Annie ‘Bags’ Ferdinand

[gibbo]

This lady has no connection to my family but seems sad tho that her own family would have most likely lost contact with her. Everyone has a story but usually its the upper class we hear about so im please someone has told Annie's story to the best they could.

In the 1880’s Annie ‘Bags’ Ferdinand scrimped and saved so that she could travel to Australia in search of her lost love who had moved to the country in search of gold.

Without money or mode of transportation Annie walked through NSW and Queensland looking for her red-headed love.

https://www.i-q.net.au/our-mining-heritage/annie-seeks-lost-love-on-the-goldfields

They raised money for a headstone for her [died 1910] a couple of years ago.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-17/annie-bags-memorial-headstone-after-109-years/11020940

And a book has been written

This is a work of fiction that is informally based on a real person, Annie Ferdinand.

https://www.booktopia.com.au/annie-bags-laurence-joseph-murphy/book/9780992304614.html

 

[barbarajoh]

Sad story, no happy ending there Gibbo but you are right these stories should be told.

 

[gibbo]

She was jailed for 6 months for vagrancy but released soon after when they discovered she had money.

The Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 - 1947)
Mon 23 Sep 1889
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/177605900

"It appears, however, that she had in her possession when arrested about £21 and deposits in the Saving Bank amounting to £250."

Im beginning to think the story of her coming to Australia looking for her long lost love is not right. If she had that sort of money on her why did she walk from NSW to QLD when she had more than enough funds to pay her way. She also supposedly was a child of a Prussian aristocrat so why if she was born into a family with money why did she have to scrimp and save to come to Australia like they said she did. Im wondering if she was a remittance woman and was paid to stay away which might explain why she had money in the bank.
She intrigues me regardless of why, how and where she come from.

 

[gibbo]

Appears she was well educated.

Annie ‘Annie Bags' Ferdinand (1851-1910) - wanderer - North Queensland's queerest and quaintest figure who solaced with animals and lived rough around Charters Towers: "Her hair was matted and she must have never combed it. Her face was all brown and her skin dried out from the sun. Her dress was made out of bags, the reason for her name." Yet she was known to be gifted musically and well educated.

 

[barbarajoh]

Sounds like a real eccentric. And the story about the lost love doesn't sound right - maybe one of these romantic stories that people made up about her eventually became "fact" kind of like an Ancestry Tree!