ENGLISH-born writer Ada Cambridge lived in Beechworth for nine years when her husband was Anglican archdeacon. She became late Victorian Australia's most significant published female writer, pushing social boundaries with then uncommon but far-sighted views on sex, marriage and equality.
Anglican Christ Church Beechworth
27 Ford Street, Beechworth VIC 3747
Wednesday, 8 May, 2024
7:30-9:00pm
Host: Anglican Christ Church Beechworth
Australian Heritage Festival event ID 116114
Light refreshments to follow
Tickets $10 adult, $8 concession, $0 child, $25 family, $0 National Trust member - card or cash. No booking required.
Information: call or text 0409 912 967
Join us for an evening in Beechworth's historic Anglican Christ Church to explore Ada's life and her Beechworth years, where she lived and wrote in the church rectory between 1885 and 1893.
Born in 1844 to a farming family in Norfolk, Ada married priest George Cross in Ely, England, in 1870, and four months later the couple disembarked in Melbourne. They lived across the next 15 years in Wangaratta, Yackandandah, Ballan, Coleraine, Bendigo and Beechworth, where George's tenure as rector and archdeacon from 1885 kept them for nine years until he was called to Williamstown parish in 1893.
You'll hear from Ada's published works Thirty Years in Australia (1903), Up the Murray (1875), and Unspoken Thoughts (1886)- the latter 'hastily suppressed' because of her reflections on sex in marriage and social justice.
You'll also hear music of the late Victorian era performed by Sandra Williams on the church's colonial-built organ, installed in 1887 when George was rector, accompanied by soprano Colleen Arnott.
Tickets $10 adult, $8 concession, $0 child, $25 family, $0 National Trust member - card or cash. No booking required.
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Image: Cross family papers. Reproduced from Ada Cambridge: Her life and work 1844-1926. Audrey Tate, 1991. Melbourne University Press
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