Few could have imagined, as Mary Blakiston grew up in comfortable, orderly surroundings in Geelong, the hardships and heartbreak that lay ahead of her.
Her parents, Mary and Edward Blakiston, ran ‘The Band of Hope’, an organisation promoting temperance, self-improvement, music and recreation for children and young people.
In the early 1860s Mary met Allan Erlandson and the two fell deeply in love. Their surviving letters reveal a couple devoted to one another. They married at Christ Church Geelong in 1866 before moving to Elliminyt, near Colac, where newly subdivided land offered the chance to establish a farm and raise a family. Allan also worked as a mail contractor.
Life was unforgiving. Over fifteen years Mary gave birth to nine children while enduring the endless labour of washing, sewing, cooking and caring for a growing family in harsh pioneer conditions. Yet through the hardship she created a loving home for her children.
Then tragedy struck. Allan, aged only forty-one, died from pneumonia less than a year after the birth of their ninth child.
Grieving and facing an uncertain future, Mary knew she had little choice but to become the family provider or risk losing her children to welfare care. Courageously, travelling by horse and cart, she took over the mail run from Colac to Cororooke, working six days a week for 12 shillings and 6 pence.
Mary also signed the famous Monster Petition calling for women to be granted the right to vote, with two of her daughters signing alongside her.
When Mary died from a stroke at fifty-six, she left behind not only the family she had fought so hard to keep together, but the story of a remarkably resilient pioneer woman.

Research by Merrill O’Donnell
Story by Kerrie Ryan

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