Main fundraiser photo

Help Dr Christina Henri memorialise convict women

Donation protected
Dr Christina Henri has been acclaimed for her work remembering Australian convict women through her Roses from the Heart Memorial Project which involves making and displaying commemorative bonnets. 2024 marks Christina's 20th year working on the Project in an honorary capacity.

Christina needs your help to travel to Ireland to continue her work in the country from which many convict women came. Christina has been invited to speak about her project, launch it on the official Irish digital archive (DRI), meet schools and community groups already making bonnets, and commemorate the Irish-Tasmanian wife and children of Irish rebel, Thomas Francis Meagher.

Respected author and journalist, Martin Flanagan, has written about the importance of Christina's visit to Ireland:

"To say I’m from Tasmania is only half-right. I’m from Van Diemen’s Land. My people were the Vandemonians or Vandemons, as they were known on the Victorian goldfields. In the colony of Victoria no-one was low as the Vandemonians. They were former convicts and terrible stories were whispered in polite society about what the convicts in Van Diemen’s Land had got up to. Then there was the matter of what happened to the island’s Indigenous inhabitants – in fact, the same thing happened all over Australia but in Tasmania, for over 100 years, it was said the Tasmanian Aborigines were extinct, a word intelligent people around the globe understood to mean that this was a place where part of our shared humanity had been lost.

"I always say Tasmania was invaded twice, once by the British, once by the Victorians - by Victorians, I principally mean Victorian attitudes. What happened was that Tasmanian history – or, to be more accurate, the history of Van Diemen’s Land - became a source of shame. Tasmanians, particularly the old convict families, actively forgot the past – it only took a generation or two and, at one level, those memories were erased.

"The Bonnets project is an initiative to bring that history back. It started as a way of making a visible connection with the 12,500 convict women sent to Van Diemen’s Land by recreating the bonnets they wore. Each bonnet bears the name of a convict woman and the ship she was transported in.

"The convict from whom I derive my surname, Thomas Flanagan, was transported for stealing to feed his starving children during the Irish Famine of 1845. In 1848, partly because of the British government’s pitiful response to the Famine, there was an Irish Uprising. Its leaders were first sentenced to death, then transported to Van Diemen’s Land. One of them was Thomas Meagher and, before escaping to America, he married Catharine Bennett, the daughter of a Van Diemen’s Land convict.

"Dr Christina Henri, the author of the Bonnets project, has been invited to attend a week of Thomas Meagher commemorations in Ireland and to raise the profile of her project. This Go Fund Me campaign seeks to raise $5000 to contribute to the expenses of her trip which she will use to further entrench the memory of our convict women among the people of Ireland."

(Martin's latest book, published in August by Penguin/Random House, was “The Empty Honour Board: A School Memoir”)
Donate

Donations 

  • Mary Ryan
    • $30
    • 8 mos
  • Sue Hickey
    • $200
    • 11 mos
  • Rosemary Yeoland
    • $30
    • 11 mos
  • Patrick McInerney
    • $50
    • 11 mos
  • Heather Shearer
    • $50
    • 11 mos
Donate

Organizer

Rodney Croome
Organizer
Hobart, TAS

Your easy, powerful, and trusted home for help

  • Easy

    Donate quickly and easily

  • Powerful

    Send help right to the people and causes you care about

  • Trusted

    Your donation is protected by the GoFundMe Giving Guarantee