Today, Sunday 21st February 2021, the Parramatta Female Factory marked two hundred years since the convict prison building, commissioned by Governor Macquarie, took in its first cohort of 109 women and 71 children. It has been many years since the site operated as a gaol, workhouse, marriage bureau, work assignment centre and even an early version of a women’s health service (of sorts), but the Greenaway-designed buildings still stand, as do others added on over the decades.

A group of volunteers called Parramatta Female Factory Friends have been advocating for this site to be given world heritage status and for local, state and federal governments to recognise its importance and do what needs to be done to protect and enhance its future. It was a committee from the Friends who organised and ran today’s event.

It’s estimated that one in seven Australians today can trace their heritage back to a Parramatta Female Factory woman. That includes me: my 4 x great-aunt Mary Greenwood was an inmate here in the 1830’s, almost certainly her mother passed through here briefly before being assigned to work at the (then brand new) King’s Grammar School – as a laundress. Her name was Mary Ann Greenwood and she was my 5 x great-grandmother.

Thomas and Meg Keneally, both patrons of the Friends of Parramatta Female Factory, spoke of the power of the stories it can tell modern Australians about the women who lived and worked there. To survive the whole transportation experience, including incarceration in the various female factories around the country, women needed to be resilient and tough. They were voiceless and powerless then, but as Meg said, she and other descendants of her 3 x great-grandmother can now be her voice.

The day included an opportunity to lay floral tributes along the commemorative wall, which is inscribed with the first names of every woman known to have passed through its forbidding gates. Here I am with my little posy; if you look closely you’ll see my forebears’ names on the wall.

Another special part of the morning was a performance by Cliona Molins and Rosie McDonald, along with Nigel Lever and Ann Palumbo, of four songs specially commissioned by the Female Factory Friends to mark the bicentenary. The song suite is called Mothers of the Nation and includes recognition of the many women who, as the title song’s lyrics tell us, were

Mothers of the Nation, black and white,
Written out of history
Mothers of the nation, hold your heads high
Mothers of the nation, elders yarn,
her story of strength and fight
to carve out a life in this land.

‘Mothers of the Nation’, by Cliona Molins and Rosie McDonald

My thanks to the organisers of today’s special occasion.

If you’d like to know more about the stories of the Parramatta Female Factory and the activities of the PFF Friends, you can visit their website.