History

  • Books and reading,  History

    It’s complicated: ‘Germania’ by Simon Winder

    This is not a new book: first published in 2010 and one of a trilogy of books about Central Europe, Germania is described as a personal history of Germans ancient and modern.

    Why did I pick up a fourteen-year-old book about Germany?

    Because, in my investigations into my family tree, there is one individual about whom I know very little: my mother’s 3 x great-grandfather, Christian Uebel.

    In a tree made up of mainly English and Irish branches, Christian Uebel is an outlier, on a branch of his own. He emigrated from the Rhineland region of the country we now know as Germany, arriving in Australia in the 1860s. I realised that I knew so much more about British history and culture and almost nothing about Germany, so Germania was my first step to correcting this.

    I quickly realised that the history of central Europe is much more complicated than I had imagined. I knew that the German nation did not exist until the unification in 1871, and in the centuries leading up to that, there were endless squabbles between and about the many, many small and large states that made up the German-speaking parts of Europe.

    Germania traverses the history of this region from the days of the ancient tribes in the forests, all the way up to 1933, when the Nazis took power. I wondered about this timeframe until I realised it was for an entirely sensible reason. The dark shadows of WWII have so dominated German history, that apart from the first World War, many people know very little about what came before it.

    This is not simply a book about history, although of course that is an important theme. It’s also a travelogue of a particular kind; one where the author indulges his pet loves – and hates – about a country and culture, and describes these in a very amusing – even humorously disrespectful – way.

    Here’s an example: in discussing the appearance of a particular abbey, which gives a sense of an ancient and brilliant culture, but whose main interior unfortunately looks as though something has gone horribly wrong involving a collision with several trucks filled with icing sugar, having had an extreme rococo makeover to mark its seven-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary. (p65)

    There are plenty of gems like this, along with more serious discussions of the ups and downs of German history. On this, we are told that there were three points at which it was the worst time to be alive in central Europe’s past: the 1340s (famine and plague), the 1630s (the Thirty Years War) and the 1940s.

    No prizes for guessing why that last one is on the list.

    I was grateful for the map of Germany and its neighbours in central Europe at the front of the book, flipping frequently back and forth in my quest to learn more about this fascinating and (to me anyway) somewhat bewildering region.

    Winder’s analysis of the themes and movements, great and small, of European history is thoughtful and thought-provoking:

    But, as with so many aspects of Central European history, there is such an amazing spread of unintended consequences that only a form of political paralysis can substitute for the actual kaleidoscope of decisions which generate the oddness of European history – a small, bitter and crowded landscape somehow incapable of (indeed allergic to) the broad-ranging uniformity of the Chinese Empire or the United States. It is unfortunate that what seems in many lights so fascinating about Europe should also, as a spin-off, be the basis for so much rage and death.

    Germania p273

    Germania was published by Picador in 2010.

  • History,  Uncategorized,  Writing

    Travels with my…unknown cousins?

    One of the delightful and unexpected side effects of writing and publishing Travels with My Ancestors, a series about my research and travels through all things family history, has been the out-of-the-blue contacts I’ve had from relatives I’ve neither known nor heard of. These people have (in the words of one) stumbled upon my blog articles and reached out via this website, or on Facebook messenger, to introduce themselves. They are all related to me, albeit distantly, and part of the fun is figuring out who our common ancestor might be.

    It’s wonderful to know that many others like me, are delving into our ancestors’ past worlds. And I am always thrilled to hear when something in my articles, a photo or a snippet of information, sparks interest in others to know more.

    The flip side is that I am open to being corrected – I’m not a professional historian or genealogist and no doubt there are mistakes or misinterpretations in my work.

    Imagine my absolute delight in being told that something I’d included, shed some light for someone researching their own family story. (Thank you, Brian!)

    As I move towards completion of my book (Travels with my Ancestors: Felons, Floods & Family) and get it ready for printing, the knowledge that others have found my research and stories useful or interesting is very reassuring. It’s all been worth it!

    This book will be volume one in Travels with My Ancestors. It traces my father’s line of descent, from convicts Thomas Eather and Elizabeth Lee, to my grandmother Florence Newton. The narrative also encompasses the stories of the Newton and Robinson families, who came here as assisted immigrants in mid-19th century.

    It has been an absorbing three years, researching, writing, re-writing, re-writing, re-writing…and of course, travelling. As I get closer to the time when I send it to the printers, I feel both excited and (if I am honest) a teensy bit nervous. Once printed, that’s it: potential mistakes and all.

    Well, there is always volume two to work on: my mother’s side of the family tree.

    Stay tuned!

  • Books and reading,  History

    Austria in WWII: ‘The Secret Society of Salzburg’ by Renee Ryan

    This historical fiction book opens with the arrest by the Gestapo of acclaimed and loved Austrian opera singer Elsa Mayer-Braun, on a stage in Salzburg in 1943. So, an early heads up of what one of the two main characters has to deal with.

    From here the narrative weaves back and forth in time, and also across the English Channel, from the Continent to London, where we meet the other protagonist Hattie, who works in a dull civil service office, but longs to paint.

    An unlikely pair of women to put together, but that is what the author does, as a chance meeting develops into a deep friendship between the two. Hattie travels to Austria with her sister to see Elsa perform and the sisters become stalwart fans of Elsa and her operas.

    But of course war is coming and once their nations are at war, everything changes – except the women’s determination to carry out the secretive work of smuggling Jews out of Austria to England. Both Elsa and Hattie will not stop these life-saving rescue missions, despite the ever-increasing danger involved.

    While Hattie’s artistic career takes off and Elsa travels Europe to perform – including singing for some high ranking Nazi officers – their secret missions ramp up.

    As the tension mounts the reader is left guessing: is Elsa’s husband a threat or an ally? Who is the art dealer who supports Hattie’s artistic success and may just be falling in love with her? Will Elsa’s deep secrets be kept hidden or discovered by the Nazi heirarchy?

    I loved that this story was inspired by real-life English sisters, civil servants who learned of the persecution of Jews through a freindship with an Austrian conductor and his wife. In my view, the best kind of historical fiction is that which touches on real people or events.

    The Secret Society of Salzburg gives an insight into the experiences of Austrians in the lead-up and the early years of the war and Nazi occupation. It’s an engrossing story, well told.

    The Secret Society of Salzburg was published in November 2023 by HarperCollins. My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.

  • History

    Travels with My Ancestors #17: Josephine Eather and John Creek

    This is the continuing story of the family and descendants of convicts Thomas Eather and Elizabeth Lee in Australia. You can find the very first post in this series here. That one deals with my journey to discover Elizabeth’s beginnings in Lancaster; following posts explore the Eather roots in Kent, then the journeys of both on convict ships to NSW, where they met and created a family and life together.

    This chapter in the Eather family story is about my great-grandparents, Josephine Eather (1862 -1942) and John Lamrock Creek (1857 – 1924).


    The Bush Nurse

    West Maitland, NSW

    In 1919, Josephine Creek (née Eather) received an official-looking envelope. It didn’t look like a bill—the kind of mail she was used to receiving. Inside were two thank you letters and a certificate, the second signed by the NSW Governor, the Premier and the Minister of Public Health.[1] When she’d read them, she carefully packed them away to keep.

    Why had a fifty-seven year old mother of eleven, unaccustomed to public attention or recognition, received these messages from such prominent people?

    ~

    When the Great War (1914-1918) ended, men and women who had served in the military or as nurses began the long trek home. With them came rumours of a deadly illness that was striking people down with frightening ferocity across Europe. Across Australia, some veterans returned with more than their injuries, kitbags and uniforms: they unwittingly also carried the virus that people began calling the Spanish Flu.

    In the Maitland papers, Josephine (often known as ‘Jo’) no doubt read about the ratification of the longed-for peace treaty with Germany; but also the unwelcome news of rising influenza cases. There were long queues for the inoculation clinic at the Town Hall. Locals exchanged worried remarks about this invisible enemy. Wearied by four long years of war, worry, and loss, here was a new threat to contend with.

    The government brought in travel restrictions, cancelled public events, closed schools and other institutions. Mask wearing in public became compulsory. [2] An Influenza Administrative Committee in the Hunter region managed and organised the local responses. They even ordered the railway station be fumigated. But four Maitland cases were diagnosed in March, the sufferers quarantined in their homes.

    With more cases likely, an infectious ward was needed, and the Maitland Benevolent Home (known as Benhome) was repurposed, with existing residents of the home relocated to the Technical College building.[3]

    Maitland Daily Mercury 28 Jan 1919 Via Trove

    What could she do to help? She was a woman of action, someone who’d not easily watch from the sidelines. When she heard the callout for people to care for those diagnosed with this troubling virus, she responded.

    She joined a team of hospital and community nurses, those willing to work with the sick. She had worked as a bush nurse for several years, visiting homes, caring for people discharged from hospital, assisting with births and patient care in their homes. [4] She had the skills and experience to assist in this crisis.

    With such a highly infectious disease, the work carried the risk of getting influenza herself. The hours were long and the work physically tiring: washing bedpans, scrubbing floors, cleaning medical equipment, feeding and bathing patients, changing bed linen, and many other tasks to keep a sick person clean and comfortable. She’d done it all before and could do it again now.

    The death of young Maitland trainee nurse Molly Carr, struck down by flu in mid-June, brought other local women forward to help. At Maitland hospital, Matron Skullthorpe conducted education sessions on home nursing to more than fifty women who volunteered to assist when a shortage of nurses meant extra hands were needed.[5]

    The Maitland Mercury gave daily reports of the donations that came in from the community for the influenza ward: eggs, butter, meals for the nursing staff, household goods, cloth to make masks and gowns.[6]

    For several months it was all people could talk about. The energy that had kept everyone going during the war years was channelled into influenza relief. Of course, fear of the virus meant some people believed the silly ‘cures’ advertised in local papers, such as gargles or eucalyptus oil. Jo and her fellow nurses knew better.

    By September the pandemic was contained. Maitland had weathered the worst of it; Benhome ceased its function as isolation ward and its long-term residents returned to the home. Jo and her community could breathe a collective sigh of relief.

    ‘Benhome’ around 1900. Source: University of Newcastle

    ~

    The certificate she received, signed by the Governor, stated:

    Nurse Creek volunteered and worked in the District supervised by the Newcastle Influenza Committee in connection with the stamping out of the pandemic of Pneumonic Influenza (1919) and for caring for sufferers, and thereby rendered eminent service in the cause of humanity [7].

    The letters from the Committee applauded the work done by volunteers and nurses:


    The Committee desires to sincerely thank you for your splendid work in assisting those unable to help themselves during the recent serious Epidemic. This work was carried out under conditions which were always trying and often dangerous…The whole community is indebted to you for your noble efforts which undoubtedly saved many lives… Without your spontaneous and continued help the work could not have been carried on…It will gratify you to know that your assistance brought comfort and relief to many cases of deep and genuine distress…
    [8]

    One of the official thanks received by Josephine for her work during the 1919 Flu Epidemic
    Copy in family collection

    This was quite a moment for a woman who had previously served both family and community with little recognition for her work. She had stepped up to help in the crisis and could be proud of what she and others had collectively achieved. She kept that certificate, and the two thank-you letters signed by Mayoress Edith Cracknell, until she died; after which they were carefully preserved by her family.

    Before the Pandemic

    Like many others in the large Eather clan, she had strong links to two major rivers and their valleys: the Hunter and the Hawkesbury. Born in 1862 when her parents Robert and Ann were living in Newcastle, she was the middle child of thirteen.[9]

    Her older sisters might have sometimes spoken sadly of their tiny brother Robert, who had been born and died before her arrival. When she was ten, her sister Lucretia was buried, dead before her third birthday. Jo had helped care for her other little brother and sisters, just as her older siblings had done for her. She knew all about the risks and dangers for babies and young children, being born and getting through childhood.

    When Lucretia died, Robert and Ann were living at Sally Bottoms (Tennyson) in the Hawkesbury Valley, with nearby Howes’ Creek meandering past paddocks and bushland. Here they farmed their thirty acres; the children working too, while never missing an opportunity to roam and explore the neighbouring creek and bush when their chores were done.

    There were plenty of jobs to keep them busy: chopping wood, fetching water, looking after the littlies, peeling potatoes or kneading bread dough in the kitchen with their mother. There were animals to care for: cows to milk, chickens to feed and eggs to collect.

    At least some of the children went to school for a few years, learning to read, write and do basic sums, likely at the provisional school established in the 1870s.[10]

    In between they went rabbiting, fishing for yabbies in the creek, swimming to cool off on a hot day. They shared the creeks and paddocks with eels, snakes, tortoises, goannas and many kinds of birds.

    They may have come across cave paintings or axe grinding grooves in sandstone ledges across waterways, mysterious signs of the Dharug people who lived on this country before white settlers had arrived to put up fences.

    It was a busy, crowded childhood with few comforts; but they learnt everyday skills they carried into adulthood.

    ~

    St Stephens at Kurrajong. Photo by author, 2023

    When Jo was seventeen, she married John Creek in St Stephen’s Church, then ten years old, perched on its hill at Kurrajong.[11] Pausing a moment on the pathway to the little church, she’d have seen beautiful undulating fields laid out around her, cradled by blue-tinged mountains in the distance.

     Her new husband was a saddler, twenty-two years old, whose parents George Creek and Sarah Webb had emigrated twenty-five years earlier, as assisted immigrants from rural Cambridgeshire in England. They’d arrived in December 1854 on the ship General Hewitt, having packed their hopes for a better life into their trunks, stowed securely in the ship’s hold. [12]


    Married life

    John was George and Sarah’s only son. After their wedding Jo lived with her new husband on the north side of the river, where their first baby was born in 1880.[13]

    John worked as a saddler at North Richmond. Saddlery was a skilled and respected trade, as almost everyone needed his wares: saddles and bridles for horses, harnesses for bullock teams, other leather items such as belts. In his day to day work John used an array of specialised tools, saddle frames, and hides, surrounded by the rich smell of leather and the oils used to soften and nourish it. It was honest, satisfying work.

    Saddler and barber businesses at Australian Pioneer Village, Wilberforce NSW.
    Photo by author, 2022

    The next three children were baptised at St Marys.[14] John had either found work at a saddlery business there, or opened his own.

    A township with a strong industrial base, St Marys had tanneries, sawmills, brick makers, blacksmiths and wheelwrights, all making use of local resources. The railway arrived in the 1860’s and encouraged further development in industries such as sawmilling and tanning. The well-known Bennett’s wagon building business incorporated a number of these trades and their wagons were used by timber getters, farmers, and builders.[15] A saddlery business was guaranteed to do well there. The Creeks could look forward to their future with optimism.

    But by the late 1880s they were back in the Hawkesbury at Kurrajong, where seven more babies were born over a fifteen-year period.[16]

    ~

    Young Josephine Eather,
    date unknown.
    Photo in family collection

    Just like her mother and grandmother before her, Jo’s adult life was dominated by childbirth and the care of children. All the practice she’d had as a young girl looking after her siblings came into its own.

    Many of those babies were likely delivered by Sarah Howard, who lived at Little Wheeney Creek at Kurrajong. She was the district midwife, travelling on rough roads across the surrounding district, often late at night and in all weathers. Her arrival was always welcomed in homes where a labouring woman needed her expertise.[17]

     Mrs Howard’s heroic commitment to local women and their families may have planted a seed in Jo’s imagination that was to bear fruit in her later life. How wonderful, to be a nurse bringing care to patients suffering in homes too far from a doctor or unable to travel! Perhaps she longed to be able to make this kind of difference in people’s lives.

    ~

    In an awful echo of her mother’s experience, she found herself beside a tiny grave dug for her third baby, Robert, who died in 1884, after just one year of life.[18] He was buried in the cemetery of St Stephen’s at Kurrajong, the same church where four years earlier, she’d stood at the altar to marry John. At least her little boy would lie in a beautiful place, with the peaceful surrounds of the churchyard, and clear piping calls of bellbirds floating down from nearby trees.

    St Stephens churchyard, 2023. Photo by author

    Eighteen years later, she returned to St Stephen’s for the funeral of another child, baby John (Jack) who died at three months, from convulsions brought on by whooping cough.[19] She’d had to endure the appalling sight of her baby struggling for each breath and the hooting sounds of his cough. Young life was so fragile. Despite her practiced hand with infants, there was nothing she could do to ease or prevent his death.

    Who could have blamed her if, when registering the birth of her last baby Francis (Frank) a year later in 1903, she’d silently hoped that there’d be no more babies to fret and worry over.[20]

    At least, back in the Hawkesbury again, she was nearby to comfort her mother when her father died in 1879.


    In 1901, Australia made the momentous move to Federation—no longer a collection of separate states, now under one national constitution. Of course, women were not allowed to vote in Federal elections (and in most state elections, for that matter) until 1902.  December 1903 was the first occasion on which Jo had the right to cast her vote. Finally, this was a franchise extended to most—but not all—women across the new nation. Indigenous women and men and people of ‘non-European’ backgrounds had to wait.

    As she slipped her ballot paper into the box the first time, she’d have had a great deal to think about, including her children’s futures—especially her daughters. Perhaps their lives could be easier than her own.

    Return to the Hunter

    Around 1910, the family returned to Maitland. Australia had suffered an economic depression in the ‘jobless 90s’, and many were on the move, desperate to find work. If John’s saddlery business had slowed because of the downturn, he’d have struggled to make ends meet.

     An opportunity arose back in Maitland, to work at the prestigious Barden & Ribee Saddlery business in High Street.[21]  Jo could leave behind sad memories now associated with the Hawkesbury.

    Barden & Ribee Saddlers in Maitland. Photo from Athel D’Ombrain collection, courtesy of Univeristy of Newcastle

    They moved to Station Street Homeville, in West Maitland (now known as Brooks Street, Telarah.)

    It was during these years that she began her nursing career.

    ~

    In 1914 the cataclysm of the Great War erupted. Andrew Fisher, who was elected Prime Minister that year, voiced the opinion of many Australians that they should support Great Britain, when he declared that:

    Australians [would] stand beside the mother country to help and defend her to our last man and our last shilling. [22]

    Australians responded enthusiastically, with 416,809 enlisting for service, representing nearly 40% of the male population aged 18 to 44.[23]

    None of the Creek boys signed up, though it was always a possibility. Would Jo have felt proud of her sons, if they had come home in uniform? Pride mixed with fear, perhaps—though to begin with, most people thought the war would be a short-lived affair. Cyril was a grocer, an important occupation during wartime—people always needed to buy food. Still, there was pressure to join up by some who believed all young men should ‘do their bit,’ even workers in key jobs.

    The difficulties of wartime life included higher prices for essentials such as fuel and food. While there wasn’t formal rationing, trade embargoes and the government’s decision to send essential commodities to Britain resulted in shortages at home. Already a thrifty homemaker with a large family to feed, she had to further reduce the family’s consumption of items such as butter and meat. Newspapers and magazines were full of ‘austerity recipes’ with ideas on how to make food stretch further.

    Many local women volunteered with the Red Cross, raising money, knitting socks, making cakes and jams, all of which were bundled up as ‘comfort packs’ to send to the boys at the front.

    Through all this, she continued her nursing work.


    John and Josephine Creek, date unknown. Photo in family collection

    Once the war had ended and the flu pandemic brought under control in 1919, life settled down to a calmer pace. But in January 1924, John died of kidney disease and a heart condition which had been troubling him for over a year.[24] He was buried at Campbell’s Hill Cemetery, West Maitland.[25]

    More sadness was in store for Jo: her sister Elvina died two years later in 1926; and in 1929 daughter Priscilla, aged forty-four.[26] In that same year another sister, Cecilia, known as Mother Mary de-Sales of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan, passed away at the age of eighty.[27] And in 1933, she was given the news of the death of her forty-two year old daughter Alma, who had moved to Victoria after her marriage.[28]

    Australia was now in the throes of the Great Depression. Maitland, once a thriving, prosperous town built on an abundance of natural resources, suffered like the rest of the country, with high unemployment and hardship.

    To make matters worse, in 1930 the Hunter River broke its banks in another flood, the worst since the previous century.[29] After the water receded, people spent long exhausting days sweeping mud from homes and shops, throwing out items onto huge rubbish piles, sorting through donations of clothing for flood victims. Just like the Hawkesbury of her youth, this river was both a giver of gifts and a deadly enemy.

    West Maitland in 1930 flood.
    Photo courtesy Newcastle & Hunter District Historical Society & University of Newcastle

    Another War

    By 1939, Australia was once again embroiled in a world war. During her final years, she had to relive the anxieties of wartime. This time the government did introduce rationing, with the war raging in the Pacific as well as in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

    As war broke out, Jo’s youngest son Frank was living in England, where he worked as a porter at London’s Australia House. He joined the Civil Defence Service as an air raid warden and had special training in dealing with any gas attacks.[30] Jo must have worried about him, especially when news of German bombing raids on London filled the papers and radio broadcasts.

    In 1942 came the devastating news that grandson Harvey (‘Snow’) Newton, her daughter Florence’s eldest, was missing in action after the fall of Singapore to the Japanese. How on earth could she comfort her daughter, faced with such loss? They continued to hope for better news, but the anguish at not knowing Snow’s fate never left.

    There was a price to be paid for a long life. By the time she died at the end of December that year, aged eighty, Jo had outlived seven of her siblings, her husband, and four of her children. She was at least spared the eventual understanding that her grandson Snow would never return.[31] She did not live to see the end of the war and the safe return of other grandsons who’d enlisted.

    John and Josephine’s headstones at Campbell’s Hill Cemetery, West Maitland. Photo by author, 2022

    She was laid to rest near John at Campbell’s Hill cemetery.[32]

    Witnesses to change

    John and Josephine lived through tumultuous decades which ushered Australia into the modern era. Between them, they endured two major depressions, a world pandemic, two devastating world wars and numerous river floods. They witnessed the development of railways, motor vehicles, powered flight, telephone services, and saw Australia become a federated nation instead of a collection of British colonies.

    Jo was among the first women in the British Empire with the right to cast her vote in federal and state elections.

    They were ordinary people, living through extraordinary times. The legacy they left was not monetary wealth. Their names and photos did not appear in newspapers or history books. Still, their contributions to family and community were real and irreplaceable. Josephine’s certificate of thanks from the Governor and were testimony to that.

    ~

    Josephine Creek, date unknown. Photo in family collection

    [1] Copies in family collection[2] Janice Wilson, ‘Spanish Flu’, 2022, Maitland Stories at  https://maitlandstories.com.au/stories/spanish-flu, accessed 7 June 2024[3] Janice Wilson, ‘Spanish Flu’[4] Josephine Creek 1913 in Australian Electoral Commission; Canberra, Australia; Electoral Rolls 1903-1980, Homeville, Maitland NSW. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 10 December 2022; Maitland Mercury 12 July 1919 Via Trove, accessed 11 Dec 2022; Janice Wilson,‘Spanish Flu’ https://maitlandstories.com.au/stories/spanish-flu, accessed 11 Dec 2022[5] Maitland Weekly Mercury (NSW 1894-1931), 5 April 1919 p7. Via Trove https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/128058576#, accessed Sept 17, 2023[6] Maitland Daily Mercury, (NSW 1894-1939), 12 July 1919 p5 Via Trove, accessed 28 Sept 2023[7] Department of Public Health Certificate for Influenza Workers (copy in family collection)[8] Alderman Edith B Cracknell and Influenza Relief Committee to Josephine Creek, Maitland, July 1919 (copy in family collection )[9] Birth of Josephine Eather, reg 1862/ 10963, Aust Birth Index 1788-1922, via Ancestry.com accessed 28 Sept 2023[10] Michelle Nichols, Pictorial History of Hawkesbury, Kingsclear Books, 2004, p35[11] Marriage of Josephine Eather and John Creek, 1879/4267, Australia Marriage Index 1788-1950. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 17 Sept 2023 June 2024 [12] State Records NSW, Persons on bounty ships to Sydney, Newcastle and Moreton bay (Board’s Immigrant Lists) Series 5317 Reel 2466, Item [4/4937] Via Ancestry.com, accessed 15 Dec 2022 [13] NSW Birth Certificate for John Creek, 1857/11943 Certified copy issued 12 Sept 1988 [14] Australian Birth Index John Lamrock Creek 1857/11943; Hannah Creek 1860/11726; Sarah Ann Creek 1866/14287 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 Sept 2023[15] Lorraine Stacker, Penrith & St Marys: A Pictorial History Kingsclear Books 2013, pp110-117 [16] NSW Birth Reg Cyril John Creek 1887/24289; Alma Creek 1891/30840; Isabella Creek 1893/31587; Florence May Creek 1896/16077; Ina Myrtle Creek 1899/15510; John Creek 1902/6579; Francis John Creek 1903/6619/
     Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 Sept 2023[17] Nola O’Connor ‘Sarah Alexander (Howard) 1860-1948’ in The Millstone, Journal of Kurrajong-Comleroy Historical Society Inc, Vol 10 Issue 3, May-June 2012, p8 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/114298699/augustus-john-creek: accessed 21 September 2023; Maintained by Frances France (contributor 47744340). [18] Robert George Creek in Australian Death Index 1787-1985, reg 1884/10080. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 Sept 2023 [19] John Cleave Creek in Australian Death Index 1787-1985, reg 1902/2879 [20] Frank Creek in Australian Birth Index 1788-1922, reg 1903/6619 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 June 2024 [21] The Maitland Daily Mercury (NSW: 1894 – 1939) 15 Dec 1915 p2 Via Trove, 20 accessed Sept 2023 [22] Department of Veterans Affairs, ANZAC Portal, at Australia’s responses to World War I – Anzac Portal (dva.gov.au) Accessed 20 June 2024 [23] Australian War Memorial Enlistment statistics, First World War | Australian War Memorial (awm.gov.au) [24] Death of John Creek 1924 in State Records Collection; Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia; Indexes to deceased estate files; Archive Series: NRS 13341; Series: “Pre A” Series (1923-1939); Reel Number: 3216 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 Sept 2023; Death certificate 1924/2319, transcription of 5 March 2024 [25] John Creek 1924 in Australia and New Zealand, Find A Grave Index, 1800s-Current: Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 Sept 2023; Death Certificate 2319/1924 transcription of 12 March 2024 [26] Death of Elvina E Scott (nee Eather) 3 Jun. 1926 in Aust Cemetery Index 1808-2007, Compiler: Central Coast Family History Society; Collection Title: Index to the Charles Kinsela Funeral Directors Registers; Reference: Rookwood Church of England; Via Ancestry.com, accessed 29 Nov 2023; Death Priscilla Hayes (nee Creek) reg 1929/23773 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 Sept 2023 [27] Death of Cecilia Eather 1929/23773 in Aust Death Index, Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 Sept 2023; Obituary Sr Mary de Sales, The Catholic Press, Sydney NSW 1895-1942, 28 Nov 1929. Via Trove, accessed 2 Sept 2023 [28] Death of Alma Millership (nee Creek) 1933/8918 in The Victorian Registry of Births, Deaths, and Marriages; Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 June 2024 [29] Maitland Stories: Timeline — Maitland: Our Place, Our Stories (maitlandstories.com.au), Accessed 20 June 2024 [30] 1939 England & Wales register, The National Archives; Kew, London, England; 1939 Register; Reference: Rg 101/530c Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 Sept 2023 [31] Death Josephine Creek (nee Eather) Maitland NSW reg 1942/30857 Transcription of 31 Jan 2023 [32] Find A Grave Index, Josephine Creek 8 Dec 1942, Campbell’s Hill Cemetery Via Ancestry.com, accessed 5 Sept 2023

  • Books and reading,  History

    Re-peopling history: ‘Dirrayawadha – Rise Up’ by Anita Heiss

    I read this book with a sorrowful heart, knowing that the resolution could not be a positive one, even with the strong threads of family, love and strength that are twined throughout.

    Historical fiction, it is based on the early conflicts between the Wiradjuri people of the central west of NSW with colonial settlers. These became known as the ‘Bathurst wars’ but were part of a wider, escalating series of violent encounters and retributions that today are more accurately referred to as the ‘Australian wars.’ Yes, folks, Australia has indeed had armed warfare on its soil.

    The novel tells the story of Windradyne, a Wiradyuri leader, who refuses to submit to the ‘white ghosts’ who are attempting to take over his country and force his people into subjection. Windradyne is a real figure from history, a freedom fighter, though of course at the time the colonial authorities and many settlers regarded him more as a terrorist.

    Along with Windradyne we meet his sister, Miinaa, who is living with some of her family at the property of the Nugents, Irish settlers who arrived free to the colony and have taken up land to farm. Of course the Nugents are part of the colonial mission and therefore part of the problem. However, they are kind people and have some sympathy for the Wiradjuri, and treat their employees, assigned convicts, and Wiradjuri, fairly.

    Miinaa misses her extended family and their way of life, as she watches her world rapidly changing, almost beyond recognition. And as the violence surrounding her increases, she worries for her brother and the rest of her family.

    Into the picture steps Dan, an Irish political prisoner transported to NSW as a convict. Dan can see the similarities between the British subjugation of the Irish, and the situation faced by the Wiradjuri. As Dan and Miinaa fall in love, he starts to understand more of the Wiradjuri world view, their cultural and spiritual practices and how Country is at the centre of it all. He is not alone but definitely in the minority among his fellow convicts and most white people, in his empathy with the Wiradjuri.

    The outcome of this novel is not a happy one. How could it be, knowing how real history played out – and how First Nations people across Australia continue to suffer from generations of inherited trauma and dispossession?

    There are some moments of hope and happiness, though. The strong bonds that unite and support Wiradjuri as they face an existential threat. The ability of some characters to reach across the racial divide and find things that connect them with each other.

    As I often do, I checked out the historical facts that this story is inspired by, and was heartened to learn that the Nugents were based on a real family who did indeed employ (and shelter) Wiradjuri people, and maintained strong friendships with them across several generations. And Windradyne did not meet his death at the hands of the ‘white ghosts.’

    The one aspect of the novel that jarred a little for me was the language used by characters, Wiradjuri and white, especially that of Dan. In his attempts to get his fellow-convicts and local settlers to understand the shared injustices faced by Wiradjuri and Irish, his dialogue includes many terms and expressions that I doubt would have been used by a young man at that time, such as ‘civil liberties’ and ‘plight of the dispossessed.’ Perhaps a well-educated Irish political activist may have done so, but I’m not sure about a man such as Dan.

    However, the author uses these for a reason – to put the concepts into a modern-day perspective. In doing so, she blurs the boundaries of historical context a little, but makes the ideas and themes in the novel more accessible to many readers.

    One of the many things I enjoyed about the book is the liberal use of Wiradjuri words and phrases throughout. This is a noticeable trend in books by First Nations authors and I love it! There is an extensive glossary provided but after reading through it, I found that simply immersing myself in the story and encountering repeated uses of words allowed me to absorb the meanings without feeling like I was taking part in a language lesson.

    Use of Wiradjuri language also allows readers to glimpse some of the important concepts for Wiradjuri people, both in the past and today. It is no coincidence, for example, that the words I ‘learnt’ from reading this book included ones for children, Country, respect, family.

    Dirrayawadha – Rise Up is gripping, troubling, and insightful and I recommend it to all who want to understand more about Australia’s colonial past. One of blurb comments about Heiss’ historical fiction is that she is ‘re-peopling history’ and I think that is accurate. Books like this bring to life real events in our nation’s past that most would have only a vague idea of, at best. I guarantee you will never visit Bathurst (one of my favourite country towns) in quite the same way after reading it.

    Dirrayawadha – Rise Up was published by Simon & Schuster in July 2024.
    My thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for a copy to review.

  • Books and reading,  History

    Historical richness: ‘Threadbare’ by Jane Loeb Rubin

    I reviewed US author Jane Loeb Rubin’s debut novel In the Hands of Women last year. Her second novel has been released recently and is actually a prequel to the first, as it tells the story of the experiences of refugees and immigrants in New York in the late 1800’s.

    Once again there is a treasure trove of historical riches in this book. The main character is Tillie, a girl whose aspirations to attend high school are cut short by the tragic death of her mother from breast cancer. Tillie is left in charge of helping her father run their farm in Harlem, on what was then the northern outskirts of the city. She also keeps house and looks after her younger siblings, including Hannah, who is the main character featured in In the Hands of Women. In this new novel we get a fuller understanding of the tough circumstances in which Hannah’s life began, and the sacrifices made by her older sister.

    Tillie marries at sixteen and fortunately – for it’s a match arranged in part by the local Rabbi – it is a mostly happy one. However her new husband brings her to live in the tenements of New York’s lower east side, notorious for their terrible squalor and poverty. The plan is to stay here only temporarily until they can save enough to move to a better area.

    Tillie’s refuge is the local Jewish centre with its lending library, where she begins teaching English to the many people from Europe crowding into the city.

    She helps her husband with his business selling buttons to the burgeoning clothing trade in the city, and becomes fascinated by fashions and the beautiful clothing she sees, but can never afford. During this time the family experience the trauma of the infectious diseases that run rampant through the poorly ventilated apartment buildings, and the death of an infant.

    As an aside, I looked on Google maps to get an idea of the areas being described in the book. I was pleased to note that in the district where Tillie and Abe first live, there is now a museum dedicated to telling the stories of the many immigrant communities who lived here from the nineteenth century. The link to the Tenement Museum is here, if you are interested. If I ever get to New York City, it will be on my ‘to do’ list for sure.

    As Abe’s business grows they move to a newer apartment and things begin to look up for the family. With her best friend Sadie, Tillie starts a business, making kits for poorer women to be able to sew their own clothes, using patterns rather like the ones my own mother used to buy, to sew for herself and her family.

    I always love learning the ‘back story’ of a place, a company or industry, and Threadbare provides so much of the history of ‘Gilded Age’ New York – which was anything but gilded for its poorer citizens, especially women. Contraceptive devices and abortions were illegal then and made life so much harder for poor women and their families – something that Tillie herself experiences. There is also the scourge of diseases such as tuberculosis and women’s cancers, at a time when germ theory was a relatively new idea and surgical and other medical treatments still far from those we would recognise today.

    Especially vivid in Threadbare is the way in which women in business were ignored, patronised, or ridiculed. Tillie’s husband must accompany her to meetings with potential business partners even though the ideas being pitched were hers and Sadie’s.

    As in the best historical fiction, Threadbare offers opportunities to learn about the past while enjoying an engrossing story about believable and sympathetic characters. The ups and downs of Tillie’s life had me cheering her on, metaphorically speaking, and hoping that the many obstacles lined up against her could disappear. They don’t, of course, but in the process of her dealing with them we see what determination and courage look like.

    As always with such stories, I drew particular pleasure from the fact that Tillie is inspired by the author’s real-life great-grandmother, Mathilde, who had arrived with her family from Germany in the 1860s. I can’t think of a better way to honour an ancestor than by writing a book inspired by their life!

    Threadbare is published in 2024 by Level Best Books.

  • Books and reading,  History

    Profound: ‘I Seek a Kind Person’ by Julian Borger

    Imagine for a moment you are the parent of a youngster after the takeover of Austria by Nazi Germany in the 1930s. As conditions for Jewish families continue to worsen, you make the – incredible – decision to advertise in a British newspaper, hoping that someone – some kind person – will take in your son or daughter and look after them until their homeland is once again safe to live in.

    That’s the story of author and Guardian World Affairs Editor Julian Borger’s father, Robert, who was advertised like this in the Manchester Guardian in August 1938. It was after the horror of Kristallnacht, (‘the night of broken glass’) when Jewish homes and businesses were smashed, looted and their occupants attacked. Young Robert himself was chased through the streets by a gang of Nazi bullies. His father came to the conclusion that Robert was not safe in Austria and for his own protection, needed to be sent abroad.

    The book opens with Robert’s suicide in 1983. No spoiler there; the reader knows immediately that there is no ‘happy ever after’ in this story. What Julian did, decades later, was to discover the history of the advertisement of his father and many other Viennese children, and attempt to trace the experiences of seven of them.

    The result is a grim, profound, at times almost unbearably moving story of the children, set against Jewish experiences in Vienna, especially in the time leading up to, during and after the Anschluss. Their experiences were varied, seemingly almost on the toss of a coin or a turn of fate (not all foster families were kind, as it turned out.) Surprisingly, some of the refugee children and some of their families ended up in far flung places: the Netherlands, Shanghai, in France working undercover in the Resistance, Wales.

    For historians, especially family historians, it’s absorbing to read about the author’s investigations, brick walls and cold trails, sometimes followed by unexpected gems of information that allowed him to continue his research.

    The book is also an interrogation of trauma.
    The unhappiness and anxiety of youngster sent far from home to an uncertain future.
    The trauma of those sent to the concentration camps, which the author describes as having to ‘learn to survive in a vast industrial enterprise dedicated to murder.’ (p177)
    The ‘survivor guilt’ and silence of those who, usually by chance, avoided the camps: ‘We did not suffer from the cold and hunger and therefore our suffering does not come close to the suffering of the children of the ghettos and camps. That’s why we did not often tell our story.’ (p237)
    And of course, the trauma handed down to the next generation: ‘We may want to let go of history, but that doesn’t necessarily mean history is finished with us…So maybe man hands on misery to man after all, though the reality is not entirely bleak, or we would all be wrecks.’ (p30)

    I Seek a Kind Person is a fascinating glimpse of the WWII experiences of a relatively small but representative group of Jewish people from one part of Europe that is both compelling and distressing. Beautifully and sensitively written, I highly recommend this book to any readers interested in knowing more about the real experiences of people in this war.

    I Seek a Kind Person was published in 2024 by John Murray Publishers, an imprint of Hachette.

  • History

    Travels with my Ancestors #16: Robert Vincent Eather and Ann Cornwell

    This is the continuing story of the family and descendants of convicts Thomas Eather and Elizabeth Lee in Australia. You can find the very first post in this series here. That one deals with my journey to discover Elizabeth’s beginnings in Lancaster; following posts explore the Eather roots in Kent, then the journeys of both on convict ships to NSW, where they met and created a family and life together.

    This post tells the story of their grandson, Robert Vincent (1824-1879) and his wife Ann Cornwell (1831-1889.) They are my great-great grandparents.

    NB: For ease of reading online, I have omitted my references and footnotes. If you are interested in seeing the sources I have relied on for this story, please let me know via the contact form on this website and I’ll be happy to share them with you.


    Legacies and continuity

    Like his father before him, Robert Vincent Eather arrived into the world surrounded by the fertile river land of the Hawkesbury valley. The family lived at their farm at Cornwallis, on low lying land near Windsor. When Robert junior was born in May, 1824, the leaves of the deciduous trees planted by his father and grandfather were burnished with autumn reds and golds, and a chill was in the air.

    His childhood was crowded: nine surviving siblings, and later, the three orphaned Griffiths boys his parents had fostered—the farmhouse brimming with young bodies. At least there was plenty of space outside, though chores always wanted doing.

    His father’s butchery in Richmond was a flourishing business, and the farms produced good yields. Once he was old enough, Robert followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a farmer and butcher, setting up a shop in Richmond, on the corner of Paget and Lennox streets.

    Richmond Church and Rectory c.1854 Frederick Casemero Terry.
    Source: Hawkesbury City Library

    The township had been established back in Governor Macquarie’s time, and his family had seen it grow. There were now many businesses lining its main street, fringed on one side by open land that had been meant for a market square but had instead been used for games and foot races by the townsfolk, and a Guy Fawkes bonfire each November. There was a grocery store, blacksmith, chemist, bakery, drapery, the Royal and Commercial hotels, several churches and schools, saddler and shoemaker, and tannery. There were frequent grumbles about the poor repair of the streets, which in wet weather were flooded, with large potholes big enough to bathe a baby. The stink of the tannery was barely covered by piles of bark thrown down to mop up the bloody refuse that seeped out onto the road.

    Still, Richmond was a good town to live in. His grandparents told many stories about the old days in the district, when Windsor was called ‘Green Hills’ and the people who lived alongside the upper reaches ran a bit wild, just like the river.

    In 1847 he married Ann Cornwell, also from the Hawkesbury. Ann’s parents, John Cornwell and Ann Eaton, had been ‘native born’. And like him, Ann’s grandparents had come to the colony in fetters—in her case, all four grandparents. In the small Hawkesbury settler community, there were few families without at least one elder with a murky past. Each successive generation tried its best to shrug off the convict legacy of their forebears.

    Restless lives

    Given the tumult and drama of their grandparents’ convict pasts, Robert and Ann’s life together got off to a tamer start in Richmond. One year after their marriage, their first child was born. Young Jane was followed by another girl, Cecilia; then ten other children, each born within two or three years of the last. Ann had no respite between babies; feeding and housing the growing family preoccupied her husband. And Robert had become increasingly restless, looking for opportunities outside the Hawkesbury district.

    Maitland Mercury & General Advertiser Sat 7 June 1856 p3

    In 1856, with their first five youngsters in tow, they moved to The Glebe, a suburb of Newcastle, on Awabakal land in the Hunter Valley. Here Robert took up an auctioneer’s license; and opened a butchery business.

    Newcastle in 1874. Source: Hunter Living Histories University of Newcastle https://images.app.goo.gl/mhmUPbrCaGRGUGnt7

    There were many similarities between this valley and the one they’d been born in. Both Hunter and Hawkesbury were mighty rivers, with the fertile soils of all floodplains. European occupation had begun with penal settlements, followed by bloody battles with the First peoples, who fought to defend their traditional homelands. Now, the white settlements were growing: the lure of land ownership and the natural resources of the valleys proving irresistible.

    Three more children were born at Newcastle, though Robert’s little namesake Robert Vincent junior, only lived one year.  In 1867 the family moved again, this time to Black Creek, near Singleton, on Wonnarua country. Two years on, they returned to Newcastle.

    He put an optimistic notice of a new business venture in the local paper:

    Robert V Eather begs most respectfully to inform the inhabitants of Lake Macquarie Road, Glebe, and Racecourse, that he will conduct the BUTCHERING BUSINESS heretofore carried on by Mr Davis Jones… where he hopes, by strict attention to business combined with cleanliness and civility to all who will favour him with a call, to merit a share of patronage so liberally bestowed on Mr Jones.

    The Newcastle Chronicle, Wednesday 18 Jan 1868

    Problems with credit had him placing a peevish notice in the newspaper, warning that he would take legal action to recover money owed him by customers who were late paying their bills. If the business was not going as well as he’d hoped, money was tight with eleven children to provide for.

    Alcohol is an easy salve for problems, but can bring more trouble. In 1870 he was charged with public drunkenness, though let off without penalty. A few months before that, he’d been fined 10 shillings for riding his horse carelessly on a public thoroughfare. Was he liquored up then, too?

    In the early 1850’s the gold rushes had begun, luring people from all over the world to the diggings in NSW and Victoria. Perhaps he’d been caught up in the spirit of the time, always on the lookout to make a fortune, rather than a living. The decade before had brought drought, depression, and bank crashes, all of which contributed to a sense of the precariousness of life.

    In 1856, he came before the court in Maitland, over a dispute between himself and a man called Richardson who he’d employed for a while as auctioneer’s clerk. When he told the man that he no longer needed his services because he was ‘off to the diggings,’ the man took him to court for unpaid wages and breach of promise. The court found in Richardson’s favour; Robert was ordered to pay a hefty £10.

    Ann would not have thanked him if he had gone off to the diggings, leaving her with the children to keep on her own. While some on the goldfields struck it rich, many more returned with nothing— or worse, in debt. If he’d used the idea as a ruse for not continuing with Richardson’s employment, she must have wondered what was going on. Either way, it was an expensive mistake.


    Ever restless, he moved Ann and the children again, but this time for good. By 1872 they were back in the Hawkesbury, on forty acres near Howe’s Creek, at Tennyson, where he’d been raised.

    Their three youngest children were born here.

    In those years between their marriage and finally settling back on home ground, Ann had given birth to thirteen babies, moved four times, buried one son aged one year, another aged eleven, and a daughter aged two. She worried about her husband’s businesses, money, and his drinking. At long last they were settled, within reach of their extended family members for support and help.

    She could breathe a sigh of relief—for now.

    The next generation

    Five years after their move back to the Hawkesbury, Robert was dead. The alcohol he’d turned to when things were tough may have finally claimed its toll: the death certificate recorded the cause of his death as cirrhosis of the liver and fluid in the lungs. He was fifty four.

    At least she had a home where she could continue to live: her husband had left all his estate, valued at £715, to her. Son John managed the property on her behalf. Her three youngest children, Walter, Isabella and Florence, aged twelve, seven and five, stayed with her there until she died ten years later, in 1889.

    Ann’s will expressed her wish that her property be divided: one half to go to son John, the other half to be shared equally by Walter, Isabella and Florence.

    She was buried near her husband at St Peters churchyard in Richmond.

    They had come full circle, from their birth beside the Hawkesbury River, to their burial in its soil.

  • Books and reading,  History

    As I sit down to write this review, it is leading up to ANZAC Day in Australia, an annual day of commemoration of those who served in military campaigns in Australia’s name. Up until recently, those who served as medical staff and nurses in wartime seem to have been ‘add-ons’ in our military histories.

    Take the story of Sister Vivian Bullwinkle. Her name should come easily to Australians thinking about their nation’s involvement in war, like Simpson and his donkey in the ANZAC story, or ‘Weary’ Dunlop in WWII.

    There is now a statue of Sister Vivian in the grounds of the Australian National War Memorial. But when it was unveiled in 2023 – last year! – it was the first statue of a woman at the memorial.

    I’ll move on from my bewilderment at why it took such a long time to recognise this woman, and onto Grantlee Kieza’s story of her life. What a tale it is.

    Vivian Bullwinkle completed her nursing and midwifery training at Broken Hill Hospital in the 1930s. Then came the announcement in September 1939 that Australia was at war with Germany. From the Melbourne hospital where she was working, Viv enlisted as an army nurse. By 1941 she was on her way to Singapore, where she would face the new enemy of the war, Japan.

    The book includes vivid descriptions of the rapid and vicious attacks on Malaya and Singapore by Japanese troops. On reading these pages I had a sense of the fear that must have been in every heart, knowing that the Japanese were moving south at a rapid rate, killing anyone who stood in their way. I also felt anger at the apparent lack of preparation on the part of Allied authorities; the complacent belief of Western superiority which was then prevalent, certainly worked in favour of the Japanese. Rumours began spreading about the merciless nature of the Japanese soldiers.

    On a personal note, an uncle of mine was involved in that first encounter with the Japanese on Singapore Island; he was reported missing, presumed dead; a fate confirmed by the Australian Army at the war’s end. His mother and siblings never got over the loss of smiling, kind, lovable Ernest Harvey Newton, known as ‘Snow’ to his family. Learning about the cruelty inflicted on those who survived encounters with the Japanese, perhaps Snow’s fate was preferable. Who can say? All I know is that the whole thing was an shocking savagery that should never have happened.

    Eventually the nurses were evacuated from Singapore; it is telling that they apparently felt great reluctance and shame to be leaving the sick and wounded soldiers they’d been caring for. The author paints an appalling picture of the chaos and desperation of a defeated Singapore. The nauseating smell of death and raw sewage, oil fires and explosions, terrified civilians climbing over each other in their panic.

    Worse was to come for Sister Vivian and her comrades. Put aboard the Vyner Brooke, formerly a royal yacht of Sarawak, over two hundred people endured a terrifying voyage from Singapore heading for the relative safety of the Indonesian islands not yet occupied by Japanese. The stories of those on board are poignant: sixty-five Australian nursing sisters, including one who was seven months’ pregnant; a family of Polish Jews who had fled to the assumed safety of Singapore only to find themselves refugees once again; and many women and children.

    The ship was bombed by Japanese aircraft and went down off the coast of Bangka Island near Sumatra. Viv and her nursing colleagues tried to assist the wounded and terrified civilians, before the inevitable order to abandon ship as it broke up underneath them.

    But Viv had never learnt to swim.

    Somehow, she survived, with the aid of a life jacket and an upturned lifeboat, despite continued bombing from above and the threat of sharks below. She stumbled onto a beach where she recovered enough to find other survivors washed up on the island by the strong currents. At least twelve nurses had died in the water that night. With no food, shelter, and with many needing urgent medical care, the survivors agreed that they had to surrender to the Japanese and hope that the rumours they’d heard about the Japanese taking no prisoners were not true.

    What follows is a story of unbelievable cruelty, even sadism, by some of the Japanese they encounter. Men and women alike were coldly gunned down or bayoneted on Radji Beach, left to bleed out in the shallow water or drift off on the tide. Twenty-one of Viv’s nursing companions were murdered that day.

    Amazingly, after being hit through her middle by a machine gun and left in the water, Viv did not die. Some instinct told her not to show that she was alive, and even though she couldn’t swim, she allowed herself to float until the men with guns were satisfied that they had killed everyone. Eventually she was taken to a prison camp where she was reunited with others of her nursing sister colleagues.

    Moved from camp to camp, starved, with no medical care, minimal fresh water, no way to preserve their hygiene and health, beaten and abused…this was the experience of nurses and civilian refugees on Bangka Island and Sumatra for three and a half years. They survived by caring for each other, pooling any resources they could scrounge, making efforts to raise the spirits of their companions, burying the dead as one by one, women began to succumb to the ravages of malnutrition, tropical diseases and mistreatment by their captors.

    It’s a terrible story of unimaginable hardship and suffering. As I read, I often wondered ‘What would I do in this situation? Could I endure it? Would I have survived?’

    It’s also about stoicism, bravery, sacrifice and the comradeship that we often hear about amongst soldiers, but is less often applied to those who care for the sick and wounded.

    Of course the war did end, Japan surrendered, and the prisoners were eventually found and returned to Australia. We should remember that in the midst of their suffering, none of the nurses knew what would happen. They had no way of knowing what the eventual outcome of the war – and their fates – would be.

    After the war, Viv’s strength of spirit, her compassion and her pride in the nursing profession, did not abate. She devoted the rest of her working life to improving the standing and professionalism of nursing in Australia, as well as speaking at many memorials and events where she kept the memory of her dead sisters alive.

    And in 1975, aged nearly sixty, she played an instrumental role as one of twelve nursing volunteers in Operation Babylift, the mass evacuation of orphaned babies and children from South Vietnam, aboard a chartered Qantas jet from then Saigon to Sydney.

    I was so happy to learn that just a year or so later, she married and was able to enjoy more than twenty years with husband Frank Statham.

    Sister Viv is a gripping account of a woman who endured great suffering but went on to live a full and productive life in spite of her awful wartime experiences. Grantlee Kieza has written a biography worthy of this truly remarkable Australian.

    Sister Viv is published by HarperCollins in April 2024.
    My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.

  • Books and reading,  History

    ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind’ by Yoval Noah Harari

    While we homo sapiens might feel pleased to be the species that has seemingly evolved to ‘rule the world’, this book should give pause for thought.

    It’s a sweeping story of our history: how we evolved and separated from other human species such as the Neanderthals, why we have paid a price for the development of our relatively large brains, how the ‘cognitive revolution’ distinguished our species from other animals (and what we have done with this advantage since), how and why myths such as gods, race, nationalities, money and human rights were created.

    There are some ideas that I am certain would be controversial to some, including:

    • the ‘agricultural revolution’ actually resulted in humankind spending more time and effort feeding itself than in hunter-gatherer communities
    • it is possible that, far from grains such as wheat or rice being ‘domesticated’ by humans, it could be the other way around: that these grains trained humans to spend huge amounts of labour tending them, allowing them to become masters of the grain world.
    • the three unifying forces of humankind have been money, empire and religion, and of these:
    • capitalism is the most successful religion invented by humans, requiring high levels of trust to operate effectively.

    Sapiens is definitely a thought-provoking book. Always interested in the ‘back story’ in how things came to be as they are, I found the historic elements deeply fascinating.

    The last section of the book ventures into territory which for me was far less comfortable, involving scary questions about the future of humankind, as technological developments seemingly outpace our collective ability to predict where they might lead or to place conditions on their use.

    First published in 2015, the questions in this book are now more relevant than ever, surrounded as we are by the growth of cyborg, genetic and other technologies which could conceivably lead to the end of homo sapien and even devolution into a new species.

    More questions than answers; but perhaps a book of this nature needs to raise issues that can’t be easily addressed. If the idea is to make readers sit up and take notice, to think more deeply about the rapid pace of change, and to appreciate our collective past as a species, Sapiens achieves this very well indeed.

    Books like this should be read by scientists, ethicists, teachers, medical professionals and legislators, because these are the people holding the reins of our collective future.

    Sapiens was published by Vintage (an imprint of Penguin Books.)
    I listened to the audiobook version, also released in 2015 and read in English by Derek Perkins.