Mary Ann Parker

Mary Ann Parker (1765/6–1848) was an English traveller and writer whose 1795 book A Voyage Round the World, in the Gorgon Man of War included the first published description by a woman of an Australian colony.

She travelled to New South Wales and back in 1791-2 on board the frigate Gorgon which was captained by her husband John Parker. The ship was taking desperately-needed supplies, and a few personnel and convicts as well, to the settlement at Port Jackson. The Governor of Norfolk Island was on board with his new wife, Anna King, the only other woman on the voyage. She was the same age as Mary Ann Parker and an "amiable companion" on the way out.

At that time it was the "longest and most dangerous voyage on earth" but Parker did not emphasise the difficulties of her fifteen-month voyage "to the remotest parts of the globe" and back. Commentators are struck by the cheerful good humour in her writing, especially in the lively descriptions of interludes in Tenerife, the Cape of Good Hope, and Port Jackson itself: meeting new people, exploring new landscapes and local customs, and enjoying fresh food. She does, however, admit to fears when faced with a shipwrecked vessel that should have made the journey they were undertaking, and the threatening though "beautiful and picturesque" ice islands near the Falklands on their return journey.

About a third of A Voyage Round the World is about Port Jackson and its surroundings. Parker was generally positive about the settlement and Governor Phillip's paternalistic rule, though concerned about the death toll amongst transported convicts. She was delighted by the natural environment, and interested in the unfamiliar flora and fauna being brought back to England. Her encounters with aboriginal people have been described as "ambivalent", and elsewhere as "humane and poignantly optimistic". Another writer sees her attitudes to the indigenous population as complex, with an underlying belief in courtesy and humanitarian values.

This book was not only the first description of the first Australian colony by a woman, but the first personal published account of Port Jackson by a private citizen. It has a "refreshing human perspective" according to the Australian Association for Maritime History.

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