Scott was educated by her father, A.W. Scott, and acquired a considerable knowledge of Australian plants, animals and insects. Her paintings earned high praise from the Entomological Society and she was elected, like her sister Helena (qv), as an honorary member.
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SCOTT, ALEXANDER WALKER (1800-1883), entomologist and entrepreneur, was born on 10 November 1800 in Bombay, India, son of Dr Helenus Scott and his wife Augusta Maria, née Frederick. Educated at Bath Grammar School and Peterhouse, Cambridge (B.A., 1822; M.A., 1825), he entered Lincoln's Inn but discarded a legal career for speculation as a merchant. On 17 January 1827 he arrived at Newcastle, New South Wales, in his ship Australia. This and voyages to the colony in 1829 and 1831 proved financially disastrous. In 1829 he took up a 2560-acre (1036 ha) grant on Ash Island in the Hunter River and in 1831 with his mother and sister he returned as a settler. He bought land between Newcastle and Maitland. From Newcastle House, built in 1837 on the harbour front at Newcastle, he supervised the establishment of an iron-foundry, forge and patent slip at Stockton and the construction of large tanks on Moscheto Island, where sea-water was used to supply salt for Sydney. He grew tobacco and flax on the Maitland farms and oranges on Ash Island. In 1842 Ludwig Leichhardt visited the island, found it 'a romantic place' and noted the artesian bore. In 1844 Scott presciently financed detailed plans for a railway between Newcastle and Maitland and was undeterred by Governor Gipps's comment that 'the colony was not sufficiently advanced to entertain such important works'; he advocated a tramway to Singleton and in 1853 became a shareholder in the Hunter River Railway Co., taken over by the government in 1855. Scott's original project became part of the Great Northern Railway.
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