the key to its immediate and widespread popularity. A first edition sold recently for $70,000.

Charlotte returned to Oldbury in 1846 and died there in 1867. Her determination to educate her children was most notably rewarded by the achievements of her daughter Louisa – the first Australian-born female novelist, journalist and botanist. 

The sculpture of Charlotte is currently being cast at the renowned Crawford’s Casting foundry in Sydney and Wingecaribee Women Writers hope it will be unveiled before the end of the 2023 calendar year.

Charlotte will be seen reclining on the ground, holding out a copy of her famous book to four sandstone block seats that both represent her four children and allow visitors to engage with the sculpture.

“Thousands of school children stop off at Berrima’s Market Place Park each year for a break on their journey,” Lynn Watson notes. “Besides having a run around and a swing, they will see a statue of this colonial woman in this colonial village. We hope that teachers will explain who she is and it might spark interest in Charlotte and the significant contribution that so many women have made to our history.”

For more information, and to make a donation to The Charlotte Project, visit www.womenwriters.org

Sunnataram Forest Monastery was devastated by the bushfires of January 2020 with 75% of the property destroyed. If it weren’t for the extraordinary efforts of the fire services, including water bombing from helicopters, they would have lost everything.

The monastery offers weekend meditation retreats that are booked out many months in advance. The experience includes “Pali chanting with English translation, Mindfulness with breathing (Anapanasati), Loving-kindness (Metta) meditation and Vipassana meditation”.

The waiting list for the retreats has become longer since 2020 because about half the accommodation huts were burnt to the ground in the 2020 bushfires. A major short term aim of the monastery is to raise money for replacement accommodation so they are ready to build as soon as they receive Council approval.

One of the messages articulated consistently during this Sunday’s Dhamma is that we can meditate by concentrating completely while doing everyday tasks such as eating, drinking, cleaning the kitchen or car or, like Kim McSweeney, flower-arranging. 

“I try to simplify and make it practical and to the point,” Phra Mana says about Buddhism. “We cannot separate spiritual life and worldly life. There has to be balance.”

For further information visit sunnataram.org and please note that visitors must register in advance for each Sunday’s Dhamma talk and meditation so that the volunteer cooks can be prepared.

In November 2021 a group of women gathered in The Southern Highlands for a writing retreat titled “True Life Stories”. The retreat leaders were Kate Forsyth and Belinda Murrell, the great-great-great-great-granddaughters of Charlotte Atkinson and the authors of Searching for Charlotte: The Fascinating Story of Australia’s First Children’s Author.

The retreat was the catalyst for the formation of Wingecarribee Women Writers which has joined a global movement that celebrates women’s voices and stories. Their first initiative is The Charlotte Project, a public fundraising appeal to raise $80,000 to erect a bronze statue of Charlotte Atkinson in Berrima’s Market Place Park.

Lynn Watson, Chair of Wingecaribee Women Writers, hadn’t heard of Charlotte before she attended the writers’ retreat just over 18 months ago.

“Charlotte did some mighty things and she was so courageous – her story just appealed to me on so many levels,” Lynn says. “I have five daughters and I’ve always been interested in women having a voice. I have also always been conscious that a lot of women’s stories, and women’s contributions, have been lost or discarded. 

“When we visited Charlotte’s grave and saw her name wasn’t on it, we raised some money to get a new plaque. But we realised more should be done to shine a light on her story. We said: let’s go for a bronze statue.

“A year later and we are well on our way to reaching our target. We are overwhelmed at how generous people have been.”

According to Professor Clare Wright, convenor of A Monument of One’s Own, less than 4% of Australia’s statues represent historical female figures. (Mary Poppins is honoured with a statue in nearby Bowral, but she was probably fictional). There are more statues of animals in Australia than of real women.

The patron of Wingecarribee Women Writers is Paula McLean, a philanthropist and former Deputy Chair of The Stella Prize, a major literary award celebrating Australian women’s writing.

“We have a history of failing to recognise the achievements of women and we need to redress this,” Paula says. “The Charlotte Project is very much aligned to the work that I did as Deputy Chair of The Stella Prize. Both of these projects are to celebrate the voices, the stories of women. Public monuments are a very important part of recognising the achievements of people all over the country and we need to recognise the achievements of Charlotte Atkinson. A statue of her will be a wonderful gift to The Southern Highlands community.”

Bowral-based sculptor Julie Haseler Reily volunteered her time to design and make the sculpture. Julie graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art, has a Diploma of Visual Arts from TAFE Queensland and has studied at the National Art School, the Ceramics Centre at TAFE Hornsby, and Gaya Ceramics in Ubud, Indonesia.

“This is a great honour for me,” Julie says. “I wanted to breathe life into Charlotte’s story, because she was such an extraordinary woman. A theme in some of my work is “the heroic feminine” and I was intrigued with Charlotte the woman and Charlotte the heroic mother figure. I feel I now know Charlotte very well, having spent so many private hours alone in my studio with her. 

“I hope she will be an ornament for Georgian Berrima and a portal to history, providing a fuller understanding of that time and place along with her personal story of courage, resilience, daring and triumph against the odds.”

So who was Charlotte Atkinson?

She was born Charlotte Waring in London in 1796 and emigrated to Australia aboard the Cumberland in 1826 after being employed as a governess by Maria and Hannibal Macarthur. On the voyage she met James Atkinson, an author and agriculturist who was returning to his Australian properties after writing An Account of the State of Agriculture & Grazing in New South Wales.

Charlotte and James were married a year later and settled at Oldbury in Sutton Forest, a property named after James’ father’s estate in Kent. Charlotte and James had four children between 1828 and 1834 and they were a very happy and formidable couple in Berrima District. But then James died suddenly in 1834, aged just 39, after “a painful and lingering illness”.

The Australian Dictionary of Biography notes that James’ death “left his widow to manage a large holding, run far-flung outstations, control convict labour in a district beset by bushranging gangs and care for her children”.

On 3 March 1836 Charlotte married George Barton, who was the superintendent at Oldbury. The marriage changed her legal position from being custodian of Oldbury to being merely the lessor’s wife. Barton proved to be a drunkard, violent and mentally disturbed and in 1839 Charlotte left him and took her children to an outstation at Budgong, south-west of Kangaroo Valley. A year later she moved to Sydney and applied for legal protection from Barton. Atkinson v Barton became a long-running legal battle that challenged the patriarchy and made her a pioneer of women’s rights in Australia.

Charlotte was now not receiving any money from the Atkinson estate, so in 1841 she wrote A Mother’s Offering to Her Children, which became the first children’s book to be published in Australia. The author was “A Lady Long Resident in New South Wales” and it was written as a collection of instructional stories from a mother to her four children. It featured Australian flora and fauna, Australian landscapes and the lives of First Nations people – and this was the key to its immediate and widespread popularity. A first edition sold recently for $70,000.

Charlotte returned to Oldbury in 1846 and died there in 1867. Her determination to educate her children was most notably rewarded by the achievements of her daughter Louisa – the first Australian-born female novelist, journalist and botanist. 

The sculpture of Charlotte is currently being cast at the renowned Crawford’s Casting foundry in Sydney and Wingecaribee Women Writers hope it will be unveiled before the end of the 2023 calendar year.

Charlotte will be seen reclining on the ground, holding out a copy of her famous book to four sandstone block seats that both represent her four children and allow visitors to engage with the sculpture.

“Thousands of school children stop off at Berrima’s Market Place Park each year for a break on their journey,” Lynn Watson notes. “Besides having a run around and a swing, they will see a statue of this colonial woman in this colonial village. We hope that teachers will explain who she is and it might spark interest in Charlotte and the significant contribution that so many women have made to our history.”

For more information, and to make a donation to The Charlotte Project, visit www.womenwriters.org

In November 2021 a group of women gathered in The Southern Highlands for a writing retreat titled “True Life Stories”. The retreat leaders were Kate Forsyth and Belinda Murrell, the great-great-great-great-granddaughters of Charlotte Atkinson and the authors of Searching for Charlotte: The Fascinating Story of Australia’s First Children’s Author.

The retreat was the catalyst for the formation of Wingecarribee Women Writers which has joined a global movement that celebrates women’s voices and stories. Their first initiative is The Charlotte Project, a public fundraising appeal to raise $80,000 to erect a bronze statue of Charlotte Atkinson in Berrima’s Market Place Park.

Lynn Watson, Chair of Wingecaribee Women Writers, hadn’t heard of Charlotte before she attended the writers’ retreat just over 18 months ago.

“Charlotte did some mighty things and she was so courageous – her story just appealed to me on so many levels,” Lynn says. “I have five daughters and I’ve always been interested in women having a voice. I have also always been conscious that a lot of women’s stories, and women’s contributions, have been lost or discarded. 

“When we visited Charlotte’s grave and saw her name wasn’t on it, we raised some money to get a new plaque. But we realised more should be done to shine a light on her story. We said: let’s go for a bronze statue.

“A year later and we are well on our way to reaching our target. We are overwhelmed at how generous people have been.”

According to Professor Clare Wright, convenor of A Monument of One’s Own, less than 4% of Australia’s statues represent historical female figures. (Mary Poppins is honoured with a statue in nearby Bowral, but she was probably fictional). There are more statues of animals in Australia than of real women.

The patron of Wingecarribee Women Writers is Paula McLean, a philanthropist and former Deputy Chair of The Stella Prize, a major literary award celebrating Australian women’s writing.

“We have a history of failing to recognise the achievements of women and we need to redress this,” Paula says. “The Charlotte Project is very much aligned to the work that I did as Deputy Chair of The Stella Prize. Both of these projects are to celebrate the voices, the stories of women. Public monuments are a very important part of recognising the achievements of people all over the country and we need to recognise the achievements of Charlotte Atkinson. A statue of her will be a wonderful gift to The Southern Highlands community.”

Bowral-based sculptor Julie Haseler Reily volunteered her time to design and make the sculpture. Julie graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art, has a Diploma of Visual Arts from TAFE Queensland and has studied at the National Art School, the Ceramics Centre at TAFE Hornsby, and Gaya Ceramics in Ubud, Indonesia.

“This is a great honour for me,” Julie says. “I wanted to breathe life into Charlotte’s story, because she was such an extraordinary woman. A theme in some of my work is “the heroic feminine” and I was intrigued with Charlotte the woman and Charlotte the heroic mother figure. I feel I now know Charlotte very well, having spent so many private hours alone in my studio with her. 

“I hope she will be an ornament for Georgian Berrima and a portal to history, providing a fuller understanding of that time and place along with her personal story of courage, resilience, daring and triumph against the odds.”

So who was Charlotte Atkinson?

She was born Charlotte Waring in London in 1796 and emigrated to Australia aboard the Cumberland in 1826 after being employed as a governess by Maria and Hannibal Macarthur. On the voyage she met James Atkinson, an author and agriculturist who was returning to his Australian properties after writing An Account of the State of Agriculture & Grazing in New South Wales.

Charlotte and James were married a year later and settled at Oldbury in Sutton Forest, a property named after James’ father’s estate in Kent. Charlotte and James had four children between 1828 and 1834 and they were a very happy and formidable couple in Berrima District. But then James died suddenly in 1834, aged just 39, after “a painful and lingering illness”.

The Australian Dictionary of Biography notes that James’ death “left his widow to manage a large holding, run far-flung outstations, control convict labour in a district beset by bushranging gangs and care for her children”.

On 3 March 1836 Charlotte married George Barton, who was the superintendent at Oldbury. The marriage changed her legal position from being custodian of Oldbury to being merely the lessor’s wife. Barton proved to be a drunkard, violent and mentally disturbed and in 1839 Charlotte left him and took her children to an outstation at Budgong, south-west of Kangaroo Valley. A year later she moved to Sydney and applied for legal protection from Barton. Atkinson v Barton became a long-running legal battle that challenged the patriarchy and made her a pioneer of women’s rights in Australia.

Charlotte was now not receiving any money from the Atkinson estate, so in 1841 she wrote A Mother’s Offering to Her Children, which became the first children’s book to be published in Australia. The author was “A Lady Long Resident in New South Wales” and it was written as a collection of instructional stories from a mother to her four children. It featured Australian flora and fauna, Australian landscapes and the lives of First Nations people – and this was the key to its immediate and widespread popularity. A first edition sold recently for $70,000.

Charlotte returned to Oldbury in 1846 and died there in 1867. Her determination to educate her children was most notably rewarded by the achievements of her daughter Louisa – the first Australian-born female novelist, journalist and botanist. 

The sculpture of Charlotte is currently being cast at the renowned Crawford’s Casting foundry in Sydney and Wingecaribee Women Writers hope it will be unveiled before the end of the 2023 calendar year.

Charlotte will be seen reclining on the ground, holding out a copy of her famous book to four sandstone block seats that both represent her four children and allow visitors to engage with the sculpture.

“Thousands of school children stop off at Berrima’s Market Place Park each year for a break on their journey,” Lynn Watson notes. “Besides having a run around and a swing, they will see a statue of this colonial woman in this colonial village. We hope that teachers will explain who she is and it might spark interest in Charlotte and the significant contribution that so many women have made to our history.”

For more information, and to make a donation to The Charlotte Project, visit www.womenwriters.org

In November 2021 a group of women gathered in The Southern Highlands for a writing retreat titled “True Life Stories”. The retreat leaders were Kate Forsyth and Belinda Murrell, the great-great-great-great-granddaughters of Charlotte Atkinson and the authors of Searching for Charlotte: The Fascinating Story of Australia’s First Children’s Author.

The retreat was the catalyst for the formation of Wingecarribee Women Writers which has joined a global movement that celebrates women’s voices and stories. Their first initiative is The Charlotte Project, a public fundraising appeal to raise $80,000 to erect a bronze statue of Charlotte Atkinson in Berrima’s Market Place Park.

Lynn Watson, Chair of Wingecaribee Women Writers, hadn’t heard of Charlotte before she attended the writers’ retreat just over 18 months ago.

“Charlotte did some mighty things and she was so courageous – her story just appealed to me on so many levels,” Lynn says. “I have five daughters and I’ve always been interested in women having a voice. I have also always been conscious that a lot of women’s stories, and women’s contributions, have been lost or discarded. 

“When we visited Charlotte’s grave and saw her name wasn’t on it, we raised some money to get a new plaque. But we realised more should be done to shine a light on her story. We said: let’s go for a bronze statue.

“A year later and we are well on our way to reaching our target. We are overwhelmed at how generous people have been.”

According to Professor Clare Wright, convenor of A Monument of One’s Own, less than 4% of Australia’s statues represent historical female figures. (Mary Poppins is honoured with a statue in nearby Bowral, but she was probably fictional). There are more statues of animals in Australia than of real women.

The patron of Wingecarribee Women Writers is Paula McLean, a philanthropist and former Deputy Chair of The Stella Prize, a major literary award celebrating Australian women’s writing.

“We have a history of failing to recognise the achievements of women and we need to redress this,” Paula says. “The Charlotte Project is very much aligned to the work that I did as Deputy Chair of The Stella Prize. Both of these projects are to celebrate the voices, the stories of women. Public monuments are a very important part of recognising the achievements of people all over the country and we need to recognise the achievements of Charlotte Atkinson. A statue of her will be a wonderful gift to The Southern Highlands community.”

Bowral-based sculptor Julie Haseler Reily volunteered her time to design and make the sculpture. Julie graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art, has a Diploma of Visual Arts from TAFE Queensland and has studied at the National Art School, the Ceramics Centre at TAFE Hornsby, and Gaya Ceramics in Ubud, Indonesia.

“This is a great honour for me,” Julie says. “I wanted to breathe life into Charlotte’s story, because she was such an extraordinary woman. A theme in some of my work is “the heroic feminine” and I was intrigued with Charlotte the woman and Charlotte the heroic mother figure. I feel I now know Charlotte very well, having spent so many private hours alone in my studio with her. 

“I hope she will be an ornament for Georgian Berrima and a portal to history, providing a fuller understanding of that time and place along with her personal story of courage, resilience, daring and triumph against the odds.”

So who was Charlotte Atkinson?

She was born Charlotte Waring in London in 1796 and emigrated to Australia aboard the Cumberland in 1826 after being employed as a governess by Maria and Hannibal Macarthur. On the voyage she met James Atkinson, an author and agriculturist who was returning to his Australian properties after writing An Account of the State of Agriculture & Grazing in New South Wales.

Charlotte and James were married a year later and settled at Oldbury in Sutton Forest, a property named after James’ father’s estate in Kent. Charlotte and James had four children between 1828 and 1834 and they were a very happy and formidable couple in Berrima District. But then James died suddenly in 1834, aged just 39, after “a painful and lingering illness”.

The Australian Dictionary of Biography notes that James’ death “left his widow to manage a large holding, run far-flung outstations, control convict labour in a district beset by bushranging gangs and care for her children”.

On 3 March 1836 Charlotte married George Barton, who was the superintendent at Oldbury. The marriage changed her legal position from being custodian of Oldbury to being merely the lessor’s wife. Barton proved to be a drunkard, violent and mentally disturbed and in 1839 Charlotte left him and took her children to an outstation at Budgong, south-west of Kangaroo Valley. A year later she moved to Sydney and applied for legal protection from Barton. Atkinson v Barton became a long-running legal battle that challenged the patriarchy and made her a pioneer of women’s rights in Australia.

Charlotte was now not receiving any money from the Atkinson estate, so in 1841 she wrote A Mother’s Offering to Her Children, which became the first children’s book to be published in Australia. The author was “A Lady Long Resident in New South Wales” and it was written as a collection of instructional stories from a mother to her four children. It featured Australian flora and fauna, Australian landscapes and the lives of First Nations people – and this was the key to its immediate and widespread popularity. A first edition sold recently for $70,000.

Charlotte returned to Oldbury in 1846 and died there in 1867. Her determination to educate her children was most notably rewarded by the achievements of her daughter Louisa – the first Australian-born female novelist, journalist and botanist. 

The sculpture of Charlotte is currently being cast at the renowned Crawford’s Casting foundry in Sydney and Wingecaribee Women Writers hope it will be unveiled before the end of the 2023 calendar year.

Charlotte will be seen reclining on the ground, holding out a copy of her famous book to four sandstone block seats that both represent her four children and allow visitors to engage with the sculpture.

“Thousands of school children stop off at Berrima’s Market Place Park each year for a break on their journey,” Lynn Watson notes. “Besides having a run around and a swing, they will see a statue of this colonial woman in this colonial village. We hope that teachers will explain who she is and it might spark interest in Charlotte and the significant contribution that so many women have made to our history.”

For more information, and to make a donation to The Charlotte Project, visit www.womenwriters.org