When my Tongan mate Puluno Efoti was invited to Parramatta as their Australia Day Ambassador, he was excited.  Why? Because it is giving him the chance to tell the story of a local girl who began a movement that transformed the people of his island nation over two centuries ago. She was one of the first-generation Australian kids who were derisively labelled ‘Currency Lads and Lasses’ - implying they were of inferior quality.
 
Parramatta girl Mary Hassall was one who proved them wrong. Mary was born in Sydney in 1799 to adventurous young parents.  These two had made the dangerous journey half-way round the world from Cornwall to Tahiti, planning to give practical expression to the Christian gospel among the native people as ‘artisan’ missionaries.
 
Mary’s father Rolland proved himself a man of bold character and a big heart and he needed both. Feuding Tahitian tribes forced the 29-year-old carpenter to retreat to safety with his young family to Sydney, only to be immediately beaten up by thugs, robbed and left penniless. Undaunted, he and his brother-in-law began travelling around outlying settlements preaching and setting up schools.

It was 8th October 1792. After 6 months mostly packed below decks, guards ferry 49 female convicts and 297 male convicts from the ship Royal Admiral to the shore of Botany Bay. Among them, 15-year-old Mary Haydock finds time to write a letter home telling her aunt that the Governor had told her she was in for life, not the seven years sentence she had been expecting. In spite of this shock and finding herself 10,000 km from England, the young girl determined, ‘I will make myself as happy as I can in this unhappy situation.’ 
 
Mary’s simple words became reality in striking fashion.
 
Orphaned at two-years-old, Mary was raised by her grandmother, educated and regularly taken to church in Bury, Lancashire. Unhappy in service as a housemaid, she ran away disguised as a boy. The thirteen-year-old was caught attempting to sell a stolen horse, sent to gaol and narrowly escaped the gallows with a 7-year sentence to Botany Bay. The fact that she maintained the pretence of being a boy until after her trial, says a lot about her pluck.