Bo Harris (née Sharon Law) 1970-1974
Robertina A Portrait of Courage and Hope
I have always called myself a southern girl, although I live in the United Kingdom, as I was born in Dunedin and spent the early part of my life in North East Valley where I attended primary school, Dunedin North Intermediate followed by Otago Girls’ High School. I can still remember wearing my OGHS summer uniform, including blazer and white, hard Panama hat for the first day of term to begin my secondary education in Form IIIR.
There was something special about this red-bricked school at the top of View Street and I look back with fond memories of my years spent there between 1970 – 1974 when Miss R Upchurch was principal.
OGHS has proved to be a special school to this day by helping pupils develop life-long skills and study subjects to achieve their potential. It certainly gave me a strong foundation of education to underpin my life’s journey. I was always strong in science and history and pursued a career in life science, first in Histology and Cytology at the Otago Medical School, followed by Histopathology laboratory work in London where I began using new technologies on tissues to help diagnosis diseases. This enabled me to branch out into a commercial environment where I worked in technical sales management roles in the UK and Europe.
I left Dunedin in 1979 as one of my passions was folk music. I was actively performing in concerts and helped run the New Edinburgh Folk Club before I left and wanted more experience overseas. My other reasons for going on OE were to explore my Scottish roots and to find out what life was like in the Northern Hemisphere. I was doing things in reverse to my ancestors and always say to people that the ‘gene’ for travel has been passed on to me. I still very much enjoy the adventure of travelling to new places and experience new cultures and am about to go on a trip to Norway and hopefully see the Northern Lights, Aurora Borealis, and venture as far as the North Cape.
After spending eight years in London, I moved to Warwickshire then Oxfordshire and in 1997 relocated to Leicestershire after I married my husband John who is also an author. We love walking in the countryside, have a beautiful dog, and also visit North Norfolk regularly to be by the sea and spot bird life in the marshes.
Once I stopped full time employment, I had more time to look into the mysteries of my Family History which first arose in 1979 when I tried to prove my patriality to remain in the United Kingdom. My maiden name Law was strangely missing from my Scottish grandfather’s birth certificate and no one in the family understood why.
I developed my own website, www.rootsroutes.com to share my family research and stories about ancestors and have met more family online due to this. I have written about their journeys to the New World, followed ancestral trails across Scotland and Northern Ireland and have been to far off places such as the Orkney Isles, Chile, Cape Horn in South America, the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa.
I have a love of sailing ships and have experienced journeys in France, Greece, Turkey on board clippers. This no doubt stems from my ancestral genes as family had to take long sea journeys to reach the New World in the 1870s and 1920s.
During the COVID - 19 pandemic, I set myself a challenge to write an extended story about a Great Grandmother on my mother’s side of the family as her portrait had hung on my bedroom wall in Dunedin and I wanted to discover the mystery of her life. I finally thought I had enough material to put the pieces together after many years of research.
The end result is my latest book called Robertina, A Portrait of Courage and Hope, and how the mystery of her life unravels. It begins in Caithness, Scotland and the windswept Orkney Isles before the family decide to emigrate to South Island, New Zealand in the 1970s by sailing ship. They spend time in Dunedin before moving to Moonlight, near Macraes Flat to become early settlers. Here my heroine grows up and falls passionately in love but tragedy strikes.
Many of you may have had ancestors who underwent similar experiences. The book also highlights how difficult it was for women with children if their circumstances changed as often they were left destitute.
Robertina is available on www.amazon.com.au in paperback and eBook formats. Readers in both Northern and Southern Hemispheres said that they were fascinated to learn about the history in the timeframe of the book and some had no idea what early settlers actually went through to sustain a new life in far off destinations such as Otago, New Zealand.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have questions or feedback.
Bo Harris
née Sharon Law
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