Death Café

On 31 January I woke up to the news that Marianne Faithfull had died. I already had Death Café in my diary for later that morning. Mementos mori were proliferating. My own ever present obsession with ‘dead uns’ (that is how my spouse refers to my genealogy research), the inevitable result of ageing i.e. more people you know die, and then the welter of celebrity deaths reported in the news in recent months. We’ve lost Maggie Smith, David Lynch and Shelley Duvall and now Marianne.   There is definitely a spike in road deaths and drownings over the summer holidays. Then the toll of warfare and climate related disaster just grows…

Death is more certain than taxes, eh, Donald?

When it is coming for us is unpredictable although the online mortality calculator Death Clock says I will die at age 73 years, 9 months and 25 days.  Better get a wriggle on with travel plans and memoir writing.  While I am skeptical about the accuracy of this prediction, the message is carpe deim and get my affairs in order…

That is also the message of Death Café, the two hour get together held this week at the Wagga Wagga Library.

Poster advertising the  Death Cafe event

When I saw it advertised, averse as I am to euphemism, I did wonder if it wasn’t a bit of a blunt way to market an end of life planning event. I realise now that the phrase ‘death camp’ may also have been echoing somewhere in the back of my mind. But the phrases on the poster: ‘no agenda’ and ‘discuss things that are on your mind about death and dying’ appealed. I have been procrastinating about finalising my will and power of attorney for too long. Going to this workshop might galvanize me into action.

Numbers weren’t huge. At first I mistook the journo and photographer from The Daily Advertiser for participants. Logic dictated otherwise. They were both in their 30s and male, whereas the bona fide attendees were all women and, with the exception of a social worker and a palliative care worker, in our 60s and 70s.

Jocelyn Mason who convened the café is cheerful, down to earth and perfectly equipped to run such an event having worked in the funeral industry for over 25 years and witnessed a wealth of death and dispatch related issues. She got us to introduce ourselves and say what we were hoping to get out of the two hours. One woman is currently nursing a dying husband and needed practical advice and reassurance. Some of us wanted to check we were doing the right thing re. our wills and to ask about funeral arrangements. There are four funeral directors in Wagga Wagga, it costs $6.5 K to get a burial plot, eco burials are available here. Nearly everyone had a poignant or frustrating experience associated with the loss of a loved one to relate. Dying intestate or with a will that challenges interpretation or implementation were common difficulties relatives had to face.

One person epitomized cognitive dissonance as no matter how strongly or frequently the facts around dying intestate, leaving one’s body to science or qualifying for a pauper’s burial were explained she was adamant in voicing her belief that all three were straightforward available options.

Jocelyn Mason, Jan Pittard and Vicki Bowles immediately after the workshop (source The Daily Advertsiser newspaper)

Most of us though left the café with greater clarity around preparing for the inevitable. One of Jocelyn’s wise tips was to consolidate all information about insurance, superannuation, online passwords, arrangements for pets etc. in a single document that is readily accessible to your executor and family members. She offered a template for preparing this. A similar, related document that contains your funerary wishes such as music and reading choices and any anecdotes you would like shared  is helpful guidance for  relatives and may ensure an uncringeworthy commemoration.

Jocelyn plans to offer further death cafes in the coming months in Wagga Wagga. They are happening elsewhere across the country too. Death can be a subject avoided by many with women more likely to be proactive in planning. I would encourage participation whether it seems immediately relevant to you or not. There is nothing negative about being informed and if death is a great leveler, death talk is a great source of affinity.

 

Traces of Wagga's Chinese Past

I recently came across an item on Trove from the Wagga Wagga Daily Advertiser of 26 June 1954 promoting the opening of the Grand Garage in Fitzmaurice Street.  It was headlined: Old Chinese Joss House is Now an Ultra-Modern Garage and Showroom.  The slick art deco styled facility included petrol bowsers, car display space, a mechanics workshop, a fully equipped kitchen, men’s and women’s showers, a writing room and even a ball room! Long before motorway service centres offered similar comforts, the Grand Garage was designed as a place for road weary visitors to Wagga to refresh, get their car serviced and maybe consider upgrading to one of the flash modern vehicles on sale. The article described the Garage as occupying the site of ‘a Joss house and temple where hundreds of Chinese once met to enjoy opium dreams’. On the same page there appeared an item claiming that ‘Chinese drawings and motives (sic) are still faintly visible’ on the walls of a structure being used as a storeroom at the premises.

Daily Advertiser clipping of 26 June 1954 (source: Trove)

My interest was piqued because I recognised the profile of the building and a Google search revealed that it still stands at 175 Fitzmaurice Street now operating as the Paul Seaman Swift Service Centre. It is something of a rarity in Wagga for a building constructed in 1954 to survive substantially unaltered for 70 years!  I had heard that this part of Fitzmaurice Street was Wagga’s Chinatown but assumed no vestiges remained. I was now on a quest hoping to be proved wrong.  My first move was to post on the Facebook Lost Wagga page to see if anyone knew anything about the ex-storage shed with the Chinese drawings on the wall. No-one did but another post showing the Grand Garage inundated in the 1950 flood elicited photographs and comments from Paul Seaman the current proprietor. I also embarked on my own research…

The Grand Garage as it looks in 2024 as the Paul Seaman Swift Service Centre (source: Google)

I found another clipping from the Daily Advertiser dated 26 September 1939 headed ‘Chinese Joss House – Old Wagga Building Being Demolished’.  A complex of buildings ranging in age from 50 to 100 years was to face the wrecker’s ball: the Joss House, a masonic hall known as the Chinese Free Mission Hall and a consecrated Christian church.  No specific reason is given in the article for the demolition but the paper quoted local man Wong (Charlie) Hing as saying that the once ‘elaborately outfitted’ church had not been in use for six years. It was implied that the other buildings had been abandoned for longer.  This was quite significant infrastructure and if the Daily Advertiser was right and ‘hundreds’ of Chinese had once congregated there, when did the location cease to be a cultural hub? For one poor soul, Ah Get, aged 66, blind with long hair and beard and dressed in rags, the Joss House had remained home. He was discovered by workers during the demolition process (The Age 29 September 1939). His fate after that is not recorded.

 

The service station before redevelopment pictured during regular flooding. The signage and structures suggest the site's Chinese heritage but I have not been able to establish their authenticity (source: Lost Wagga Facebook page).

The Daily Advertiser’s hyperbole notwithstanding, it is unlikely that the Chinese population encamped on Fitzmaurice Street ever numbered in the hundreds except perhaps when swelled by seasonal labourers. In 1883 it was recorded as 223. That figure is drawn from a report furnished by the  Sub-Inspector of NSW Police, Martin Brennan and prominent Sydney business man and philanthropist Mei Quong Tart who were tasked with conducting an enquiry into ‘disturbances’ in the Chinese camps of the Riverina district.

Chinese people first came to Australia in 1828 when colonial administrators thought their migration could help solve a labour shortage.  Land and resource scarcity in China encouraged over three thousand Chinese workers to come to Australia as indentured labourers between 1847 and 1853. The mid-century gold-rush saw Chinese migration increase further and by 1861 there were 13,000 Chinese living in NSW.  When diggings were exhausted or they experienced discrimination that prevented them from continuing to mine many remained to work as labourers, ring barkers, sap cutters and fencers or to establish successful market gardens. There were several Chinese encampments across the Riverina, the largest one at Narrandera, the second largest at Wagga and others at various locations including Adelong, Gundagai and Tumut. In Wagga the Chinese erected basic shanties as tenants on flood prone, poorly draining land owned by white landlords on the banks of the Murrumbidgee in North Wagga and at the northern end of Fitzmaurice Street. In Wagga the areas they rented were mostly owned by Susannah Brown a shrewd property investor who also held shares in the Wagga Wagga Bridge Company.

Map showing historic location of the Chinese precinct on either side of Fitzmaurice Street (Source: Alex Dalgleish, report to Wagga Wagga City Council 1999)

In their review, Brennan and Quong Tart looked at demographics, occupations, quality of dwellings, sanitation, gambling, prostitution, interracial marriage, access to education and prevalence of opium use. The report was published in full in the Wagga Wagga Daily Advertiser of 8 January 1884. It makes for fascinating reading. While acknowledging the squalid conditions in the camps and the prevalence of opium smoking and gambling, it makes a sincere attempt to examine the causes and contributory factors of crime and unruliness.  Blame is in part attributed to property neglect by landlords and to visiting ‘shearers, shepherds, and disreputable characters’ looking for sex and sly grog. The report points out that opium use gained a foothold in Chinese society having been actively fostered by the East India Company in the 18th and 19th centuries against the wishes of the government to fund the tea trade.

The report characterises the Chinese as ’the most industrious race in the world’ lauding their contribution to vegetable cultivation on the region and listing other occupations as shop assistant,  labourer and lottery house proprietor. There were small numbers of women, almost exclusively European, residing in the camps, some of whom were deemed ‘respectable’ and married to Chinese and others who worked as prostitutes.  The report explodes the ‘white slaver‘ myth stating that almost all the women engaging in sex work were European, hailed from Melbourne,  had an established history in  the profession and expressed a preference for the courtesy and acceptance they found in the environment of the Chinese camps.

Given the stories of racism on the goldfields, the riots at Lambing Flat in 1861 and the passing of the Immigration Restriction Act (White Australia policy) of 1901, it was surprising to learn that inter-cultural relations in Wagga Wagga were mostly harmonious. Tensions did of course arise but for the most part they were far less intense than in urban settings. As Brennan pointed out, some were directly attributable to ambiguities and loopholes in the law as to whether the games of my pow ghong, fan tan and pak ah pu (known collectively as ‘the Chinese lottery’) were in themselves illegal  or whether it was the placing of hefty bets that was the problem. Likewise,  regulations requiring that opium was supplied solely by registered chemists completely failed to cover the sales and use of opium amongst people in the Chinese camps who were vulnerable to prosecution and fines.

Inevitably as the Chinese population of the Riverina dispersed across the district and the wider state, the camps declined.  Some returned to China, intermarried, converted to Christianity, diversified their business interests and prospered, and some anglicized their names. It became increasingly common for Chinese-run general stores to operate alongside pubs and residential cottages in Fitzmaurice Street. With the advent of the automobile, successful Junee business man Tommy Ah Wah opened a service station on the site of the former enclave adjacent to the one remaining building, described as a ‘temple,  and apparently not demolished in 1939. It was this business and site that he later sold to Alf Ludwig and which was transformed into the Grand Garage.

Tracking the Dragon Dr Barry McGowan's highly informative book, published in conjunction with a Museum of the Riverina exhbition of the same name in 2012

According to Dr Barry McGowan's excellent publication Tracking the Dragon,  the temple was ‘beautifully constructed from rich Oregon timbers’ .  Ludwig offered to dismantle it and re-erect it elsewhere as a commemoration of the Chinese who had lived and worked in Wagga but the Council declined his offer. Tracking the Dragon also attributes to Alf Ludwig the story that networks of subterranean tunnels connecting various buildings used to escape police raids existed on the site.

Chinese gaming tokens unearthed in Fitzmaurice Street in 2006 now in the collection of the Museum of the Riverina (Source: Tracking the Dragon)

In 2006 Chinese coins/gambling tokens were discovered in the same area of Fitzmaurice Street. I am still on my quest to find out if there is any other evidence of Wagga’s Chinatown extant.  Next port of call is Seaman’s Swift Service Centre as Paul has shared a drawing of the site that claims Chinese graves were discovered there during levee construction in 1957!

Sources:

https://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/hong-kong-and-the-opium-wars/

https://issuu.com/riversidewaggawagga/docs/mor_waggaessay_lr_web

https://storyplace.org.au/story/once-out-of-view/

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/145648701?searchTerm=joss%20Wagga

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/101928639?searchTerm=Chinese#

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/145648707?searchTerm=Grand%20Garage

Morris, Sherry, Wagga Wagga – A History, 1999, Council of the City of Wagga Wagga

An Almost Timeless Classic

While not overly impressed with Barbara Brooks and Judith Clark’s biography of Eleanor Dark (blog post, 15 May 2022) it did inspire me to read her work. I decided to make a start with Waterway, her 1938 novel set in contemporary Sydney.  Unfortunately, when I searched the local library catalogue they didn’t have a copy, there was one at Gundagai but our library had suspended inter-library loans while they did a stock take or a review or performed some mysterious process which has affected ties with other libraries and services to readers across the Riverina region. The local paper claims that the mobile library service which used a very flash truck and trailer arrangement worth about $27K and visited 21 locations across over 50,000 square kilometres has ceased to operate, a very sad situation that I hope will be rectified soon.  But I digress,  Waterway seems to be out of print so I made a mega commitment and downloaded the approx. 600 page The Timeless Land to my Kindle instead.  I am agnostic about eBooks vs ‘real’ books. One advantage of a Kindle is that you can delude yourself that you are well into a doorstop-sized tome (even when the little percentage thingy says otherwise) and it is a lot lighter to carry around than a book of The Timeless Land’s bulk. Of course, marginalia are a problem and if this was a book group choice I would be woefully ill-prepared for our discussion.

The Riverina's Mercedes Benz Mobile Library truck & trailer whose fate is currently in the balance. Source Riverina Library Services Facebook page.

Anyway thanks to a bout of the flu, I‘ve finished reading The Timeless Land and feel sufficiently impressed by Dark’s achievement to want to make a few comments about the book.  I am not alone as Googling revealed hundreds of reviews from the most academic analyses of its literary form and cultural perspective to succinct ‘this was a good read’ type comments.  My blog isn’t the place to rehash all these as they are easily found and I do hope to be reasonably engaging. Here are just some my reactions to reading Eleanor Dark’s The Timeless Land …

Dark conveys the physical aspects of Australia, the sky, landscape, vegetation etc. with an authenticity that reflects many hours spent observing and forming a deep love of and respect for this country. Those  also inform the passion and conviction with which she writes about the Indigenous way of life and spiritualty. While primarily an imaginative exercise for her, albeit a highly researched one, which today would likely be regarded as appropriation and distortion, her decision to foreground Aboriginal experience in this novel - it opens with Bennilong (sic) and his father watching the tall ships of the First Fleet arrive - was a bold and radical departure from the colonial narrative of ‘settlement’ that abounded in the 1940s when she wrote.  Achieving this is testament to her deeply held liberal humanist values, to her painstaking and unflinching use of her sources and her considerable talent as a writer.

The text abounds with the  quite correct, but jarring to the modern reader,  use of ‘one’,  the gender neutral indefinite/impersonal pronoun, when Dark is crafting the inner monologues of her characters be they naval officers, convicts or Indigenous Australians.  This consistent usage, while understandable from the pen of a writer  of her background and era, evokes an upper middle class aloofness that doesn’t accord well with the varied kinds of human consciousness she is attempting to conjure. Having said that, her language suffers from very few archaisms and most of the time is admirably successful in persuading us that we are seeing 18thC existence through the eyes of her characters. Her sweeps of descriptive writing and her intricate construction of their trains of thought, particularly Bennilong’s and Arthur Phillip’s, are a triumph.

Bennelong dressed in some of the garments given to him in England. The caption of this portrait by an unknown artist states that upon his return to Australia he once again embraced his 'savage ways', expressing an imperialist reactionary sentiment that  Eleanor Dark did much to challenge. Source SLNSW.

Not all the characters are so convincingly drawn but one (I mean, I) certainly developed a soft spot for Watkin Tench whose 1788: Comprising A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay and A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson was the source of much of Dark’s material and whose reputed sophistication and sense of the absurd she captures beautifully, providing the novel with some of its few lighter hearted moments.

As well as the centrality of the Aboriginal narrative, Dark focuses on several aspects of gender relations, both Cunnembeillee and Ellen are forced into socially condoned sexual and domestic subservience and newly arrived free and convict women are treated as currency. However, in her desire to contrast cooperative, intuitive Aboriginal Law with hierarchical colonial ‘justice’ she perhaps buys too readily into the idea of the primitive club-wielding male warrior subduing the women of his tribe with violence. The white male colonialists avow more genteel and Christian attitudes, yet dispassionately dole out cruel floggings and conduct executions, both of which the Indigenous observers see as obscene.  The reality of gendered violence is complex and I would be interested to read if the level of violence toward women in Indigenous society at the time of colonisation Dark asserts as the norm can be substantiated  and how much that differed from the incidence in white society.

The depiction of Barangaroo is problematic. Dark uses the epithet ‘shrew’ of her repeatedly and suggests there is something erratic and childish about her expressions of emotion but is nevertheless  admiring of her pride in entering the Governor’s house in her natural unclothed state and her suspicion of the white invaders.  Having just watched a promotional video for the Sydney Harbour foreshore re-development named for Barangaroo which presents her in a revisionist ‘girl power’  light, I think we are still working out who she was in her own time and context and how we relate to her as a modern day cultural icon. 

As I am prone to, I have focused on some quibbles here, but I do need to say unequivocally that I am glad I read The Timeless Land and think it worth any reader’s while. I am awestruck by the conscientiousness and depth of Eleanor Dark’s historical research - she draws on a plethora of fascinating contemporary documents – and by the vast canvas she chose and then faithfully filled (especially considering there are two sequel novels, The Storm of Time and No Barrier). She sets the bar for social history that is both illuminating and interrogative. Her account of the establishment of the colony of New South Wales would have been revolutionary when first released. I wonder if the television adaptation did the books justice, not sure I have the courage to find out.

Eleanor Dark with the manuscript of The Storm in Time, the second novel

 in the trilogy. Source Varuna website

I would be intrigued to know what today’s Indigenous readers and writers think of the book(s). In my research for this post I discovered that Yothu Yindi had a 1990s hit with the song Timeless Land which suggests they didn’t disdain the connection.

References

Tim Piccione, The Wagga Wagga Daily Advertiser, July 8 2022

https://www.dailyadvertiser.com.au/story/7812533/mobile-library-truck-ceases-operations-amid-dispute-with-wagga-council/

Antonio Simoes Da Silva’s Revising the past/Revisioning the future: A postcolonial reading of Eleanor Dark's 'The Timeless Land' trilogy

https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2481&context=lhapapers

Yothu Yindi ‘Timeless Land’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7TWJMO4k3k