UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND HISTORY SERIES 6

THEY CAME TO THUNDERBOLT COUNTRY University of New England History Series General Editor: Bruce Marshall Other titles Phillip A. Wright, Memories of a Bushwhacker (2nd edition) Anne Harris, Abington Pauline Kneipp, This Land of Promise The Ursuline Order in Australia, 18824982_._. Owen Wright, Wongwibinda Malcolm Saunders, Britain, the Australian Colonies and the Sudan Campaigns of 1884-85

JEANE UPJOHN

Born in Tasmania, eldest daughter of a much travelled civil engineer, JeanO Upjohn spent most of her life learning about people. Following a career in public relations and journalism, she enrolled as a mature-age student at the University of New England. After graduating as B.A. and M.Litt., she became an editorial representative for a group of ocean- oriented magazines, and a columnist for a coastal newspaper. Her love of folk tales and a nose for newsworthy stories led her to Oral History. Ms Upjohn has published one other volume of folk history, The Jetty People, and a small book of childrens poems, Poems for Possums.

Cover illustration: "A Selector's Home in New England, 1895"(photograph no. 1495 by Charles Kerry), in J.H. Maiden, The Forest Flora of N.S.W., 5, Parts 41-50, Government Printer, Sydney, 1913. .6Z6I .10/4s1P Main aw fo siaauold

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ea) W7" Jeanë Upjohn and The University of New England, 1988.

This work is copyright. Apart from any fair dealings for the purpose of private study, research criticism, or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publishers.

Printed by the University of New England, Armidale, NSW, 2351.

Distributed by the University of New England Publishing Unit, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, 2351. Contents

Foreword University of New England Series 1 ISSN 0729-7866 IntroIntroduction — They Came to Thunderbolt Country 5 1 The Road to Sandon County 14 2 The Family at West End 26 3 Crime and Punishment 31 4 Boys Will Be Boys 38 5 Practical People 40 6 The Gentlemen National Library of Australia Cataloguing in Publication entry 44 7 School Days 47 8 Death and Destruction Upjohn, Jeanê, 1921- They came to Thunderbolt country. 50 9 Accomplished Rogues ISBN 0 85834 735 0. 55 ISBN 0 85834 736 9 (pbk.). 10 Shades of Shame 62 1. Uralla Region (N. S.W.) — History. I. University of New 11 Circuit Court England. II. Title. (Series: University of New England history 69 series; no. 6). 12 Grand Openings 72 994.4'4 13 The Women 14 The Teamsters 80 15 Mother Love 87 Endnotes 95 li

Foreword

Three hundred years ago a wise parliamentary lawyer, John Selden, wrote two uncommonly perceptive sentences about the nature of history: Though some make slight of Libells, yet you may see by them how the wind sitts: as, take a straw and throw it upp into the aire, you shall see by that which way the wind is, which you shall not doe by casting up a stone — More solid things doe not shew the Complexion of the times so well as Ballads and libells. By `libells Selden meant what we should refer to as the raw material of oral history or folk history — old peoples recollections, popular sayings and ideas, songs and stories, none of them necessarily checked, authenticated, or even written down. Mere pub gossip, some would say: but others, more and more every year, would agree with Selden. It all depends on what kind of history you want. Those who seek a reasoned argument about past changes, carried out or presided over for the most part by great men or the occasional great woman, will seldom learn much from popular songs or old wives tales, though there are exceptions. For example, the politico-religious history of England for the century following 1660 will never be so memorably figured forth or in so few words as those of the anonymous old ballad,

The Vicar of Bray:

In good king Charless golden days When loyalty no harm meant, A zealous High Churchman was I And so I got preferment. To teach my flock I never missed Kings were by God appointed, And lost are those that dare resist Or touch the Lords anointed. ii They Came to Thunderbolt Country Foreword iii Chorus To these I do allegiance swear And this is the law that I'll maintain While they can keep possession: Until my dying day, sir: For in my faith and loyalty That whatsoever king shall reign I never more will falter I'll be the Vicar of Bray, sir. And George my lawful king will be When royal James possessed the crown Until the times do alter. And Popery grew in fashion, Chorus The penal laws I hooted down This old undeniably tells us much about the conventional And read the Declaration. subject-matter of history: — great changes in public institutions and the The Church of Rome I found would fit names ofgreat people who represented them; but it tells us a great deal Full well my constitution, more about the "Complexion of the times". Volumes could not better And I had become a Jesuit explain the increasing cynicism and materialism of English society and But for the Revolution. the English church after the Restoration, or why the second half of the Chorus eighteenth century is still known as The Age of Reason. If the historian is When William was our King declared interested in social attitudes and beliefs rather than deeds or events, then To ease the nation'sgrievance; folk history or oral history may be a better source than official With this new wind about I steered institutional records, and oral history is all the more valuable if it And swore to him allegiance. happens to be written down, no matter how many factual mistakes it may Old principles I did revoke, contain. Set conscience at a distance. Those who decry oral history do not care to remember that it was, and Passive obedience was a joke. still is, the origin of all history. The poetry which constitutes the A jest was non-resistance. `Homeric' epics was composed and passed orally from singer to singer Chorus for generations before it, Herodotus's Histories, or anythingan else was When royal Anne became ourQueen, written down in the Greek language; before in fact there was a written The Church of England'sglory, Greek language. Practically all we know of the first two hundred and fifty Another face of things was seen Years of English history was written down by the Venerable Bede who who And I became a Tory. died in 735, or by the compilers of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Occasional conformists base, worked over a century later. The 'First Fleet' bringing the English tells us, in 446 A.D. So I blamed their moderation, invaders to Kent arrived, the Chronicle And thought the church in danger was everything that happened in the first quarter of a millennium of English By such prevarication. history is oral history: what Bede learnt from old men's stories, or travellers' tales, orpossibly from the manuscript of Gildas, a monk, Chorus whose own book was necessarily based on the same kind of second, or When George in pudding time came o'er hundred-and-third hand, oral reports. And moderate men looked big, sir: But what of Bede's well known account of the Synod of Whitby held My principles I changed once more only four years before his own death? Surely that cannot be seen as And I became a Whig, sir; second hand or oral history? That depends on whether the historian And thus preferment I procured himself was actually present in the hall where the great lay and From our new faith's defender, ecclesiastical leaders of the time carried on their debate. It seems highly And almost every day abjured probable that he was an eye-witness of the event he describes and so, on The Pope and the Pretender. this occasion, aproper historian. If not, the accuracy of this account Chorus depends entirely on the memories and the veracity of his informants who The illustrious house of Hanover were in the hall. Similarly it is well known that even Hansard reports of And Protestant succession, Parliamenta ry oratory do not necessarily constitute an accurate record of iv They Came to Thunderbolt Country Foreword v

what an M.P. actually said. One has only to compare a Hansard report of It aims simply to entertain, not to instruct or analyse or reason about any speech delivered by the former Premier ofQueensland, Sir Johannes thepast. Accordingly it has no structure, no logical line of progression — Bjelke-Petersen, with a 'live' delivery on T.V. of sounds from the same and no axes togrind. Folk singers, story tellers and vaudeville artists like people's tribune. thegreat `Mo McCackie' were no freer to get on with their business of Only history written by one who has himself or herself witnessed the entertaining the audience. Nor was the greatest entertainer of them all, events described can be entirely uncorrupted by the passage of stories, Francois Rabelais. The writer of these 'memoirs' has felt equally free to whether in oral or written form, through many minds. Which is not at all beguile the reader with any number of unrelated yarns about any number to say that such history alone can be 'real' or 'true' history. of differentpeople and topics, so long as they all had some connection t In the final analysis there can be no such thing. No matter how with Uralla and the surrounding district and, before all else, so long as iE carefully the trained historian seeks to record, of a single event he has they were interesting. Unlike many oral historians, she also checked her witnessed, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, his view of facts, wherever possible, against printed sources. it will inevitably be coloured by the passions, prejudices and pre- Sophisticated people often assume that the auditor's interest can only suppositions developed in him — or her — by his own life experiences. In attach to deeds of the great and famous, although nothing could be further other words the 'subjective' emotional tricks of memory and other such from the truth. How often have you been bored witless by an after factors, which bedevil oral history or folk history, inevitably affect too dinner story beginning, "When I was at Oxford. . . ", and followed by the the most rigorously written, triply certificated academic history. So is recounting of events which, if transposed to the University of Melbourne there nothing to choose between oral history and 'official' history? or Kalamazoo, would not raise a sickly smirk even from the narrator? In Not at all. That all history presents apartial view of the past does not the absence of illustrious persons, chroniclers of small beer and the mean that it is all equally biassed or inaccurate. Written history is better county pump have no such means of attaching a bogus interest to their than oral history as a rule, not because it is different in kind but because it stories. Genuine interest must be intrinsic to the people or events takes more time and pains to construct, and it is very much more subject described. to criticism, verification, correction, or damnation by other historians. How can commonplace events in the commonplace lives of the Written history differs in another way from oral or popular history. anonymous inhabitants of a small bush town interest anyone? The Traditionally history has always been concerned withgreat changes in answer lies in their historicity, or the differences between then and now. society which affect whole nations or other large groups of people. It is The folk historian's characters intrigue us precisely because they are concerned with public, political, religious and industrial events seen to average specimens of common humanity who at the same time live, and be carried out by great public figures. Oral history, by contrast, tends to in some wasY even feel, differently from today's everyperson. The last be concerned with common people'sprivate and domestic lives, and with wordpoints to a most striking difference. A hundred years ago, Uralla, small groups of people. and the whole of Australia, was a very much more harshly male- My argument is that oral or popular history, whether or not in printed dominated place thanth it is today, and a correspondingly more terrible form, is much more important than traditionalists have allowed. It is a place for women and children. Shocking cases of rape and child abuse very much greater component than we realise of all history ,even of the are still too common in the 1980's, but they are generally condemned by best history, and it often throws a light on aspects of the past completely public opinion and reported in the media. In the 1880's many thought it a neglected by 'great historians. It also has thegreat advantage of being father's right to rape and bash his wife, or flog his children with a buggy made as often by the vanquished, as by the victors. That is why it is as whip. Those sensitive souls who did not agree were rarely brave enough interested in the poor and inarticulate many, or those seen as their to intrude, or even to comment on the private domestic affairs of a champions, as in the distinguished few; in small obscure communities, as neighbour of other acquaintance. in the great and famous ones; in common orgeneral movements of Of course we did not need a rambling history of Uralla written mainly human feeling, as in particular or class ones. Finally we have called the from oral sources, to discover that Australia a century ago was a cruder shade of the Venerable Bede, incomparably the greatest historian of his and more brutal place than it is now; but nothing read or seen before place and time, to witness that an oral history of any community, large or made me realise the extent, and the everyday acceptance of the small, is a great deal better than no history at all. brutishness, as keenly as the artless memories of an old man, now dead, These reflections have been occasioned by re-reading of The Bruce Smith, the writer's chief informant. Similarly, to know that there Australian Legend and a first reading of They Came to Thunderbolt was no dole or other 'social services' for those who would now be called Country. Jeanè Upjohn's book engagingly exhibits the virtues of folk members of disadvantaged groups, is not the same as to know that hungry history. vii vi They Came to Thunderbolt Country Foreword

people worked out of doors through New England winters with their feet different account of the slaughter. Hundreds, or at any rate many score of swathed in rags to keep out the cold. unarmed men, women and children, spread out in a half moon formation, So much for the "Complexion of the times". What of the facts one came down the gully waving branches in token of peace. They were might expect to find in a conventional or proper history? There are driving a mob of kangaroos before them. They did not threaten anybody. plenty of them, some even concerning great people, great that is at Moore ordered the soldiers to start shooting at about eleven oclock. A least in the minute world of Uralla. Samuel and Martha McCrossin, for great many black Tasmanians were killed and wounded, perhaps fifty or instance, brought their seven children from County Tyrone to Sandon sixty. "Some of their bones were sent in two casks to Port Jackson by Dr. County in the bounty ship Cadet in 1841. Theiryoungest son built Mountgarrett," added Edward White, the convict who had been weilding McCrossins Mill, became an explorer, and died as Urallas most his hoe nearby when the massacre began. James Bonwick, who recorded prominent citizen. Edward Trickett, champion sculler in 1876, and the these folk stories in 1869, seemed to endorse another informants first Australian world champion in any sport, lies buried in the Salvation suggestion that Moore was still drunk after a night on the bottle, and a brutal desire to see the NIGGERS Army section of Urallas Cemetery. His son founded the store at what ordered the slaughter, merely from used to be known as Tricketts Corner; but the most interesting facts are run!" of another sort. What follows is incomparably the best history of Uralla and District Bruce Smith told how as a lad he helped ayoung man to build a bark we have. More, it is the best history of a comparably small Australian hut. As this was, after their tent, the first type of habitation made by the communit y that I have ever read. early white settlers in the bush, nineteenth century books and manuscripts Russel Ward often gave a new-chum directions on how it was done. All that I have read omitted any reference to the crucial part of the operation, which happened to stick in the little boys memory. The green sheets of bark, cut from the living ironbark or other eucalypt, were cylindrical or semi- cylindrical in shape. To flatten them out for hut building the bushman had to pass each sheet, its wet hollow side downwards, slowly back and forth over the embers of a very hot fire. This is the kind of fact that oral history is best at; but I want finally to stress that often the oral historians statements are not much less likely to be factually correct than those of the most dry-as-dust academic. Just one case in point. The first white invaders under Lieutenant Bowen occupied Risdon Cove in Van Diemens Land in September 1803. Eight months later on 4th May 1804 soldiers commanded by Lieutenant Moore of the Rum Corps (101st Regiment) began destroying the black Tasmanian race. As most people were illiterate, Moore gave what was for long the only written account, and is still the official account of events. Five to six hundred Aborigines approached the British camp in such a threatening manner that he ordered the soldiers to fire and "a few natives" were killed. Moore did not report the ages, sex, or number of the dead. This account was passed on by Lieutenant-Governor Collins to Governor Macquarie in Sydney and so on to the colonial authorities in London where it became the definitive historical record of the incident. So it would probaby have remained, but for the wagging tongues of some we may legitimately call illiterate oral historians, who happened to have been present that morning. Over twenty years later Governor Arthur appointed a committee of white gentlemen to enquire into the causes of the blackpeoples implacable hostility. A convict workman gave the committee a very