The Enlightenment’s surge of scientific inquiry, rampant exploration and booming international trade propelled Europeans to explore and settle Western Australia. This imperial frenzy was epitomised by men who bought into utopian dreams of limitless opportunity. But what opportunities did women seek? The ideal of an early nineteenth-century European woman was of a polite, gentle and devoted wife, but in a period that encouraged fierce inquiry and participation in the adventure of colonialism, was it devotion alone that drew these women to our shores? Or did some act autonomously?

This study considers records written by and of women such as Rose de Freycinet, who stowed away on her husband’s French naval ship and explored the world; Georgiana Molloy, who settled in the isolated South West and established herself as a talented and well-renowned amateur botanist; and Mary Ann Friend, who accompanied her husband on board the Wanstead to far-flung colonies around the world, and produced a frank, insightful diary of her experiences, years before women’s travel writing was popularised. To understand how enlightened women such as these embodied autonomous lives, modern feminist autonomy theories will be read against established understandings of early nineteenth-century European womanhood.