Deckchairs on the Mooltan

This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt is a 1939 photograph of four men sitting in deck chairs on a ship bound for the Congo.

I have something similar.

Among my paternal grandmother’s photographs is a casual shot of her father, Arthur Murray Cudmore, her future father in law, CTC de Crespigny, and Bronte Smeaton, another Adelaide doctor, in deckchairs on RMS Mooltan sailing to Lemnos in the Aegean, near Gallipoli, in 1915. Both Drs de Crespigny and Cudmore held the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel: de Crespigny was Registrar and Secretary and Cudmore a consultant surgeon of the 3rd Australian Hospital.

Arthur Murray Cudmore with Trent de Crespigny [centre] & Bronte Smeaton [left] in 1915 at sea. Picture from my grandmother Kathleen née Cudmore’s scrapbook. (Kathleen later married the son of Constantine Trent Champion de Crespigny.)

18 May 1915 Crowds of well-wishers farewell Australian Army Medical Corps (AAMC) personnel who have just embarked on the transport HMT Mooltan at Port Melbourne railway pier. Australian War Memorial image id C01009 retrieved from http://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C01009/

My great grandfathers served at Lemnos with the Third Australian General Hospital receiving sick and wounded soldiers from Gallipoli.

In January 1916 the hospital closed. De Crespigny was put in charge of the 1st Australian General Hospital at Heliopolis. The staff of the hospital sailed for Marseilles in 1916 from Alexandria.

On 24 March 1916 Alice Ross King received her orders to sail to France. She and her fellow nurses from No. 1 Australian General Hospital waited on the pier at Alexandria, weighed down with the booty from a final shopping spree. One nurse had a canary in a cage. A captain was told to make sure all the nurses were on board the hospital ship Braemar Castle.‘Not knowing the AANS he told us to form a double row to “number off”,’ Alice recounted.‘He wanted 120. Each time he got a different number. He was terribly worried. Finally our big [commanding officer] Col De Crespigny came down the gangway to see what was the matter. In his tired voice he called out, “Sisters! Form a fairly straight line. Left turn! Get on board.” “Oh! Sir,” said Matron, “they are not all here.” “Then they’ll be left behind,” said our CO. Our first hard lesson! We had always been fussed over [and] spoilt before,’ Alice wrote, with a shade of overstatement. (Rees, Peter. The Other Anzacs: Nurses at War 1914-1918. Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin, 2008. Retrieved from https://epdf.pub/other-anzacs-the-nurses-at-war-1914-1918.html)

I never knew my great grandfather Constantine Trent Champion de Crespigny, and my impression of him is derived from what my father can remember and other people’s memoirs. But this story, of him of directing people to get on with it, sounds characteristic. It certainly brings him to life for me.

Another shipboard anecdote is set in the journey home. My great grandfather, supposedly averse to brisk exercise, did his rounds of the deck very very slowly. But he met a satirical suggestion about his speed with a rapid retort:

The TALK OF THE TOWN (1941, January 11). The Mail (Adelaide, SA : 1912 – 1954), p. 7. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article55761367

Both my great grandfathers arrived back from the war on Tuesday 13 May 1919 on the HMAT Dunluce Castle.

Personal Notes. (1919, May 17). Observer (Adelaide, SA : 1905 – 1931), p. 12. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article164132088

Soldiers line the deck of the hospital ship HMAT Dunluce Castle in the harbour in Malta about 1915. Image from the Australian War Memorial P05382.015

Related posts

• Arthur Murray Cudmore World War I service
• No 3 AGH (Australian General Hospital) Lemnos Christmas Day
• R is for No. 1 Australian General Hospital at Rouen
• The patients of No. 1 A.G.H. France during World War 1
• U is for Unibic biscuit tin

A Colonial Dinner

This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt photograph has men sitting at long tables for a formal dinner. This reminded me of a painting by my fourth great aunt, Martha Berkeley née Chauncy (1813 – 1899), sister of Philip Chauncy (1816 – 1880), my third great grandfather.

Martha arrived in Adelaide South Australia in February 1837 on the John Renwick with her husband and her unmarried sister Theresa (1807 – 1876). They landed just six weeks after the Proclamation of the Province on 28 December 1836 when, by Vice-regal proclamation, South Australia was established as a British province

Martha was an artist. Several of her works are held by the Art Gallery of South Australia. One of the more notable is a watercolour of The first dinner given to the Aborigines 1838.

Berkeley Martha, The first dinner given to the Aborigines 1838, Art Gallery of South Australia

A notice appeared in the South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register on October 27 announcing a conference with the Aborigines of the Province with a dinner to be given to them.

Advertising. (1838, October 27). South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register (Adelaide, SA : 1836 – 1839), p. 1. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article31750198

Martha’s watercolour was:

Her major work … a large watercolour, The First Dinner Given to the Aborigines (AGSA), depicting the three Adelaide tribes being entertained by Governor Gawler on 1 November 1838. The Aborigines sit awaiting the distribution of biscuits, meat, tea and blankets, while their three chiefs, dressed in new jackets provided by the settlers, stand together at the inner edge of the circle surrounding the Governor, the Protector of Aborigines and their wives. Behind the Aborigines is a standing ring of settlers, which includes obvious portraits. Berkeley added a pencil description of the event on the back of the painting in 1847, which confirms her aim of recording an important historical event for posterity. (Kerr, Joan. “Martha Maria Snell Berkeley.” Design & Art Australia Online. Design & Art Australia Online retrieved from http://www.daao.org.au/bio/martha-maria-snell-berkeley/biography/ )

This description aligns with a newspaper account of the event in the Southern Australian of 3 November 1838.

THE ABORIGINES.—On Thursday last, in pursuance of an advertisement issued by the Governor, a dinner was given to the natives, and the occasion excited much interest in the town. Soon after the hour appointed for the assembling, a vast concourse of the inhabitants had collected on the ground, and were enjoying the fineness of the weather in promenading for upwards of two hours before the ceremonies commenced.

About two o’clock a band of about 160 natives were assembled, and their appearance was certainly highly pleasing and orderly ; their huzzas would have done great credit to the lungs and voices of English-men, and their general, demeanour upon the occasion was very orderly. The native men were dressed in gaudy coloured cottons and the women had new blankets and rugs; and the tout ensemble of the group had a very striking effect.

Soon after they arrived, His Excellency said a few words, which were translated by Mr. WYATT, expressive of his desire that they should imitate the good qualities of the whites, learn to fear and love God, learn English, cease from quarrels with each other, and pay respect to the property of the whites.— Whether they understood what was said, we know not, but the vacant stare and senseless faces of many evidently bespoke utter ignorance of the meaning of His Excellency.

Immediately after, they squatted on the ground in a series of groups, and were regaled with roast beef, biscuit, rice, and sugar water, and if we may judge of their enjoyment of their repast by the quantity consumed, we should say they certainly did enjoy it. Trials of throwing the spear followed, and at a late hour in the afternoon the company dispersed. The Governor had very politely provided a luncheon on the ground, for the ladies and gentlemen visitors, which was also rather numerously attended, but whether with the same effect we have not the means of ascertaining ; however, every one appeared highly to enjoy the holiday.

Of the usefulness of this ceremony we have some doubts, but we trust it may be productive of good. To some part of it we most decidedly object—that was, rewarding and cheering those who could throw the spear with the greatest accuracy. An hour before, the Governor had told them to respect the white man’s property, and not to spear his sheep and his cattle, and immediately afterwards they were regaled with fine fresh beef, and exercised in the art of throwing the spear! Surely we should induce them to abandon a practice so dangerous to the peace of the colony, and the very source of all broils, and not encourage them in perpetuating their knowledge of such an art.

In May 1838 there had been another dinner of about 200 ladies and gentlemen assembled to farewell Governor George Gawler who was leaving London for South Australia. In Gawler’s speech he spoke of the Aborigines:

There is one interesting circumstance connected with the colony on which I can –
not help remarking; it is with regard to the aborigines. A great many here perhaps are acquainted with a report of parliament on the subject of the aborigines, in which it appears that colonization has been almost every where (I believe there is not an exception save South Australia) either the cause of the destruction or demoralization of the aborigines. I hope South Australia will continue to be an exception to that rule, and I hope I shall never forget towards the aborigines of South Australia, what I never forget to any other men, that as children of one common parent, they are “bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh.” I never yet heard of a man so wild that judicious Kindness did not in some degree succeed in taming, and I hope that this particular case will not prove an exception. (DINNER TO GOVERNOR GAWLER AND THE SOUTH AUSTRALIAN COLONIZATION COMMISSIONERS. (1838, May 9). South Australian Record (SA : 1837 – 1840), p. 5. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article245932046 )

Gawler arrived in South Australia on 12 October 1838 after a four month journey. One of his early gestures as a Governor was the Dinner for the Aborigines. It is a great pity that colonisation in South Australia did not become the exception but also led to the destruction and demoralisation of the South Australian Aboriginal people.

Mitchell family arrival on the Swan River 1838

On 4 August 1838, my fourth-great grandfather the Reverend William Mitchell (1803 – 1870), accompanied by his wife, four children, and a governess, arrived at Fremantle, on the mouth of the Swan River in Western Australia.

They had left Portsmouth four months and three days before, sailing on the “Shepherd”. Their only intermediate port of call was Porto Praya off the west coast of Africa (now Praia, the the capital and largest city of Republic of Cabo Verde), where the ship took on supplies.

The Swan River Colony – now Perth – was established in 1829 following exploration of the region in 1827 by James Stirling, later Governor of Western Australia. Fremantle was the settlement’s main port.

Captain Stirling’s exploring party 50 miles up the Swan River, Western Australia, March, 1827. Oil painting by W. J. Huggins in the collection of the National Library of Australia retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-134156746

William Mitchell had been ordained a minister of the Church of England in 1825. In 1826 he married Mary Anne Holmes (1805 – 1831), and soon afterwards, the family moved to India, where Mitchell served as a missionary. They had two daughters and a son. The second girl, Susan Augusta, born on 11 April 1828 in Bombay, was my third great grandmother. Around 1830 Mary Anne became ill and the family returned to England, where she died in 1831. William married again, to Frances Tree Tatlock (1806 – 1879) and returned to India, where this second marriage produced three more sons. Frances and the children returned to England in 1834 and William returned in 1835. In 1838 William was appointed by the Western Australian Missionary Society to be clergyman for the residents of the Middle and Upper Swan regions of the new colony of Western Australia.

Reverend William Mitchell portrait from “Mitchell Amen” by Frank Nelder Greenslade

The oldest child of the Reverend William Mitchell, born to his first wife Mary, was Annie (1826 – 1917). She was 12 when the family arrived on the “Shepherd”. In her memoirs, written many years later, she described their arrival:

The ship “Shepherd” anchored off Garden Island on 4 August 1838, after a voyage of four months and three days. We landed at Fremantle by the ships boats. The first sight we witnessed was a very large whale lying on the sea beach at Fremantle, from which the natives were cutting large pieces and carrying them away on spears.

We lodged at Fremantle for a week and then proceeded to Government House where we were entertained by Sir James Stirling and Lady Stirling. It was usual practice at this time for new arrivals to call at Government House on arrival. We stayed at Judge Mackies house for a while (he was the first Judge in the Colony). After this we went to Henley Park, on the Upper Swan, by boat. Major Irwin was landlord at this time. He was Commandant of the troops in W.A. We stayed with him for a week or so then went to the Mission-house on the Middle Swan where we settled.

The whole of Perth at this time was all deep sand and scrub. There was no road or railway to Perth. All transport was done by water travel. The banks of the Swan River were a mass of green fields and flowers, with everlastings as far as the eye could see.

At the time of arrival, there were only two vessels, the “Shepherd” and the “Britomart” plying between London and Western Australia. When a ship arrived, a cannon was fired to let people know that a vessel had arrived. The people used to ride or row down to Fremantle to get their letters. There were then about seven or eight hundred people settled in W.A. mostly along the banks of the Swan.

There was no church in the colony at this time and the services were conducted in the Courthouse by the Revd John Wittenoom, the first colonial chaplain.

Panorama of the Swan River Settlement, ca. 1831 by Jane Eliza Currie (wife of explorer Mark John Currie)

The Mitchells lived at Middle Swan, now a Perth suburb, 12 miles from the city centre.

In 2000 we visited Mitchell’s church at Middle Swan. The original octagonal church, built in 1840, was replaced in 1868 by the present-day building.

St Mary’s Octagonal Church, Middle Swan, sketch published in “Mitchell Amen” page 14

St Mary’s Church, Middle Swan photographed 2006 by Wikipedia user Moondyne

William Mitchell died at Perth and is buried in the graveyard of St Mary’s Middle Swan with his second wife and his son Andrew (1846 – 1870).

William, Frances Tree & Andrew Forster Mitchell, gravestone at St Marys, Middle Swan. (Photograph provided by a 3rd great grand daughter of William Mitchell and used with permission)

Sources

• Greenslade, Frank Nelder Mitchell Amen : a biography on the life of Reverend William Mitchell and his family. F.N. Greenslade, Maylands, W.A, 1979.
• THE WESTERN AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL. (1838, August 11). The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal (WA : 1833 – 1847), p. 126. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article639437 
• Clergy of the Church of England database: https://theclergydatabase.org.uk/jsp/DisplayOrdination.jsp?CDBOrdRedID=139120 and https://theclergydatabase.org.uk/jsp/DisplayOrdination.jsp?CDBOrdRedID=139062
• Anglican Parish of Swan 
  • Octagon Church https://www.swananglicans.org.au/octagon-church
  • St Mary’s Church https://www.swananglicans.org.au/st-marys-church-cny2

Related post

• Remembering Susan Augusta Chauncy née Mitchell (1828-1867)

Hans Boltz’s school photograph

This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt photo, taken in the 1920s, shows a group of children.

My maternal grandfather, Hans Fritz Boltz, was born 1910. Among the photos we inherited from him was a school photograph, probably taken about 1920 when he was 9 or 10 years old.

Hans Boltz is sitting in the 4th row 2nd from the right

When Hans applied for a position as a cartographer with the Australian Government in 1948 he declared that he first attended the preparatory school of the classical school from the age of six, in 1919 changing to the Realschule in Steglitz, a district of Berlin. A Realschule was of middle rank and provided students with a general extended education. It ranked above Hauptschule, which provided a basic general education, and lower than Gymnasium which prepared students for university.

from the National Archives of Australia: MT105/8, 1/6/4531 Page 3 of 143 [file of Hans Fritz Boltz , General Correspondence and Administrative files of the Department of Post-War Reconstruction]

Among our family photographs is a small cardboard wallet of postcards with images of the Realschule Steglitz.

Collection of postcards of the Realschule Steglitz among the family photographs

The school is now called the Gymnasium Steglitz. It was founded in 1886. The architect Walter Gropius (1883 – 1969) was a pupil.

Hans is younger in this photograph than when he is with his classmates above

 

Further reading

• School website https://www.gymnasiumsteglitz.de/cms/schule/uebersicht/125-jahr-feierlichkeiten/
• German wikipedia article https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnasium_Steglitz

Related posts

• Trove Tuesday: Flying the Kangaroo route in 1949
• C is for career in Canberra

Wedding of Linda Victoria Fish and Gilbert Payne Mulcahy at Creswick 1921

Linda Mulcahy née Fish (1895 – 1970), the daughter of Alice Fish formerly Reher née Young (1859 – 1935) and Thomas Fish (1873 – 1949), was my husband’s first cousin twice removed.

On 8 June 1921 she married Gilbert Payne Mulcahy (1894 – 1979). Below is a copy of one of the wedding photographs, given to us by Lindsay and Mary George in 2011. (Lindsay, grandson of Elfleda Cecilia Anna George née Reher (1884-1970), is Greg’s 3rd cousin. Elfleda was the half-sister of Linda Fish.)

With the women, hair bobbed, wearing straight, short, drop-waist dresses, picture hats low on the foreheads of the bridesmaids, and the enormous bows of the flower girls, the photograph is easily dated to the 1920s.

The marriage was announced in The Argus of 13 July 1921:

MULCAHY—FISH.—On the 8th June, at Presbyterian Church, Creswick, by the Reverend K. C. Billinge, Gilbert Payne (late A.I.F.), youngest son of Mr. and Mrs. J. S. Mulcahy, of Auburn, to Linda Victoria, elder daughter of Mr. and Mrs. T Fish, of Creswick.

I have not been able to find a newspaper report of the wedding, and I cannot identify everyone in the bridal party.

The father of the bride, Thomas Fish, is on the left. It seems odd that Alice Fish, mother of the bride, was not included in the photo. Perhaps she was taking it?

Linda’s sister, Alice Pretoria Emma Fish (1900 – 1958) is standing beside her father. Alice married Ernest George Aldrich in 1922.

The groomsmen are not named, nor is the second bridesmaid. She was probably one of Linda’s half sisters: Gertrude, Elfleda, or Mary Reher.

The flowergirls are Gertrude Isabel George born 1915, daughter of Elfleda George née Reher, and Pearl Ramelli born 1913 who in 1936 married Elfleda’s son Norman George (1912 – 1968); Pearl is the mother of Lindsay George who gave us the copy of this photograph.

500 Sepia Saturday prompts

Inspired by the work of Kristen Cleage, who blogs about her family history at Finding Eliza, here is a collage of images from my own responses to Sepia Saturday blog prompts since 2013.

Peter Young, Violet Buckley, Roy Sullivan, Joyce Sullivan, Jack Buckley, Arthur Sullivan

Our Sepia Saturday theme image this week features a small boy and a large fish. The identity of the boy is unknown (and, come to think of it, the precise identity of the fish is also unknown) but the photograph was seemingly taken at the Bon Echo Inn, in the Bon Echo Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada. The photograph forms part of the Flickr Commons Stream of the Cloyne & District Historical Society.

Photograph of Gordon Mainwaring from “Whitmore Hall : from 1066 to Waltzing Matilda” by Christine Cavenagh-Mainwaring. Adelaide Peacock Publications, 2013. page 103.

The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault painted 1818-1819 and now hanging in the Louvre. The Méduse was wrecked off the coast of Africa in 1816. Of the 400 on board only 15 survived.

Berkeley Martha, The first dinner given to the Aborigines 1838, Art Gallery of South Australia

The Coopers Arms, also known as Plaisteds Wine Bar, in 2008 (photograph from Wikimedia Commons taken by Ewan Munro and uploaded by Oxyman) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 ]

drawing by Philip Chauncy of his son’s grave

From SATURDAY WEDDINGS IN TOWN AND COUNTRY CENTRES. (1947, June 9). The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957), p. 8. Retrieved August 29, 2013, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article22431673

Sepia Saturday prompts started in 2009, aiming to provide bloggers with

… an opportunity to share their history through the medium of
photographs. Historical photographs of any age or kind (they don’t have
to be sepia) become the launchpad for explorations of family history,
local history and social history in fact or fiction, poetry or prose, words or further images.

In December 2019 Sepia Saturday reached a milestone of 500 prompts.

Sepia Saturday 500 Prompt Image

My first post inspired by Sepia Saturday, in August 2013, was about my
grandfather’s cousin John Champion de Crespigny (1908 – 1995). It was my 27th blog post.

I continue to read the blogs of the community who post in the Sepia Saturday group. I am always interested to see how fellow bloggers interpret the prompt photo and I have found the prompts have indeed inspired me to explore my family history.

I am very pleased that I came across the Sepia Saturday blogging community. Thank you to Alan Burnett, Kat Mortensen, and Marilyn Brindley for prompting writing about family and social history with inspirational photographs.

 

My posts inspired by the Sepia Saturday prompts:

1. Sepia Saturday 192 : John Chauncy Champion de Crespigny (1908 – 1995)
2. Sepia Saturday 193 : Richard Geoffrey Champion de Crespigny
3. Sepia Saturday 194 : Eureka
4. Sepia Saturday 195 : International Day of Peace
5. Sepia Saturday 196 : Sick Children
6. Sepia Saturday 197: a blurry photograph
7. Sepia Saturday 198 – a launching
8. Sepia Saturday 208: A Christmas Gift
9. Sepia Saturday 211: First World War faces – Wentworth Rowland Cavenagh-Mainwaring at Gallipoli
10. Sepia Saturday 214: Emil and Helene Manock at the piano
11. Sepia Saturday 218: My grandfather’s back garden
12. Sepia Saturday 238: Plaisteds Wine Bar
13. Sepia Saturday 249: coach rides
14. Sepia Saturday 255: A silhouette of Mrs Cudmore
15. Sepia Saturday 269: Martha Berkeley : The first dinner given to the Aborigines 1838 (Adelaide)
16. Sepia Saturday 285: Largs Bay Hotel
17. Sepia Saturday 286: Fishing
18. Sepia Saturday 289: Deaths at sea
19. Sepia Saturday 290: Tropical Hotel – Kissimmee, Florida
20. Sepia Saturday 292: A run on the bank in Beaufort
21. Sepia Saturday 308: Kanu-Club Wannsee
22. Sepia Saturday 329: shepherding near Murrumburrah, New South Wales
23. Sepia Saturday 333: William Smith Daw (1810 – 1877)
24. Sepia Saturday 349: street photography
25. Sepia Saturday 350: burglary
26. Sepia Saturday 380: A Quiet Life: Gordon Mainwaring (1817-1872)
27. Sepia Saturday 397: Fishing for the right word
28. Sepia Saturday 398: Swings
29. Sepia Saturday 480: Swimming in Bendigo

Swimming in Bendigo

Reading the responses to this week’s Sepia Saturday prompt – swimming costumes – I was reminded that I had some terrific 1940s photos of Greg’s parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents at the White Hills Swimming Pool, next to the Bendigo Botanic Gardens, a few miles north of the city centre.

Marjorie Young, Violet Buckley, Roy Sullivan, Joyce Sullivan, Jack Buckley, Arthur Sullivan

Greg’s maternal grandparents Arthur Sullivan (1891 – 1975) and Stella Sullivan nee Dawson (1894 – 1975) had six children:

• Stella Violet (Violet) Sullivan 1914–2005
  • She married John Buckley in 1938. He served in the Australian Army (AIF) from 1942 and was discharged 14 March 1946. On the 1946 electoral roll John and Stella Violet Buckley were living at Napier Street Bendigo.
• Lillian Mavis Sullivan 1915–2009
  • She married Alan Wilson 1934. In the 1940s were farming at Tongala with a family of children. They are not in the pictures at Bendigo.
• Arthur Stanley Sullivan 1919–2014
  • He married Joyce Robbins 1941. He served in the AIF from 1943 and was discharged 4 December 1945
• Marjorie Winifred Sullivan 1920–2007
  • She married Peter Young 1944. He served in the AIF from 1943 and was discharged 25 February 1946
• Royle Lawrence Sullivan 1926–2009
  • He enlisted in the RAAF in 1944 and was discharged in August 1946 He married Grace in 1956. She is not in the photos at Bendigo.
• Gwendolyn Phyllis Sullivan 1933–1935
  • She died of meningitis aged 17 months.

Peter Young, Violet Buckley, Roy Sullivan, Joyce Sullivan, Jack Buckley, Arthur Sullivan

Roy and Marjorie

Violet

Roy, Violet, Marjorie, Mum, Pop, Arthur

Roy, Jack Buckley, Arthur,Marjorie, Violet, Stella, Arthur senior, Joyce

I thought at first I might be able to date the photos from when the men were discharged after the War. But I think that some of them might have been on leave at the time, not yet demobbed. Peter and Marjorie had their first child in late 1946 and there is no sign of a baby in the pictures. He arrived back in Australia in late December 1945. Arthur and Joyce had their first child in early 1947.

In 1946 Violet and John Buckley’s house was on Napier Street (the Midland Highway), so I suppose the group might have met there before going on to the pool. Unfortunately the Electoral Roll gives no number for their house, and Napier Street runs for several miles.

At this time, Violet’s parents, Arthur and Stella Sullivan, were living in Castlemaine. On the 1946 Electoral Roll Arthur and Joyce Sullivan were living in 251 Auburn Road, Hawthorn, Melbourne. Marjorie was registered as living at 1 Yarra Street, Toorak, with the occupation of weaver. Roy, only twenty, was too young to be enrolled to
vote.

It seems likely that these photographs were taken when Violet’s parents and brothers joined Violet and Jack in Bendigo for a holiday in early 1946.

All of Arthur and Stella’s sons and their and son-in-law got back unhurt from the war. This was something to celebrate.

Marjorie and Peter Young. I think this was taken at a similar time but at Marjorie’s parents’ house in Castlemaine.

Related posts

• N is for New Guinea
• Sepia Saturday: street photography

Swings

This week’s Sepia Saturday blog post prompt is of an image of swings.

I remembered the swing in my grandfather’s back garden and many happy hours spent there.

The second picture is of my mother pushing my aunt on the swing perhaps 10 or 12 years earlier. The fruit trees have grown very quickly.

I first wrote about my grandfather’s back garden in response to a Sepia Saturday prompt in 2014 : Sepia Saturday: My grandfather’s back garden

Fishing for the right word

This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt image is of a small boy with a fish. I invited my husband Greg to write an entry for my online research journal.

Our Sepia Saturday theme image this week features a small boy and a large fish. The identity of the boy is unknown (and, come to think of it, the precise identity of the fish is also unknown) but the photograph was seemingly taken at the Bon Echo Inn, in the Bon Echo Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada. The photograph forms part of the Flickr Commons Stream of the Cloyne & District Historical Society.

 

In Australian country towns you used to know your place. We were Upper Lower Middle Class (somewhere, perhaps, on George Orwell‘s mocking scale), which meant for one thing that although Dad worked as a labourer on the railways—transhipping goods from five-foot-three inch gauge Victorian trains to four-foot-eight-and-a-half NSW trains and vice versa—his wages reached Mum on Friday night untaxed by the six-o’clock swill at Ryan’s Hotel. It helped to be Protestant too. We looked down on the Irish Catholic kids next door, whose father, a plasterer’s labourer, weaved from side to side on his way home along Macauley Street.

That made them Lower Lower Middle class, the necessary foundation of our superior status. But when their old man got a skinful of Victoria Bitter and sang Roll out the barrel‘ with his mates in their backyard, they got indulged by their parents, at least at the maudlin sentimental stage of the booze-up, while we could only peer through the paling fence in jealous disapproval.

This principle also applied to the way we spoke. Rough kids had a richer and freer vocabulary, but we knew how to employ the second-person plural personal pronoun correctly and that to use the wrong form marked you as an ignoramus, destined for an early exit from schooling followed by a dismal apprenticeship in panel-beating or something of the sort.

One day my brother and I, fishing in the river, began talking to a boy—we were about 10 or 12 years old—whose smart rod and reel but shabby clothes and worn shoes marked him as the usual product of poverty: combined parental indulgence and neglect. When he got a bite and missed he damned the uncooperative fish as a ‘bloody black Assyrian bastard’.

We were profoundly shocked and delighted. Here was a phrase crying out for use and re-use. It had alliteration, rhythm, a racial slur, and two powerful swearwords fore and aft. The ‘Assyrian‘ bit was a puzzle, but it seemed to imply contempt for foreigners, a good thing, and it sounded Biblical too, so as a bonus it was probably also sacrilegious.

I am grateful to that Lower Lower boy for introducing me to his splendid incantation. Over the years I have found it very useful for opening screw-top jars and starting small petrol engines.

A Quiet Life: Gordon Mainwaring (1817-1872)

This week’s Sepia Saturday theme is inspired by the theories of the Danish author Herman Bang (1857 – 1912), one of the leaders of the “quiet existences” literary movement, which sought to give more attention to “ignored people living boring and apparently unimportant lives”. One of my forebears, known in the family as the remittance man – the term meaning an emigrant, banished to a distant British possession to live on money sent from home – seems a suitable candidate.

Our ‘remittance man’ was my 3rd great grandfather Gordon Mainwaring (1817 – 1872) who arrived in the colony of South Australia in 1840.

Photograph of Gordon Mainwaring from Cavenagh-Mainwaring, Christine ” Whitmore Hall : from 1066 to Waltzing Matilda”. Adelaide Peacock Publications, 2013. page 103.

As the third son of Rowland Mainwaring (1783 – 1862), Gordon Mainwaring was not expected to inherit the family estate, ‘Whitmore’ in Staffordshire.

But it appears that he was thought to need a career, and from 1832 to 1834 Mainwaring was enrolled as cadet at Addiscombe in Surrey, a military seminary for the British East India Company. In 1835 he joined the 53rd Bengal Native Infantry Company of the Honourable East India Company Service.

Mainwaring resigned his commission in 1839 after less than five years. In 1840 he left Calcutta and sailed for Adelaide, arriving in South Australia as a passenger on the Eamont on 9 April 1840, less than four years after the proclamation of the new colony.

Three years later, in 1843, Mainwaring married Mary Hickey (1819-1890), who in 1840 had emigrated to South Australia on the Birman from Cork in Ireland with her sister and brother and her brother’s wife and small child. (Her brother died on the voyage out and her sister-in-law seems to have returned to Ireland.)

Gordon and Mary had seven children:

• Ellen (1845 – 1920)
• Emily (1848 – 1863)
• Charles Henry (1850 – 1889)
• Alice (1852 – 1878)
• Walter Coyney (1855 – 1888)
• Julia (1857 – 1935)
• Frederick Rowland (1859 – 1891)

In 1925 the Adelaide Register published extracts from a diary that Mainwaring kept in 1851. By that time he had become a farmer, with a small property at Gilles Plains, 15 kilometers north of Adelaide.

The 1851 diary records the Mainwaring family’s visit to Mary’s sister. A.T. Saunders, a South Australian historian, who annotated the diary in 1925 explains that Mary’s sister Julia (1817-1884) was married to William Morris, the head keeper of the lunatic asylum.

Mainwaring’s diary gives us a glimpse of Gordon’s quiet life in 1851. He chopped wood for sale, grew vegetables and fruit, helped his wife with the housework and socialised locally. I find Gordon’s record of his quiet life interesting and no less important than any other life.

Diary of 1851 published by the Adelaide “Register” 23 March 1925. Introduction and month of January.

February and March 1851. On 24 February Gordon Mainwaring, his wife Mary and the children visited Mary’s sister, Mrs Morris, wife of William Morris, then head keeper of the lunatic asylum.

March to May. Selling firewood through Mr Kerr.

May

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• Trove Tuesday: Obituary for Admiral Mainwaring