Janet/Jannet was born in Scotland in 1818/1819. I have not been able to find her mother's name or family. She arrived in Van Diemen's Land on the Greenock in April 1826 with her father John McRa. Margaret McRae and her brother Thomas McRae arrived on the same ship. John and Margaret married in Hobart towards the end of 1826. They first settled in Risdon and later moved to Abyssinia near Bothwell.

In about 1839 Janet moved to Melbourne. She seems to have had a job looking after the children of a neighbouring family (Sherwin) and they took her with them when they moved across Bass Strait.

Before leaving, a cousin from Scotland arrived and stayed with the family for a few weeks while he found a job. This was Duncan McRae, known as "the Real Duncan." He and Janet must have hit it off as they married in Melbourne in 1841, one of the first marriages in the newly built Scots Church.

Duncan had taken up land in the western districts of Victoria and was a successful squatter up until about 1860. He and Janet settled into family life producing 9 children over the following years. Duncan's brothers and their families travelled from Nova Scotia to join him in the 1850s. There is little evidence to suggest that Janet kept in touch with her father and her ten half-siblings in Tasmania during her lifetime.

Hard times struck Duncan's pastoral pursuits and they were forced to sell up and move, firstly into Portland and later across to Ballarat where Duncan continued his working life as a stock inspector.

Seven of Janet's children moved to Western Australia in search of land and wealth. Four died before their parents. Janet's only unmarried daughter, Laura, remained at home after Duncan died in 1889. Laura ran a small school from their house in Ballarat.

Janet died in Ballarat, after ten years of widowhood.