At one hundred and twenty four days at sea, the Bloomer’s voyage was a very long one for the time. Of the eleven ships which arrived in Portland in western Victoria in 1854, it was the slowest. The quickest, the Edward Johnson, arrived a few months before the Bloomer in September 1854, and took only 78 days. John and Elizabeth's infant daughter's birth was registered in the Collingwood/Richmond district on 20 April 1855 by Elizabeth, and states she was born at sea on 24 November 1854 on the Bloomer ‘on her voyage from Liverpool’. Perhaps Elizabeth couldn’t remember the date (the Bloomer had arrived by the 21st).