Mary Lawry, A Brave Australian Girl

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.

These were the wild early days when rum was the currency of the colony and Governor Bligh was deposed by the rebellious NSW Corps. In the middle of this chaos, the Hassall family worked hard to develop a stable base in Parramatta. Their farming enterprises helped stablise the economy and they were generous in using their wealth to educate, care for the poor and destitute as well as training people for Christian ministry in NSW and the Pacific Islands.
 
Mary received a good education which was rare given the time and rough colonial setting. Like her parents, she was compassionate, self-determined, practical and enterprising. At 18 she developed organisational skills as the treasurer of her father’s Sunday school of 25 teachers and 150 colonial and indigenous children.
 
At twenty she married itinerant preacher Walter Lawry and the enthusiastic young couple immediately invested her dowry in building Australia’s first Methodist Church. Tragedy soon tested them. A severe influenza epidemic claimed the life of Mary’s baby Elizabeth, her father and her newborn nephew in the space of a few days.

The heartbroken parents refused to let it kill their faith. Undaunted, in 1820 they purchased a vessel and set sail for Tonga via New Zealand - 6000km away -hoping to teach and serve the native people. Captain James Cook had dubbed them ‘The Friendly Islands’, but the experience of the sea-farers of the South Pacific had proved otherwise.
 
Mary arrived in Tonga as the first Australian-born missionary to anywhere in the world. There was little island romance about days filled with threats, theft, local wars and frightening rituals. Where Walter’s preaching met resistance, Mary was successful in communicating with the women about children, folk medicine and female lore. In return she found them ready to provision them and provide help in the home. No doubt they empathised when Mary miscarried soon after arrival.

Mary brought change quietly behind the scene. Her common-sense Australian spirit showed when she wrote, ‘I think it may be easier for a woman to be a missionary than a man. Why? I am able to come to Tonga and bring my work, the shape of my days, with me almost unaltered…the same elements are still there—wife, mother, housewife . . . a protective shell around me and mine . . . In this tiny area, it is all right to be ourselves.”
 
Walter and Mary returned briefly to Australia before sailing the 10,000 kms to England to answer unfair accusations made about them. In December 1825 a daughter was born to them – significantly they named her ‘Mary Australia’. Two weeks later, on Christmas Day 1825, Mary died as the result of complications of childbirth, having filled her brief 26 years with devoted service.
 
I know that this weekend, Puluno is taking great pride in being able to thank Parramatta for the gift of love that Walter Lawry and Mary - the courageous Currency Lass - gave to the people of Tonga. Thirty years after their short stay, the whole population had accepted the Christian faith to some degree.
 
Walter returned to Parramatta and after his death in 1859, was buried in the Wesleyan cemetery there.  In 1961 the  Parramatta  City Council  converted it into a public park and named it  in his honour.