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LAMBRICK, EMMA JANE (1822–1846), pioneer British resident of Port Essington, was born 4 August 1822,
daughter of Lieutenant Dillon of the Royal Navy at Perranarworthal in Cornwall. She married Lieutenant George
Lambrick, a veteran of the Carlist wars in Spain on 24 November 1842, at Budock in Cornwall, and their daughter
Emma was born in August 1843, when they were stationed at the East Stonehouse marine barracks in the county
of Devon.
Eight months later, George Lambrick was placed in charge of the military guard on board the convict ship
Cadet, bound for Hobart where it was to discharge most of the convicts, and then to Port Essington where he was to
serve under Captain John McArthur, commandant of the settlement. Emma, her daughter and a female servant,
were given permission to accompany Lambrick on the journey.
When Cadet sailed in April 1844, there were several other women on board also accompanying their husbands
to Port Essington: Mary Ann Clarke, twenty-four, wife of Private James Clarke; the pregnant 27-year-old Esther
Norman, wife of Private William Norman; Jane Isaacs, wife of Sergeant Hugh Isaacs; Mary Ann Kirk, wife of
Private David Kirk; and Mary Ann Crowden, wife of Private William Crowden. Mary Ann had been allowed to
accompany the ship only on condition that she paid her own way to Dublin, the port from which the ship sailed.
Two of the women did not complete the journey. Mary Ann Clarke, who became ill, was discharged at
Kingstown, Ireland, shortly after the party had left Dublin. Her husband was not to return to England until 1850,
after the abandonment of Port Essington. The fare of Esther Norman was more tragic. Eight months pregnant,
she became ill soon after embarkation and within the first few days gave birth to a stillborn child who was buried
at sea. Esther died a few weeks later, thus, leaving her husband a widower, with their five-year-old son to raise by
himself.
The tragedy could hardly have been encouraging to the pregnant Emma who, by the time Cadet and its consort
Angelica reached Hobart, was reported by her husband to be ‘in a most delicate state of health’. She was so fragile
that George was reluctant to continue the journey. However, in October on their way up the Western Australian
coast Emma safely gave birth to George Lambrick Jnr, a weak and sickly child whose health was not improved by
the tropical climate of Port Essington.
Shortly after their arrival at the settlement Emma, George and family moved into a small wooden dwelling
above the storekeeper’s quarters. Mary Ann Kirk, Jane Isaacs and Mary Ann Crowden and their husbands moved
into the married quarters, as did William Norman and his son. It was McArthur’s policy to keep the marrieds apart
from the other residents.
As the only ‘lady’ (officer’s wife) at Port Essington, Emma Lambrick was almost completely isolated by the
social standards of the time. John Sweatman, who spent several weeks at the settlement with HMS Rattlesnake and
lived with the Lambricks, noted that Emma was ‘without society, no amusement and no one but her husband to
talk to, and he busy with his duties most of the time’. Sweatman painted her as a very fragile, quiet woman in bad
health but concluded that at least she had ‘an unfortunate baby that was always sick and who, perhaps served to
keep her employed,’ but Captain John McArthur described her as ‘a truly amiable and sensible woman’. He added:
‘How she endures the privations she is exposed to I cannot comprehend. Great equanimity with firmness of purpose
appear to be her main characteristics.’
She needed whatever psychological strength she could find. Emma became pregnant again and while awaiting
the birth of her third child her son George Jnr died, probably a victim of malaria. A few months later Emma bore
another son, but he too was weak.
Finally, in October of 1846, the climate and the circumstances of Port Essington took their toll and Emma
herself died, followed a few weeks later by her infant son. Only young Emma was left to comfort her grieving
father.
George Lambrick had a special monument erected to the memory of his wife and two sons, reportedly with
some of the stone being imported from England. The pyramid-shaped tombstone still stands, a permanent reminder
of the many who lost their lives there.
Writer Elsie Masson, who visited the graveside in 1913 during an official inspection with the then Territory
Administrator, John Gilruth, wrote of Emma’s life and fate: ‘She came with her little daughter to Port Essington,
doubtless expecting to find a comfortable sociable military settlement. A year passed, her baby was born and both
she and the child died and were buried in this lonely spot. Not far from the cemetery is a pretty little strip of beach
backed by fine tamarind trees. Here a little girl used to play happily in the sand while her mother sat, her hands
folded, gazing out on the mournful shores, wondering if she would ever live to pick wildflowers in a cool English
forest again. Just as it looked to her eyes, so the harbour looked to ours—utterly lonely and remote, imbued with
sadness as if lamenting the lives sacrificed in that premature experiment.’
There appears to have been no written material left behind to tell us what Emma remembered of her time at Port
Essington, but for many years following the abandonment of the settlement there was an Aboriginal woman who
could have perhaps told a great deal about the lifestyle. She was the woman who, known as Flash Poll, as a girl of
about ten, was nursemaid to Emma for two years.
Young Emma left Port Essington with her father in November 1849 and returned to England the following
year, never to return to the land of her childhood. She died in England in March 1925, a ‘spinster of independent
means’, well looked after both by her father’s will and by her two step-brothers, children of George Lambrick’s
second marriage in 1860.