Wanted: Governess. Properly qualified in English, to instruct male pupil in rural location.
Sydney, 1902. Desperate for a job, Kate Courtney travels to the faraway New England Ranges to interview for a governess position. She is greeted by wealthy landowner, ruggedly handsome Tom Fortescue, and is shocked to find that her new charge isn’t a small boy—but the grown man.
Tom needs Kate to smooth away his rough edges, make him desirable to the English rose he wants to marry. But the more time Kate and Tom spend together, the closer they become, and Tom has to decide between the dreams of his childhood, and the reality that is right in front of him.
This Australia Day, the Convict Wives bundle takes you back in time at a great price…
From Lena Dowling comes two emotional, heart-wrenching, heart-warming stories about second chances at life—and love.
The Escapades 
Tasmania’s history, both indigenous and white settler, is a rich source of writing inspiration. While you may think that penal colony history doesn’t sound any fun, consider the Flash Mob, a sub-culture of the female convicts (most of who worked in women’s factories) famous for their intractability. At the Cascades Female Factory (really a prison) in Hobart, the women with their cropped hair were forced to stand silently, ankle-deep in muddy water for twelve-hour shifts at stone washtubs. A number of the women in these prisons were sent to private homes to work as servants only to be sent back to the Cascades prison for the crime of falling pregnant after being raped by their masters. The response of these women to such injustice, and the hypocrisy of men such as the prison preacher Reverend William Bedford (a notorious lecher) came in the form of Flash Mob events designed to torment their keepers and provide entertaining mayhem. In fact, these women were so wild and difficult to discipline that the man in charge of them whined:
“I have threatened them, and they have laughed at me; I have remonstrated with them, they have laughed at me; I have coaxed them, they have laughed at me; Dr. Bedford and myself have prayed and preached to them, they have laughed at us; and when it was found necessary to punish, they frowned, and, I believe, exercised their idle hours in planning rebellion and revenge.”
I don’t know about you, but I think the Flash Mob sound downright inspiring!