• Writing

    She Married a Murderer: a short story

    I entered this story in the 2024 EM Fletcher Family History Writing Award, an annual award presented by Family History ACT. The award aims to encourage story writing on a family history / genealogy theme. I was lucky to win this competition in 2021 with my story The Bitterness of their Woe and this year, was shortlisted from the 90 entrants from across the country. I thank Family History ACT for their continued support of this competition, unique in Australia for the broad range of genres and styles of writing that it encompasses.

    She Married a Murderer is fiction: it is my reimaging of the experience of my 3 x great-grandmother Margaret Houghton, known as Ann.


    She Married a Murderer

    Campbell Town, Tasmania, 1862

    She thought it all spiteful gossip, vicious rumours from people who did not like her or know Tom as she did.
    If only she had listened.


    Ann knew something of her new man’s past. A Ticket-of-Leave convict, transported from Ireland for theft of a sheep. Being Irish herself that never troubled her; so many of her countrymen and women had worn the broad arrow.

    She’d lost Michael after he was trampled by a horse, the mangled mess brought home on a stretcher unrecognisable as the husband she’d loved. The memory of it haunted her for the next five years, spent alone.

    When Tom arrived in Deloraine to work on Coulter’s sheep farm, they caught each other’s eye under the balcony of the Deloraine hotel where she was housemaid. He had no money to speak of, and a rough way with him, but none of that troubled her. Being poor, she was used to grimy hands, muddy boots and curses. She hoped for better times with a man around again; in six weeks, they were living as husband and wife.

    Tom had kissed the blarney stone more than once—honey could drip from his tongue. He’d tell a tale to have her in stitches, then quick as lightening, tell a sad one to make her weep. She was happy to come home to him after a long day washing floors and making beds at the pub. Tom gave her laughter and loving, and then two wee boys: the first named for him, followed by Hubert two years after. A grand little family, she thought.

    The whispers started when young Tommy was learning to walk, his pudgy thighs trembling, him grinning with astonished delight. Her heart squeezed with love for him as she walked to the grocer, Tommy on one hip and a basket on the other, to buy vegetables for a stew.

    As she dropped the goods into her basket, she heard low voices from the corner and glanced across. Two women, who fancied themselves Deloraine’s better sort of ladies, deep in hushed conversation. She caught: his poor first wife, beaten and life sentence, before they saw her looking and their murmuring ceased.

    Walking home she puzzled over what she’d heard. Were they talking about Tom’s first wife? She’d died, Ann already knew that. But beaten to death? And by who? Surely not Tom. The women said the killer had received a life sentence—Tom had his Ticket, wasn’t serving life. Whatever had happened to his wife, Tom had no part in it. Besides, he wasn’t a violent man, had not lifted a finger against her or the baby.

    But that night she slipped in a question as they lay together in their narrow bed.
    ‘What was your first wife’s name, Tom?’
    There was a brief silence. Then: ‘Catherine.’
    ‘How did she die?’
    ‘Met with an accident.’
    ‘The same with my poor Michael! What sort of accident?’
    The blanket was dragged from her shoulders as Tom sat up. ‘What are all these questions for? I don’t pester you with questions about Michael. All that’s in the past. Leave it there.’
    She lay very still until he slid down and she could pull the covers over her cold arms. Try as she might, she couldn’t halt the thoughts that bucked and spun in her mind like that panicky horse that had killed Michael. She had a sudden pang of longing for her first husband and for their lost years together.

    The whispers did not stop that day. She heard them many times, always quickly swallowed when she came near or turned to look directly at the speaker. The same words repeated: first wife, killed. She began to hear new ones: murder, trial, mercy.

    She never again asked Tom about the manner of Catherine’s death. But she couldn’t stop herself from questioning him about her: what was she like? Where did they marry? When did she die? It was a strange compulsion to learn about this woman who had once shared his bed.
    He gave up snippets, small nuggets that she stored away to consider later. She learned that Catherine had been Irish, and a convict like him. She learned that they’d married in Launceston in March, 1851, but not had children.

    Hubert was four in 1859 when Tom and Ann wed, in Saint Michael’s Church. A bright day, spring blossom everywhere as they stood outside, greeting well-wishers. Widower and widow, united by God as part of His holy plan. So she thought.
    By then they’d moved to Campbell Town, leaving behind the rushing sparkle of the Meander River for the gold of wheat fields and brown of sheep paddocks. Here Tom found work on local farms and they settled into a small cottage, just one room and a sleepout at the back, but comfortable enough.

    After the wedding Tom’s behaviour towards her began to change. He disliked it if she spoke to others, especially men. He cut short conversations at the hotel or the grocer. She couldn’t understand his jealousy—she had no interest in flirting or gazing at other men. He was all she needed, but as his manner became more abrupt and suspicious, she gradually became aware that she’d begun to be a little afraid of him. He had never hit her. He didn’t need to. His size and strength, the ugly glower on his face when he was displeased, his unpredictable temper— all told her to take care, to never give him reason to strike out.

    She was happy when she made a friend in Campbell Town. They met at the store. Their children were similar ages; they all shyly regarded each other over stacks of newspapers. The woman picked up a copy and began to read from the front page.
    ‘There’s a conference of Temperance Societies in Launceston this week,’ she said as she paid for her purchases. ‘What do you think of the Temperance aims?’
    Ann stammered, knowing nothing of Temperance but not wanting to show her ignorance.
    The woman continued, ‘I support their objectives. So much grief comes from drink. Not just from men’s drunkenness, either. Do you remember the case from some years back in Launceston, a woman beaten by her husband when he found her drinking with other men? He killed her. Was sentenced to life, but that helped his poor wife none.’
    Ann’s chest tightened. His poor wife. All those whispers. Before she could stop herself, she had grasped the other woman’s arm.
    “Do you know her name? The murdered woman?’ The word murdered fell heavily from her tongue.
    The woman thought. ‘Tipping was her last name, I think.’ She gave a small smile then looked closely at Ann. ‘Did you know her?’
    ‘No, no, I don’t think so.’ Ann went to gather the boys and leave, but hesitated. ‘Do you live near?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes, the blue painted house; it’s not far.’
    ‘I’m on the corner. Would you like to come to mine? I’ll make tea and our littlies can play. My husband is at work.’ She didn’t know why she felt a need to say that last bit.
    ‘Lovely! We’ve not been here long; I don’t yet know many neighbours,’ the other woman replied.
    Over tea Ann learned the woman’s name was Martha, that her family had moved from Launceston but returned there often to visit her elderly parents, and that she was a staunch supporter of the Temperance movement, which she explained was about combatting the evils brought about by the demon drink. The two women became firm friends.

    Ann tucked away the new nugget of information that had stopped her in her tracks in the store. A murdered woman in Launceston. It lay in her mind along with the others she’d secreted there, the whispers she’d heard. They gnawed away, troubling her as she went about her day and disturbing her dreams at night.

    After months of this, she asked Martha if she knew of more about the dead woman from Launceston.
    ‘No, but we are visiting my mother there next week. The Examiner has its office in town; my husband is a friend of the Editor. Perhaps he can find a back issue with a report on the trial.’
    ‘Please don’t go to any trouble.’ Ann was beginning to regret asking.
    ‘No trouble.’ Martha tilted her head. ‘But I think something is troubling you.’
    After a long hesitation, the dam wall of worries broke and out they poured. Tom’s harshness and jealousy. His first marriage in Launceston. The whispers. The murdered woman.
    Martha’s expression changed and she said, ‘If you are correct, you could be in danger. Keep things calm at home until I return. Don’t question or upset him.’ Her tone was urgent; Ann promised she would try.

    Two weeks passed. Long days in which she tiptoed around Tom, careful of word and deed.

    When Martha finally knocked at her door, Ann could scarcely wait for her friend to take off her hat before asking, ‘Well?’
    Martha sat down heavily, withdrew a paper from her pocket.
    ‘Edgar copied it from the news report. The killing happened in April and the trial in June, 1851. Eleven years ago.’ She made to pass it to Ann, who shook her head.
    ‘I can’t.’
    Martha took it back and began to read.
    ‘Thomas Britt, convicted of murder, was brought up for sentencing. Catherine Britt came by her death from a kick given by him, but she was drunk, and he had reason to suspect her of other immoralities…His Honour said due allowance should be made for the excited state of his feelings; a manslaughter verdict would have been more proper. Mercy recommended.’
    Ann felt sick.
    Martha said, ‘I’m afraid there is more. The report on the inquest held after Catherine’s death gave more detail as to what happened. Do you want me to read…?’
    At a mute nod from Ann, Martha continued,
    ‘Britt was inflamed by jealousy…he used revolting language towards his wife, swore he would do for her that night. On the way home he subjected her to most brutal assaults. A witness…placed himself between them but Britt knocked his wife to the ground and stamped violently on her head as she lay…she never spoke again and died the next day.’

    Ann gave a choking cry. Murder. Those women had whispered the truth, after all. Why had no one told her to her face about Tom’s past crime? Would she have listened? She no longer knew, no longer felt sure of anything. She’d married a murderer, a man who had killed in a most brutal way. Would he do the same to her? Or her boys? Horrible visions engulfed her, the lads lying bloodied while their da stamped on their little heads. She buried her face in her apron, shuddering.
    Then another horror as she remembered that Tom and Catherine had married in March, 1851. He had murdered his new bride within a month of their wedding! And the judge had recommend mercy? Where was the justice?
    She would never be safe again.

    She looked up at Martha, jaw clenched. ‘What can I do? I can’t leave; I’ve nowhere to go, not with two lads.’
    She gave a half sob, half laugh. ‘My da would say: You make your bed; you must lie in it. Seems he was right.’
    Ann had no more words for her despair and fear. She’d walked unknowingly into a trap and now she must live there, caught in a vice that only her death would release.

    Postscript:
    Friends of Ann Britt of Campbell Town are respectfully invited to attend her funeral on 12 June 1862, at the Roman Catholic cemetery.

    Inspiration: My 3 x great-grandfather’s murder of his first wife brings into sharp focus the devastation of family violence, which continues to this day.

    Marriage registration of Thomas Britt and Catherine Tipping at Launceston, Tasmania, 1851
    Launceston Examiner, 23 April 1851

  • 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!

  • 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

    The ‘other’ indigenous Australians: ‘Growing up Torres Strait Islander in Australia’ Edited by Samantha Faulkner

    The ‘Growing Up’ series is a fabulous suite of books published by Black Inc Books, each of which ‘captures the diversity of our nation in moving and revelatory ways.(Black Inc Books)

    NB: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are advised that the book contains names and images of, as well as writing by, people who have died.

    Previous titles in the series include: Growing Up Asian, Growing Up Aboriginal, Growing Up In Country Australia, Growing Up Queer…all designed to allow for the sharing of lived experiences by people who make up today’s Australia.

    This latest edition is a collection of short pieces by Australians with Torres Strait Islander heritage – sometimes referred to as ‘the other Indigenous Australians.’

    The Torres Strait Islands are located between the tip of Cape York Peninsula in far north Queensland, and the coast of Papua New Guinea. Torres Strait Islanders have a unique culture and a fascinating history. They are traditionally a sea-faring (or salt water) people, though of course in the past hundred years or so many have moved south to live on mainland Australia.

    The pieces in this volume, educed by poet and author Samantha Faulkner, include stories about well-known people (such as Eddie Koiki Mabo, whose High Court challenge overturned the lie of ‘terra nullius’) or actor Aaron Fa’Aoso. It also includes names I was unfamiliar with. Young and older people. Those living in Torres Strait Island communities and those who have never been there, having lived all their lives on the mainland.

    The stories say a lot about how culture and language are maintained, how precious childhood memories can fuel pride in culture, the many barriers that faced Islanders in the past and those encountered today, and how cross-cultural influences have contributed to the rich tapestry of Australian life: many contributors have ancestry that also includes mainland Australian First Nations, Malay, Japanese, Filipino, among others.

    Together they paint a picture of the extraordinary depth and range of spiritual beliefs, languages, dance and other cultural practices that make up the vibrancy of the Torres Strait Island people.

    If, like many Australians, you had never heard of or knew much about this corner of Australia, or its people, grab a copy of this book and learn! It’s a great read and very accessible. I’d love to see a copy in every public and school library across Australia.

    Growing Up Torres Strait Islander in Australia is published by Black Inc Books in 2024.

  • 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

    Did you know that in Victorian times, the fear of grave-robbers disturbing the final resting place of a loved one led to a brisk sale in ‘mortsafes’, an iron frame anchored over graves to secure them? And that there was an equally brisk, and to modern eyes very disturbing, trade in the bones and other body parts of non-Europeans, smuggled about the globe and ending up in private collections, museums and scientific institutions?

    These are some of the snippets I learned by reading Black Silk and Sympathy.

    I love Deborah Challinor’s historical fiction for this reason. She weaves into her stories fascinating insights about the places and periods in which her novels are set – in this case, London and Sydney in the 1860’s. Specifically, it is the world of Victorian undertakers: not usually a topic for a novel, especially one with a female protagonist, but all the more reason to enjoy it.

    Tatiana at seventeen has been recently orphaned and makes a decision to leave London – and England – and try her luck in the colony of New South Wales. She is offered work as an undertaker’s assistant by Titus Crowe. It’s an unusual offer, but Crowe is an astute businessman and recognises the attraction of a ‘woman’s touch’ to grieving clients. Echoes of today’s women-operated funeral businesses, I suppose, but truly ground breaking in Victorian-era Sydney.

    When Titus dies, Tatty is determined to keep running the business on her own terms. Not unheard of, but unusual for the time, especially in the competitive world of the funeral industry.

    Unfortunately for Tatty, the competition is even fiercer than she’d thought, and one rival in particular will stop at nothing to limit her success.

    Being a businesswoman in this town, and particularly in your industry, will not be without its challenges. And you will be the only female undertaker in Sydney. To my knowledge there are seven other local undertaking firms apart from yours, all chasing the same profit to be made from funerals. Be prepared.

    Black Silk and Sympathy p167

    She is a formidable adversary though, and through quick thinking and a willingness to take risks, Tatty and her business endure.

    Previous books I’d read by this author include the Convict Girls series, and it took me a while to realise that several characters, who felt vaguely familiar, were from those novels, albeit several decades on. It’s always nice to meet old friends from earlier books again.

    The author’s background as an historian and researcher show in her impeccable details of the period, including fascinating insights into Victorian mourning customs and funeral practices, and the restrictions on women owning anything of their own once they married. The laws of the time certainly stacked the odds against women having anything like independence; yet there were women like Tatty who did not let that stand in their way. Thankfully we can now read stories about such women and the circumstances in which they lived.

    Tatty is a heroine to relate to and I hope to meet her again in the next book of the series.

    Black Silk and Sympathy is published by HarperCollins Publishers in April 2024.
    My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.

  • 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.

  • Writing

    Short Story: ‘The Bitterness of their Woe’

    This is a story about the horrific flood of the Hawkesbury River in 1867, in which twelve members of the Eather family perished. I wrote this back in 2021 as a fictional response to the tragedy, and was thrilled when it received first prize in the E.M. Fletcher family history writing competition that year.

    The terrible events were referenced in my post of 4 March 2024 ‘Travels with My Ancestors’ #15, which concludes the lives of my ancestors, Robert and Mary Eather, who were great-uncle and aunt to the children who drowned in the flood.

    The Bitterness of their Woe

    ‘The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.
    Blessed be the name of the Lord.’


    I stare at Emma’s memorial stone. It wasn’t the Lord who took my darling wife away from me. It was my own foolish, stubborn nature. I thought I could keep them safe—Emma, our children, and my brother’s family. I’d reckoned myself smarter than the Lord himself, who’d sent the rains. But what did I know? Not enough.
    I do, however, know how to mourn.


    Cornwallis, near Windsor NSW, 1867

    That cursed rain began mid-June. When the fields around our house became a seething sheet of water, my brother George rode over to see me.
    “The water’s reached the level of the ’64 flood,” he said. “You’d best bring Emma and the children to my house. I’ve told William the same.”
    I agreed. George’s house was newer than mine and our brother Will’s, and on a higher point of land. We could wait it out in safety there.

    Emma carried little Maudie and gripped Angelina’s hand as they sloshed across low ground, already sodden from days of rain. I could barely see our two boys, walking ahead with Annie and Eliza. We covered our heads with our coats but were soaked and chilled when we reached George’s door.

    George ushered us inside and passed around towels to dry ourselves as best we could. William and Catherine were already there, their five youngsters gathered in a tight knot. The smallest ones were grizzling from cold and Emma went to help them get dry. Always kind, my Emma.

    George said, “I’m taking Dora and the children by boat to Windsor. Shall I take Emma and your youngsters too?”
    I hesitated. “What about your workers?” George had two young lads who worked his farm alongside him and his eldest boy.
    “I can come back for them, if the river keeps rising.”
    I shook my head. “Take them now, and send another boat back for us if it’s still raining by nightfall,” I said. “We got through the last flood; remember how we’d worried my place would go under? Turned out fine. We’ll be safe enough here. Get the lads into Windsor and send help if you think it needed.”

    I turned to Emma and the children. Emma was pale.
    “Don’t you think we should send the three youngest, at least? And Catherine’s?” she said in a low voice.
    I gave her a reassuring smile.
    “The river has never reached George’s house, not once. I’ve lived through plenty of floods. We’ll be safe here. Wouldn’t you rather we stayed together? George can send another boat for us, but I don’t believe we’ll need it.”
    Emma went to answer, but I cut her off.
    “Trust me, the children will be safe. Now, you and Catherine get something hot for them to drink.”
    Emma bit her lip and turned away.

    I had a moment of doubt then. Should I allow them to go with George? But George’s boat wasn’t big enough to take them—eleven children and their mothers. I’d shepherded us through the last big flood and would do so again. I knew this river and its moods.

    We watched as George rowed his boat upstream. It dragged in the water under its heavy load and I was glad I hadn’t trusted our little ones to it. George had enough to manage with his family and the lads. His wife turned to wave and shouted something back to us, but her voice was lost in the turbulent river as it raced past.

    When night fell, I wished I had that time over to decide differently. I’d thought the rain heavy before, but as the world darkened, water crashed from the sky in torrents, a powerful wind behind it buffeting the sturdy walls and roof of George’s house. Emma gasped at each thud. Then Charles called out in a frightened voice I’d not heard since he was a tiny boy.
    “The water’s coming in!”

    We hurried to staunch the flow with towels, sheeting, anything we could find, but nothing stopped the cold rush of water under the door. Young Eliza, in a panic, opened the door and was knocked to the ground by a wave two feet high. She screamed before Emma scooped her up to safety.

    William shouted, “We need to get everyone up on the roof. We’ll drown otherwise.”

    With difficulty we got outside, Maudie in my arms, Angelina on my shoulders. Emma, Catherine and Charles followed with the others. William struggled with the ladder, finally tying its base to the gum tree outside the front door, and leaning it against the house. We helped Catherine, Emma and the children climb to sit astride the ridge top. The women’s legs tangled in their sodden skirts and Catherine reached a hand to steady Emma as she teetered. By now all the children were crying, except Annie and Charles, who held on to their siblings and cousins with grim determination.

    The wind was ferocious up there.
    I tried to say “We won’t be here for long. George will send a boat—” but I broke off as no one could hear me above the din. I heard a dismal wailing and thought it was one of the children, but it was a cow, swirling past in the rushing water below us.

    And still the rain sheeted down.


    We stayed on that roof all night. A long, inky, fierce night. The rain and wind never let up, even for a moment. William and I made sure that no one fell asleep, by poking or nudging each of our group at intervals. I shivered so hard from the chill; I feared I’d jolt myself off the roof. I could see nothing below, but heard the evil gurgling of the water as it continued to rise.

    When at last dawn arrived, I choked back a horrified cry when I saw how far up the house it had come. Surely it could not reach us on the roof? But how much longer could we last, cold and wet as we were?

    It beggars belief, but we endured another whole day on that roof. The children were silent now, which was horrifying, much more so than their earlier tears. Catherine clasped her baby in her arms with little Clara slumped between her knees. Emma’s lips moved; I think she was praying. She shuddered from the cold, gripping on for dear life and holding Maudie’s legs to keep her safe.
    My chest and stomach tightened. They were all here because of me. If only I had taken up George’s offer and sent them to safety. Right then, if I could have saved them all by plunging into the roiling waters below, I would have done so.

    We looked in vain for George’s boat—any boat. Why hadn’t he sent help? The light faded and we were once again in darkness. I had not thought things could be worse but there, too, I was wrong. The storm intensified, thrashing us harder with rain that stung like shotgun pellets. Spiteful gusts of wind whipped at us. I was growing weary, so tired…how could the little ones keep holding on? But how could they not?

    Then it came, a groan and a crack, audible even above the noises of wind and swollen river. The walls of George’s house began to crumble and fall. There was a shifting in the roof beneath me and before I could think, I was plunged into the icy water. A scream…Emma or Catherine? Or one of the girls? I will never know whose voice I heard.

    The shock of the cold water stunned but I got my head above it. Hidden things knocked and bumped me as the river swept me along. I reached out blindly and my hands closed around something solid. It was a tree branch, half submerged but steady. I wrapped my arms around it, calling: “Emma! Charles? Eliza! Can you hear me? Come to my voice if you can! I’ll pull you to safety!”

    Charles called, close by, his voice ragged in the gusting wind.
    “I’m here, and Uncle Will.”
    I swallowed a sob. “Thank God! Are your sisters and mother near?”

    There was no answer. I screamed Emma’s name, crying out for my children, and for Will’s family. Above the noise of the wind and water I heard Will doing the same. My hands splashed about in futile attempts to find a leg, hand or arm. When I tried to call again, icy water filled my mouth. Choking, spitting, eyes squeezed shut; I bent my head and wept. How could this be happening? How could I have been so wrong about this flood, the danger of it? I wanted nothing more at that moment than to let go and sink beneath that hateful water.

    Then I roused myself. Charles was here, and Will. I had to help my boy and my brother; if I could save no one else I had to save them. I took one hand from the branch long enough to undo and remove my belt.

    “Charles!” I called, “take my belt and tie yourself to the tree with it.”
    His hand fumbled under the sloshing water towards mine and found the leather strap. Will shouted that he and Charles had made themselves fast. I could see nothing; could only pray that they would stay safe.

    I clung to the branch, holding my head above the water that slapped and pulled at me. My limbs grew heavy with the intense cold and fatigue. I called words of encouragement to Charles and Will; they gave answering shouts to let me know they were still there. At times I had to fight the urge to let myself be washed away. Somewhere in the river’s turmoil were my Emma, our children, and my brother’s entire family. Why should I live?

    But there was Charles, whose answering cries grew fainter as that hellish time wore on. I had to live, for Charles’ sake.

    At last I heard a voice, not Charles or Will. Someone was calling out to whoever might be lost in the river or on its banks. There was the wavering light of a lantern held high.

    “Here; over here!” My voice cracked, but the fellow in the boat heard and pulled towards us. I heaved myself over the edge of the boat, turned to help Charles and Will. We collapsed in a huddled heap on the floor of the vessel.

    Will gasped out, “Our wives, children…” and the oarsman turned the boat in slow circles, calling into the darkness, but there was no sign of them. Eventually he gave up the search and turned the boat back towards safety.

    We shivered and groaned in our misery, huddled in that boat. Two wives and ten children—vanished. Gone from us, forever.


    The waters receded after three days. Charles and I lay in bed, weakened from our ordeal. Searchers found Will’s Catherine and their children—all drowned. A neighbour spotted my boy James, washed up downstream from George’s house. We buried him the next day. Eliza’s body was discovered two months later, on a sandbank a mile away. But my Emma, and Maudie, Angelina and Annie…they were never found.

    I thought it would fell me, the pain of it. I didn’t care about the farm—the stock and crops and our house, all gone. Charles, Will and I stayed with George and Dora for a time. We rose each morning and went to bed each evening. The hours in between were lost to me for weeks. I registered nothing, except the loss of Emma and our children.


    A newspaper report about the floods described the awful losses—of people, homes, farms, livestock. It said:

    ‘The inhabitants of our district have not yet begun to taste the bitterness of their woe.’

    Truer words were never written.


  • Books and reading,  History

    Fitting end to trilogy: ‘The Settlement’ by Jock Serong

    The Settlement is the conclusion to a trilogy of historical fiction novels by award-winning Aussie author Jock Serong. Set in early colonial times in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) the three books tell the uncomfortable story of the violence of the colonial project, the evil manifested by those involved, and the defiance of the island’s First Nations.

    I can’t recommend the first (Preservation) and second (The Burning Island) highly enough. If you enjoy both historical and crime fiction these novels are for you.

    The Settlement again moves forward in time to the 1830’s, where we meet the real-life George Augustus Robinson, the evangelistic character who took it upon himself to try to solve the problem of spiraling conflict between First Nations people and the settlers in Van Diemen’s Land.

    The so-called ‘Black Line’ – a very expensive and (for the British authorities at least) completely unsuccessful attempt to corral and capture Aboriginal people to eliminate the problem, had been a failure. Robinson convinced the authorities to allow him to locate and meet with the leaders of the groups posing a threat to white settlement, with the aim of convincing them to quit their homelands and move to a settlement on an island in the northeast.

    So the ill-fated and eponymous settlement of ‘Wybalenna’ on Flinders Island was established.

    The narrative moves between key characters: Robinson himself, and other historical figures including leading First Nations figure Mannalargenna, among others; and fictional characters such as two Aboriginal orphans, Whelk and Pipi. A sympathetic, if powerless and conflicted character is the settlement’s Storekeeper, who wrestles with his conscience and his own personal issues throughout the novel.

    Robinson himself, now called the settlement’s Commandant, also struggles with the morality of his actions, but always manages to hide behind his religious beliefs and expediency, with an eye to his future position and legacy. He becomes an illustration of the moral blankness at the heart of colonisation.

    The chilling character of the Catechist is a remake, of sorts, of the evil figures from the first two books. I heard the author in an interview describe this recurring / reincarnated character as embodying the evils of colonialism and the violence inherent in it. Or, as described in this novel, as an embodiment of the place, the hands and face of an otherwise formless despair. (p108)

    The scenes involving the death and funeral of Mannalargenna are almost unbearable, lifted only by the strength and dignity of the man’s spirit even as his body fails, and beautifully conveyed:

    Mannalargenna cared little for displays of suffering. He continued to use the grease on his skin and the ochre in the short tufts of his hair, in defiance of the Commandant’s wishes. He persisted in adorning himself in other ways, and in speaking language. Far from rendering him an alien in their midst, it made aliens of his captors. Like a holed and smoking ship of war, he would slide beneath the waves imperious.

    The Settlement p174-175

    Jock Serong has again woven a dark story around the equally dark bones of historical fact. He has cemented his place as one of my favourite Australian contemporary authors.

    The Settlement was published by Text Publishing in August 2023.