The Adventures of Bridget O'Malley.

                                                                                               

                                                                                                       Miltown Malbay, 1890 

Bridget O'Malley was born in November 1859 in Miltown Malbay, a small village of about 500 souls in County Clare, Ireland, eldest daughter of Michael O'Malley (shoemaker) and Johanna O'Connor. 
In 1868 her father developed a pelvic tumour and was unable to work. The family was obliged to enter the Tulla workhouse, where they were provided with accommodation and food in return for work. 
Workhouse conditions were designed to be harsh to encourage people not to stay. It must have been really crap for a pubescent girl.

Michael died in August 1869. 

By February 1876, 16 year old Bridget had had enough of living in a Charles Dickens novel. She left Ireland  as an assisted migrant on the "Strathearn", which sailed  from Queenstown (now Cobh) in County Cork on 3 Feb 1876, docking in Rockhampton in Queensland after 3 months at sea.   

                                    

                                                                                      Emigrants Pier, Cobh.

She then made the 1,375 km road journey north from Rockhampton to Cooktown, a bustling gold-mining frontier town with a population of 11,400 people, with 65 pubs, 2 newspapers, a state school, a customs house, a courthouse, 20 restaurants, 12 large stores and 20 smaller stores.

She obtained work there as a servant.

                                                        Cooktown 1878 



On 4 Feb 1877, 17 year old Bridget succumbed to the Gallic charms of local storekeeper, Augustus Dubois, and after a whirlwind romance married the unctuous little Frenchman at the Cooktown Roman Catholic Church. 

 

The Groom.

The groom, who claimed that he was a 30 year old bachelor, was in fact a 35 year old married man who had deserted his wife and four children in Dubbo, NSW.  
He subsequently became the publican of the European Hotel - an interesting name for a pub in a town where the Chinese population made up a third of the population. 

But life is a hard marker and natural justice won't be denied. 
On Monday 28 Mar 1881, the Brisbane Courier Mail reported that "Poor Augustus Dubois, well known to Cooktown residents, with most of his companions, was killed and eaten by Brooker Island natives". 
(Gus and his companions had  gone to Brooker Island to investigate the fate of the crew of the vessel "Annie Books", who had been massacred by the cannibal islanders. They certainly found out.)

                                   Brooker Island - good place for a barbecue.

The widowed Bridget left Cooktown with her two children, Louis and Charles, and arrived in Sydney sometime in 1881.

Here she met George Clibrig, a boilermaker of Balmain, also aged 21, who fell in love with the young Irish widow. 

Bridget, only human, was unable to resist the charms of a Clibrig male and fell pregnant in short order, giving birth to Edmund Clibrig (my granddad) on 19 Jun 1882. 

Edmund's birth certificate states his father to be "Augustus Dubois, deceased", but old Gus had been well and truly digested by the Brooker Islanders in the two years since he was the main ingredient of their favourite dish, Filet de Dubois.

Bridget died in 1916 aged 56. 
George, a lonely widower, died 19 years later, aged 75.
They are buried together at the Field of Mars Cemetery, North Ryde.