Catherine Anne Flood, my great-great-grandmother, arrived in Australia from Ireland aboard the Shooting Star—a name that already feels like a story in itself. Official records tell me only fragments: her occupation was listed as “housekeeper,” she married Wilhelm Dreschler, a German settler, and they raised a family in Sedgwick.
The details that truly fascinate me—the small gestures, the laughter, the fears, the longings—are lost to time. What did she dream of? What did she miss from home? How did she come to meet Wilhelm, and what drew them together? In the absence of these stories, I imagine her life. I see a woman brave enough to leave everything familiar behind, or desperate to escape the poverty and famine that shaped her childhood. I imagine her loving tea, finding comfort in small rituals, holding onto fragments of the life she left behind while forging a new one in a strange land.
Through the Luminaries series, I seek to honor not only Catherine Anne, but all the women whose lives were lived quietly, courageously, and without record. In imagining her, I feel a lineal connection across time—a recognition of strength, endurance, and the subtle, untold beauty of ordinary lives.
Photographed on Dja Dja Wurrung land.
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