AUSTRALIA'S GRACE DARLING

Evening Star, Issue 23692, 27 September 1940, Page 3

AUSTRALIA'S GRACE DARLING

Most of the old folk living in Western Australia can recall the early days of settlement in that young State. Separated by great distances, with no roads, families lived simple but delightful lives in their isolated homes. In the extreme south-west lived the Bussell family, after whom the town of Busselton has been named. Grace was m her teens, as much at homo on horseback as in housework. One December day in 1876 she and her mother were busy with the Christmas preparations. It, was rough weather and the wind howled round the house, bringing to them the roar of the breakers as they scattered their waters on the rocky shore. Suddenly a .stockman came rushing in, crying, “ 'There’s a steamer aground out there!” and Grace ran to her horse, galloped to the shore, and found a small steamer lying helpless in the pounding waves. She took her horse into the water, battling through the thundering surf with its strong undertow until she reached the ship. Sam Isaacs, the stockman, followed her lead. The journey back to shore was not so easy, for Grace carried with her a precious human burden, and soon the stockman arrived with another. So they went on until every one of the 50 people on board the wreck was brought to land. The portrait of Grace Bussell hangs in a gallery of pioneers of the great Western Province, and she is called Australia’s Grace Darling.