Looking back on the track...

Twice before I have blogged about the year that was - events past & lessons learnt. My most recent post The Ballad of Beryl was the culmination of shared conversations and emails and a tribute to an extraordinary woman. Since then, I have been considering what to write. Nothing specific came to me with the same sense of urgency or purpose. Of the various ideas and themes I had jotted down throughout the year I had only been inspired to develop a few. Then, earlier this week I trawled though a year’s worth of diary entries and photographs taken during 2022 to see what stood out.

I found much worth recalling …

January

Day trip to Adelong with my sister in searing heat. Looked at the falls and gold works.  Photographed them and a mural in town depicting youths clambering across Kurrajong Hill personified as the head and face of a (presumably) Aboriginal man, and up the edge of a conveniently placed air conditioner vent.  The imposing Royal Hotel with its Victorian leadlight and cedar staircase, cream and terracotta woodwork and wrap around balcony wasn’t serving lunch. With few other choices we opted for the Adelong Services and Citizens Club. The club’s exterior is a marriage of Edwardian bank and early 20^thC cinema architecture but the 1970s wood paneling and formica of its interior welcome you in to try its ‘Chinese & Australian Meals’. We had fish and chips and a Thai beef & prawn salad.  Just outside the club stands a lone digger statue and roll call of the fallen. A war memorial is, as Peter Sculthorpe so poignantly evoked in his autobiographical composition, at the heart of almost all small country towns.

The Adelong mural subtly incorporating elements of the built environment

In 2021 our writers’ group was approached by a media company as a source of articles about items of local interest. I produced a piece about Janine Middlemost and the charming quirky clothes she designs, makes and sells in her eponymous shop. The company rejected it as being an ‘advertorial’ so I expanded it and posted it to this blog as Material Comforts on 3 January 2022

My daughter and I went to see a local production of Mama Mia and were hugely impressed with its quality. One of the nurses from the blood bank we’re friendly with was in the chorus, eschewing her usual dancing roles pending a hip replacement.

Our dog Stella had 2.5 kg tumour successfully removed from her abdomen.

February

Animatronic dinosaurs came to the Wagga Showground. I was more than compensated for an un- scintillating hour of my time by parlaying the experience into a poem that went over very well at the open mic.

March

Visited Canberra to see the Jeffrey Smart exhibition and stayed with husband’s friend-since-high-school and his partner. Their new poodle pups Yin & Yang and our ageing greyhound X got along famously. They gifted her their latex squeaking pig on our departure. Wagga celebrated its second Mardi Gras unhampered by the district’s grasshopper plague (perhaps grasshoppers don’t like platform shoes and lycra).  My husband and Stella rode on the SES float and our daughter performed hula hoop routines in the parade. I felt very proud. Junee Museum held an open day with blacksmithing demonstrations and country music covers. The museum is located in the Broadway Hotel (built 1914) whose interior boasts art nouveau pressed metal ceilings and walls of gleaming green tiles interspersed with floral and garlanded decorative ones. We bumped into retired school teacher Brian Beazley whose wood working skills, ukulele playing and bush ballad renditions are renowned throughout the Riverina.

Decorative elements of The Broadway Hotel, Junee

April

Already a veteran of standup comedy with her own hula hooping coaching and performing business, our daughter, Hooly Dooly made one of her occasional forays into legit theatre portraying a fairy in Midnight Dream, local impresario Stephen Roots' country and western flavored adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Another theatre highlight was Geoffrey Atherden’s Black Cockatoo at the Civic, a compelling account of how a group of activists restores the story of First Nations cricketer Johnny Mullagh to the national consciousness.

Our son visited Wagga and I drove back to Sydney with him. During my visit we took the ferry to Wendy Whiteley’s Secret Garden which lived up to its reputation and enjoyed a late Lavender Bay lunch.  My knowledge of and capacity to tolerate Sydney roads has dwindled and I got lost several times driving out to meet friends for dinner at Sydney Rowing Club. It was a public holiday and the place was quiet but the staff still didn’t seem inclined to wipe down the bar. Consulting the wine list it seemed that any choice we made would be a ’sticky’!

Determined to keep up my aquatic regimen I went for a swim at the Victoria Park pool. Its cold water and dilapidated change rooms made me grateful for Wagga’s Oasis; however I acknowledge that Sydney Council has considerably more recreation facilities to maintain than Wagga does. I guess THE place for regional visitors to take a dip is the North Sydney Pool (just ask Bridget McKenzie).

The Secret Garden

May

The month began with news of the unexpected death of my wonderful former colleague and, in recent years, Facebook friend, Chris Bonney. His funeral was in Adelaide on the 6^th and thanks to the widespread practice of streaming such events I was able to see and hear his send off.  If ever a man was loved and celebrated…

Mona, not the gallery, the ‘community-focused magazine for women who live in regional, rural and remote communities in Australia’ launched its second edition in nearby Narrandera. I had submitted pieces which weren’t used in the print edition but which have since appeared on their blog. It was a catered, feel-good event that served as good promotion for Books On East and East Street Café. On our return to Wagga, the sat nav decided to take the back way and we drove for over an hour and a half on unlit country roads but happily free of encounters with kangaroos.

On 15 May Scott Morrison and his cronies were roundly defeated by the ALP and my faith in Australian democracy was restored.

June

Visited a client in Coleambally (est. 1968 pop. 1,331). We met at the only café in town with no chance of privacy or anonymity. Notable facts about Coleambally: all the streets are named for birds, the water tower is called ‘The Wine Glass’   and is surrounded by a mosaic depicting the town’s short history, giving due prominence to the Ruston Bucyrus Erie excavator.

Self referential art at the base of the 'Wine Glass', Coleambally.  Can you spot the Ruston Bucyrus Erie excavator?

Also for work, I got a tour of the Defence Shed and Pro Patria Centre.  The latter is a former convent with an impressive chapel featuring amazing stained glass including a window depicting Indigenous themes. The facility is being adapted to provide a centre for reflection and treatment for local veterans. I was going to write a post about the centre but got stalled so instead wrote a letter to the Daily Advertiser in support of the project.

Claire Baker, a colleague from Booranga Writers whose poems I much admire was a featured reader at the June meeting of the Perth poetry group. As their meetings are streamed I was able to join in. Claire shared the bill with WA poet Gabrielle Everall whose singsong delivery of her graphic and gender disrupting works featuring Severin, a character from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's novella Venus in Furs, I am still processing. Claire’s work was polished and poignant.

July

There are possums nesting in the roof cavity above our en suite. They poke out their little pink paws through a hole in the ceiling some times.  Visited Aurora, a laser light show in the Albury Botanic Gardens. Photographed buildings and streetscapes prior. The round trip was tiring – I don’t know how my boss does it twice a week. Also botanical and lepidopterological, was the exhibition Transformations - Art of the Scott Sisters at the Museum of the Riverina in the old council chambers. I hadn’t heard of these 19^thC artists before and loved their work.

Attended performance of Bell Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors so disappointing I devoted an entire blog post to it (13 July 2022).  I participated (by video – I was not well and couldn’t attend in person) a reading of works inspired by Helen Grace’s short films. Mine related to The Immortals.  I have dabbled in ekphrasis exercises in conjunction with the gallery a few times now. I love that I can combine my appreciation of visual art forms with the act of writing

August

Sydney’s Griffin Theatre ran playwright workshops for aspiring local writers under 30 in conjunction with the Civic Theatre. Participants, who included our daughter, did a read through of the finished product. So much talent! It seems the collaboration will continue in some shape or form this year. The Wagga Monumental Cemetery has always been a favourite dog walking destination. On a quest to find the unmarked resting place of my husband’s great great grandfather  (see post 2 October 2022) I was delighted to locate remnant stone work from the Turvey vault, a once impressive edifice in a suburb of Wagga Wagga moved to the cemetery when a road was widened. The panel, sans the dog sculptures which used to guard it, looks remarkably modern for something carved in 1885.

All that remains of the once opulent Turvey family vault

As the suburb becomes more built up it is less usual to see wildlife in the grounds around our house. Kangaroos and blue tongues were frequent visitors when we first moved here. In August a beautiful barn owl alighted on our front balcony and stayed there for hours in broad daylight. A real treat.  August was also when we slavishly practiced the ABC classic choir carol Yerbil With Clarence and videoed ourselves to meet the deadline of month’s end.  Unfortunately we were pressed for time and sent in raw footage containing more than one expletive (uttered when we stuffed up). The radio station, which released the composite video in December, chose not use us in the finished product. I think we need to learn our limitations. Nothing can compete with the nurturing and sustained rehearsal we got singing in Jonathan Welch’s massed community choir in 2016.

Our visitor

September

At the Forum Cinema we saw of Jodi Comer’s tour de force performance in the National Theatre’s production of Prima Facie captured on film. Booranga Writers hosted a workshop by poet Nathan Curnow. Nathan told us that rather than a poem being all about the writer conveying a message, it ‘sets up the scaffolding for the reader to have an experience’ and warned us to ‘beware adverbs’.

Made a pilgrimage to Newcastle to see Peter our artist friend of 25 years plus who was about to celebrate his 85th birthday, to catch up with two friends we have known almost as long (since my early public service days) and to see  my first cousin once removed, Beryl, in respite care. We booked dog friendly accommodation in Merewether and took Stella with us. With her we walked on the beach, visited the Honeysuckle waterfront area and several cafes and pubs. Our landlords kindly looked after her when we went out for dinner.  At the Lock Up gallery we saw eclectic high energy work by Deborah Kelly and at Peter’s lock up (storage unit) we saw his latest work and he gave us a painting of his we’d admired since the days we all resided in Glebe in the 1970s. We came home via Cowra where dogs are welcome in the Japanese gardens. This is the last picture of the three of us together.

Last trip with Stella

October

After several unsuccessful attempts to cultivate nasturtiums from nursey stock we grew them from seed this spring and by October they rioted across the terraces of our garden in glorious saffron and crimson shades and copious fleshy green umbrella leaves. Their profusion framed the area where we laid our beloved Stella to rest when she died suddenly and unexpectedly on the 12^th, a few days shy of her 13^th birthday. We planted Stella Bella day lilies and a tea tree on her grave – they are flourishing.

At the Civic we saw Sunshine Supergirl, Yvonne Goolagong’s life dramatized. If anyone had told me that plays about Indigenous sporting legends would be amongst my favourite theatre in 2022 I would have been skeptical but this and Black Cockatoo were amazing.  Arts journalist/curator Julie Ewington delivered ‘We Need To Talk About Art’ at the gallery. She is a huge advocate of jargon-free unpretentious captioning and artists’ statements.  At The Curious Rabbit our daughter was one of 7 performers shimmying and lip syncing with a satanic edge in Hallowed Queens, a drag show for Halloween. Almost as camp and tremendous fun were David Hobson and Colin Lane pretending to be ignorant of each other’s milieus and then wowing us with the duet from the Pearl Fishers in Men In Tails at the Civic.

November

I turned 66 in November and more than any other gift I wanted a dog back in my life. The day after my birthday we drove to Bethungra to check out a Kelpie X puppy at a refuge called Iron Dogs. Of course we were unable to resist Reilly (now Sheila O’Reilly) and she has joined our household.

Sheila & friend

I sensed that seeing my cousin Beryl in September would be our last encounter. She died on 13th November. Karen James, a Wagga-based fellow family historian and correspondent of Beryl‘s was kind enough to accompany me to Lake Macquarie for the funeral. I could not have asked for a more good-humoured companion and despite the sadness of the occasion we had some lovely outings not least to the beautifully situated local art gallery which was showing the finalists in the Lake Art Prize.

More drag and burlesque were in store at Cabaret Schmabaert conceived by Leeton hoop and flow performer Dizzy Dilemma. The hilarious and sophisticated acts featured deserve a regular showcase. The Civic Theatre turns 40 in 2023 so its season launch was more flamboyant than usual. Jonathan Welch gets his second mention in this post for tricking us into a vulgar spoonerism and getting us to sing nursery rhymes at the top of our voices.

Braddon Snape's Allusive Object winner of 2022 Lake Art Prize

December

Another poet colleague, Joan Cahill, launched her latest collection. I got the all clear after a skin check for melanoma. We made an abortive attempt to see an exhibition at CSU’s HR Gallop Gallery. In the middle of the day the doors were unlocked but the gallery was in darkness and we were unable to find a light switch (I suspect the lights were on a timer and because adjacent class rooms were not in use no-one considered the gallery might attract visitors). What we could discern in the gloom of Donna Caffrey’s, Sam Bowker’s  and others’ work  looked wonderful. I hope we have another chance to see it. Then there was Christmas/New Year with a just manageable amount of food preparation and excessive consumption of the results, lots of cooling off in the pool and, for the first time in 3 years, completion of the ritual 1000 piece jigsaw.

Peter's painting 

So much more I could have included but this has turned into an epic. Happy New Year everyone!

The Ballad of Beryl

In memory of Beryl Whatson (nee Pittard)

 1933 - 2022

In 1930s Auburn

Pittard’s Produce Store

sold coal and groceries

and offered

homemade scones

in the afternoons

to perk up the working man

My great aunt Armandine

was serving at the counter

when a larrikin sign writer

named Aubrey Paul

dropped by

and seduced her

over the strawberry jam

Armandine and her parents

grew flowers and veggies

on the double block

surrounding their Victorian house

and kept a pony and trap

for deliveries.

Aubrey and Armandine

lied to Maud and Fred

that they were wed.

Aubrey and his elegant sideboard

moved in 

The Pittards gathered

and gave them a nuptial party

and all was bliss

until a woman knocked on the door

one day

insisting her husband come home.

Maud threw Aubrey

and his sideboard out.

A few months later

on the coldest Sydney morning ever

Beryl was born

and given Maud as her middle name

in appreciation

Maud senior set herself as gate keeper

to keep both Armandine and Beryl

safe from the pernicious adulterer

who didn’t dare darken their doorstep again

As she grew Beryl

gleaned a few scant facts

about her father

by eavesdropping

on family exchanges

it seemed she had his height and thick wavy hair

During the week

to be near her work

in Sydney’s rag trade

Armandine boarded out

leaving Beryl to Maud’s offices

Maud kept her close

chiding her for exuberance,

and more than once

resorting to the strap

Fred indulged her though

and Beryl adored him

treasuring and keeping

his drawings even

his plan

for a chicken brooder

all her life.

Beryl wondered later

if the neighbours knew and judged

her origins 

like her nasty Auntie Joyce

who dubbed her ‘Illegitimate Beryl’

as if it were

a latinate name.

She was a lonely child

her nearest namesake friend

went off to a different school

and Beryl made four chimneys

she could see from her window

into fantasy playmates

she called Semy, Commy, Kivey and Co 

When she was thirteen

her uncle Clarrie bought her a bicycle

and her world expanded

She was allowed to

catch the train to town 

to meet her mother

after work to see a show

Once walking from the station

she didn’t recognise Armandine

and pondered who this woman was

sporting a perm and set

whose dress fabric seemed familiar

talking to a tall man with wavy hair.

Living in Narrabeen

with Fred and Maud

city schools were deemed too far away

and Beryl was sent to Manly Domestic High

her academic gifts sequestered

for now

She left at fifteen

to bring a few pounds to the family coffers

working at a belt and buckle factory

which she hated.

Later she became a machinist

making children’s clothes

for fashionable Marjory Daw

‘before all children’s clothes were made in Asia’

as she once said  in an email to me

By age eighteen Beryl had lost

Fred and Maud and Armandine

and lived with feckless bicycle buyer

Uncle Clarrie

but he had married Josephine

his second of four brides

who used green Estapol

on the Pittard heirloom clock

and made Beryl feel unwelcome

so she took a room in a city boarding house,

forming friendships and sharing interests

with fellow boarders.

On a bushwalk she met and liked

George and Alan Whatson

especially George

They married in 1957

at St Thomas’s, Enfield

Funds were short and kind neighbours

furnished the cake and wedding breakfast.

George and Beryl moved to Glenbrook

in the Mountains

Beryl had to quit work

to adopt their three kids

so turned her sewing skills

to outfitting her girls and boy

and her energies to

being an attentive parent.

Taking her eldest

to a youth camp in the 70s

she heard the name ‘Pittard’

and got to know my Mum

her cousin’s wife

as it turned out.

Beryl applied

her brain and tenacity

to family research

and discovered

Swiss forebears

with engineering prowess

a damp and dingy

Lambeth address

measles aboard an immigrant ship

more single motherhood

and seamstress skills

a forger in the ranks

and acquired gentility

that denied

much of the above.

When our paths crossed

in 2015

seeking grandfather Fred’s

first drowned love

and adding more flesh

to Aubrey Paul’s bones

became our holy grails.

Beryl had photographs

of a woman in white

resting her hand on Fred’s shoulder

and of the sailing boat

he purportedly sold

after her death.

We traded reports

of Aubrey’s early

criminal capers

and surmised

who the mystery fiancée

might have been.

We stitched together

Aubrey Paul’s story,

mugshot and all,

but Fred’s first love

eluded our grasp.

Our last meeting was

in a nursing home

in Cooranbong

in COVID days

I shared my latest find

a transcript of another errant ancestor's

sympathy-seeking confession

Beryl showed mild interest

but her mind was on the indignities

of respite care

and the fate of her papers

of great significance to her

but of little to her adopted children

she thought.

Her funeral was last month.

The sun shone on neat lawns

and shiny cars

and her heavily pregnant granddaughter

read Mary Frye’s

Do not stand at my grave and weep

though we did.

I was and am the vessel

of your blood

and memories,

Beryl

Your eighty nine years and

four generations

leave their traces

in your papers,

in my computer files

and on this page.

Lost

Stella (2009 - 2022)

A corner shadow

that seems to form her silhouette

a metallic jingle that sounds like tags

factoring walk time into the day

then checking yourself

glancing at the backseat of the car

in vain

avoiding certain supermarket aisles

giving away her food

and bedding

hiding her leash

and squeaky pig

talking to every dog walker we see

for vicarious fulfilment

browsing the rescue sites

for another brindle friend

but it is much too soon.

Sunshine Super Girl by Andrea James, Performing Lines theatre company, Civic Theatre Wagga Wagga, 8 October 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.

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.

Unearthed Treasure

 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.

Armandine & Laurie

When we sit outside at our favourite café 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.  

Henty Man

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.

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.

The Hope Inn, Fitzmaurice Street, Wagga

I can remember my surprise on obtaining a copy of John’s death certificate to discover that he had met his end just down the road (about 48 km away) from Wagga and about 464 km from his family home in St Kilda. Searching the newspaper archives revealed little until I tried the variations on the spelling of his surname: ‘Simple’ and ‘Semphill’. Then I found the full story of the tragic last weeks of his life. It seems that after he was discharged from bankruptcy John  must have sought work felling timber for the telegraph service which was being established between Deniliquin and Wagga. On or about 23 November  1860 he was leading a team when the tree the men were attempting to chop down fell unexpectedly; it hit John and fractured his spine. He was transported by cart to The Hope Inn in Fitzmaurice Street, Wagga where he languished under the care of Dr Allen Morgan and the unnamed publican and his wife until 3 December when he succumbed to his injuries. John’s wife Mary was informed by letter but he was not reunited with his family posthumously. It was summer and burial was urgent. According to his death certificate John Semple was interred in the new Wagga Wagga Monumental Cemetery the following day. While he is commemorated on a grave stone in St Kilda Cemetery, his burial site in Wagga’s extensive cemetery would have had only a wooden marker if it was indicated at all. 

St Kilda Cemetery, John's not there despite indications to the contrary

Thanks to the St John’s Church of England’s archivist, Leanne Diessel, we have recently discovered that John was only the 26th burial in the Anglican section of the cemetery and have been given a map that has allowed us to estimate his location. I like the fact that his great great grandson has been in his company so often over these past 8 years and that we are now  able to share information with other descendants about his unexpected final resting place.

Robert Erwin (John Semple's great great grandson) standing on the likely spot of John's interment

*it turns out that when checking out Wagga pre move we dined in the very building where John breathed his last, the old stone portion of what is now the Riverina Hotel! 

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