Cirrus@Austlit

Georgiana Huntly McCrae was the illegitimate daughter of a Scottish duke. Well-educated, she was a diarist, painter and linguist. She was a professional portraitist and miniaturist before marrying Andrew McCrae in 1830. Her husband arrived in Australia in 1839 and Georgiana McCrae and her children followed him in 1841, settling at Arthur's Seat on the Mornington Peninsular in Victoria, in a house designed by Georgiana.

McCrae's journals covering the period 1838-1965 were edited and published as Georgiana's Journal: Melbourne a Hundred Years Ago by her grandson Hugh McCrae in 1934. The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (1994) called the Journal 'one of the most valuable records of Melbourne life in the 1840s ... and the reflection of a distinctive, lively personality' and Georgiana McCrae herself 'a cultured, witty and resourceful woman, the friend of most of the colony's political and cultural figures'.

The matriarch of a dynasty including her son George Gordon McCrae, grandson Hugh McCrae, granddaughter Dorothy Frances McCrae and great granddaughter Mahdi McCrae (qq.v.), Georgiana McCrae has also been the subject of Brenda Niall's award winning biography Georgiana: A Biography of Georgiana McCrae, Painter, Diarist, Pioneer (1994).