Flora Blundell nee MacLennan (1845-1917)

Flora’s father John McLennan was born in 1800 on the Isle of Skye, and was a crofter with 2 acres of land in Boreraig, Strath in the County of Inverness. He took over when his father Farquhar McLennan died in 1849.

Crofting was a difficult life, at the mercy of the landlords some of whom were clearing their land for large scale production. Boreraig today is a mix of ruined stone houses and sheep, it was forcibly cleared by the agents of Lord MacDonald to make way for large scale sheep farming in 1853. Today the land is owned by the Scottish Government.

John and Flora McLennan and their 7 children were sponsored and resettled by the Highland and Island Immigration Society, 8 of the 22 Boreraig families came to Australia. The family settled in the Barrington River district of New South Wales when Flora was 9 years old.

Flora married George Blundell in Queanbeyan in 1874 and they moved into the cottage and named it Poplar Grove. Flora was the local midwife and a fine horsewoman and George a bullock driver for the Campbell family. Over the next fifteen years they had eight children. The family grew crops on the land surrounding the cottage and in 1893 The Goulburn Penny post reported that “Mr George Blundell has a magnificent crop and has already started haymaking.”

Flora died on the 14th July 1917 and was buried in Riverside Cemetery, Presbyterian section in Queanbeyan with her daughter Flora Susannah, and George died on the 18 December 1933 and is buried in St Johns Anglican Churchyard, Reid.