AUSTRALIA'S GRACE DARLING

Evening Star, Issue 21240, 22 October 1932, Page 5

AUSTRALIA'S GRACE DARLING

Australia's Grace Darling is beginning to receive something of the recognition she richly deserves. The other day a portrait was unveiled at Perth of Grace Bussell, now Mrs G. V. Drake Brockman, who is every inch as much a heroine as England’s world-famous Grace Darling. Most of the old folk living in Western Australia can recall the early days of settlement in this very young State. Separated by _ groat distances with no roads, families lived _ simple but delightful lives in their isolated homes. In the extreme south-west of the State lived the Bussell family, after whom the town of Bussclton has been named. At the time she performed her heroic deed Grace Bussell was a girl in her teens, as much at home on horseback as in housework. One December day in 1876 Grace and her mother were in the kitchen busy with Christmas preparations. It was rough weather, and the wind howled round the house, bringing to them the roar of the breakers on the rocky shore. Suddenly a stockman came rushing in, crying: “There’s a steamer aground out there!” At once the Christmas cooking was forgotten. Grace ran to her horse, and she and the stockman galloped to the shore. There they saw a small steamer lying helpless in the pounding waves. Without hesitation brave Grace Bussell urged 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 hack to the shore was not so easy, for Grace carried with her a precious human burden. Soon the stockman arrived with another. And so they went on until every one of the fifty people on board the wreck was brought safely to land. The Christmas fare Grace and her mother had been preparing came in useful, for the fifty shipwrecked strangers were entertained for weeks at Wallcliffe before it was possible to send them on their journey again. In the building of the Country Women’s Association near Perth the portrait of Grace Bussell has now been hung among other paintings of pioneer women who have done fine work for this great Western province.