Eliza Hamilton Dunlop

Eliza Hamilton Dunlop (1796 – 20 June 1880) was an Irish–Australian poet and songwriter, known for composing the poem "The Aboriginal Mother" among others.

She was born in County Armagh, Ireland, and was raised by her grandmother and a guardian, after her father travelled to India and her mother died.

[1] She married again in 1823, this time to David Dunlop, a bookseller who was from County Antrim,[1] at the Portpatrick village in Wigtownshire, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland.

[3] David was a magistrate briefly in Penrith, New South Wales, appointed by the governor, George Gipps.

[1] After moving to Australia, Dunlop continued writing poems, as well as song lyrics which were given a tune by Isaac Nathan, after he arrived in Sydney in April 1841.

[1] Many of her works were published in a variety of newspapers there, including the Maitland Mercury, the Sydney Gazette, and The Australian.

[6] In particular, she wrote the poem "The Aboriginal Mother" in 1838, which she composed due to her opposition to the Myall Creek massacre.

The massacre had killed 29 Aboriginal Australians, and occurred just a few months after Dunlop's arrival in Australia.

[2] Nathan published many songs to Dunlop's lyrics in England, stating "I shall not set a line of my music to any words of the Sydney writers whilst I may calculate on receiving productions from your powerful pen".

[2] Following her husband’s appointment as a police magistrate at Wollombi in the Hunter Valley, she engaged the Indigenous Darkinyung, Awabakal and Wonnarua people, learning the languages of the region.