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52 The Society of Malaŵi Journal

grave’ is not ‘known and tended’ and it seems Anna Marie’s remains will never
be found.
Conclusion
To return to the beginning of these notes, some of Cullen Young’s
questions have thus been answered in the above narrative. Some light has been
shed on the exact whereabouts of the various sites of Fort Anderson including the
one on the Ruo River where Anna Marie was buried.
Anna Marie arrived unannounced in a tiny European community in a
district that was having to deal with much unrest and where the building blocks of
colonial administration were not fully in place. Her arrival was akin to a rock
being thrown in a pool and it seems some of the residents did not know how to
respond to her or how to treat her. Cullen Young’s poignant closing words
regarding Anna Marie that …. “one too to whom we owe what redress is open to
us now for a wrong done to her – so long ago” echo down the years, even if the
full details of the wrong are still not clear. One hopes that the remarkable life and
story of Anna Marie Hlawaczek will in due course become better known and that
admiration for her exploits will represent some sort of redress for whatever befell
her in her final days in Mulanje.
Acknowledgements
This article bears a great debt to Dr Josephine May, Conjoint Associate Professor,
University of Newcastle, Australia. In 2016 I wrote a brief article entitled ‘In
Pursuit of ‘Miss H’ – the Polish/Austrian/Czech Governess’ which was published
in the Society of Malawi Journal. This touched on the brief details then known of
a lady, who was at that time known variously as Miss Hlavackova / Miss
Hlawaczeck / Miss Hlavercecq, who had endeavoured to walk from Cape Town
to Cairo. Even the woman’s Christian name was not then known. There had been
some interest in her, notably in Czechoslavakia, with articles written by a
journalist, a novelist and a member of the diplomatic corps all speculating on her
origins. These people had got in touch with the Society of Malawi to find out what
was known about her. Information was scanty.
Then in May 2017 out of the blue, the Society of Malawi received an email
from Jo May. She said that she was ‘in the process of researching the life and
career of Anna Marie Hlawaczek who was a State School Headmistress in New
South Wales, Australia up until 1887’ and that having found my article ‘In pursuit
of Miss H….’ on-line, she felt that this was the same person who died in Mulanje
in 1893. Given that Anna Marie the Headmistress had been born in Vienna in 1849
and that the spelling of the surname and the nationality were those mentioned by
Edward Laidlaw Thomson, there seemed little doubt that they were one and the
same person.
In the course of her research Jo May had found a wealth of material on Anna
Marie including some articles relating to her death. There had been some press
coverage of that event across the world after word had seeped out, with the two