Isabella Louisa Parry (née Stanley, 1801–1839) came to New South Wales in late 1829 when her husband, the explorer and hydrographer William Edward Parry, was appointed commissioner for the Australian Agricultural Company. Living at Tahlee, on the northern shore of Port Stephens from 1830, she was involved in community work, establishing schools for children and convicts, and designing St John’s Chapel, built at Stroud in 1833. Isabella took a keen interest in her surroundings, collecting natural history specimens and artefacts, and making sketches of and around her home. The Parrys returned to England in 1834, settling in Norfolk and then London, where Isabella died in May 1839. The Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University holds a number of examples of her work, including her plan for St John’s, several views of Port Stephens, and a sketch of the coal works on the Hunter River at Newcastle
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