A true "Lady"
Last Sunday was Mother's Day here in Australia and many other countries throughout the world. Today's blog is of a long forgotten woman, technically not a mother but who displayed the qualities we all admire in the definition of the word and proved to be a wonderful step mother to the young children of her deceased husband. LADY JULIA PARKES Julia Lynch, an Irish lass, was born in Country Cavan in 1871, one of five children to Terence, a farmer, and his wife Margaret, and brought up in the Catholic religion. The family departed Ireland in 1888 and arrived in Brisbane aboard the "Jumna" on 13 October 1888. Julia made her way to Sydney around 1889 and was employed in the household of Cardinal Patrick Moran, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney. It is said that Sir Henry Parkes was a guest at a dinner given by the Cardinal where she was waiting at table. Soon after she was employed as a maid at Kenilworth, his home, one the Gothic "witches houses" located in Joh...