he came out about the end of that year, and began
life in the office of the Burra Mine at a small salary. My eldest
brother William, was not successful in the country, and went to Western
Australia for some years, and later to New Zealand, where he died in
his eightieth year, soon after the death of my brother John in his
seventy-ninth, leaving me the only survivor of eight born and of six
who grew to full age. My eldest sister Agnes died of consumption at the
age of 16; and, as my father's mother and four of his brothers and
sisters had died of this malady, it was supposed to be in the family.
The only time I was kept out of school during the nine years at Miss
Phin's was when I was 12 when I had a cough and suppuration of the
glands of the neck. As this was the way in which Agnes's illness had
begun, my parents were alarmed, though I had no idea of it. I was
leeched and blistered and drugged; I was put into flannel for the only
time in my life; I was sent away for change of air; but no one could
discover that the cough was from the lungs. It passed away with the
cold weather, and I cannot say that I have had any illness since. My
father died of decline, but, if he had been more fortunate, I think he
would have lived much longer. Probably my mother's life was prolonged
beyond that of a long-lived family by her coming to Australia in middle
life; and if I ever had any tendency to consumption, the climate must
have helped me. There were no special precautions against infection in
those days: but no other member of the family took it, and the alarm
about me was three years after Agnes's death.

But to go on to those early days of the forties. There were two
families with whom we were intimate. Mr. George Tinline (who had been
clerk to my fathers' old friend, William Rutherford, of Jedburgh), who
was in the bank of South Australia when in 1839, my father went to put
our small funds in safety, introduced us to a beautiful young widow,
Mrs. Sharpe, and her sisters Eliza and Harriet, and her brother, John
Taylor. Harriet afterwards married Edward Stirling, a close friend of
my brother-in-law, Andrew Murray, and I was a great deal interested in
the Stirlings and their eight children. Mr. William Bakewell, of
Bartley & Bakewell, solicitors, married Jane Warren of Springfield,
Barossa, and I was a familiar friend of their five children. In one
house I was "Miss Spence, the storyteller," in the other "Miss Spence,
the teller of t