CLENDINNING, Martha (Holmes)

Martha (Holmes) was born on 22 February 1822.  Martha married George Clendinning on 12th August 1845 at Kilmegarenagh.  Martha was part of a wider family group who traveled to Victoria from Ireland, arriving in Australia on 1st January 1853.  Martha emigrated with her sister Sarah Annie Holmes who was married to Thomas William Lloyd.  The families met with disaster when their vessel was shipwrecked near Geelong and they almost lost all their belongings.

George and Thomas made up a party and went to the Ballarat gold diggings, leaving their wives in Melbourne.  Martha and her sister decided that they would join their husbands.  They were determined to open a store on the Ballarat Diggings, so they hired a cart, and provisions, and set out to arrive in Ballarat after their husbands who arrived in Ballarat on 1st March 1853.  The ride out of Melbourne was bumpy, Martha declaring she would sooner walk all the way than endure the jostling and jolting on top of the cart.  She became known as the 'lady that walked to Ballarat'.

Both sisters became prominent members of the Ballarat community during and after the  Eureka Uprising.  Martha and her sister opened a store from their tents to supply the women in the Goldfields with homely comforts.  During the course of business, Martha was well known to hold protection in the form of guns in the tent.  During the Uprising, Martha was asked to surrender her guns by Alfred Black the Minister of War.  After the Uprising, Martha continued her business and founded the ‘Ballarat Female Refuge’ in 1867.  This refuge was established in response to what Martha viewed as a growing issue of destitution among women of the Goldfields. This was the first institution of its kind for single mothers on the Goldfields.  Today, Martha’s legacy is ‘Clendinning House’ in Berry Street, Ballarat Central.  This institute continues to assist modern women in crisis.    (Wickham 2009)

Martha is buried at the Ballarat New Cemetery Church of England D Section 1 Grave 47