Description

Extended Data

DAAO URL

https://www.daao.org.au/bio/mary-murray-prior

Birth Place

Hunter River, NSW, Australia

Biography

sketcher and collector, the elder daughter of Wellington Cochrane Bundock and his wife, Mary Ellen Bundock née Ogilvie, was born at her maternal grandfather’s property, Merton, on the Hunter River in New South Wales in February 1845. Mary spent most of her childhood on the family property, Wyangarie, on the Richmond River. The Bundocks led very isolated lives, but Mary became friendly with the local Aboriginal people and was interested in native flora and artefacts. The collections she later made of Aboriginal artefacts were donated to various museums in Australia and Europe. A collection of water vessels (c.1890s) in the Australian Museum, reputedly made by Aboriginal women of the Richmond River district, were presented by Mary Murray-Prior in 1895. However, a descendant of the Clarence River people, Robyne Bancroft, claims that they were actually made by Clarence River women much earlier and collected by Edward Ogilvie, who sent them to Mary. Then she sent them to museums assuming they were Richmond River work. (see also Isobel McBryde). Mary Bundock was educated by her mother and for a few months by Rev. Arthur Selwyn and his wife, Rose Selwyn , at Grafton, who presumably encouraged an interest in drawing, although her enthusiasm for watercolour painting was specifically aroused in September 1853, she later wrote, when at the age of eight she went with her mother and Uncle Edward (Ogilvie) to Lismore to attend the marriage of Teresa Wilson, a daughter of family friends, to Oliver Fry, the district commissioner: 'The eldest Miss Wilson (Bessie) painted flowers well and let me have a small box of colours to try and paint flowers myself and from that time on one of my greatest pleasures has been flower painting.’ Later Mary went to boarding school at Parramatta but remained for only a few months because she developed asthma. For three years from about 1860 she lived with her grandmother at Fairlight, Edgecliff Road, Edgecliff, and attended Miss Moore’s nearby school. In old age she wrote: 'I have a little pencil sketch of Double Bay as seen from the tower windows of Fairlight showing the place as it looked then’. At the age of 17 she returned home to take over the teaching of the five youngest children from her mother: 'I found it no easy job to teach brothers and sisters so little younger than myself and who were very ready to disobey a mere sister’. Mary’s father took her to Britain and Europe in 1885. In the early 1890s she became the second wife of Thomas Murray-Prior, a member of the Queensland Parliament whose family held land at Wyangarie. He died not long afterwards, and Mary took over the management of his various properties for some years; McBryde says she was known as 'the Florence Nightingale of the Upper Richmond’. Then she moved to Sydney. In the 1920s she went on a second European tour, was taken ill on the return voyage and died at Perth in April 1924. Writers: Staff Writer Date written: 1992 Last updated: 2011

Born

b. February 1845

Summary

Murray-Prior spent most of her childhood on the family property, Wyangarie, on the Richmond River. She was friendly with the local Aboriginal population and took a keen interest in the native flora and collecting artefacts. She bequeathed her collections to museums in both Australia and Europe.

Gender

Female

Died

Apr-24

Age at death

79