Biddy Lewis of Marramarra Creek
North Coastal - 1846

The government of NSW forms a Select Committee to look into conditions of Aborigines. Rev William West Simpson, the Anglican Minister at the Lower Hawkesbury (Wiseman’s Ferry) sends the following note:

In Marramarra Creek I have found a family of half castes, the children of John Lewis or Ferdinand, a white man employed in the lime burning trade … The mother is Biddy, the sister of the blackfellow Bowen, of Pitt Water and the daughter of an aboriginal woman by an English seaman. There are seven children by this connexion, from nineteen to two years of age, living in their father’s house after the manner of the settlers of the Creek … The two lads are employed in the boat with their father, four of the younger children are yet at home, and the eldest girl is living with a man of the name of Rose, a fisherman at Marramarra Creek. (NSW Legislative Council Select Committee 1846, quoted by Richmond)