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| Stella (2009 - 2022) |
Last night I had the great pleasure of seeing Sunshine Super Girl at Wagga’s Civic Theatre. The play is Yorta Yorta/Gunaikurnai woman, Andrea James’ immaculately crafted telling of Wiradjuri tennis star, Evonne Goolagong’s rise from her modest Barellan upbringing to international fame and acclaim. Written with Ms Goolagong’s cooperation and using several of her real life anecdotes , the play treats small town life and community, incipient and overt racism, sexual predation, contemporary politics, 70s fashion, the relentlessness of championship tennis and both Evonne’s vulnerability and tenacity with a lightness of touch, sensitivity and humour that make for a very rewarding production.
Ella Ferris is
charismatic in the central role taking us from 3 year old Evonne’s first encounter
with a tennis ball retrieved from the back seat of her dad’s beat up old car,
through her parents’ dedication and neighbours’ assistance to learn to play tennis
and get the right gear, to lodging with Vic Edwards (her coach)’s family in
Sydney’s northern suburbs, to encountering the quaint traditions of Wimbledon
and the gruelling impact of the international tennis scene. The last most poignantly
affecting when Evonne learns of her father’s death in a motor accident while competing
in the US Open and is persuaded that sedation and then playing on is preferable
to going home for his funeral.
The Cawley–Goolagong
love story is handled with the understatement and charm that was the hallmark
of their blossoming relationship. The scene where they sneak a romantic picnic
at the laundromat is delightful. Lincoln Elliot gets the honourable occasional G&T
sipping Roger Cawley’s accent and body language beautifully. While Jax Compton's delightfully over the top
caricature of John Newcombe brings a nice touch of broad humour to the Knightsbridge
party scenes.
Apart from the play’s overall excellent construction and setting, Vicki Van Hout’s and Katina Olsen’s choreographed tennis moves make the action hypnotic and show the audience Evonne’s evolving skills and the challenges she faced from opponents like Margaret Court.
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| Evonne Goolagong-Cawley and playwright/director Andrea James (source: https://news.aboriginalartdirectory.com/2020/09/sunshine-supergirl.php) |
There is so much to say in praise of Sunshine Super Girl but the other motifs that struck me were Evonne’s (and her Mum’s) love of fishing and their traditional knowledge about the best waters to fish in (images of which open and close the play) and the depiction of an Indigenous yarning circle making the link between all the forms of string and twine that bind and hold us, like the grip of a hand on a racquet!
One reviewer I
read said they thought this play would enter the canon and be produced repeatedly
over years to come. It certainly deserves that and judging by the number of
young people in last night’s audience it will act as inspiration for new generations
of potential tennis champions.
1. The Thornbers
Before we moved to
Wagga Wagga eight years ago I knew little about the city. I was vaguely aware from
my time at the (now defunct) professional craft artists’ organisation, Craft
Australia, that Wagga was home to a significant collection of Australian art glass.
A reconnoitre mission prior to committing to the move yielded more positive
findings. As well as the Glass Gallery, Wagga
has an impressive regional art gallery; Wagga has a pool complex that runs aqua
aerobics every day of the week almost all year round, and Wagga’s Civic Theatre
is on the circuit for enough of the performers and productions we want to see
to keep our diaries happily full. On
arrival we also quickly discovered the charms of Pomilgalarna, the Wollundry Lagoon
and the Victory Memorial and Botanic Gardens and the delight of seeing
‘womboynes’ (Wiradjuri word for kangaroos) bounding about behind our house.
Still to come though was
the surprise of two family connections. I’ve been doing genealogy for a few
years, filling the void created because my mother was an only child, we left
England when I was eleven and my father maintained very few links with his Australian
family. I’ve experienced the peculiarly modern day Australian delight of uncovering
convict ancestors and then the disappointment of discovering that one of them,
the famously spirited Tasmanian inn keeper, Rachel Hoddy who arrived on the
Lady Juliana in 1789, was mis-identified as a relation.
A felon of a later era does however retain his place in our tree. Henri Garnay (aka Henri Chapins /Adolphe Mathey) married my great grand aunt Pauline Emilie Pittard in 1885. For the marriage certificate he represented himself as ‘a photographer in private life’, not revealing his former incarceration in New Caledonia for forgery or his conviction for carrying housebreaking implements in Sydney some four years earlier. It is one of his daughters (he and Pauline had time to conceive two before he was deported in 1887), Armandine Garnay, whose link to Wagga I first discovered. Despite her humble origins, Armie married well. Her groom in 1911 was South Australian born Lawrence (Laurie) Rowland Thornber, from a successful family of bankers and teachers. His career with the Union Bank spanned 43 years and 22 of those were spent first in Wagga and then in nearby Henty.
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Armandine & Laurie |
When we sit outside at our favourite cafĂ© in Johnston Street, the former Union Bank, where Laurie was accountant from 1923 to 1926, is directly in our line of vision. The building now houses Boyce Chartered Accountants, but its exterior remains little changed since Laurie’s day and it isn’t hard to imagine him at work behind his desk inside. Nor is it hard to picture the Thornbers out and about in 1920s Wagga pursuing their interests. Both Laurie and my first cousin twice removed, Armie were keen golfers and their wins at the Wagga Golf Club, then situated on the site of the Murrumbidgee Turf Club, were frequently reported. Laurie was the club’s auditor in 1924 while Armie was a founding member and Treasurer of the Wagga Wagga Shakespeare Club.
Their stay in Wagga was brief as in 1926 Laurie was promoted to manager of the Union Bank’s Henty branch some 60 kilometers away. Far from diluting the sense of propinquity, learning this fact intrigued me further. I first heard of Henty and its annual Field Day from a colleague raised in Albury who regularly sang the Henty Field Day song to us at work. With that auspicious introduction, I was excited to visit the town. Initially unaware of the family connection I contented myself with admiring the famous (locally at least) Henty Man. When I returned it was to see the old Union Bank building in Sladen Street where Laurie, Armie and their daughter Norma had resided. The elegant two storey corner building combined banking premises and spacious accommodation but is now a private residence.
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Former Union Bank, 33 Sladen Street, Henty |
It was a balmy day and to my delight the current owner had the door open while renovating the hallway. When he saw me excitedly staring at the building and photographing the exterior he was kind enough to invite me in. I saw the banking chamber, the old safe door, Laurie’s office, the kitchen, living room and bedrooms. My spine tingled as I imagined Armie hosting CWA meetings to raise funds for the hospital or giving her celebrated needlework demonstrations there and Norma meeting with the local youth group, nattily named ‘The Younger Set’, up until her marriage in 1940 disqualified her from membership and she was presented with a parting gift of a 'Cutex' leather encased manicure set. It is hard to explain the frisson I experienced despite never having known or, until recently, known of, these relatives. I found treading where they had trod an emotional and rewarding experience.
Laurie and Armie remained in Henty for some 13 years after his retirement in 1945 eventually joining their daughter and her family in Quirindi, northern NSW where they died within a few months of one another in 1973.
2. Semple Misfortune
The other coincidence is less jolly. It relates to my husband’s family and this time the DNA has not left the district!
My husband is descended from Welsh miners via Newcastle NSW on his mother’s side and London tradespeople via Melbourne on his father’s. While it is a popular belief that migrants from the UK generally benefited from relocating to Australia both sides of our families contain examples of misfortune hampering attempts to build a life in a new land. A qualified engineer died a pauper in my family and my husband’s great great grandfather John Semple (1815-1860) perished under sad circumstances after trying for a decade to make a success of his timber business. John, his wife of 5 years, Mary, and daughters Susannah and Mary jnr arrived in Victoria aboard the Alice Maude in 1849. They had 4 more children in the following decade. Plotting his course via newspaper archives, I traced his involvement with the dissolution of the Golden Cross Timber Yard business in 1855, his fine for sourcing wood on Crown Land in 1857 and the establishment then lapse into bankruptcy of his own timber import and merchandising business at Melbourne’s Batman’s Hill during 1858-60.
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