Sheila MacDonald

Sheila Scobie MacDonald (1880 - 1971) was the daughter of Mackay John Scobie Mackenzie, a Scotsman who came to New Zealand in 1870 via Australia. Mackenzie was to become manager, then owner of the Kyeburn sheep station in Otago, a successful enterprise which gave him the time and financial means to engage in politics. After unsuccessfully standing in the 1881 election, he went on to win and hold the Dunedin seat of Mount Ida from 1884 to 1891. In 1876 he married Jessy Adela Bell, the only daughter of Sir Francis Dillon Bell who owned the neighbouring sheep station. They were to have six children with Sheila being born in 1880. Little is known of her early life in New Zealand but around the turn of the century she moved to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as a young bride. After the death of her first husband in 1924, she left Rhodesia for England where she began to write about her experiences of living in Africa. Her first and best known book was Sally in Rhodesia, a semi-autobiographical work written as series of letters from a young European woman living in Africa to her mother in Britain. It describes from a female perspective the difficulties of domestic life in early Salisbury (now Harare), the social life of the city and the activities of her husband. First published in 1927, the book was reprinted several times and became something of a classic among the ex-patriot community in southern Africa. It was followed by a several other books about life in Africa, and a biography of her father, The Member for Mount Ida, which was published in New Zealand in 1938. It is possible that this portrait was taken when Sheila made a return visit to New Zealand either to carry out research, or for the book’s publication. In 1933 she remarried and lived with her husband in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and Kenya before eventually retiring to Cape Town in South Africa where she died in 1971 at the age of 91.