Longing or Belonging? Responses to a ‘new’ land in southern 1829-1907

Jane Davis B.A., Grad Dip Psych., Dip Ed

This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Western Australia

School of Humanities, Discipline of History November 2008

Abstract

While it is now well established that many Europeans were delighted with the landscapes they encountered in colonial Australia, the pioneer narrative that portrays colonists as threatened and alienated by a harsh environment and constantly engaged in battles with the land is still powerful in both scholarly and popular writing. This thesis challenges this dominant narrative and demonstrates that in a remarkably short period of time some colonists developed strong connections with, and even affection for, their ‘new’ place in Western Australia. Using archival materials for twenty-one colonists who settled in five regions across southern Western Australia from the 1830s to the early 1900s, here this complex process of belonging is unravelled and several key questions are posed: what lenses did the colonists utilise to view the land? How did they use and manage the land? How were issues of class, domesticity and gender roles negotiated in their ‘new’ environment? What connections did they make with the land? And ultimately, to what extent did they feel a sense of belonging in the Colony? I argue that although utilitarian approaches to the land are evident, this was not the only way colonists viewed the land; for example, they often used the picturesque to express delight and charm. Gender roles and ideas of class were modified as men, as well as women, worked in the home and planted flower gardens, and both men and women carried out tasks that in their households in England and Ireland, would have been done by servants. Thus, the demarcation of activities that were traditionally for men, women and servants became less distinct and amplified their connection to place. Boundaries between the colonists’ domestic space and the wider environments also became more permeable as women ventured beyond their houses and gardens to explore and journey through the landscapes. The selected colonists had romantic ideas of nature and wilderness, that in the British middle and upper-middle class were associated with being removed from the land, but in colonial Western Australia many of them were intimately engaged with it. Through their interactions with the land and connections they made with their social networks, most of these colonists developed an attachment for their ‘new’ place and called it home; they belonged there.

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ii Contents

Acknowledgements………………………………………………………...v List of Maps and Illustrations……………………………………………vii

Introduction Questions and Method…………………………………1

Chapter One Framing the Questions: Place, Home and Belonging...13

Chapter Two Colonists, their Culture and Reading their Responses to Place in Australia……………………………………..35

Chapter Three The Upper Swan………………………………………79

Chapter Four Augusta and The Vasse……………………………...119

Chapter Five Australind and Picton………………………………..157

Chapter Six The Avon Valley…………………………………….195

Chapter Seven The Eastern Goldfields………………………………231

Conclusion Longing or Belonging?...... 267

Select Bibliography……………………………………………………...275

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iv Acknowledgements

I could only have completed this project with the support and assistance of a great many people, and here I wish to thank you all. Thank you to my supervisors, Andrea Gaynor and Charlie Fox. To have one good supervisor is wonderful; to have two truly great people who are approachable, who listen, who ask thoughtful and thought provoking questions, who patiently read draft chapters and make constructive comments, and who are encouraging at every stage is lucky indeed! You have both been tremendous. The history post-graduate students here at the University of Western Australia are known for their social networking, as well as their academic talent. Thank you all for your camaraderie over cups of tea and glasses of wine as we compared frustrations and accomplishments. Thanks especially to Sarah and Ruth, for your friendship and the fun we have shared. To my dear friends in Anthropology, Martin Forsey and Debra McDougall, thank you, too – for listening, sharing thoughts, reading chapters and for your enthusiastic encouragement. My thesis draws on ideas from disciplines other than history and has shades of your influence! Beyond the University community I wish to thank you, Megan, for your friendship and support over many cups of tea at John Street. Thanks to Phyllis Barnes, who generously gave me access to her transcriptions of Marshall Waller Clifton’s Journal. Thanks also to the staff at the Battye Library who efficiently retrieved numerous archival documents. Thank you to Matt, Sam and Harry, who keep me firmly grounded, and whose love reminds me of what is truly important. Above all, thank you to my parents, Carol and Frank Mansfield. This is for you.

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vi List of Maps and Illustrations

Figure 1. 1 The at the end of 1830 Figure 3. 1 The Swan River Colony, 1836 Figure 3. 2 Landholders, middle and upper Swan district, early 1830s Figure 3. 3 Eliza Shaw Figure 3. 4 William Shaw Figure 3. 5 , ca. 1841 Figure 3. 6 William and Hester Tanner Figure 3. 7 ‘Millendon’, George Fletcher Moore’s house, 1840s Figure 4. 1 Karri forest Figure 4. 2 Augusta and The Vasse Figure 4. 3 John Garrett Bussell, 1840s? Figure 5. 1 Plan of the intended town of Australind on Leschenault Inlet Figure 5. 2 Louisa Clifton and Marshall Waller Clifton Figure 5. 3 Louisa Clifton, View of Leschenault Inlet Figure 5. 4 After Louisa Clifton, A view of Koombana Bay or Port Leschenault Figure 5. 5 John Ramsden Wollaston’s sketch of a gully in its natural state Figure 5. 6 John Ramsden Wollaston’s sketch of a modified gully Figure 7. 1 Charles Combe Deland Figure 7. 2 Edward Campbell Deland (referred to as Campbell) Figure 7. 3 Western Australian goldfields, 1899 Figure 7. 4 Kalgoorlie from Mt Charlotte, 1897 Figure 7. 5 The drawing room and mantelpiece of Maude Wordsworth James, ca. 1907 Figure 7. 6 ‘Our Camp at Mullingar’, ca.1898 Figure 7. 7 ‘Letter from home’, 1895

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Introduction Questions and Method

How comfortable to be at home – at home! What singular beings we are. What ideas this word suggests. Where is Home?1

In March 1897 Maude Wordsworth James alighted from the train on to the platform at Kalgoorlie. She had left her home in Tasmania and travelled to the Goldfields to join her husband who had secured work there a year earlier. Soon after she arrived in Kalgoorlie she declared, ‘I daresay I shall live the feeling down, but to me, Kalgoorlie is the most depressing place I was ever in.’2 Such anguish is a familiar theme in Australian colonial history. Nor are such reactions surprising when we imagine the experiences of Europeans new to Western Australia who had left their families, the green fields and leafy woods of England, Ireland, , Wales or the milder climatic conditions of parts of the eastern colonies of Australia. Possibly more remarkable is that like Maude, many of them came to feel at ease and, to some extent, ‘at home’ in their new environment. Ten years after she arrived in Kalgoorlie Maude concluded a poem about Mullingar, the locality of Kalgoorlie where she lived, with the following line: ‘And glad I am that I still dwell in my dear Mullingar.’ 3 Surprising or not, how people become attached to place, call it home and develop a sense of belonging is not well understood; this thesis therefore illuminates this process. With a focus on responses to landscape my concern here is to unravel the means by and extent to which European newcomers to southern Western Australia from 1829- 1907 came to call Western Australia home in some way. How can we understand Maude’s affinity for Mullingar, far removed in distance and appearance from her original home? How did the , who left the thriving urban centre of Portsea in the early 1830s and emigrated to the South West corner of Western Australia, find anything to appreciate in landscapes that at first appeared to them as wilderness? Similar questions are asked of my other subjects. These are George Fletcher Moore and Eliza Shaw who arrived in the Colony in 1830, Hester and William Tanner who arrived

1 George Fletcher Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, Hesperian Press, Victoria Park, Western Australia, 2006, 13/5/1833, p. 230 (emphasis in original). 2 Maude Wordsworth James (hereafter MWJ), Journal, BL, 4739A, p. 8. 3 MWJ, Journal, BL, 4739A, p. 327. 1 in 1831 and who all in settled in the Upper Swan district; Marshall Waller Clifton, his daughter Louisa Clifton and John Ramsden Wollaston, who made lives for themselves at Australind and Picton in the 1840s; Eliza Brown, Henry de Burgh and Gerald de Courcy Lefroy who arrived in Western Australia in the early 1840s and lived in the Avon Valley, and Janet Millett who arrived in 1863 and also lived in the Avon Valley; and, lastly, Charles and Campbell Deland whose time on the Eastern Goldfields coincided with the arrival of Maude Wordsworth James. My focus is on people who stayed, at least for a few years, built houses, brought up families, earned a living from the land or worked for a wage in the towns; it is not with itinerant people such as explorers, journalists, geographers or botanists, for the agendas of peripatetic people was different from those who remained. There are, therefore, two broad aims of this thesis. One is to increase understanding of how white colonists to southern Western Australia responded to their new environments. The second is to contribute to discussions of home and belonging that are now established themes across many academic disciplines. The process of how some Europeans in colonial Australia came to feel a sense of belonging, while others remained alienated is complex and the colonists’ responses to the ‘new’ environments they encountered were strongly influenced by their cultural heritage. In the journals, diaries and letters of the colonists several themes recurred that were particularly significant. From these themes the following questions emerge that are central to my discussion. How were their ideas of nature and wilderness interpreted in the new landscapes of Western Australia? How did romanticism and ideas about the picturesque influence their relationship with the land? How were their ideas of gardens modified and what role did they play in attaching meaning to place? How did ideas of civilisation, savagery and progress influence their relationship with the land? How did their understanding of Aboriginal connections to the land, and their knowledge that Aboriginal people inhabited the country before they arrived, influence their own relationships with the environment and their sense of belonging? How were their old class and gender roles as they operated in their homes and gardens transposed in new landscapes? I am also interested in how their responses differed across regions of southern Western Australia and how their period of arrival, place of origin, attachment to family and disposition influenced this process. Throughout this study I argue that the interaction of a European cultural heritage and the Western Australian landscape on a micro scale was complicated. I contest the

2 notion that European culture was transplanted and transposed onto a new environment with little appreciation of this land.4 I also challenge writers who generally claim that, apart from a few exceptions such as Georgiana Molloy, the land alienated and estranged these newcomers.5 By focusing on individuals and asking different questions concerning the colonists and their relationships to ‘new’ landscapes, I demonstrate that interactions between European newcomers and the land were more complex and less negative than previous scholarship has suggested. I argue that many of the colonists developed an affinity with environments that at first were unfamiliar and frightening. They came to feel they belonged in Western Australia and called it home. In Australian writing today ideas of belonging and love of country are predominantly associated with Indigenous people.6 However, non- are also expressing a sense of belonging and attachment to their land. Peter Read is concerned with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of belonging, and works such as these by Read contribute to awareness that across the country contemporary Australians from diverse backgrounds are attached to place.7 However, we have to recognise that since they arrived, non-Indigenous people have felt that they also belonged.8 While it is imperative that all Australians know and understand the

4 This is the dominant view of works such as Thomas Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999, p. 45; William J. Lines, Taming the Great South Land; A History of the Conquest of Nature in Australia, Allen & Unwin, North Sydney, 1991; Richard H. Grove, Green Imperialism: colonial expansion, tropical island Edens, and the origins of environmentalism, 1600-1860, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and Melbourne, 1996, pp. 44 and 56. 5 See for example, Lines, Taming the Great South Land; Sharon Morgan, Land Settlement in Early Tasmania: Creating an Antipodean England, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and Melbourne, 1992; Jane Grellier, ‘Awe, disillusionment and fear: attitudes to landscape among Christian colonists of far South-West Australia’, unpublished MA thesis, University of Western Australia, 1996. 6 Recent publications include Mark McKenna, Looking for Blackfella’s Point: An Australian history of place, University of Press, Sydney, 2002; Deborah Bird Rose, Nourishing terrains: Australian Aboriginal views of landscape and wilderness, Australian Heritage Commission, Canberra, 1996; Deborah Bird Rose, Dingo makes us human: life and land in an Aboriginal Australian culture, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and Melbourne, 1992; Bruce Pascoe, Convincing Ground: Learning to fall in Love with your Country, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 2007; Sally Morgan, Tjalaminu Mia and Blaze Kwaymullina, Heartsick for Country, Arts Centre Press, North Fremantle, 2008. 7 Peter Read, Returning to Nothing: The meaning of lost places, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and Melbourne, 1996; Peter Read, Belonging: Australians, place and Aboriginal ownership, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge & N.Y., 2000; Peter Read, Haunted Earth, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2003. 8 Alan Atkinson is one historian who has suggested that colonists in Australia could develop feelings of attachment and belonging for their ‘new’ land but he has not explored this idea further. Alan Atkinson, Camden, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1988; Alan Atkinson, 3 grave injustices that were committed against the Aboriginal people when colonists invaded their country and appropriated their lands, this thesis argues that in colonial Australia there were Europeans who called their new place ‘home’.

Establishment of the Swan River Colony Other historians have explored questions relating to how and why the British established the Swan River Colony9 and a brief account will suffice here.10 After exploring the Swan River in 1827 Captain James Stirling convinced the English authorities that it was a favourable place for settlement. The English press portrayed the Swan River in glowing terms and there was great interest among the English middle- class who were motivated by the prospect of economic advancement and an increase in social status by acquiring large land grants. Stirling established the Swan River Colony in June 1829 and by December 500 colonists had arrived. Another 1000 people had emigrated by July 1830, but the conditions were less favourable than expected. Colonists wrote letters to England complaining about the lack of land suitable for agriculture and the shortage of labour. Thus, in the following two years only an additional 130 colonists arrived and settled at the Swan River.11 Historians have emphasised the fact that the Swan River Colony was initially established for free settlers and that commerce was the basis for colonisation. The British government’s ‘Conditions of Settlement’ for the Colony had three objectives. These were to minimise government expenditure, attract private investors and ensure that land grants were used productively.12 Land was allocated to colonists on the value of the assets and labour they brought with them. This differed from the primarily penal

The Europeans in Australia: A History, Volume One, The Beginning, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1997. 9 The Swan River Colony, established in 1829, was not the first European settlement in Australia’s western parts. Albany was settled in 1826 when the Governor of NSW claimed the area for Britain. See Geoffrey Bolton, Land of Vision and Mirage: Western Australia since 1826, University of Western Australia Press, Crawley, 2008, pp. 6-7. 10 See for example Pamela Statham, ‘Swan River Colony 1829-1850’ in C.T. Stannage (ed) A New History of Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1981, pp. 181-210; J.M.R. Cameron, Ambition’s Fire: the agricultural colonization of pre-convict Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1981; R.T. Appleyard and Toby Manford, The Beginning: European Discovery and Early Settlement of Swan River Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1979; Ian Berryman (ed), Swan River Letters, Vol 1, Swan River Press, Glengarry, W.A., 2002; Pamela Statham-Drew, James Stirling: Admiral and Founding Governor of Western Australia, UWA Press, Crawley, 2003. 11 These figures are from Cameron, Ambition’s Fire, pp. 51-2. 12 Statham, ‘Swan River Colony 1829-1850’, p. 183. 4 colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land. Arising from these different beginnings there has been a tendency to view Western Australia as different from other colonies. Charlie Fox suggested recently that this view is the result of historiographical issues and that Western Australia was never really different from the rest of Australia.13 While the founding of the Swan River Colony on the basis of free enterprise may not be significant for a long-term perspective, it significantly affected how colonists initially responded to the land. The establishment of the Swan River Colony did see middle- class immigrants acquire land and then relate to this land in ways that were different to that of landowners in England. In the Colony14 some of them worked the land and were not removed from agricultural processes, as were landowners in England. Many were unaccustomed to and unprepared for manual work in their own country, let alone on land that was totally unfamiliar to them. By the 1890s, though, when the Europeans of my final chapter came to the Colony, it was gold rather than land that had attracted them and those who lived on the goldfields experienced landscapes very different to the Upper Swan, the South West or the Avon Valley. The economy of the Colony in the 1890s was also very different than it was in the 1830s and 1840s. Economic growth was slow in the period 1850-1880s but during the 1890s railways, harbours and roads were constructed, agricultural areas expanded and a manufacturing sector developed. The European population of the Colony had increased from 5, 886 in 1850 to 48, 502 in 1890.15 Then, with the discovery of gold at Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie the population jumped to 179,967 by 1900.16 Gold attracted thousands of people to the Colony but it also affected the distribution of the population as Europeans established settlements far from and the South West. Politically, too, the 1890s were very different to the 1830s and 1840s. By the time that Maude Wordsworth James left Kalgoorlie in 1907, the Colony of

13 Charlie Fox, ‘The View from the West’ in Martyn Lyons and Penny Russell (eds), Australia’s History: Themes and Debates, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2005, pp. 81-98. 14 In January 1832 Captain James Stirling became Governor of territory that, geographically, was almost the same as Western Australia today. Prior to this he had jurisdiction over the Swan River Colony that included the Swan River, land south of the river, York, Augusta and The Vasse. (Statham-Drew, James Stirling, pp. 182, 203-04) 15 R.T. Appleyard, ‘Western Australia: Economic and Demographic Growth, 1850-1914’ in C.T, Stannage (ed), A New History of Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1981, p. 212. 16 R.T. Appleyard, ‘Western Australia: Economic and Demographic Growth, 1850-1914’, p. 219. 5 Western Australia had become the State of Western Australia, having joined the Australian Commonwealth at Federation in 1901.17

Answering the Questions: Method and Sources To explore these issues of belonging and answer the questions discussed earlier, I have used archival material as the basis of my primary research. I have scrutinized the writing of selected individuals to find information about their relationship with the land, Aboriginal people, their dwellings, gardens and their emotional attachment both to their place of origin and their new homes. With the exception of Mrs Janet Millett’s guide for emigrants,18 the principal sources are in the form of diaries, journals and letters. Initially I cast a wide net to survey material written by both men and women from a range of landscapes in southern Western Australia. Final selection of the sources was based on the richest material, in which the colonists wrote in detail about my areas of interest and expressed their thoughts and feelings, as well as making observations about the land and simple accounts of their daily activities. My sources were not selected on the basis of whether or not they came to feel a sense of belonging in the colony, and indeed, not all of my subjects embraced these ‘new’ places. Diaries and letters are frequently used as historical documents and they have also been studied as a genre of writing. Diary writing was a common pastime for both men and women in England from at least the sixteenth century.19 In the nineteenth century personal and public diaries were used frequently to record events, thoughts and feelings but there was an increasing awareness that diary writing was also a literary activity.20 Personal diaries, and to a lesser extent accounts of journeys and expeditions, were the diaries most frequently used by the colonists of this study, and for some of them writing was a creative form of self-expression. Although both men and women wrote diaries in the nineteenth century, scholars have expressed particular interest in women’s diaries. Harriett Blodgett acknowledged

17 See Bolton, Land of Vision and Mirage, Chapter 4, ‘The Golden West, 1895-1905’, pp. 65-86 for a comprehensive discussion of the circumstances and process by which the Swan River Colony became the State of Western Australia. 18 Mrs Edward Millett, An Australian Parsonage or the Settler and the Savage in Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, facsimile edition, 1980 (first published , 1872). 19 Harriet Blodgett, Centuries of Female Days: Englishwomen’s Private Diaries, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick and New Jersey, 1988, p. 21. 20 Robert Fothergill, Private Chronicles: A Study of English Diaries, Oxford University Press, London, 1974, pp. 32, 33. 6 that men kept diaries but she suggested that this habit was especially useful to women.21 Why should this be the case? There are many motives for writing a diary. Fothergill suggested men and women wrote diaries to gain a sense of control over their lives, as a religious or contemplative exercise, as an aid to self-development, as a record of activities, as a means of storing memories or for the purpose of social observation.22 However, in a patriarchal society where there were few opportunities for women to have a public voice, diary writing provided an appropriate form of self-expression that was particularly beneficial for women to gain an identity and feelings of self-worth.23 So, although women wrote to communicate their experiences and to keep in touch with family and friends, their diaries and journals also fulfilled a psychological need. This self-consciousness provides researchers with insights into the author’s thoughts and feelings as well as practical information about daily life. Joy Hooton has argued that women’s writing of the nineteenth century is generally more appealing to twentieth century readers as women were more reflective and frank while men tended to write in a style that was more factual and impersonal.24 I have not found this distinction as clear in my sources. The journals of George Fletcher Moore and Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, in particular, are reflective and contemplative and have provided rich material for discussion and analysis. In their discussion of Australian women’s letters and diaries, Patricia Clarke and Dale Spender suggested that letter writing was a way of maintaining relationships for colonial women, many of whom had not chosen to emigrate.25 Women also wrote letters to express frustration, relieve boredom and gain information. Journals were used to express responses to colonial life and were sometimes difficult to distinguish from letters written in instalments, sometimes referred to as serial letters or letter diaries.26 These served the purpose of both a diary and a letter and the author frequently kept a copy. George Fletcher Moore and the Bussells used this form of writing. Occasionally, too, the Bussells shared their letter diaries so that one member of the family would begin writing and another added to this, giving the reader a different perspective of the

21 Blodgett, Centuries of Female Days, p. 97. 22 Fothergill, Private Chronicles, Chapter 4. 23 Blodgett, Centuries of Female Days, p. 5. 24 Joy Hooton, ‘Lifelines in Stormy Seas: some Recent Collections of Women’s Diaries and Letters’, Australian Literary Studies, Vol 16, No 1, 1993. 25 Patricia Clarke and Dale Spender (eds), Lifelines: Australian women’s letters and diaries 1788 to 1840, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, 1992. 26 Clarke and Spender (eds), Lifelines, pp. xxv, 121, 190; Blodgett, Centuries of Female Days, p. 24. 7 same event. Janet Doust called this an open family diary; a public document kept in the household that family members used to record their activities.27 It was different from a closed, personal diary kept by an individual, as it was accessible to all members of the household. Diaries, journals, letters and Janet Millett’s guide to emigrants all provide detailed and complex insights into activities and relationships of individuals not revealed in public, official documents, but they are not without their shortcomings. My reliance on these written sources limits this study to those who were literate and as stated earlier, the colonists of my thesis were all from the middle or upper-middle class and were well-educated. Another issue arising from my material relates to the question of the intended audience of my sources. All the letters, journals and diaries referred to in this study were written with a particular reader, or readers, in mind, influencing what the colonists included and what they omitted. For example, although Eliza Shaw’s letters to her father were informative, they also reassured him that Eliza and her family were well, happy and adapting to their new circumstances. Similarly, letters from the Deland brothers on the goldfields were written to inform, but also to satisfy their parents in that they were keeping well, both physically and morally. Other material, such as letters written by the Bussells and George Fletcher Moore, were intended to be passed around to family and friends back in England or Ireland. The journal of Maude Wordsworth James, written in the 1890s, more than fifty years after the Bussell family and George Fletcher Moore wrote their first letters from the colony, is an interesting combination of personal reflections, a record of public events and copies of her letters to family and friends. Like the Bussells, Maude was self-conscious of her role as a ‘pioneer’. She believed that she and her husband contributed to the ‘progress’ of Kalgoorlie as it developed into an important mining centre. Furthermore, although seemingly humble about her writing, Maude was not secretive about her ambitions to publish some of her work. While Maude Wordsworth James aspired to be a published author, Janet Millett did publish her account of life as a settler.28 An Australian Parsonage or the Settler and the Savage in Western Australia was written as a guide for emigrants based on her

27 The open family diary as a genre is discussed in relation to a pioneer family in Victoria and New South Wales by Janet Doust, ‘Kinship and Accountability: The diaries of a pioneer pastoralist family, 1856-1898’, History Australia, Vol 2, No 1, 2004, pp. 1-14. 28 Millett, An Australian Parsonage. 8 collection of notes that she compiled while living at York. Guides were written specifically for English people emigrating to Australia during the 1850s and provided practical advice and information about the Colonies.29 One of the most popular was Philips’ Emigrant’s Guide to Australia in the 1850s and Janet Millett may have used this as a model, although her book was more autobiographical.30 The historian, Rica Erickson, commented on the value of An Australian Parsonage for students of colonial Western Australia,31 and while it contains valuable information about the Colony, her observations are likely to have been considered, embellished and edited for her audience in a way that was different from the letters and diaries written by other colonists of this study. As mentioned, I selected source material from colonists living in five regions of southern Western Australia. For this study the southern region extends from the Avon Valley north east of the Swan River to Kalgoorlie in the east and south to Augusta. This triangle defines the geographical parameters of my study. Focusing on diverse geographical regions enables me to compare colonists’ relationships to landscape across these regions. I consider the extent to which variations in landscape accounted for different responses and different connections made between the domestic space of the white newcomers and the environment beyond their house and garden. The time frame for this study extends from 1829, when the Swan River Colony was established, through to 1907, when Maude Wordsworth James concluded her journal. This colonial period looms large in narratives about the way in which people have come to terms with place in Australia and I want to explore these and challenge some of the prevailing assumptions. It also makes it possible to explore whether, and if so, how, living in different landscapes influenced the process of belonging, as by 1907 European settlement had extended over southern Western Australia. Chapter One discusses ideas of place, attachment, home and belonging and provides a theoretical framework for my key questions. Chapter Two is concerned with

29 D.J. Golding, ‘Introduction’ in John Capper, Philips’ Emigrant’s Guide to Australia in the Eighteen Fifties, edited by D.J. Golding, Hawthorn Press, Melbourne, 1973 (London, 1856), pp. 2-3. Although most of these guides were written for the eastern colonies, one notable exception was Nathaniel Ogle, The Colony of Western Australia: A Manual for Emigrants, John Ferguson Pty., Ltd., NSW, 1977 (London, 1839). 30 John Capper, Philips’ Emigrant’s Guide to Australia in the Eighteen Fifties, edited by D.J. Golding, Hawthorn Press, Melbourne, 1973 (London, 1856). 31 Rica Erickson, ‘Introduction’, Mrs Edward Millett, An Australian Parsonage or the Settler and the Savage in Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, facsimile edition, 1980, (first published London, 1872). 9 the ways in which inherited world views influenced how the colonists understood their ‘new’ environments and discusses how other scholars have interpreted their interactions with the landscape. Subsequent chapters are based on place and time. For each region considered I discuss a number of themes in relation to key people for whom there are extensive archival records. Colonists first took up land on the banks of the Swan River, near Guildford (see Figure 3.1). George Fletcher Moore, Eliza Shaw and William and Hester Tanner were among the early colonists who settled there and they are the subjects of Chapter Three. These colonists of the Upper Swan illustrate the complex meanings of home. George Fletcher Moore found much to admire in the landscapes of the Swan River but he missed his family and friends and for this reason, while he called his property near the Swan River home, he never truly belonged there. Similarly, Hester and William Tanner’s strong connections to their social network in England made it difficult for them to develop a sense of belonging. Eliza Shaw, though, did feel that she belonged in the Colony, but her connections to place in the Upper Swan were based on the strong ties she felt to her children, rather than on her affection for or attachment to the land. Very soon after the Swan River Colony was proclaimed, Captain Stirling encouraged a group of colonists to take up land in the far south-west. John Bussell with two of his brothers, as well as James Woodward Turner and his household and Captain John Molloy and his wife, Georgiana, arrived in Flinders Bay in May 1830 and established Augusta (see Figure 1.1). Chapter Four focuses on the Bussell family at Augusta and then at the Vasse. The experiences of John Bussell and his brothers and sisters show that members of the same family with similar ideas about the world and similar experiences responded to new environments and situations very differently. It is clear from this study that individual personality plays a significant role in how people respond to place. For example, Charles Bussell and Gerald de Courcy Lefroy were pessimists and, at times, Lefroy was melancholic, whereas Fanny Bussell was an optimist, wrote more positively about life in Western Australia and made stronger connections to place there. Chapter Five considers Louisa Clifton, her father Marshall Waller Clifton and John Ramsden Wollaston, and their relationships with the environment at Australind and Picton (near Port Leschenault, Figure 1.1). In this chapter the contrast between Marshall Waller Clifton and John Ramsden Wollaston assists in developing an understanding of how people become attached to place. Clifton, financially better off

10 than his fellow colonists and less reliant on the land for survival, adopted a more romantic approach to the landscapes, though his attachment to his children was greater than his attachment to the land. In contrast, Wollaston, who also had children, connected emotionally to place by working on the land. In the 1840s Europeans began farming activities in the Avon Valley (in the vicinity of York, Figures 1.1 and 3.1), and Chapter Six explores responses to this environment using material written by Eliza Brown, Henry de Burgh, Gerald de Courcy Lefroy and Janet Millett. These colonists to the Avon Valley expressed markedly different degrees of attachment. Eliza Brown found meaning in her life at Grass Dale and this became a place of great significance for her, while at the other end of the spectrum, Gerald de Courcy Lefroy constantly expressed dismay with his life in the Colony and never developed feelings of attachment or a sense of belonging there. The final substantive chapter, Chapter Seven, moves east to the Goldfields (Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie, Figure 7.3) and forward to the 1890s. Here, my theme of belonging is discussed with reference to Maude Wordsworth James and Charles and Campbell Deland. The landscapes of the goldfields were difficult for Europeans accustomed to less arid environments to adjust to, and this was reflected in their responses. In addition, perhaps more than any of the colonists discussed in previous chapters, Maude Wordsworth James and the Deland brothers show how factors such as family background and involvement with social networks influence the process of belonging. In the concluding chapter I draw all this material together and argue that these colonists responded to landscape in diverse and complex ways. While for some, the environment remained alienating and Western Australia never became ‘home’, for others an initial curiosity and admiration of the landscape developed into feelings of attachment. For some of these people home was both Western Australia and the place they had left, but others expressed a strong sense of belonging and for them, ‘home’ was Western Australia.

11

Figure 1.1 The Swan River Colony at the end of 183032

32 The Swan River Colony at the end of 1830, Statham-Drew, James Stirling, p. 182. 12 Chapter One Framing the Questions: Place, Home and Belonging

How do people become attached to places? How do they come to call a new place ‘home’? How do they come to feel a sense of belonging? In a world of increasing globalisation, immigration and displaced peoples, these questions are fundamental in thinking about what makes us human. The concepts of place, home and belonging have been explored from many perspectives including the philosophical, phenomenological, ecological, architectural, spiritual, cultural, geographical, historical, ethnographical, sociological and psychological.1 A brief overview of significant authors and approaches that have influenced the path of my discussions here provides a framework for exploring the extent to and the ways in which colonists to southern Western Australia became attached to their ‘new’ environments. Many philosophers, including John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Gaston Bachelard and Martin Heidegger, have been concerned with questions of space and its relationship to place, and their writings have influenced how some geographers, anthropologists and historians have utilised these concepts in their own work on attachment to place, home and belonging. The question of whether space comes before place or place comes before space is contentious and leads to lengthy, abstract discussions, but because it has a bearing on what terms are used in the following discussions, it needs resolving at the outset. In a complex essay Edward Casey has explained that he is uneasy about the idea that in anthropology place is usually regarded as being made up from space.2 Using a phenomenological approach, based on acquiring knowledge through experience, he

1 See for example, Steven Feld & Keith H. Basso, Senses of Place, School of American Research Press, Seattle and distributed by the University of Washington Press, 1996; Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Boston, 1964; George Seddon, Sense of Place: a response to the environment, the Swan Coastal Plain Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1972; Ruth Barcan & Ian Buchanan, Imagining Australian Space: Cultural Studies and Spatial Inquiry, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1999; David Fitzpatrick (ed), Home or Away? Immigrants in Colonial Australia, Division of Historical Studies and Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies, Research School of Social Science, Australian National University, Canberra, 1992; Doreen Massey, Space, Place and Gender, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1994; Setha M. Low & Denise Lawrence-Zuniga, The anthropology of space and place: locating culture, Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA, 2003; Jane Mulcock, ‘ “Welcome to my Dreaming Place”: Landscape, Identity and Settler Belonging in Contemporary Australia’ in G. Willett (ed), Thinking Down Under: Australian Politics, Society and Culture in Transition, Wissenchaftlicher Verlag Trier, Trier, 2006, pp. 87-103; I. Altman, & S. Low, Place Attachment, Plenum Press, New York, 1992. 2 Edward S. Casey, ‘How to get from space to place in a fairly short stretch of time’ in Feld & Basso, Senses of Place, pp. 13-52. 13 contends that contrary to modern Western thought, space and time are found in place; we experience space and time together in place so space cannot come before place. As Casey suggests, this approach to space and place is at odds with Western philosophy and common sense.3 It is more usual to argue that spaces exist before places and become places by the meanings people bestow on them. This is the approach taken by many scholars including the geographers Yi-Fu Tuan, Edward Relph and Theano S. Terkenli; the historian Paul Carter; Ruth Barcan and Ian Buchanan from cultural studies; and I. Altman and Seth M. Low in their collection of essays on place attachment.4 This is also how I understand the relationship between space and place. The colonists came with some knowledge of the Colony and imagined the spaces there. At first these were unfamiliar to them, but through their experiences they invested them with meaning and they became places. The process by which people feel attached to place, call a place ‘home’ and develop a sense of belonging to place has been studied by academics from a range of disciplines. Human geographers in the 1970s were among the earlier scholars to undertake studies of place attachment. Most notable of these were Yi-Fu Tuan and Edward Relph. Tuan explained that unlike his colleagues, who were primarily interested in ‘survival’ and ‘adaptation’, he believed that people also aspired to contentment and joy: Environment, for them, is not just a resource base to be used or natural forces to adapt to, but also sources of assurance and pleasure, objects of profound attachment and love. In short, another key word for me, missing in many accounts of livelihood, is Topophilia.5 ‘Topophilia’ is a term coined by Tuan and defined by him as, ‘the affective bond between people and place or setting’.6 In Topophilia he presented a framework for discussing different ways that people can develop a love of place. From the experience of wilderness to the cities, Tuan explored different perceptions and evaluations of place and discussed how factors such as family background, education and occupation

3 Casey, ‘How to get from space to place in a fairly short stretch of time’ p. 44. 4 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1977; E. Relph, Place and Placelessness, Pion Ltd, London, 1976; Barcan and Buchanan (eds), Imagining Australian Space; Paul Carter, The Road to Botany Bay: An Essay in Spatial History, Faber & Faber Ltd., London, 1987; Theano S. Terkenli, ‘Home as a Region’, Geographical Review, July 1995, Vol 85 Issue 3, pp. 324-35; Altman and Low (eds), Place Attachment. 5 Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia: a study of environmental perception, attitudes and values, Columbia University Press, N.Y., 1990, (first published 1974), p. xii. 6 Tuan, Topophilia, p. 4. 14 influence attachment to place. Among his conclusions were the ideas that topophilia takes many forms and varies in intensity, that attitudes to wilderness, gardens, farms and cities have always been ambivalent, and that in their search for the ideal environment people in the Western world have turned to the new town, or garden city, to find a place with a centre amongst the alienation of the suburbs. In a later publication Tuan sought to understand how people organise and attach meaning to space and place by focusing on experiences that transcend cultural differences.7 Home, argued Tuan, is an intimate place filled with elements that evoke memories. On a larger scale, attachment to homeland is attachment to a region and is a universal phenomenon. It comes about over many years and is made up from many ordinary experiences. Tuan sees home as the centre, a place of great value, and yet when it is abandoned or destroyed people are able to readjust their view of the world and create a new centre. Like Tuan, Edward Relph is concerned with people’s alienation from homogenous urban environments.8 Using a phenomenological approach he set out to identify and explore how places are experienced, how attachments to place are formed and how an insensitivity to place creates placelessness.9 For Relph, place is more than a location; it is location plus the meanings that are attached to that location. He suggests that for some people a profound attachment to place is as important as relationships with other people. Attachment to home is particularly significant: Home is the foundation of our identity as individuals and as members of a community, the dwelling place of being. Home is not just the house you happen to live in, it is not something that can be anywhere, that can be exchanged, but an irreplaceable centre of significance… Home in its most profound form is an attachment to a particular setting, a particular environment, in comparison with which all other associations with places have only a limited significance.10 Relph also attempted to understand what is meant by ‘sense of place’ and the forms that this can take, and he distinguished between authentic and inauthentic senses of place. An authentic sense of place is one that is derived from a direct experience of place, whereas an inauthentic attitude to place ‘involves no awareness of the deep and symbolic significances of places and no appreciation of their identities. It is merely an

7 Tuan, Space and Place. 8 Relph, Place and Placelessness. 9 Relph, Place and Placelessness, Preface. 10 Relph, Place and Placelessness, pp. 39-40. 15 attitude which is socially convenient and acceptable…’11 In relation to home, authentic experiences are those that involve home as a central point of existence, whereas inauthentic expressions of home are those that weaken the meaning of home through sentimentalisation and commercialisation, such as the way real estate agents promote the marketing of homes.12 David E. Sopher, another geographer writing in the 1970s, explored how complex the idea of home is in the English language. He observed that ‘home’ extends far beyond a house or a dwelling and can also refer to a community or even a nation.13 Using an ethnographic approach, he demonstrated how the experience and meaning of home is subject to wide variation both within and across cultures. Despite this variation though, he concluded that the most significant meaning of home lies with people. Without the presence of sustaining and nurturing people a place would not be home. Ultimately then, for Sopher, ‘The overriding meaning of the landscape of home is social.’14 The geographer, J.M. Powell, similarly noted the importance of social and cultural factors in adapting to new environments: Naturally few transactions between the settler and his physical environment and none between himself and the rest of society, could ever have taken place within a vacuum; whatever his personal circumstances, he could not escape belonging to various information-sharing networks, various communication systems.15 Human relationships indeed emerge as a significant factor influencing the extent to which the colonists of this study felt a sense of belonging in Western Australia. In this study I have used the term ‘social landscape’ to refer to their social networks and surroundings. This term has been used in sociological literature to encompass gender, class, social groups, social structures and social institutions.16 It has also been applied more broadly in academic writing to refer to a variety of social phenomena, from population distribution, housing and traffic movement in Beijing,17 to emerging social

11 Relph, Place and Placelessness, p. 82. 12 Relph, Place and Placelessness, p. 83. 13 David E. Sopher, ‘The Landscape of Home: Myth, Experience, Social Meaning’ in D.W. Meinig (ed), The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays, Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1979, pp. 129-49. 14 Sopher, ‘The Landscape of Home, p. 138. 15 J.M. Powell, Mirrors of the New World, Archon Books, Hamden, Connecticut, 1977, p. 24. 16 Susan I. Ferguson, Mapping the Social Landscape: Readings in Sociology, McGraw Hill, New York, 2005. 17 Feng Jian, Zhou Yixing, John Logan, Wu Fulong, ‘Restructuring Beijing’s Social Space’, Eurasian Geography and Economics, September/October 2007, Vol 48, Issue 5. pp. 509-42. 16 trends in rural Victoria,18 and to social variables in a study of landscape change in rural areas of North America.19 However, I use social landscape in a more intimate sense to refer to the colonists’ social interactions. Their primary interactions took place in their families, between their friends and neighbours, at the social events they attended, or as members of institutions and clubs. Aboriginal people were also part of the colonists’ social landscape. Although on the periphery of their social interactions, the colonists were aware of their presence, spoke with them, used them as guides, sometimes engaged them as servants and George Fletcher Moore, in particular, wrote of many encounters with Aboriginal people and became friendly with a few of them.20 Two decades after Tuan and Relph wrestled with ideas of place and attachment, in response to fears that modern, urban landscapes detached people from place, Theano S. Terkenli suggested that though the world was becoming increasingly interdependent and interconnected, home was still associated with intense affection.21 In his view the contemporary western world’s identification with place was weaker than in previous centuries and, while the concept of home was still important, it was not necessarily tied to a place. Rather, home was a system of ‘interlinked patterns of habitual association and attachment.’22 Anthropologists have also addressed issues of place and home and extended these discussions to incorporate ideas of belonging. A collection of essays edited by Steven Feld and Keith Basso contributes to understandings of place through an ethnographic approach, with case studies from North America, Africa and East Anglia in England.23 Feld and Basso asked how everyday senses of place are articulated and expressed, with their primary objective being to describe and interpret some of the ways in which people encounter places, perceive them, and invest them with significance. This case study approach is valuable for applying theory and does enhance understandings of relationships between people and place in the specific contexts of the

18 Neil Barr, The Changing Social Landscape of Rural Victoria, Department of Primary Industries, State of Victoria, 2005. 19 Donald R. Field, Paul R. Voss, Tracy K. Kuczenski, Roger B. Hammer, Volker C. Radeloff, ‘Reaffirming Social Landscape Analysis in Landscape Ecology: A Conceptual Framework’, Society and Natural Resources, April 2003, Vol 16, Issue 4, pp. 349- 62. 20 Moore made many references to the Aboriginal people in the Colony. See the index of Moore, The Millendon Memoirs. 21 Terkenli, ‘Home as a Region’, pp. 324-35. 22 Terkenli, ‘Home as a Region’, p. 334. 23 Feld & Basso, Senses of Place. 17 ethnographies, but it does not always adequately explain the process by which place attachment occurs. In her introduction to a diverse collection of ethnographies, Nadia Lovell seeks to further explain how ideas of belonging and attachment are created and maintained through place.24 Loyalty to a place and belonging are shaped by both actual, physical place and by memories of belonging to particular landscapes. Accounts of how this process occurs assist in understanding how both individual and collective identities are shaped. Though the identities formed varied in each ethnography, the contributions in this volume all focus on how feelings of collective belonging can be instrumental in making claims on territory. Michèle Dominy’s book, Calling the Station Home, is an extensive ethnographic study concerned with relationships between place and identity and the process of belonging in a settler society.25 While Dominy’s focus, like mine, is with settler belonging, this is always with the awareness that colonisation dispossessed the original inhabitants of their land. Place here is the high country sheep stations of New Zealand and the people are the families and station hands who run these properties. Consistent with my approach to place, the high country is not just a setting but is ‘a physical space invested with cultural meaning, a site of intense cultural activity and imagination – of memory, of affectivity, of work, of sociality, of identity’.26 Dominy found that the families of the high country viewed the landscapes there differently from many urban New Zealanders, environmentalists and Maoris who ‘perceive those in the mountains as not having the right to live in what should be the “wilderness’”, to “own” a national resource, or to have monopoly on a national symbol’.27 Families there resisted the romance associated with the high country and were engaged with the land in complex ways. Knowledge of the country, such as the best vantage points from which to view their stock, and understanding how sheep move across the country, was part of their culture and was a way of belonging. Similarly, the routine of work created a sense of belonging as families of the high country, ‘work throughout their lives both consciously and unconsciously to create a niche for

24 Nadia Lovell, ‘Introduction’, in Nadia Lovell, (ed), Locality and Belonging, Routledge, London & New York, 1998, pp. 1-24. 25 Michèle D. Dominy, Calling the Station Home: Place and Identity in New Zealand’s High Country, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Lanham, Maryland, 2001. 26 Dominy, Calling the Station Home, p. 3. 27 Dominy, Calling the Station Home, p. 25. 18 themselves within the landscape’.28 In a Maori land claim the Pakeha (white) farmers gave evidence of their own claims to the land based on connections they had forged through settlement and working the land. They saw themselves as caretakers of the land on behalf of all New Zealanders. Dominy’s approach is important as she allows for the possibility that Anglo-Celtic settlers can feel a sense of belonging to land they claim to have connections with. However, as Dominy makes it clear, ‘To argue for high-country indigeneity is not to argue for the same indigeneity as Ngai Tahu.’29 Ways in which home and belonging have been conceptualised in migration literature have also informed my theoretical framework. In Western society the concepts of house and home have been linked and sometimes used interchangeably,30 so the idea that it is possible to feel significant attachment to more than one place has sometimes been overlooked. However, in migration literature, home can be located in more than one place. The concept of ‘transnational identity’ can be used to explain these ideas. Loretta Baldassar’s definition of ‘transnational’ is ‘the process by which immigrants forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement.’31 She has applied this concept in her study of the experiences of a group of migrants from Italy to Perth who went back to visit their village in Italy.32 Her analyses of return visits demonstrate that these ensure relationships of reciprocity are maintained between people in the place of origin and the ‘new’ country. Furthermore, the complex social relations that develop out of regular return visits illustrate the fact that migrants create multiple identities from both places. Baldassar concluded that attachment to place is not necessarily geographically fixed but can be an idea of place, and ongoing family connections are an important part of maintaining identity with a migrant’s place of origin. Visits Home shows that migration is a continuous cultural process rather than a finite act of relocation and, ‘Home is thus a constantly negotiated place for the migrant.’33 Baldassar’s approach provides a way of understanding how, for the colonists of this study, home making was also a process that occurred over time, and home could be found in more than one place. Like Baldassar’s

28 Dominy, Calling the Station Home, p. 267. 29 Dominy, Calling the Station Home, p. 227. The Ngai Tahu are a Maori tribe. 30 Tamara K. Hareven, ‘The Home and Family in Historical Perspective’, Social Research, 58, 1, 1991, pp. 253-285; Shelley Mallett, ‘Understanding Home: A critical review of the literature’, The Sociological Review, Feb 2004, 52, (1), esp. pp. 73-74. 31 Loretta Baldassar, Visits Home: Migration experiences between Italy and Australia, Melbourne University Press, Carlton South, Victoria, 2001, p. 8 32 Baldassar, Visits Home. 33 Baldassar, Visits Home, p. 339. 19 migrants too, the colonists of this study maintained social relationships with their place of origin and developed new networks and identities in the Colony. Some of these colonists also consciously wrestled with thoughts of home and questioned where their home really was. Migration literature and colonial Australia come together in a collection of studies edited by David Fitzpatrick.34 In his contribution to the collection, K.S. Inglis sought to better understand colonial Australians who moved from Australia to England.35 Though it is often noted that many emigrants to Australia from England called Great Britain home,36 Inglis found examples of emigrants, notably Henry Parkes, who first referred to England as home but then wrote of Australia as home. From accounts of colonists living in England, Inglis concluded that the experience of visiting or living in the ‘Mother’ country could make colonists aware of how firmly they were connected to their Australian homeland. David Fitzpatrick has drawn attention to the complex meanings attributed to ‘home’ in letters written by Irish emigrants to Australia up to 1914.37 Like Terkenli and Sopher, Fitzpatrick found that home was more often a social environment or a location rather than a physical dwelling: ‘Home was not only a symbol of shelter and comfort, but also a scene of sociability, match-making and breeding.’38 Members of the letter writer’s immediate family were always identified with home, but it was not uncommon for distant relatives and neighbours to be included in the domain of home. Used in this way, ‘home’ was a form of rhetoric to maintain relationships with family and friends back in Ireland. As emigrants adapted and settled in, attachment to their place of origin might diminish and be transferred to their new location. However, when used to refer to Australia, or a place in Australia, ‘home’ was not usually associated with a social environment but was more likely to refer to the household environment. Fitzpatrick

34 Fitzpatrick (ed), Home or Away? 35 K.S. Inglis, ‘Going Home: Australians in England 1870-1900’ in David Fitzpatrick (ed), Home or Away? Immigrants in Colonial Australia, Division of Historical Studies and Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies, Research School of Social Science, Australian University Press, Canberra, 1992, pp. 105-30. 36 For example, Richard Nile, ‘Civilisation’ in Richard Nile (ed), The Australian Legend and its Discontents, University of Queensland Press in association with API Network, St Lucia, Queensland, 2000, p. 50 stated, “For at least the first half of the twentieth century ‘Home’ for around 90% of Australians meant the United Kingdom.” 37 David Fitzpatrick, ‘Ambiguities of “Home” in Irish-Australian Correspondence’ in David Fitzpatrick (ed), Home or Away? Immigrants in Colonial Australia, Division of Historical Studies and Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies, Research School of Social Science, Australian University Press, Canberra, 1992, pp. 19-36. 38 Fitzpatrick, ‘Ambiguities of “Home” in Irish-Australian Correspondence’, p. 25. 20 concluded that in Australia, home was not romanticised. He also found that when emigrants expressed happiness or contentment in their ‘new’ home they wrote that they felt ‘at home’. Fitzpatrick’s study is significant because it demonstrates the range of meanings that were attributed to the word ‘home’ in a colonial context where, too often, it has been assumed that for colonists ‘home’ could only mean their place of origin. Since the rise of the Victorian ideal and cult of domesticity, women have been associated with the home more than men, and this link has been explored and challenged using a variety of approaches and methods. Of particular relevance to this thesis are those studies that have explored settler women’s responses to the land, and the extent to and the ways in which they made connections with their ‘new’ place and called it home. In a North American context Marian Fowler’s and Annette Kolodny’s work has contributed to understanding women’s adaptation and belonging in frontier settlements.39 Fowler’s book The Embroidered Tent tells the story of five English women, all from upper middle-class backgrounds and all dutiful wives who travelled to Canada in the period 1791 to 1872. Fowler was principally interested in how these women related to the Canadian wilderness. She found that after an initial culture shock the women showed great resourcefulness. She also argued that on the frontier, gender roles were less prescribed than in England and this provided an opportunity for them to escape the restrictive mantle of womanhood. Interactions with the wilderness also encouraged these women to develop ‘masculine’ attributes. This was evident on a pragmatic level as the environment demanded initiative and courage, and on an imaginative level as the wilderness provided them with the possibility of discovering repressed areas of consciousness. Kolodny also brought women’s experiences to the forefront of frontier literature. She believed that women shared with men the desire to profit from emigration but that they also: …claimed the frontiers as a potential sanctuary for an idealized domesticity. Massive exploitation and alteration of the continent do not seem to have been part of women’s fantasies. They dreamed, more modestly, of locating a home and a familial human community within a cultivated garden.40

39 Marian Fowler, The Embroidered Tent, House of Anansi Press, Toronto, 1982; Annette Kolodny, The Land Before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630-1860, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1984. 40 Kolodny, The Land Before Her, p. xiii. 21 On the American frontier white women found themselves psychologically trapped in an unfamiliar landscape. To escape this captivity, Kolodny argued that they made their own mark on the land by confining themselves to their houses and gardens. Women, though, appreciated the beauty of the land more than the men, who were intent on transforming nature into wealth. Until recently, Australian literature on women and the frontier has been dominated by the ‘pioneer myth’. Although not concerned specifically with place, in Australian history the ‘pioneer myth’ has, in a general sense, dealt with themes of alienation and adaptation to the Australian environment. Pioneer histories of Australia include the works of J.S. Battye, Ernest Scott, F.K. Crowley and Eva Pownall and have reinforced the view that life in rural Australia was harsh and the land unforgiving.41 In these histories the native vegetation was generally seen as a barrier to farming activities, the heat was oppressive and life on the land was demanding and unsuitable for women and children. In terms of the relationship between the colonists and the environment, the ‘pioneer myth’ reinforced the image of men on the land, away from their homes, without a presence in the domestic sphere. For women, the myth assumed they toiled against adversity as martyrs, creating a home in the wilderness. As Jemima Mowbray succinctly wrote, according to the myth, ‘the pioneer man penetrated the frontier, the pioneer woman domesticated it’.42 Furthermore, the myth denied women the possibility of developing a sense of belonging or attachment beyond the cooking pots and the laundry. In 1978 John Hirst launched an attack on the pioneer myth and C.T. Stannage followed this with his critical monograph in 1985.43 They argued that the ‘pioneer myth’ was a gentry version of history which neglected class and sex distinctions, labourers, city dwellers, newcomers from non-Anglo Saxon backgrounds and Aboriginal people. Judith Godden also criticised historians who used pioneer women to

41 J.S. Battye, (ed) Cyclopedia of Western Australia, Hussey and Gillingham, Adelaide, 1912; J.S. Battye, Western Australia: a History from its Discovery to the Inauguration of the Commonwealth, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1924; Ernest Scott, A Short History of Australia, Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, London, 1930; F. K. Crowley, Australia’s Western Third: A History of Western Australia, from the First Settlements to Modern Times, London, 1960; Eva Pownall, Australian Pioneer Women, Rigby, Australia, 1975. 42 Jemima Mowbray, ‘Examining the Myth of the Pioneer Woman’, Eras, Edition 8, November 2006, p. 12, http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/eras (accessed 28/11/2006). 43 John Hirst, ‘The Pioneer Legend’, Historical Studies, Vol 18, No 71, October 1978; C.T. Stannage, Western Australia’s Pioneer Myth, University Extension of Western Australia, Monograph Series No 1, 1985. 22 idealise domestic life and she asserted that the myth of the pioneer woman was conservative, favoured middle-class values and ignored relations with Aboriginal people.44 As a result of these criticisms the pioneer myth has largely been abandoned in recent scholarship. However, it still pervades popular historical thinking and writing.45 One recent example is Susanna de Vries’ collection of stories about women in colonial Australia that emphasises the anxiety of these women and the ever-present potential for injury, disease and danger.46 The recurring theme in these pioneer histories is one of triumph over hardships in an alienating landscape. Maggie MacKellar’s study of attachment and belonging in Australia and Canada rejects the ‘pioneer myth’ in which women’s sense of place was confined to the house and garden, and challenges previous accounts of women’s relationships with the land.47 MacKellar explored how settler women achieved a physical intimacy with the land that extended beyond home making in their domestic space. She studied the diaries, journals and letters of women who walked the land, rode on horseback and climbed its mountains and concluded it was these physical experiences that shaped their perceptions of place and contributed to their sense of belonging. MacKellar found that women in both Australia and Canada responded to a range of different landscapes in similar ways; their initial feelings of disconnection, their desire to find a sense of place and how they achieved this through their interactions with the land were common experiences. In her work MacKellar is also aware that writing about non-Indigenous women’s connections to place in both Australia and Canada raises issues that concern indigenous land ownership, and that settler women’s sense of belonging took shape in settings of violence and dispossession of the Indigenous peoples.48 As well as acknowledging this, MacKellar explored how, for some white women, their relationship with Indigenous women helped to define their new sense of place. Thus, Susan Allison, at the end of the nineteenth century and Marie Rose Smith, in the early twentieth century (both in

44 Judith Godden, ‘A New Look at the Pioneer Woman’, Hecate, Vol 5, No 2, 1979, pp. 7-21. 45 Jemima Mowbray also noted that pioneer histories are still prevalent and cited recent television dramas and writing that demonstrates their popularity. Mowbray, ‘Examining the Myth of the Pioneer Woman’, footnote 1, p. 18. 46 Suanna De Vries, Great Pioneer Women of the Outback, Harper Collins, Pymble, N.S.W, 2005. 47 Maggie MacKellar, Core of my heart, my country, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria, 2004. 48 MacKellar, Core of my heart, my country, pp. 7 & 15. Maggie MacKellar, writing as Maggie Pickering, addresses this issue in more detail in her thesis, Maggie Pickering, ‘Core of my heart, my country: women’s sense of place and the land in Australia and Canada, 1828-1950’, Thesis (PhD), University of Sydney, 2001, especially p. 24. 23 Canada), and Alice Duncan Kemp, also in the twentieth century but in South-West Queensland, gained knowledge of the land from the Indigenous women they encountered. They learnt about the land, how to respect it and to care for it, and so their interactions with Indigenous women also contributed to their feelings of belonging.49 So far I have discussed some of the ways that geographers, anthropologists and sociologists have addressed these ideas of place, home and belonging, how migration literature has taken up these themes and how women’s sense of place has been approached in settler histories and literature. The final section of this chapter reflects on place, home and belonging in Australia. In his introduction to a collection of writing on Australian senses of place, John Cameron has suggested that interest in this theme has largely been attributed to historical factors that include the geographical and social isolation of Australia in the nineteenth century, the unfamiliar flora and fauna encountered by Europeans and the dispossession of the Aboriginal people.50 He has noted that contemporary discussions concerning attachment to place in Australia are often centred on Aboriginal senses of place, and he attributed this to recent international recognition of Aboriginal art, literature, dance and music.51 I suggest that the rise of Aboriginal land rights and native title has also contributed to a greater interest in Aboriginal belonging. The essays in Cameron’s collection are written from a range of perspectives, but they all consider whether or not Australians have developed distinctive senses of place, and if they have, how these are constructed. They include discussions on Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationships to place and how these relate to each other. Cameron hopes that ‘The stories that emerge from such a way of being in place might then form the basis of a more mutually respectful dialogue with Aboriginal people about what it means to inhabit this continent in the new millennium.’52 As well as representing diverse perspectives on place, Cameron’s collection includes historical and contemporary approaches. Veronica Brady surveys early poets and writers in Australia, finding that they expressed fear and alienation.53 The early settlers saw colonisation as a process of conquest: ‘The natural world was to be

49 MacKellar, Core of my heart, my country, Chapter Two and pp. 147-151. 50 John Cameron, ‘Introduction: Articulating Australian senses of place’ in John Cameron, (ed), Changing Places: Re-imagining Australia, Longueville Books, Double Bay, NSW, 2003, p. 4. 51 Cameron, ‘Introduction: Articulating Australian senses of place’, p. 4-5 52 Cameron, ‘Introduction: Articulating Australian senses of place’, p. 12. 53 Veronica Brady, ‘Journey into the land’, in John Cameron, (ed), Changing Places: Re- imagining Australia, Longueville Books, Double Bay, N.S.W., 2003, pp. 264-71. 24 dominated and tamed, made to do our will.’54 Though Brady concedes that some Australians learned to love the country, she maintains that stereotypes about the land persist and suggests that most city-dwelling Australians do not feel entirely at home in Australia. Valerie Brown is more optimistic than Brady about the possibility of Australians finding a sense of place.55 She believes that with the success of some Aboriginal land claims Indigenous people are now not entirely dispossessed and, ‘it seems time to recognise that other people are also indigenous, born of their place, in the strict sense of the word’.56 Brown carried out a study with groups that included Aboriginal Australians, as well as European Australians and other immigrants, to see how people construct place.57 The similarities and differences in how their sense of place was constructed, and the discussions that followed, resulted in a greater understanding among the participants of different ways of attaching meaning to place. Brown concluded that Australians from all waves of settlement could have a strong sense of place. Traditionally, historians have been reluctant to engage with issues of space and place, preferring to leave these concepts to geographers and ethnographers. One exception is Paul Carter, whose work has challenged traditional histories of Australia by critically examining how space and place have been conceptualised.58 The Road to Botany Bay begins with a criticism of empirical Australian histories, which Carter calls ‘imperial histories’. He argues that ‘imperial history’ is inadequate as a way of thinking about Australian history because it pays attention to facts and ‘events unfolding in time alone.’59 The result is that imperial history legitimises events and ignores their impact on the Aboriginal people who were dispossessed by colonisation. Carter reinterprets the records of explorers, travellers and settlers to disclose their intentions. Exploring the processes of choosing directions, applying names, imagining goals and inhabiting the country, he argues that this approach, which he calls ‘spatial history’, reveals how

54 Brady, ‘Journey into the land’, p. 267. 55 Valerie Brown, ‘The symbols of my places are the foundations of my world: constructing a shared Australian sense of place’ in John Cameron (ed), Changing Places: Re-imagining Australia, Longueville Books, Double Bay, NSW, 2003, pp. 128-44. 56 Brown, ‘The symbols of my places are the foundations of my world: constructing a shared Australian sense of place’, p. 128. 57 Valerie Brown based her study on a framework from Lewis Mumford, The City in History, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1973. 58 Carter, The Road to Botany Bay. 59 Carter, The Road to Botany Bay, p. xvi. 25 Europeans turned spaces into places. Carter also believes that his approach gives a voice to groups such as the convicts and the Aboriginal people, previously erased from Australian histories. The Road to Botany Bay begins and ends with Botany Bay. In the first chapter Carter surveys previous explanations of why Captain Cook chose the name ‘Botany Bay’ and asserts that if the naming process is read in the context of Cook’s journal then this name was not arbitrary; it told a story of Cook’s explorations.60 Many of Carter’s discussions in his later chapters of explorers and settlers are then based on his premise that place names ‘were tools of travelling, rather than fruits of travel’.61 In the final two chapters Carter returns to Botany Bay to demonstrate how the language of imperial history obscured the experiences of convicts and Aboriginal people. Furthermore, he maintains that by uncovering the intentions of the First Fleet journalists and by attempting to understand how the convicts and the Aboriginal people used the spaces they inhabited, their stories can become visible.62 The Road to Botany Bay has been criticised for being unclear about the meaning of ‘spatial history’63 and that, in trying to uncover the intentions of the explorers and settlers, Carter projected his own associations and interpretations onto others.64 However, as George Seddon remarked, the strength of this book lies in its insights about language and the relationships between words and place.65 Carter’s approach reinforces the value of returning to primary material for understanding relationships between intimate space and the wider landscape, and his insistence that there are different ways of knowing encourages further investigations into spatial understandings of Australian history. As discussed earlier in relation to settler women, Maggie MacKellar, like Carter, values primary material for understanding relationships between people and place. She continues to explore these ideas in her recent book, Strangers in a Foreign Land, based on the journal of Niel Black and the writing of other nineteenth century settlers in the

60 Carter, The Road to Botany Bay, p. 14. 61 Carter, The Road to Botany Bay, p. 32. 62 Carter, The Road to Botany Bay, chapters 10 and 11. 63 George Seddon, ‘On “The Road to Botany Bay”: a review of a book with that name by Paul Carter’ in Landprints, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997, pp. 35-48 and first published as ‘On “The Road to Botany Bay”’ in Westerly, Volume 33, No 4, 1988, pp. 15-26 discussed a range of reviews of Carter, The Road to Botany Bay. 64 Riva Berleant-Schiller, ‘Review of The Road to Botany Bay’, Faber & Faber Ltd., London, 1987, The Professional Geographer, 1989, Volume 41, Issue 2, pp. 239-240. 65 Seddon, ‘On “The Road to Botany Bay”’. 26 Western District of New South Wales.66 Here, MacKellar introduces and comments on Black’s journal and places the themes that emerge in their historical context. She discusses settlers’ ideas of home and suggests that Black’s journal demonstrates how home could be both England and Australia. Furthermore, MacKellar noticed how their home making was achieved with such little appreciation of the effects this had on the Aboriginal people. While MacKellar is primarily concerned with place, home and settler belonging, Peter Read has addressed these issues in contemporary Australia.67 His extensive research and writing on Aboriginal history makes him well placed to write about these subjects with knowledge and empathy.68 In Returning to Nothing: The Meaning of Lost Places, he considered the meaning of home for non-Aboriginal Australians who experienced grief over the loss of their homes and country that had significance for them.69 Read interviewed former residents of places such as Adaminaby in New South Wales and Lake Pedder in Tasmania, both flooded for hydro-electric schemes; Macedon in Victoria, which was destroyed by bushfires and Darwin, which was ravaged by Cyclone Tracey. Read found that like Indigenous Australians, white Australians have experienced grief over lost places that were important to them; places that they called ‘home’. Collectively, these stories show the importance of place and the complexity and depth of feelings that people can hold for places that no longer exist. Read noted that in Australia, as in many other countries, the psychological effects of place deprivation are ignored, and he suggested that ways should be found for these effects to be considered in environmental impact or heritage assessments. Read followed Returning to Nothing with Belonging: Australians, Place and Aboriginal Ownership. 70 Here he surveyed a wide range of non-Aboriginal Australians to explore ways in which they can belong to the land with the knowledge that they live in places that were taken from Aboriginal people. Throughout these discussions,

66 Maggie MacKellar, Strangers in a Foreign Land: The Journal of Niel Black and Other Voices from the Western District, The Miegunyah Press in association with the State Library of Victoria, Carlton, Victoria, 2008. 67 Read, Returning to Nothing; Read, Belonging. 68 Peter Read’s publications on Aboriginal people include Peter Read, A Rape of the Soul So Profound: The Return of the Stolen Generation, Allen and Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, 1999; Peter and Jay Read (eds), Long Time Olden Time: Aboriginal Accounts of Northern Territory History, IAD Publications, Alice Springs, Northern Territory, 1991; Peter Read, Charles Perkins, A Biography, Viking, Ringwood, Victoria, 1990; Peter Read, A Hundred Years War: the Wiradjuri people and the state, Australian University Press, Sydney, 1988. 69 Read, Returning to Nothing. 70 Read, Belonging. 27 awareness of Aboriginal dispossession was always salient, and while Read found that there are many ways to belong, he concluded that non-Indigenous Australians cannot fully belong if their sense of belonging excludes and denies Aboriginal people’s belonging.71 For Read, belonging is also personal and while he listened and thought about Aboriginal dispossession, his own sense of belonging was taking shape. Yet his belonging is different from Indigenous belonging and it does not seek to appropriate Aboriginal ways of belonging. It comes, though, ‘from believing that belonging means sharing and that sharing demands equal partnership’.72 Read continued investigating these themes in Haunted Earth, in which he challenged rational, empirically-educated readers to open their minds to the significance of spiritual dimensions of place.73 In this volume Read sought to further understand ‘how we experience, understand, care for and form attachments to the land’.74 By turning away from Western rational ideas of place, Read entered the realm of spirits and through a series of meditations and discussions with Australians from different places he considered connections between people, place and spirit. He argues that local places were infused with spirits and these can be acknowledged publicly when a large number of people share this conviction.75 Implicit in Haunted Earth is the idea that Indigenous people connect to place in a spiritual way, and that this does not come easily to Western people. However, in this book Read found ways that non-Indigenous Australians can also connect spiritually to places that are significant for them. Perhaps, then, this becomes another way to find a shared belonging.76 Read’s writing on belonging has influenced my point of view and I concur with his hunch that ‘It seems something of a myth that non-indigenous Australians did not love the landscapes they found and made because it was not like the British countryside

71 Read, Belonging, p. 223. (my emphasis) 72 Read, Belonging, p. 223. 73 Read, Haunted Earth. 74 Read, Haunted Earth, p. 9. 75 Read, Haunted Earth, p. 247. 76 Despite Peter Read’s commitment to and respect for Aboriginal people, his work on belonging has been criticised. Ken Gelder and Aileen Moreton-Robinson argued that Read fails to fully take account of Aboriginal dispossession and that this means settler belonging is not possible as non-Indigenous Australians are still trespassers. Ken Gelder, ‘The Imaginary Eco- (Pre)Historian: Peter Read’s Belonging as a Postcolonial Symptom’, Australian Humanities Review, http//www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-September-2000/gelder.html (accessed 9/1/08); Aileen Moreton-Robinson, ‘I Still Call Australia Home: Indigenous Belonging and Place in White Postcolonizing Society’ in Sara Ahmed, Claudia Castaneda, Anne-Marie Fortier and Mimi Sheller (eds), Uprootings/Regroundings: Questions of Home and Migration, Berg, Oxford and New York, 2003, pp. 23-40. 28 they knew.’77 However, this leads to further questions concerning place-making in colonial Australia. While existing scholarship has established that many Europeans, including those who settled there, found much to admire in the landscapes, the process and factors involved in developing connections with the land in a colonial context have received little attention. The focus of this thesis is with settler belonging, but as Read and MacKellar both show, the process of settling and making homes occurred against Aboriginal dispossession.78 Therefore, any discussion of attachment to place without reference to Aboriginal understandings of place would be remiss, as to some extent the colonists’ responded to the land knowing that Aboriginal people lived there and related differently to the country. While a full discussion of Aboriginal connections to the land is beyond the scope of this thesis, there are a range of significant works that deal in a general sense with Aboriginal attachment to land and have informed my understanding of the differences between the colonists’ and Aboriginal ways of relating to the land. Deborah Bird Rose has worked extensively with Aboriginal people and written about land rights, Aboriginal land management and Aboriginal culture.79 In Nourishing Terrains, a report commissioned by the Australian Heritage Commission, she explains that for Aboriginal people the concept of ‘country’ is both a common noun and a proper noun: Country is not a generalized or undifferentiated type of place, such as one might indicate with terms like ‘spending a day in the country’ or ‘going up the country’. Rather, country is a living entity with a yesterday, today and tomorrow, with a consciousness, and a will toward life. Because of this richness, country is home, and peace; nourishment for body, mind, and spirit; heart’s ease.80 Relationships between Aboriginal people and their country are intense, intimate, full of responsibilities, and people and country take care of one another. Reading the Country is a collaborative work by Krim Benterrak, Stephen Muecke and Paddy Roe, who see themselves as ‘drawn together (with our different

77 Read, Returning to Nothing, p. 5. 78 Read, Belonging; MacKellar, Strangers in a Foreign Land. 79 See for example, Rose, Dingo makes us human; Rose, Nourishing Terrains; Deborah Bird Rose and Anne Clarke, Tracking knowledge in North Australian landscapes: studies in indigenous and settler ecological knowledge systems, Australian National University North Australia Research Unit, Northern Territory, 1997; Deborah Bird Rose, Country of the heart : an indigenous Australian homeland, Aboriginal Studies Press for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra, 2002. 80 Rose, Nourishing Terrains, p.7. 29 ways of expressing ourselves) by a concern for one thing which remains constant in spite of everything: Roebuck Plains’.81 This is an unusual book of Roe’s stories, Benterrak’s paintings and Muecke’s academic writing. While it ‘is an attempt to construct a theory of place’,82 most of all it is a record of Paddy Roe’s dreaming, or understanding, of the Roebuck Plains near Broome in Western Australia. Reading the Country is also a fine example of how Indigenous people are finding ways to communicate their sense of place and connections to country through white practices and ways of understanding.83 In Understanding Country Dermot Smyth communicates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives on the Australian environment to non-Indigenous Australians, but he makes it clear this is not an attempt to speak on behalf of Aboriginal people.84 Smyth asks, ‘What is “country”?’ and answers by explaining that while this term does refer to a geographical area in the sense that it means place of origin in a literal, cultural or spiritual sense, it means more than a geographical location; it also encompasses the values, place, resources, stories, and cultural obligations associated with that area.85 For many Aboriginal people the importance of the land and sea is bound to the spirituality surrounding the origins of the country. Geographical features are reminders of the creation stories that explain the origins of the natural world and this knowledge makes the land particularly significant to Aboriginal people. At birth they are assigned to a clan that has associations with a particular ‘country’. This association gives them rights to hunt, fish and gather resources from their clan ‘country’, but also responsibilities for its management. This close relationship between Aboriginal people and the land was disrupted when the British crown colonised Australia and, in the process of colonisation, took Aboriginal land. Smyth explains that because animals and plants are part of their spirituality and kinship, when they were denied access to their country, as well as losing access to resources, their identity and well-being were also unsettled.86 Dispossession

81 Krim Benterrak, Stephen Muecke and Paddy Roe, Reading the Country, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle, 1996, pp. 15-16. 82 Benterrak, Muecke and Roe, Reading the Country, p. 16. 83 Another, more recent, publication by Indigenous people that helps explain the deep connections between Aboriginal people and country is the collection of stories by Morgan, Mia and Kwaymullinu (eds), Heartsick for Country. 84 Dermot Smyth, Understanding Country, Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, 1994. 85 Smyth, Understanding Country, p. 2. 86 Smyth, Understanding Country, p. 9. 30 was made legally possible through the concept of terra nullius, meaning a land without owners, and Henry Reynolds argues that this concept was the ‘single most important feature of the British appropriation of Aboriginal land’. 87 Though the British knew that Aboriginal people inhabited the land, they viewed them as nomads without rights of ownership. Terra nullius therefore justified the actions of the British government and enabled the settlers to rationalise their acts of dispossession.88 In Australian historiography, however, Michael Connor has challenged this position.89 He argues that Australia was not claimed by the British using terra nullius because the term did not exist in the eighteenth century.90 Connor hoped that his book would stimulate debates about terra nullius and the extent to which it had an impact on how the British colonised Australia, but his ideas have been largely discredited by Australian academics.91 David Ritter, for example, clearly explains that even though the term terra nullius did not exist when the British claimed Australia: it is a useful shorthand metaphor for what actually occurred. The unarguable historical reality of the colonization of Australia was that Indigenous people were treated as being without legally enforceable property rights derived from traditional law and custom.92 While the colonists of this study did not use the term terra nullius, they did implicitly recognise the concept, and it did influence how they related to the land. Although the colonists knew that Aboriginal people lived there before they arrived, Aboriginal people’s relationships with the land were not consistent with European understandings

87 Henry Reynolds, Dispossession, Allen and Unwin, St Leonards, Sydney, 1989, p. 67. 88 Reynolds, Dispossession, p. 67. There is a wealth of historical and legal literature that explains terra nullius in more detail and from different perspectives. For example, see David Ritter, ‘The rejection of terra nullius’ in Mabo: a critical analysis’, thesis, University of Western Australia, Law School, 1994; Robert Manne (ed), Whitewash on Keith Windschuttle’s fabrication of Aboriginal history, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2003; Peter H. Russell, Recognizing Aboriginal title: the Mabo case and Indigenous resistance to English-Settler colonialism, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2005. 89 Michael Connor, The invention of Terra Nullius: historical and legal fictions on the foundation of Australia, MacLeay Press, Paddington, NSW, 2005. 90 Connor, The invention of Terra Nullius, p. 7. 91 Henry Reynolds, ‘A New Historical Landscape [Response to Connor, Michael, The Invention of Terra Nullius: Historical and Legal Fictions on the Foundation of Australia, (2005)]’, The Monthly, Melbourne, Victoria, May 2006, pp. 50-53; Patrick Wolfe, ‘Operation Sandy Track: Michael Connor and the War on Australian History’, Overland, Issue 183, 2006, pp. 26-31; James Warden, ‘Atramentous History’, History Australia, 2006, Monash University ePress, Victoria, Australia, http://www.epress.monash.edu.au/.49.1-49.8DOI:10.2104/ha060049; David Ritter, ‘Myths, Truths and Arguments: Some Recent Writings on Aboriginal History’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, Vol 53, No 1, 2007, pp. 138-148. 92 Ritter, ‘Myths, Truths and Arguments: Some Recent Writings on Aboriginal History’, p. 147. 31 of ownership, and therefore the colonists went about their home making and farming as though the Aboriginal people had no legal rights to the land. In this chapter I have drawn on a range of pertinent studies to provide scaffolding for my questions. When people leave home and travel to new places they respond in various ways and some people develop feelings of attachment or affection for these new places, call them home and feel that they belong there. Home, though, is a complicated idea and difficult to articulate. It is not necessarily a specific place such as a house or locality, but it can be an idea of a place. Home can also have different meanings; people may call more than one place home. People can also call a place home but not feel that they belong there, so belonging can be understood as ‘being at home’ in a place and implies a sense of attachment to a place that in some sense is also home. These complex and nuanced ideas of place, home and belonging have been approached from many perspectives. My study is similar to ethnographic approaches that are concerned with lived experiences, though my sources are archival, rather than ethnographic. Like Michèle Dominy, for example, I look at how a settler population ‘settles in’, and argue that settlers can develop connections with land that result in feelings of belonging. Like Paul Carter and Maggie MacKellar I am returning to primary sources and their work has influenced mine, though in different ways. My understanding of how colonists to Western Australia initially imagined their new environments is drawn from Carter’s idea that explorers, travellers and settlers in Australia gave meanings to the spaces they saw and inhabited, and converted these spaces into places. Like Seddon, who saw that the strength of Carter’s work lay in the connections he made between words and places, I focus on the words of the colonists to better understand the relationships they developed with the landscapes. In Core of my heart, my country Maggie MacKellar’s use of primary sources provides a personal perspective.93 With vivid descriptions she shows that some settler women developed strong connections with the landscape. Like MacKellar, I also found that some settler women connected to place in their colonial environments. However, one problem with studies of place attachment and sense of place that is shared by MacKellar, Tuan and Relph is their reliance on an intuitive understanding of the phrase ‘sense of place’. This phrase is appealing and can be applied to many disciplines, but John Cameron and George Seddon have criticised it on the grounds that its meaning and significance are

93 MacKellar, Core of my heart, my country. 32 difficult to define and establish empirically, and the term has been overused with insufficient critical application.94 To overcome this problem, as well as describing attachment and belonging as ideas and feelings, I conceive of them as processes, and identify factors that contribute to or inhibit these processes. This can be thought of as unravelling the ‘mechanics of belonging’.95 The following chapters take up the challenge to more fully explore settler belonging in colonial Australia.

94 Cameron, ‘Introduction: Articulating Australian senses of place’, p. 13; George Seddon, ‘Placing the debate: a long postscript’ in Landprints, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997, pp. 136-142. 95 The term ‘mechanics of belonging’ was first used by Dr Andrea Gaynor during one of our many discussions on belonging. 33

34 Chapter Two Colonists, Culture and Reading their Responses to Place in Australia

When the colonists came to Western Australia they did not come with blank minds. Rather, they incorporated what they saw and learned with what they already knew and believed. Their cultural beliefs and values affected how they responded to place and the extent to which they came to feel a sense of belonging in the Colony. This chapter will first examine the ideas that might have influenced their thinking as they encountered the landscapes of Western Australia and made their homes there. Knowing how they might have understood nature, wilderness, civilisation, progress and human differences, helps to see the world through their eyes when interpreting their writing. I also discuss class, gender and domesticity in nineteenth century Britain as it pertains to the colonists in Western Australia. My discussions in the subsequent chapters will focus around these ideas as I consider what happened when their European culture came into contact with landscapes that were unfamiliar to them. Secondly, I look at how other scholars have understood the ways in which culture influenced colonists’ responses and adaptations to new environments. Here I consider studies that have explored, in a broad sense, belonging and adaptation to colonial Australia. Following this I discuss studies concerned with more specific aspects of colonists’ responses to landscape. These include readings of art and literature, studies that focus on picturesque approaches to landscape and those that consider how gender, domesticity and gardens have been understood in a colonial context. My focus here is on writing about Australia, but I have included a few significant studies from other colonial contexts. In the final section of this chapter I draw attention to differences between these studies and my approach.

Understanding the Colonists’ Culture Nature and Wilderness How did the colonists view nature and wilderness and how were their ideas construed in the new landscapes? The colonists’ learnt ideas of nature and wilderness were significant because they framed the way they interpreted their ‘new’ environments. When writing about Australian environments the colonists used prose they learned to describe an English countryside with meadows, copses, woods and hedgerows. Whether

35 they saw landscapes as beautiful, awe-inspiring, monotonous or threatening was influenced by centuries of thought and writing concerning the relationship between human culture and the natural environment. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the time when the first colonists arrived in the Swan River Colony, Europeans held a range of views towards nature and wilderness. Romanticism had exerted its influence but biblical, utilitarian and scientific ideas were also widespread and all are evident in the colonists’ writings. Since Lynn White’s influential paper that laid the blame for modern ecological crises squarely at the feet of Judeo-Christian beliefs of nature,1 and perhaps because Christianity was central to the lives of British people in the nineteenth century,2 it is sometimes assumed that this was the primary lens through which the colonists viewed the natural world. Jane Grellier has argued that Judaeo-Christian attitudes to nature dominated the relationship between colonists to the far South-West of Australia and the environment.3 She maintained that, with the exception of Georgiana Molloy, the colonists’ prevailing feelings towards nature were those of unease and the need for control. The colonists thus ‘entered into a relationship of struggle with nature, seeking to subdue and shape it into recognizable and acceptable patterns’4 and ‘the harsh, arid conditions of the land and the exacting demands of colonial life in South West Australia led very quickly to a drying up of whatever spiritual, pantheistic fascination with nature the British colonists may have brought with them.’5 Although Grellier acknowledged that the relationship between the colonists and the environment was complex, she emphasised the colonists’ feelings of alienation and the meaning of wilderness as a hostile place, overlooking the more positive associations of wilderness in the Bible. Max Oelschlaeger has explained that the Hebrew word ‘midbar’ translates as ‘wilderness’ and is used extensively throughout the Bible where it

1 Lynn White, ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis, Science, 155, (3767), 1967, pp. 1203-07. 2 Gerald Parsons (ed), Religion in Victorian Britain Volume 1 Traditions, Manchester University Press, Manchester and NY, 1988, see especially the introduction. 3 Grellier, ‘Awe, disillusionment and fear: attitudes to landscape among Christian colonists of far South-West Australia’. 4 Grellier, ‘Awe, disillusionment and fear: attitudes to landscape among Christian colonists of far South-West Australia’, p. 59. 5 Grellier, ‘Awe, disillusionment and fear: attitudes to landscape among Christian colonists of far South-West Australia’, p. 60. 36 takes on a range of meanings.6 In Deuteronomy it is portrayed as a hostile, fearsome place, in Isaiah it becomes a place of refuge, while wilderness in Exodus is both a place of spiritual renewal and a place to be avoided.7 Clarence Glacken also noted that ideas of stewardship, where humans have responsibility for all forms of life, and dominion, where humans control and utilise nature, are both present in the Bible.8 While religion and the Bible were influential in how British people in the nineteenth century viewed nature, it was not the only lens through which relationships between people and the natural environment were viewed. Utilitarian approaches were also evident, but these were complex and often bound up with other perspectives. For example, in Britain, the typical model for understanding relations with nature was the farm, and improvement - meaning capitalist farming - was the goal, but as Roy Porter shows, this is too simplistic: At the heart of enlightened attitudes towards Nature… lay a nest of paradoxes. Enlightened man, especially in his Picturesque embodiment wanted to discover Nature unspoilt by man; and yet, when he found it, he could not resist the impulse, if only in his imagination, to ‘improve’ it, aesthetically and agriculturally. By the close of the eighteenth century, utilitarian Nature – Nature improved – was becoming problematized and Romanticism was making it transcendental, holy and subjective. Under Romanticism, Nature became the new religion.9 In a similar way, Anne Janowitz argued that in the early nineteenth century, ‘the meanings of improvement were often contradictory and obscure, as questions of profit and decorum were at times experienced as congruent, and at others as irreconcilable.’10 By this she meant that strategies for making land more profitable were also bound up

6Max Oelschlaeger, The Idea of Wilderness, Yale University Press. New Haven & London, 1991, p. 356n10; Bruce M. Metzger & Michael D. Coogan (eds), The Oxford Companion to the Bible, Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford, 1993, p. 798. 7 Oelschlaeger, The Idea of Wilderness, p. 356n10; Bruce M. Metzger & Michael D. Coogan (eds), The Oxford Companion to the Bible, Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford, 1993, pp. 798-99 for further details of references to wilderness in the Bible. 8 Clarence Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century, University of California Press. Berkley and L.A., 1967, p. 150. 9 Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World. Penguin Books, London, 2000, p. 319. 10 Anne Janowitz, ‘Land’ in Iain McCalman (ed), An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age in British Culture 1776-1832, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999, p. 153. 37 with ideas of beauty; that notions of ‘improving’ the landscape referred to aesthetic as well as economic considerations. Ideas of improvement in relation to the land were also increasingly associated with science as capitalist agriculture was seen as rational,11 and in nineteenth century Britain, scientific ways of viewing the world were gaining in momentum.12 Indeed, David Knight called the nineteenth century the ‘scientific age’ as traditional sources of authority, such as religion and literature, began to give way to science.13 As Bernard Lightman suggested, in Victorian Britain science was part of both the popular and intellectual culture as Victorians ‘of every rank, at many sites, in many ways, defined knowledge, ordered nature, and practiced science.’14 Botany was particularly fashionable in everyday life, especially among women.15 Scientific and religious understandings of nature also coexisted in Britain during the nineteenth century. Patrick Armstrong argued that during this period many English parsons were also naturalists; the complexity and diversity of nature was evidence for the existence of God, and delight in nature was an expression of Christian piety.16 However, as Gates argues, by the 1870s boundaries between professional scientists and the educated lay public became clearly marked.17 However, though seemingly contradictory, at the same time that science was increasingly shaping how the British viewed the world, romanticism also flourished in

11 Porter, Enlightenment, p. 428. 12 Tim Fulford, Debbie Lee and Peter J. Kitson, Literature, Science and Exploration in the Romantic Era: Bodies of Knowledge, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004, esp. p. 5. 13 David M. Knight, Science in the Romantic Era, Ashgate Variorum, Hampshire, Great Britain and Vermont, USA, 1998, p. 3 14 Bernard Lightman, ‘Introduction’ in Bernard Lightman (ed), Victorian Science in Context, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1997, p. 1. Further evidence for the widespread interest in science during the nineteenth century, particularly from the 1860s, can be seen in Roy M. MacLeod, The ‘Creed of Science’ in Victorian England, Ashgate Variorum, Hampshire, England, 2000 and George Basalla, William Coleman and Robert H. Kargon (eds), Victorian Science: a self-portrait from the presidential addresses of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Doubleday, Garden City, New York, 1970, p. 3. 15 Ann B. Shteir, Cultivating Women, Cultivating Science: Flora’s Daughters and Botany in England 1760-1860, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1996. 16 Patrick Armstrong, The English Parson-Naturalist: A Companionship between Religion and Science, Gracewing, Herefordshire, 2000, pp. ix, 3. 17 Barbara T. Gates, ‘Ordering Nature: Revisioning Victorian Science Culture’, in Bernard Lightman, (ed), Victorian Science in Context, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1997, p. 181; Richard Yeo, ‘Science and Intellectual Authority in Mid-Nineteenth- Century Britain: Robert Chambers and Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation’, in Patrick Brantlinger (ed), Energy and Entropy: Science and Culture in Victorian Britain, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1989, pp 1-27. 38 Europe and was a major influence on how colonists to Western Australia viewed the landscapes there.18 This intellectual and cultural movement emerged as a reaction to Enlightenment ideas that prevailed from the beginning of the eighteenth century and also to changes in society as a result of the growth of industrial capitalism.19 If the Enlightenment emphasised mechanistic, scientific and rational ideas, these were challenged in the Romantic period by ideas that valued subjective knowledge, aesthetics, the uniqueness of individuals, religion and feeling.20 The Romantics, many of whom were from the old aristocratic order, had no sympathy with the new bourgeoisie with whom they associated these Enlightenment ideas. Many believed industrialism was ruining the environment and they sought a return to a way of life they felt was disappearing.21 For many people, however, this way of life never existed. Romantics revered nature, seeing it as simple and honest. They idealised the past and drew on Arcadian visions of rural society. They saw nature as morally healing and spiritually empowering.22 Keith Thomas described the beginning of the nineteenth century as an important juncture in attitudes to nature, as romanticism became more influential.23 In England, he argued, by 1800 there was a sharp division between town and country that encouraged a ‘sentimental longing for rural pleasures and the idealization of the spiritual and aesthetic charms of the countryside’.24 He also explained that these new attitudes towards nature and wilderness were more likely to be found among the wealthy.25 Those people struggling to feed and clothe a family from their labour on the land were less likely to hold romantic notions about nature. Similarly, Oelschlaeger explained that in Western thought, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, there was a shift from viewing wild nature as an obstacle to

18 There are a plethora of sources on Romanticism. For a general introduction to this movement I referred to Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism, Pimlico, London, 2000; Iain McCalman (ed), The Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture 1776-1832, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999; Christopher John Murray (ed), Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era 1760-1850, Fitzroy Dearborn, New York, 2004 and David Pepper, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism, Routledge, London, 1989, pp. 76-81. 19 Pepper, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism, p. 76. 20 McCalman (ed), The Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age, p. 1. 21 Pepper, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism, p. 76. 22 Pepper, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism, pp. 78-80. 23 Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500-1800, Allen Lane, London, 1983, Chapter VI. 24 Thomas, Man and the Natural World, p. 250. Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1967, p. 66 also noted that similar trends developed in America during the same period. 25 Thomas, Man and the Natural World, pp. 264, 267. 39 civilisation and potentially a valuable resource, toward a conception of wilderness as an end in itself.26 As a reaction to a more industrial, urban society the romantic idea of wilderness developed, offering an escape from towns and cities: ‘Wild nature was idealized as an oasis free of the ills of civilization, a retreat to which the harried and battered, the suppressed or oppressed, might turn for relief.’27 Yi-Fu Tuan also associated the romantic appreciation of nature with wealthy urban people, arguing that it was only when society had reached a certain complexity that people would appreciate the relative simplicities of nature,28 and Raymond Williams found that those who were educated and had access to the language of aesthetics were more likely to appreciate the beauty of natural scenes.29 From romantic sentiments towards nature the picturesque emerged in Europe as a particular way of viewing and representing landscape. Colonists to Western Australia were clearly aware of the picturesque and this study seeks to explain the way in which romanticism and the picturesque influenced their relationships with the land. The picturesque began as a reaction against the ideas of Edmund Burke. Burke, who in his political treatises rejected the mechanistic materialism of the Enlightenment, in other treatises expressed a keen interest in aesthetics. In his influential work Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful he discussed the essential qualities of beauty and the sublime.30 The essence of beauty, Burke argued, was smoothness, calmness, safety and clarity, whereas essential qualities of the sublime were astonishment, awe and even fear and danger. However, some theorists believed that Burke’s categories were too narrow as they excluded many landscapes that were still pleasing to the eye. These scenes were termed picturesque. Reverend William Gilpin, a clergyman, author and painter, is the figure most frequently associated with the picturesque tradition. Gilpin published tourist literature and landscape paintings of the Lakes District and developed a theory that influenced how people perceived and represented landscapes.31 He

26 Oelschlaeger, The Idea of Wilderness, p. 4. 27 Oelschlaeger, The Idea of Wilderness, p. 111. 28 Tuan, Topophilia, p.103. 29 Raymond Williams, The Country and the City, Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, 1973, p. 183. 30 Edmund Burke, Philosophical Inquiry into the origin of our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, first published 1757, discussed in Christopher Hussey, The Picturesque: studies in a point of view, GP Putnam’s Sons, London and New York, 1927, pp 12-13. 31 William Gilpin’s first tour book was published in 1782 but his clearest ideas on what constituted picturesque scenes were published in 1792 as Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; 40 extended Burke’s category of beauty to include objects that were rough and interesting to the eye, and then applied these ideas to natural landscapes where there was irregularity and variety. In his theoretical writing he clarified his ideas about what signified the picturesque, but his favoured definition of a picturesque scene or view was one that was suitable for painting.32 Assisted by the accessibility of his guidebooks, Gilpin became widely accepted as the authority on the picturesque qualities of landscape in the 1790s and early 1800s. Armed with one of Gilpin’s guidebooks, a ‘Claude glass’33 and a sketchpad, middle- class English people toured the Lakes district where they enjoyed the picturesque scenery. However, there was intense debate about the nature of the picturesque and there were conflicting understandings of exactly what the term referred to. Writers such as Uvedale Price and Richard Payne Knight, both wealthy squires, attacked the imprecise nature of Gilpin’s ideas.34 For Price, ideally, picturesque scenes were based on a ‘homely model of rustic decay founded on the imagery of seventeenth century Dutch artists’ and not the ‘wild scenery of Gilpin’s tourist vision’.35 Price summarised his idea about the picturesque and described it as roughness, sudden variation, and irregularity.36 Knight criticised Price’s arguments, claiming that any distinction between the beautiful and the picturesque was imaginary.37 Arthur Young, an agricultural writer in the 1770s, also applied the term picturesque to cultivated landscapes.38 There is no doubt among art historians that the picturesque mode of viewing became enormously popular among the educated and wealthy English during this period and thus, according to Hussey, ‘Forthwith the picturesque became the nineteenth century’s mode of

On Picturesque Travel; and On Sketching Landscape, London, 1792. These works are discussed in Malcolm Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque, Scolar, Aldershot, 1989, pp 56-58. 32 Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque, p 56; Hussey, The Picturesque, p. 14. 33 A ‘Claude glass’ is a convex tilted mirror through which the tourist viewed scenery. It gave the view through the glass a blue tint and framed the scene in an attempt to imitate the landscape paintings of Claude Lorrain. 34 Uvedale Price, Essays on the Picturesque, 1794; Richard Payne Knight, Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste, 1805, discussed in Hussey, The Picturesque, pp. 13,16; Anne , Landscape and Ideology: The English Rustic Tradition, 1740-1860, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1986, pp 66-71. 35 Andrew Hemmingway, Landscape imagery and urban culture in early nineteenth century Britain, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992, p 68. 36 Hussey, The Picturesque, p. 66. 37 Birmingham, Landscape and Ideology, p 70; Hussey, The Picturesque, p. 69. 38 Hemmingway, Landscape Imagery and Urban Culture in Early Nineteenth Century Britain, p. 21. 41 vision.’39 Clearly, despite general agreement that the picturesque was important in nineteenth century English culture,40 there was uncertainty about what the term actually meant.41 However, although there were variations in what was understood by picturesque landscapes, the colonists of Western Australia came from a strong tradition of appreciating scenery and landscape that contained variety and interest, and were suitable for painting.

Civilisation, Progress and Human Difference As well as coming with ideas of how to view landscape, the colonists to Western Australia came with ideas of civilisation, progress and human differences that were central to how they saw themselves. From the Bussells in the South West in the 1830s and 1840s, to Gerald de Courcy Lefroy and Janet Millett in the Avon Valley, to Maude Wordsworth James in Kalgoorlie in the 1890s, the belief that they were civilised people profoundly influenced how they perceived themselves in relation to the landscape. The colonists used the words ‘civilisation’ and ‘progress’ frequently, transposing their European understandings on to an Antipodean landscape. What, though, did they mean by these terms? The idea of civilisation had its origins in Renaissance Europe and was then developed during the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century.42 The French word civilité was defined in the middle of the sixteenth century as civil, urbane or courteous.43 Although the word civilisation was not used at this time, the concept of civilisation as expressed by French intellectuals such as Louis Le Roy, Jean Bodin, Etienne Pasquier and Sieur de la Popeliniére, went far beyond meanings of politeness. They used the words civilité and civilise to refer to people who, in their view, had

39 Hussey, The Picturesque, p 2. 40 David Watkin, The English Vision: The Picturesque in Architecture, Landscape, and Garden Design, John Murray Ltd, London, 1982, p. vii also argued that in England between 1730 and 1830, ‘The picturesque became the universal mode of vision for the educated classes.’ 41 Stephanie Ross, ‘The Picturesque: An Eighteenth-Century Debate’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 46, Issue 2, 1987, p. 271. 42 Thomas C. Patterson, Inventing Western Civilization, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1997, p. 23. 43 George Huppert, ‘The Idea of Civilization in the Sixteenth Century’ in A. Molho and John A. Tedeschi, Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, G.C. Sansoni Editore, Florence, 1971, p. 760. 42 sophisticated political systems, laws, social systems and culture.44 They wrote about civilisation in a way that implied a moral superiority over people whose societies were not deemed civilised, such as the peoples of Africa and America, and presumed a comparison between uncivilised people whom they termed wild men, barbarians, savages or infidels, and civilised people such as themselves. The Middle East, China and Japan were also deemed to be civilised but the societies descended from Greece and Rome were considered superior.45 ‘Uncivilised’ people were regarded as inferior because they did not appear to have organised governments, written language, class structures or permanent settlements. The idea of Western civilisation also implied a teleological understanding of history that explained how civilised societies developed from a primitive condition to a more advanced condition. Le Roy believed that change from a primitive state to a more advanced condition came about through moral, intellectual and social progress. For Le Roy and his contemporaries, ‘change was assumed to be cumulative, directional and desirable’.46 Bacon and Descartes extended the concept of civilisation by linking it with the growth of reason - it was reason that distinguished northern Europeans from savages, and the greater rationality of the civilised nations would bring about the conquest of nature, leading to ‘rapid, beneficial and profitable change’.47 Influenced by French philosophers and first-hand accounts from travellers to North America, thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment also had a significant influence on English ideas about civilisation and its antithesis, savagery. They supported and developed a stadial view of social development that maintained that all people belonged to a common humanity but different nations were at different stages of development. According to this view, societies proceeded through four stages: the age of hunters, the age of shepherds, the age of agriculture and the age of commerce.48 Hunters, at the first

44 Patterson, Inventing Western Civilization, p. 29 and Huppert, ‘The Idea of Civilization in the Sixteenth Century’, pp. 762-767. 45 Patterson, Inventing Western Civilization, p. 23. 46 Patterson, Inventing Western Civilization, p. 32. 47 Patterson, Inventing Western Civilization, pp. 34-5. 48 These stages have been written about extensively. See for example, R. L. Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000, pp. 117-125; Patterson, Inventing Western Civilization, Chapter Two; John Gascoigne, The Enlightenment and the Origins of European Australia, Cambridge University Press, Port Melbourne, Victoria and Cambridge, 2002, pp. 148-151 wrote about the idea of stadial development and its influence on Australia and Pat Maloney, ‘Savagery and Civilization: Early Victorian Notions’, New 43 stage of social development - and the stage at which Europeans thought Aboriginal people were at - were described as savages: nomadic, with little division of labour, no written language or civil government and limited property. Many believed that ‘civilised’ nations had a responsibility to help ‘savage’ peoples reach a higher level of development and to convert them to Christianity. The French philosophers and leading thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment assumed that humans were capable of improvement, and societies could move forward from one stage of development to the next. Ideas of civilisation were thereby inextricably linked to those of progress.49 In his classic work, The Idea of Progress, J.B. Bury understood progress to mean that ‘civilisation has moved, is moving, and will move in a desirable direction’.50 More recently, David Spadafora refined Bury’s ideas and defined progress as ‘the belief in the movement over time of some aspect or aspects of human existence, within a social setting, towards a better condition’.51 Ideas of civilisation and progress were widespread in England and Europe by the 1750s but they were not unchallenged.52 Spadafora has identified British intellectuals who were historical pessimists and who did not promote progress, whose ideas were characterised by belief in the aesthetic superiority of the ‘natural’ over the ‘refined’, the advantages of the ‘noble savage’ over the rational European, belief in cyclical rather than linear understandings of history and lamentation over the vices present in British society.53 The concept of the ‘noble savage’ can be traced back to the sixteenth century but became more widely known when Rousseau adopted it in his writing based on European contact with Amerindians.54 It was, of course, the ‘noble savage’ idea which

Zealand Journal of History, 35, 2 (2001), pp. 153-176 also described these stages and argued that this stadial view of societal development informed colonial policy in the South Pacific. 49 Huppert, ‘The Idea of Civilization in the Sixteenth Century’, p. 760; Patterson, Inventing Western Civilization, pp. 32-33 also argued that the idea of progress was embedded in the concept of western civilization. 50 J.B. Bury, The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into its Origins and Growth, Macmillan and Co., Ltd., London, 1924, p. 2. 51 David Spadafora, The Idea of Progress in Eighteenth Century Britain, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1990, p. 6 52 Both Thomas C. Patterson, Inventing Western Civilization, 1997 and David Spadafora, The Idea of Progress in Eighteenth Century Britain, 1990 have discussed opposition to the prevailing ideas of progress and civilisation. 53 David Spadafora, The Idea of Progress in Eighteenth Century Britain, 1990, p. 14. 54 Sankar Muthu, Enlightenment Against Empire, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2003, Chapter Two, pp. 11-71. 44 Captain James Cook epitomised when he idealised the lives of Aboriginal people he met on his journey up the East coast of Australia: They live in a Tranquility which is not disturb’d by the Inequality of Condition: The Earth and sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for life, they covet not Magnificent Houses, Household stuff etca, they live in a warm and fine Climate and enjoy a very wholesome Air…55 Educated people in Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries who believed in ideas of civilisaton and progress thought that societies differed in terms of their development based on they way they were organised economically, but how did the colonists understand differences between individual people? The concepts of race and human difference that the colonists brought with them are critical for comprehending and interpreting how they saw the Aboriginal people and their relationship with the land. The concept of race and its association with skin colour did not become a common way of categorising humans until the third quarter of the eighteenth century.56 Throughout most of the eighteenth century religion, civility and rank were more important as indicators of difference than physical attributes such as skin colour, skull shape or hair texture.57 Of these, Wheeler argued that religion was the most important way of defining difference.58 Most Britons believed that variations in human appearances and behaviours were explained by the Biblical account of creation and changes occurred naturally as people dispersed all over the earth.59 The increased interest in science and rational thinking during the Enlightenment had a profound influence on ideas about human difference. Carl Linnaeus’ classification of humans as a species with a number of varieties was one of the earliest attempts to scientifically classify human ‘types’ and, although Linnaeus did not rank his types, he

55 James Cook, The Journals of Captain James Cook on his voyages of discovery, J. C. Beaglehole and others (ed), Hakluyt Society, Cambridge, 3 volumes, 1955-68, i. 399 as quoted in Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, Harper & Row Publishers, Sydney, 2nd edition, 1985, p. 169. 56 Roxann Wheeler, The Complexion of Race: Categories of Difference in Eighteenth Century British Culture, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2000, p. 9 and George M. Frederickson, Racism: A Short History, Princeton University Press, Princeton & Oxford, 2002, p. 52. 57 Wheeler, The Complexion of Race, p. 7. 58 Wheeler, The Complexion of Race, p. 15. 59 Wheeler, The Complexion of Race, p. 15. 45 expressed a preference for Europeans.60 Linnaeus, together with George Louis Leclerc Buffon’s studies on human variation were very influential in drawing attention to skin colour as a significant human difference.61 Ideas that supported views of racial inferiority were also fuelled by belief in the ‘chain of being’ that placed all life hierarchically on a ladder. Humans were at the top of the ladder, but ‘races’ were also ranked, with northern Europeans on the highest rung and Australian Aborigines on the lowest.62 The influence of the Enlightenment on ideas of race and human difference is widely acknowledged among scholars, though the emphasis they place on it varies.63 What is clear, though, is that as the nineteenth century progressed, assumptions about human difference were increasingly based on scientific ideas. When Charles Darwin published Origin of The Species in 1859, British intellectuals were already sympathetic to the idea that biology was a key factor that explained why humans differed. As Malik asserted, Victorians easily adapted Darwin’s theory to suit their preconceived ideas and this shaped the way that Darwin’s theory was applied to society.64 When Darwin’s ideas of adaptation and natural selection were applied to societies, the term ‘Social Darwinism’ was employed, and in part, was used to justify the social hierarchy.65 At the end of the nineteenth century in Australia, Social Darwinism also justified the dispossession of Aboriginal people. Europeans who viewed Aboriginal people as inferior and at the bottom of the ‘chain of being’, now also viewed them as incapable of competing with the more ‘advanced’ European society in Australia and came to believe that, inevitably, Aboriginal people would die out. As Reynolds observes about government policy relating to Aboriginal people in the late nineteenth century,

60 Frederickson, Racism: A Short History, p. 56. 61 Wheeler, The Complexion of Race, p. 30. 62 Henry Reynolds, ‘Racial Thought in Early Colonial Australia’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, April 1974, p. 47; Reynolds, Dispossession, Chapter Four. See also Kenan Malik, The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society, Macmillan Press, London, 1996, p. 43 for further discussion on the ‘chain of being’. 63 For discussion on the relative influence of the Enlightenment on ideas of race and human difference see for example, Cornel West, ‘A Genealogy of Modern Racism’ in Philomena Essed & David Theo Goldberg (eds), Race Critical Theories, Blackwell Publishers, Massachusetts and Oxford, 2002, pp. 94-96 and Malik, The Meaning of Race. 64 Malik, The Meaning of Race, pp. 90, 91. 65 Malik, The Meaning of Race: Race, p. 91. For further information about social darwinism see for example, Mike Hawkins, Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860- 1945: nature as model and nature as threat, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 1997; Greta Jones, Social Darwinism and English Thought: the interaction between biological and social theory, Harvester Press, Brighton, Sussex, 1980. 46 ‘Humanitarian concern might ease the passing but nothing could bend the iron laws of evolution.’66 Ideas of civilisation, progress and human difference were applied to Aboriginal people in different ways across the country. Whether they were farmers, missionaries, storemen, bakers, gold prospectors or women who worked in the home, these ideas influenced how the colonists viewed themselves and Aboriginal people they observed and interacted with. Generally, individuals had consistent thoughts about civilisation and progress, but their attitudes towards the Aboriginal people were sometimes contradictory. George Fletcher Moore in the 1830s, for example, held complex and inconsistent beliefs about them. He knew several Aboriginal men quite well, knew a great deal about and respected their culture and sometimes defended their rights to the land, but ultimately, he believed that they were obstructing the goals of colonisation. However, by the time Maude Wordsworth James arrived in Kalgoorlie in 1897, Social Darwinism dominated European attitudes toward Aboriginal people and there were few doubts among Europeans in Western Australia that Aborigines belonged to a dying race, doomed to extinction.

Social Class, Gender and Domestic Space Social class, gender and domestic space are vast areas of study in themselves, but here I ask three specific questions: How were their old class and gender roles, particularly in relation to domestic space, transposed in new landscapes? How were their ideas of gardens modified in the colonial context? What role did gardens play in attaching meaning to place? The colonists to southern Western Australia discussed here were from the middle or upper-middle class. They had sufficient capital to emigrate and were well educated, but they were not major landholders. Their decision to leave England or Ireland was based on the assumption that they, and particularly their children, would have greater opportunities for owning property in the Swan River Colony, which would lead to greater wealth than they could expect if they remained. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall have explored what it meant to be ‘middle-class’ in England during the

66 Reynolds, Dispossession, p. 114. 47 period of Australia’s colonisation.67 Although middle-class men had a diverse range of occupations that included clergymen, doctors, merchants, farmers and professionals, with their wives they shared both a similar moral code and ideas of home. Home was where religious and moral standards were produced and reproduced and where women were primarily responsible for creating and maintaining the house, its contents and its familial relationships.68 At this time, too, middle-class households usually comprised only nuclear families and their servants, whereas prior to the nineteenth century, they typically included members of extended families and other unrelated people such as apprentices and boarders, as well as servants.69 For middle-class people in Western societies, home and family became increasingly linked so that home symbolised family relationships within the house and became distinct from the household.70 In middle-class homes in England at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, the issue of space, as well as domesticity, was important. Davidoff and Hall argued that strict boundaries were erected between the private and public spheres of life.71 Gates, drives, hedges and walls around middle-class houses and gardens were evidence of an increasing desire for privacy.72 This desire for privacy, though, created tension as people of the middle-class also wanted to demonstrate their household’s place and status in the community.73 As their standard of living improved, middle-class people had more time for reading, writing, decorative needlework and scientific hobbies and they created separate rooms for these activities. Where possible, eating took place in a separate dining room and everyday goods were separated from the ‘best’, which were brought out on special occasions such as Sunday lunch and Christmas day.74 Entertaining at home also became more popular and the parlour, a room for receiving visitors and family gatherings, was used regularly.75 Davidoff and Hall also found that by the mid-nineteenth century, three quarters of middle-class households had at least one servant living in, meaning that space was required for

67 Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850, Hutchinson, London, 1987. 68 Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes. 69 Hareven, ‘The Home and Family in Historical Perspective’, p. 260. 70 Hareven, ‘The Home and Family in Historical Perspective’, p. 260. 71 Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, pp. 357-362. 72 Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, p. 361. 73 Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, p. 362. 74 Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, p. 375. 75 Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, p. 377. 48 domestic help.76 In terms of interior design, the early nineteenth century preference for lightness and space was yielding to a cluttered approach, with living rooms containing many decorative items such as ornaments and paintings.77 In southern Western Australia the importance of domesticity, the desire for separate rooms for different activities and the cluttered style of decorating houses in British middle-class culture are all reflected in the colonists’ home making. Women performed an important role in homes in colonial Western Australia and I am interested in how, as homemakers, they interacted with the wider environment. However, I also consider how men functioned in the domestic sphere as Australian historians have often overlooked their role in the home. Davidoff and Hall, though, have written about masculinity in the middle-class home, finding that men played an important role as fathers78 and were responsible for parts of the garden and items in the house such as wine, books, pictures and musical instruments.79 More recently, John Tosh has focused extensively on domesticity and masculinity and suggested that scholarship which exclusively associates women and the home has ignored the more complex relationship between home and gender.80 Home was also a man’s place. Men ruled the home, but they were also involved in home making. Changes in work that arose from increased urbanisation and industrialisation resulted in home becoming more important for men and men, as much as women, created the ideal of domesticity. Men retreated to their homes for comfort and they had important roles as fathers and husbands. Domesticity represented a profound attachment: a state of mind as well as a physical orientation. Its defining attributes are privacy and comfort, separation from the workplace, and the merging of domestic space and family members into a single commanding concept (in English, ‘home’).81

76 Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, p. 389. 77 Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, p. 375. 78Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, pp. 331-35. 79 Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, p. 387. 80 John Tosh, ‘Domesticity and manliness in the Victorian Middle Class’ in Michael Roper and John Tosh (eds), Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800, Routledge, London, 1991; John Tosh, ‘New Men?: The Bourgeois Cult of Home’, History Today, 46, 12, 1996, pp. 9-15 and John Tosh, A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1999. 81 Tosh, A Man’s Place, p. 4. 49 So, although men had little to do with domestic labour or management in the middle- class Victorian household, their place was also in the home and the term ‘women’s sphere’, ‘was a convenient shorthand, not a call to exclusivity’.82 In addition, there was inherent tension in the relationship between masculinity and domesticity as men exercised authority and yet sought companionship and comfort in the home.83 The relationship between men and their domestic space in a colonial context has not been fully explored. By including men in my study I found that, contrary to traditional Australian narratives, men also thought their place was in the home. They responded emotionally to the idea and realities of home and yearned for comfort and companionship. However, their roles could change as circumstances dictated that they engage in what were conventionally women’s tasks. One aim of my study is to look more closely at how these middle-class ideas of domesticity influenced the ways in which households functioned in colonial Western Australian landscapes. How were boundaries between private and public space marked in the thick bush of Augusta in the 1830s, in the Avon Valley in the 1840s or in Kalgoorlie in the 1890s? Were these boundaries as rigid in colonial Western Australia as they had been in England? Without the domestic help they were accustomed to, who undertook the multitude of household duties? These questions of domestic space lead to a discussion of gardens, as gardens formed a significant part of the private domestic space of middle class people in England. Gardens occupy an important position in the writing and thinking about landscape and domestic space. Composed of trees and other plants yet constructed by people, ‘natural’ yet a sign of ‘civilisation’, they relate ideas of nature and wilderness to those of civilisation and domesticity. Davidoff and Hall viewed nineteenth century English gardens as an extension of the home.84 Their main feature was the lawn bordered by shrubberies, flower beds, fruit trees and either a separate kitchen garden or vegetable beds. As with other areas of the household, the garden was a gendered space. Women were associated with flowers for decorative purposes but women, as well as men, worked in the garden. They cared for plants and enjoyed the colour and design of their garden.85 Fondness for flower gardening also crossed class boundaries with Martin

82 Tosh, A Man’s Place, p. 50. 83 Tosh, ‘New Men? The Bourgeois Cult of Home’, pp. 9-15. 84 Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, p. 370. 85 Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, p. 374. 50 Hoyle, for example, finding evidence of working class men such as Derbyshire miners, Lancashire cotton workers and colliers of Northumberland and Durham growing flowers.86 Understanding how important home life was for middle-class people in Britain, and the roles that women and men played in creating these homes is useful when, in later chapters, I consider how these may have changed in the Colony.

Reading Colonists’ Responses to Landscape and Place Defining Landscape and Environment The terms ‘landscape’ and ‘environment’ are both problematic. Simon Schama explained that at the end of the sixteenth century, ‘landscape’ was derived from the Dutch word ‘landschap’, a word that referred to a unit of human occupation.87 The English, though, associated the term with the Dutch scenery that comprised fields, farms and farmhouses; scenery that they found pleasing and that they reproduced in drawings and paintings,88 and these origins can be seen in present standard definitions of ‘landscape’ as natural scenery and pictorial representation of scenery.89 These ideas of landscape suggest that it has an existence independent of people and culture, but following other historians concerned with landscape, I understand landscape to be scenery and surroundings, both natural and designed by humans, the interpretation of which is always shaped by people’s perceptions and cultural influences. I agree with Schama that landscape is ‘the work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock.’90 Tim Bonyhady and Tom Griffiths write that landscape is ‘a word freighted with cultural meanings’91 and Barbara Bender suggests that landscapes are ‘created by people – through their experience and engagement with the world around them’.92

86 Martin Hoyle, The Story of Gardening, Journeyman Press, London and Concord, Massachusetts, 1991, p. 52. 87 Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, Harper Collins, London, 1995, p. 10. 88 Schama, Landscape and Memory, p. 10. 89 Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, fifth edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, p. 1536. 90 Schama, Landscape and Memory, p. 6. 91 Tim Bonyhady and Tom Griffiths, ‘Landscape and Language’ in Tim Bonyhady and Tom Griffiths (eds), Words for Country: landscape and language in Australia, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2002, p. 1. 92 Barbara Bender, ‘Introduction: Landscape – Meaning and Action’ in Barbara Bender (ed), Landscape: Politics and Perspective, Berg Publishers, Providence USA and Oxford, 1993, p. 1. 51 Following David Lowenthal’s understanding of ‘environment’, I use this word to refer to all material surroundings; natural and cultural.93 In this thesis ‘environment’ usually refers to natural surroundings, but it may include cultural surroundings. I reject Barry Cunliffe’s idea that environment exists independent from the observer as I understand environment, like landscape, to be mediated by culture and experience; there is no raw environmental matter, no objective ‘environment’.94 These discussions on ‘landscape’ and ‘environment’ raise a further question: What is a ‘natural’ landscape? According to Raymond Williams, ‘Nature is perhaps the most complex word in the [English] language.’95 It is not surprising, then, that the term ‘natural landscape’ is also complicated. Part of the difficulty is that the nature-culture dualism in Western thought has influenced how Western cultures view landscapes. For example, national parks services and conservation and environment departments in Western countries such as the United States of America and Australia, as well as the World Heritage Committee, typically categorise landscapes as either ‘natural’ (sometimes the term ‘physical’ is used as a synonym for ‘natural’) or ‘cultural’.96 In these reports ‘natural’ landscapes are those geographical areas that have had no, or at least only a little, human presence, whereas ‘cultural’ landscapes contain evidence of human occupation in some way. However, some academics have challenged these distinctions. Schama, for instance, does not make a distinction between ‘natural’ and

93 David Lowenthal, ‘Environment as Heritage’ in Kate Flint and Howard Morphy (eds), Culture, Landscape and Environment, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000, p. 197. 94 Barry Cunliffe, ‘Landscapes with People’ in Kate Flint and Howard Morphy (eds), Culture, Landscape and Environment, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000, p. 111. 95 Raymond Williams, Keywords, Oxford University Press, New York, 1983, p. 219. 96 Charles A. Birnbaum, ‘Protecting Cultural Landscapes: Planning, Treatment and Management of Historic Landscapes’, Technical Preservation Services, National Parks Services, US Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C., 1994, http://www.nps.gov/hps/tps/briefs/brief36.htm, accessed 22/09/08; Department of Natural Resources, NSW, http://www.naturalresources.nsw.gov.au/nr/cultural_landscapes.shtml, accessed 22/09/08; UNESCO, Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention, UNESCO, World Heritage Centre, Paris, 2005, as quoted in Sandra Pannell, Reconciling Nature and Culture in a Global Context? Lessons from the World Heritage List, Rainforest Cooperative Research Centre for Tropical Rainforest Ecology and Management, Report No 48, James Cook University Cairns, 2006, http://www.rainforest- crc.jcu.edu.au/publications/nature_culture.htm, accessed online 22/09/08; Ways in which these terms have been used by the Department of Environment and Conservation in Western Australia can be viewed online. For an example of ‘natural’ landscape see https://www.dec.wa.gov.au/pdf/nature/management/wilderness_area_ policy.pdf (accessed 22/09/08) and for ‘cultural’ landscape see https://www.dec.wa.gov.au/pdf/nature/management/beeliar_management_ plan_18_10_2006.pdf (accessed 22/09/08). 52 ‘cultural’ landscapes as he argues that the ‘wilderness’ craved by environmentalists such as Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, which they believed would cure the evils of industrial society, was a cultural construction.97 Even the act of identifying and photographing ‘wilderness’ gives it a human or a cultural component. Marcia Langton, one of Australia’s leading Indigenous scholars, brings another dimension to this discussion, and one that is particularly significant to the idea of ‘natural’ landscapes in colonial Australia.98 Like Schama and Lowenthal, she asserts that there is no such thing as a ‘natural’ landscape, as they ‘exist only as representations and constructions’, in which ‘nature’ and ‘wilderness’ are considered non-human.99 She then explains her position in relation to an Aboriginal perspective of ‘wilderness’, arguing that Australians need to understand that many areas of ‘wilderness’ are inhabited and used by Indigenous people, and indeed, have been shaped by the activities of generations of Indigenous land managers.100 In this thesis, I concur with Langton and am aware that the ‘natural’ landscapes that the colonists observed, wrote about and made their homes in, had been managed and modified by Aboriginal people for countless years. Understood like this, there were no ‘natural’ landscapes when the colonists arrived in southern Western Australia. The colonists, though, did not understand ‘natural’ landscapes in this way. Their understandings were derived from the nature/culture dualism, so landscapes that appeared to be unmodified by people, even if they knew Aboriginal people used fire to manage the land, were deemed to be ‘natural’. Therefore, when I refer to ‘natural’ landscapes, I do so through the eyes of the colonists.

Responses with a Broad Approach Writing in the 1960s and early 1970s, R.L. Heathcote and J.M. Powell were among the first historians and geographers to address the broad subject of how Europeans in Australia imagined the Australian landscape.101 Heathcote categorised European

97 Schama, Landscape and Memory, p. 7. 98 Marcia Langton, ‘Art, wilderness and terra nullius’, Ecopolitics IX: Conference papers and resolutions, Northern Land Council, Northern Territory, 1996, pp. 11-24. 99 Langton, ‘Art, wilderness and terra nullius’, pp. 11, 16. 100 Langton, ‘Art, wilderness and terra nullius’, p. 24. 101 R.L. Heathcote, ‘The Visions of Australia 1770-1970’ in A. Rappaport (ed.), Australia as Human Setting, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1972, pp. 77-98; R.L. Heathcote, ‘Early European perceptions of the Australian landscape; the first hundred years’ in George Seddon & Maris Davis (eds), Man and Landscape in Australia, Australia Government Publishing Service, 53 perceptions of the Australian landscape from 1770 to 1970 into five visions: the scientific, romantic, colonial, national and ecological. In understanding how these visions were created he argued that they were the result of the interaction of the nature of the environment, the nature of those who made their assessments and the means by which the assessments were made.102 Powell was interested in the role that images and ideas played in the white settlement in Australia, North America and New Zealand.103 Immigrants to these environments came with ideas of the type of society they would create and, as they learned about their new environments, these images were modified. Agrarian idealism was one powerful vision brought by immigrants and Powell discussed how this, and other visions, influenced the development of rural settlements. Kevin Frawley continued the theme of visions when he explained how concepts and ethics derived from the Western cultural tradition influenced visions of environmental management and nature conservation in Australia.104 He described three visions: the exploitative, pioneering vision which began in the nineteenth century, the national development and ‘wise use’ of resources vision which extended from 1900- 1960s, and the modern environmentalism which began in the 1960s. Attitudes to nature formed part of these visions. Frawley proposed that by 1820 there were two prevailing views: Europeans in colonial Australia perceived that either the flora and fauna were novel and interesting, or that the scenery was visually monotonous, wearisome and brought about feelings of melancholy. Several historians have linked ideas of nature, wilderness, civilisation, progress and race, brought to Australia by Europeans, with the wanton destruction of the Australian environment and the Aboriginal people. This approach to Australian environmental history sets a scene wherein the white, alienated occupier waged war against the land, conquered it and then exploited it for profit. One of the first Australian historians to espouse these ideas was W. K. Hancock, and his assertion, ‘The invaders hated trees’,105 has often been quoted to signify that Europeans felt alienated by the

Canberra, 1976, pp. 29-46; J. M. Powell, Environmental Management in Australia 1788-1914, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1976; Powell, Mirrors of the New World. 102 Heathcote, ‘The Visions of Australia 1770-1970’. 103 Powell, Mirrors of the New World. 104 Kevin Frawley, ‘Evolving visions: environmental management and nature conservation in Australia’, in Stephen Dovers (ed), Australian Environmental History, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1984, pp. 55-78. 105 W.K. Hancock, Australia, Ernest Benn, London, 1930, p. 33. 54 Australian environment.106 More recent proponents of this approach include William J. Lines and Tim Flannery. Lines argues that the conquest of nature in Australia by Europeans was justified by Enlightenment ideas of progress and improvement that fuelled the colonists’ desire to tame and conquer nature for profit.107 Although Lines acknowledges there were individual dissenters, his dominant argument is one of destruction and devastation justified by rational ideals of economic growth and development. John Gascoigne also suggested, though with less fervour than Lines, that Enlightenment ideas of improvement and progress that emerged from new methods of agriculture framed how colonists viewed the land.108 Tim Flannery’s ecological approach is also less damning than Lines’. His expansive history of Australasia is divided into three sections; before people inhabited these lands, with the coming of Aboriginal people, and then with the arrival of the Europeans. His explanations regarding the destruction of the environment are more generous towards Europeans than Lines’, as he argues that sentiments such as love and memories of home, as well as greed, led to environmental destruction. Geoffrey Bolton also took a broad, sweeping approach to Australia’s environmental history, spanning Europeans’ impact on the land from 1788 to 1980.109 Although Bolton wrote about exploitation of the land to achieve economic goals, in contrast with Lines, he did address the emergence of conservation movements. Bolton’s Spoils and Spoilers bridges adversarial approaches to Australian environmental history and those writers who analyse white responses to the land in more interactive and relational terms. This alternative approach, exemplified by George Seddon, Tim Bonyhady and Grace Karskens does not assume that Europeans were alienated from the land.110 Seddon’s approach to landscape was broadly ecological. He

106 See for example, Tim Bonyhady, The Colonial Earth, Miegunyah Press, Carlton, Victoria, 2000, p. 3; Grace Karskens, ‘Nefarious Geographies: Convicts and the Sydney environment in the early colonial period’, Tasmanian Historical Studies, Volume 11, 2006, p. 15 and Geoffrey Bolton, Spoils and Spoilers: Australians make their environment 1788-1980, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1981, p. 37. 107 Lines, An All Consuming Passion, especially pp. 19-21; Lines, Taming the Great South Land, especially pp. 25-26. 108 Gascoigne, The Enlightenment and the Origins of European Australia, pp. 69-85. 109 Bolton, Spoils and Spoilers. 110 Seddon, A Sense of Place; George Seddon, Searching for the Snowy. An environmental history, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, 1994; George Seddon, Landprints, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997; George Seddon, The Old Country: Australian Landscapes, Plants and People, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne and New York, 2005; Bonyhady, The Colonial Earth; Karskens, ‘Nefarious Geographies: Convicts and the Sydney environment 55 saw people as part of nature but acknowledged they could be creative as well as destructive and this is reflected in his interest in environmental design. Sense of Place, first published in 1972 and republished in 2004, is considered seminal in its relational approach to Australian environmental history. It is an account of his own attempt to come to terms with the Swan Coastal Plain and draws on disciplines such as botany and geology to explain how he came to see and to know this environment. Bonyhady draws on colonial art for much of the primary source material in his study of the relationship between environmental ideals, policies and practices and argues that there were individuals in colonial Australia who cared deeply for the environment and derived pleasure from its flora and fauna. Examples of this concern were evident in the desire of some colonists to protect the native flora and fauna, in the disquiet regarding the effects of pastoralism, and in urban colonial Australia where there were efforts to improve the aesthetic environment. Karskens’ study of convicts in colonial Sydney challenges the dominant view that they, like most Europeans in colonial Australia, disliked and were alienated by the land. She launches her argument with a brief discussion of a painting that suggests a different relationship between convicts and the environment. Officially named ‘Major Johnson with Quartermaster Laycock One Sergeant and twenty-five Private of ye New South Wales corps defeats two hundred and sixty armed Rebels, 5th March 1804’, in this painting of convicts, soldiers and the bush, the bush appears to be the convicts’ ally, but an enemy of the authorities. Karskens then seeks possible explanations for this relationship and explains that, soon after arriving at Sydney Cove, many convicts left the settlement; some were trying to escape, some searched for native foods and others collected native flora, fauna and artifacts made by local Aboriginal people to sell or barter. These activities assisted the convicts to become familiar with the geography of the place and, by learning about the environment, they attached meaning to the bush. Furthermore, although only a few convicts left sufficient records to assess their responses to the environment, Karskens did find evidence that as well as learning about the bush through their travels, they admired and enjoyed the landscapes around

in the early colonial period’. Karskens’ article, ‘Nefarious Geographies’ is not a broad, expansive approach to the question of how Europeans in Australia viewed and related to the landscapes but, as she suggests, (footnote 9 of ‘Nefarious Geographies’), it expands Bonyhady’s work, so I have included it with these ‘interactive’ approaches. 56 Sydney.111 Although the subjects of Seddon’s, Bonyhady’s and Karskens’ work are diverse, they all agree that relationships between land and people are complex, interactive processes. Another group of historical studies that, in a broad sense, are also concerned with the theme of belonging, examine how European culture was transplanted and transposed on to colonial Australia. Among these, the works of Thomas Dunlap, Alan Atkinson, Alan Frost and David Irwin are particularly notable.112 Dunlap was interested in how natural history and science shaped settlers’ understanding of the landscapes they encountered in the new worlds of Australia, Canada and New Zealand.113 Like Lines, he believed that the relationship between the settlers and the land was essentially adversarial and he termed the Europeans ‘conquerors’, who saw ‘the land in European terms’ and also ‘tried to make it like their old homes’.114 However, the new settlers were forced to adapt and although ‘European farming triumphed everywhere, it did so in new forms’.115 Atkinson also argued that the Europeans attempted to re-create a familiar landscape but, with particular reference to those who settled on the Cumberland Plain, he noted that in this process the newcomers were ‘beginning to be subject also to the land itself’.116 Here, Atkinson was referring to the power of the Hawkesbury River not only to appeal to the settlers’ aesthetic values and to provide water, but also to cause death and destruction during floods. Europeans made their imprints on the land consistent with their visions, but at times the land thwarted their dreams. Through this interaction, however, they gradually came to develop a sense of place.

111 Karskens, ‘Nefarious Geographies’, pp. 17-18. 112 Atkinson, Camden; Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia: A History, Volume One; Alan Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia: A History, Volume Two, Democracy, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2004; Alan Atkinson, J. S. Ryan, Iain Davidson, Andrew Piper (eds), High Lean Country: Land, People and Memory in New England, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2006 (ebook) examines the relationship between people and place in the northern region of New South Wales known as New England, beginning with the arrival of European people and extending past the colonial period into the twentieth century; Thomas R. Dunlap, ‘Australian nature, European culture: Anglo settlers in Australia’, Environmental History Review, Vol 17, No 1, Spring 1993, pp. 25-48; Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora; Alan Frost, ‘Going away, coming home’ in John Hardy and Alan Frost (eds), Studies from Terra Australis to Australia, Australian Academy of the Humanities, Canberra, 1989, pp. 219-231; David Irwin, ‘An English Home in the Antipodes’ in John Hardy and Alan Frost (eds.), Studies from Terra Australis to Australia, Australian Academy of the Humanities, Canberra, 1989, pp. 195-209. 113 Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora. 114 Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora, p. 17. 115 Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora, p. 69. 116 Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia: A History, Volume One, p. 197. 57 Historians have used the idea of hybridity to understand how colonial settlements reflected both European and Australian characteristics. This understanding of hybridity is different from how the term is used in post-colonial studies, cultural studies and cultural theory. In these disciplines hybridity is a very complex idea applied to studies of the construction of identity in multicultural societies.117 The historian Alan Frost applied the word ‘hybrid’ to describe the landscapes of the Cumberland Plain in New South Wales that contained elements of Europe and Australia.118 He noted how rapidly the region had taken on a distinctly ‘English’ character but also observed that the ‘Europeanisation’ of the region had a ‘hybrid’ quality and quoted Mrs Macarthur to explain what he meant by this term: ‘It is now spring, and the eye is delighted with the most beautiful variegated landscape. Almonds, apricots, pear and apple trees are in full bloom. The native shrubs are also in flower and the whole country gives a grateful perfume.’119 Frost also pondered whether the colonists were merely British people who lived in New South Wales or whether they were, in some sense, ‘Australian’ and, in a similar way to Atkinson, acknowledged the influence of the land in shaping their identity. While Frost was interested in hybrid landscapes, David Irwin found that colonists’ homes in Australia had many elements of European culture, but they also

117 One of the key theorists first associated with hybridity in post-colonial discourse was Homi K. Bhaba, The Location of Culture, Routledge, London, 1994 but there is now a wide body of literature on this concept of hybridity. For examples see Avtar Brah and Anni E. Coombes (eds), Hybridity and its Discontents: politics, science and culture, Routledge, London, 2000; Robert J. Young, Colonial Desire: hybridity in theory, culture and race, Routledge, London and New York, 1995; Jacqueline Lo, ‘Beyond Happy Hybridity: Performing Asian-Australian Identities’ in Ien Ang, Sharon Chalmers, Lisa Law and Mandy Thomas (eds), Alter/Asians: Asian-Australian identities in art, media and popular culture, Pluto Press, Annandale, NSW, 2000, pp. 152-168; Dean Chang, ‘The Poetics of Cultural Theory: On Hybridity and the New Hierarchies’ in Helen Gilbert, Tseen Khoo and Jacqueline Lo (eds), Diaspora: Negotiating Asian-Australian, Journal of Australian Studies and Australian Cultural History, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Queensland, 2000, pp. 52-57; Deborah A Kapchan and Pauline Turner Strong (eds), Theorizing the Hybrid, Journal of American Folklore, Washington, 1999, Volume 12, Issue 445; Yin C. Paradies, ‘Beyond Black and White: Essentialism, hybridity and Indigeneity, Journal of Sociology, The Australian Sociological Association, 2006, Vol 42(4), pp. 355-67. 118 Frost, ‘Going away, coming home’, 1989. 119 As quoted by Frost in ‘Going away, coming home’, p. 230. Mrs Elizabeth Macarthur was the wife of John Macarthur, a successful, if somewhat controversial, entrepreneur and pastoralist who became a member of the Legislative Council in 1825. Mrs Macarthur took an active role in managing their properties in New South Wales and developing the Australian wool industry. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A020130b.htm (accessed 7/2/08). 58 contained features that were uniquely Australian.120 From the letters of several colonists, a collection of books owned by the Van Dieman’s Land Company in 1832 and 1833, articles from the Sydney Gazette in the early 1800s and engravings and paintings that hung on colonists’ walls, he established what colonists read, how they decorated their houses and designed their gardens. He began by assuming colonial houses looked and felt like English homes, but reconsidered his position: …it is possible to talk about an ‘English’ home in the antipodes. But I think such a conclusion would be not only simplistic but also wrong… it is all too easy to interpret the early colonial home in Australia, its structure, its furnishings, and its surroundings, as a pre-packaged export from home, pre-packaged in both an actual and in a metaphorical sense. The home in the antipodes was not an ‘English’ home transposed to the other side of the globe. It was a home growing out of a response to the Australian climate and the Australian way of life, incorporating English elements, but absorbed into the totality of a home that was unmistakably Australian. 121 These studies that have considered, in a broad sense, how Europeans in Australia responded to the landscapes there, illustrate the range of views that scholars have formed about whether European Australians felt estranged by the land or admired it. Heathcote, Powell and Frawley were interested in how visions of landscape brought from Europe influenced relationships with the land, Lines and Flannery adopted an adversarial approach that argues that Europeans felt alienated by the land, while Seddon, Bonyhady and Karskens found that in the complex relations between land and people, many Europeans have found much to admire in Australian landscapes. Other historians looked broadly at how European culture was transferred to Australia, and Frost used the idea of hybridity to describe the combination of European and Australian characteristics of the Cumberland Plain. Following Frost, rather than post-colonial literature or cultural studies, I also use the term ‘hybridity’ to refer to a fusion of English and Australian characteristics in the colonists’ homes and gardens discussed in this thesis.

120 Irwin, ‘An English Home in the Antipodes’. 121 Irwin, ‘An English Home in the Antipodes’, p. 209. 59 Artistic and Literary Responses As the colonists established themselves in new landscapes they expressed their ideas of nature and wilderness in their paintings, architecture, poetry and prose. Since the 1940s, scholars from a variety of disciplines have used these sources to try and assess the extent to which the colonists felt either a sense of belonging or alienation. Art historians and literary critics were among the first to propose the idea that the colonists were unable to ‘see’ what was really there so they continued to paint and write in a European style, using familiar images and language to portray unfamiliar landscapes. Bernard Smith clearly states this position: These men were all born in England; they painted for exiled Englishmen who brought out English paintings – if they possessed any – for their colonial homes. These men, in the roads they built, the houses they erected, the gardens they planted, the class distinctions they imported, the horses, sheep and cattle they pastured, even the vegetables they ate and the beer they drank, endeavoured to transform the Australian landscape into an English one. It is not surprising then that the artists who were among them drew it also after the English manner, for they saw it with English eyes.122 More recently, though, art critics have questioned this interpretation. Ron Radford comments that the German born painter, Eugene von Guerad, one of those in effect accused by Smith of imposing European style on the Australian landscape, had a sense of wonderment towards Australian landscapes,123 and that his paintings of the 1850s showed that he meticulously observed local plant species.124 Bonyhady also attributed the success of von Guerad’s painting ‘Ferntree Gully’ to the enthusiasm of James Smith, a respected Australian colonial art critic, who declared that this painting was worthy and valuable as ‘a specimen of colonial art and as a faithful transcript of some of the most remarkable features of colonial scenery’.125 Architecture also reflects responses to environments. In Australia’s Home Robyn Boyd examined the development of small houses in Australia from 1788 to the

122 Bernard Smith, Place, Taste and Tradition, 1979 (Ure Smith, Sydney, 1945), p. 65. 123 Radford, Ocean to Outback: Australian landscape painting 1850-1950, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT, 2007, p. 16. 124 Ron Radford, Ocean to Outback, p. 36. 125 James Smith, Argus, 4/12/1857, p. 5 and also quoted in Bonyhady, The Colonial Earth, p. 106. 60 middle of the twentieth century.126 As well as discussing architectural styles and features, Boyd was interested in factors that influenced domestic buildings and the extent to which Australian housing developed a national character. In general, Boyd was disparaging of the way in which houses failed to take account of Australian landscapes, so leaving Australians alienated from the environment: ‘There was dissatisfaction with nature. The Australian home-builder found no place for her within the paling fences of his lot. He destroyed every native tree, planted one or two disciplined English saplings and trimmed the grass, the hedge and shrubs into geometric shapes.’127 Boyd concluded with a plea that architects of the future design ‘a house which better expresses the life and the land’.128 Since the 1960s literary critics have attended to the preoccupation of writers with the Australian landscape. Brian Elliott described and accounted for the process by which Australian poets first repudiated the Australian landscape, gradually came to study it, to know it, understand it and then to love it.129 Coral Lansbury was also interested in landscape and literature but her focus was on prose written about Australia. She wrote of a great void between the reality of the Australian landscape and how this was represented in literature and explained that against themes such as convict settlement, emigration and gold, an ideal vision of Australia was created in accord with the English tradition of Arcady.130

Reading the Picturesque Although the picturesque is widely known as an aesthetic ideology and a tool for viewing landscape, since the 1980s historians and post-colonial scholars have examined its political dimensions. Anne Birmingham was one of the first to look beyond the picturesque as a way of appreciating landscape, exploring relationships between the aesthetics of the painted landscape and the economics of the material one.131 Birmingham argues that it was no coincidence that the cult of the picturesque arose at the same time as the English enclosure movement and that it idealised and celebrated a

126 Robin Boyd, Australia’s Home, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1952. 127 Boyd, Australia’s Home, p. 216 128 Boyd, Australia’s Home, p. 278 129 Brian Elliott, The Landscape of Australian Poetry, F.W. Cheshire, Melbourne, 1967. 130 Coral Lansbury, Arcady in Australia: The Evocation of Australia in Nineteenth Century Australian Literature, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria, 1970. 131 Birmingham, Landscape and Ideology. 61 way of life and an environment that was diminishing. For the old landowning order then, the picturesque was an attempt to obscure and minimise the consequence of enclosure.132 Malcolm Andrews has also taken a critical perspective of aesthetic understandings of the picturesque.133 In his discussion on picturesque tourism, he explains how the picturesque mode of viewing detaches the observer from the landscape. Andrews argues that the carriage window and the Claude glass were artificial ways to mediate the viewing experience that served to distance the tourist from the scenery, much as the camera functions for the modern tourist.134 More significantly, he asserts that the picturesque was one way of depoliticising the natural world and, in a similar way to Birmingham, he views the picturesque as a means of excluding economic and political considerations of the land.135 However, Emma McEvoy has a different perspective and, with reference to tourists in late eighteenth century Britain, suggests that ‘picturesque tourism should not be written off as mere commodification of landscape. Reading the travellers’ journals it is evident that for many a whole new feeling for nature was coming into being.’136 Political analyses of the picturesque have also been applied to colonial contexts, where they have usually been associated with alienation from the environment. Elizabeth Bohls focused on the travel writing of English women whose involvement in this genre gave them an intellectual presence in Romantic literature.137 She analysed the ways in which they engaged with aesthetics and argues that Gilpin’s ideas gave women the opportunity to participate in philosophical discussions. Bohls maintains that the familiar language of the picturesque used by domestic and colonial travellers to view and describe unfamiliar landscapes encouraged a detachment from place and legitimised colonial cultures. She further asserts ‘the other thing made inconceivable by the picturesque is peoples’ practical connection to the land they live on and from’.138

132 Birmingham, Landscape and Ideology, p. 75 133 Malcolm Andrews, Landscape and Western Art, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999. 134 Andrews, Landscape and Western Art, p. 116. 135 Andrews, Landscape and Western Art, p. 166 136 Emma McEvoy, ‘Picturesque’ in Christopher John Murray (ed), Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, Volume Two, Fitzroy Dearborn, New York and London, 2004, p. 875. 137 Elizabeth Bohls, Women Travel Writers and the Language of Aesthetics 1716-1818, CUP, Cambridge, 1995. 138 Bohls, Women Travel Writers and the Language of Aesthetics 1716-1818, p 97. 62 In a similar way to Bohls, Indira Ghose and Sara Mills argue that in Fanny Parkes’ writing the picturesque encouraged a detachment from place.139 Fanny Parkes lived in India as the wife of a Bengali civil servant from 1822-1845. Her memoirs, entitled Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque, were first published in 1850. In a recent edition, Ghose and Mills discuss how the language of the picturesque functioned in Parkes’ writing. They believe that the difference in power between the observer and the observed in the picturesque ‘is heightened when the Picturesque is employed within the context of colonialism’.140 Furthermore: The Picturesque worked to impose a filter on the scene of the strange land; it literally served to insert an aesthetic frame between the traveller and the country he or she was visiting. The anxiety of travel, the fear and unease caused by the unfamiliar are effectively deflected and the traveller insulated from their effects. By subsuming the Other to a picture the traveller is able to reassert control in what might well be a situation of cultural misunderstanding and tension.141 This position creates a problem for Ghose and Mills that they do not acknowledge. On the one hand they argue that the picturesque detached Fanny Parkes from the land and yet they also observe that Parkes appeared to have a genuine empathy for and intimacy with the landscapes and peoples of India.142 If the picturesque mode of viewing is seen as an aesthetic tool, which does not necessarily accentuate the power difference between the observer and the observed and does not create detachment from the landscape, then the quite radical inconsistency in Parkes’ text that Ghose and Mills note, is not so radical after all. In Australia, Paul Carter maintains that the picturesque appropriated and described the land.143 He argues that European travellers and explorers used the word ‘picturesque’ to describe a range of scenes from grassy meadows and extensive plains, to lofty mountains and impervious thickets, and that this variety undermines any empirical meaning of ‘picturesque’.144 Therefore, according to Carter, the language of the picturesque reflected the travellers’ intentions and their circumstances and was used

139 Fanny Parkes, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque, edited and with notes by Indira Ghose and Sara Mills, Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 2001. 140 Parkes, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque, pp 7-8. 141 Parkes, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque, pp 9-10. 142 Parkes, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque, p 8. 143 Carter, The Road to Botany Bay, Chapter 8. 144 Carter, The Road to Botany Bay, p. 232. 63 to ‘create visions and illusions of what they wanted to see’.145 Thus, Carter argues that the picturesque enabled them to shape and create the landscape, to possess it, to make them feel comfortable in an alien place, and hence it also legitimised the appropriation of the land.146 Simon Ryan, who analysed the texts of explorers to investigate myths of exploration and colonialism, discussed their picturesque visions and concludes that the explorers’ aesthetic responses were ‘expressions of colonial greed’.147 The likening of landscapes to pictures was a way of controlling them and it precluded the possibility of other ways of seeing which may have included Aboriginal ways. The picturesque mode of viewing the landscape thus meant that it had already been shaped, created and was ready for colonisation. Ryan also argues that the picturesque was inextricably linked to utility, asserting that the picturesque is ‘thoroughly entwined with notions of nature’s use-value and the need to appropriate this wealth’.148 He reaffirms this position in The Cartographic Eye where he again declares: …the picturesque is not simply an aesthetic question divorced from the colonial moment; it is a way of according the land an aesthetic value but is also thoroughly imbricated with notions of the land’s economic value.149 Thus, when travellers and explorers used the language of the picturesque to describe landscapes as beautiful or attractive, they saw them as beautiful only because they were useful in some way. Paul Miller also wrote about the ways in which travellers in colonial Australia used the language of the picturesque to describe landscapes, and he agrees with Ryan that the picturesque cannot be separated from utilitarian perspectives.150 He also compared descriptions that used the language of the picturesque with descriptions of landscapes as monotonous, and argued that picturesque descriptions were created from the viewers’ cultural tradition, whereas passages that described the country as

145 Carter, The Road to Botany Bay, p. 248. 146 Carter, The Road to Botany Bay, p. 252. 147 Ryan, The Cartographic Eye, p. 54. 148 Simon Ryan, ‘Exploring aesthetics: The picturesque appropriation of land in journals of Australian exploration’ in Australian Literary Studies, October 1992, Vol. 15, Issue 4, p. 286. 149 Ryan, The Cartographic Eye, p. 71. 150 Paul Miller, ‘Monotony and the Picturesque: Landscape in Three Australian Travel Narratives of the 1830s’ in Jennifer McDonnell and Michael Deves (eds), Land and Identity: Proceedings of the 19th annual conference of Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 1998, pp. 52-57. 64 monotonous were devoid of cultural conventions; that is, monotony was an experience of the landscape but picturesque understandings were imaginary landscapes.151 Although my arguments are based on colonists who settled, rather than travelled through the landscapes of colonial Australia, their descriptions using language of the picturesque are comparable. Miller’s interpretation of the difference between picturesque and monotonous landscapes is arbitrary and based on only three case studies of travellers in Australia in the 1830s. More importantly though, I argue that Miller is imposing his own mental framework upon his subjects and has not begun with the evidence. When colonists’ descriptions of the environment are understood in the broad context of settling and adapting to unfamiliar landscapes they do not support Miller’s position. Recently, Julie Barst has also argued that in colonial Australia picturesque perspectives of viewing landscape were a means of appropriating the land.152 She examined Australian colonial art, poetry and exploration narratives and concludes that the visual and written strategies of the picturesque were a way of ‘defining the continent as terra nullius, or an empty land, an ideal image of the landscape which morally justified the British appropriation of Australia’.153 In a similar way to the Claude glass used by Gilpin’s tourists that framed and tinted the scenes they viewed, Barst maintains that the picturesque distorted how colonists and explorers saw the landscapes of Australia; it erased Aboriginal people or framed them in a way that justified their dispossession.154 I do not disagree with those scholars who argue that the English travellers used the picturesque as a familiar way of describing and understanding the landscape, but my evidence does not suggest that the picturesque, as used by the colonists to Western Australia, was a theoretical concept that functioned to disconnect them from the land or served to legitimise colonialism. Among English intellectuals there were theoretical discussions about the picturesque as an ideology and an approach with conventions that guided its application, but this was not how colonists to Western Australia used the term. Rather, terminology associated with the picturesque was part of their vocabulary

151 Miller, ‘Monotony and the Picturesque: Landscape in Three Australian Travel Narratives of the 1830s’ p. 53. 152 Julie M. Barst, ‘Transporting the picturesque: Australia through the Claude Lorrain Glass’, European Romantic Review, Vol 19, Issue 2, April 2008, pp. 163-69. 153 Barst, ‘Transporting the picturesque: Australia through the Claude Lorrain Glass’, p. 163. 154 Barst, ‘Transporting the picturesque: Australia through the Claude Lorrain Glass’, p. 166. 65 and they used the word to describe scenery that pleased them, that they found attractive or that was suitable for painting, in the manner of European artists such as Claude Lorrain or Salvator Rosa. For these colonists it was a way of responding to their experiences and communicating these responses to their friends and family; it was a familiar mode of expression. Arguments that the colonists claimed the land, tamed it with a strictly utilitarian approach and, by adopting the language of the picturesque, mentally possessed the land thereby legitimising colonisation, castigates the colonists for their utilitarian approach, for their aesthetic appreciation of the land, and for their role in the process of colonisation. This chastisement, however, is not justified by the evidence in this thesis. My reading of the sources disputes claims that the picturesque distanced and detached colonists from the landscape and was a way of justifying the colonial venture. Rather, colonists’ letters, diaries and journals suggest that they used the picturesque to communicate to their friends and family aspects of the environment they found attractive and pleasing. The picturesque did not detach the colonists from the landscape.155 Like Fanny Parkes in colonial India, the colonists in southern Western Australia were clearly engaged with, and living on the land even as they used the terminology of the picturesque. Throughout this study I contend that romantic and picturesque ways of describing and understanding the landscapes of southern Western Australia could be, and often were, separate from a utilitarian perspective. This is consistent with T.C. Smout’s approach in his environmental history of northern Britain.156 Smout argues that while attitudes to the environment have differed over time and place, they have always been shaped by considerations of use and delight: ‘In the seventeenth century use and delight were difficult to separate. By the end of the eighteenth, they occupied different spheres in the mind. By the twentieth they were in frequent conflict.’157 Clearly, this distinction is a generalisation, but Smout’s framework certainly makes it possible for individuals to separate utilitarian and ‘improvement’ attitudes to the environment from those that are romantic, picturesque or delightful. McEvoy, too, has taken this position

155 I have also argued this in Jane Davis, ‘Colonists in southern Western Australia and the picturesque: a mode of viewing or a political tool?’ in Jason Ensor, Iva Polak and Peter Van Der Merwe (eds), NT21C: Other Contact Zones (New Talents), Volume 7, 2007, pp. 129-36. 156 T.C. Smout, Nature Contested: Environmental History in Scotland and Northern England since 1600, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2000. 157 Smout, Nature Contested, p. 18. 66 and asserts that the picturesque ‘radically distances itself from the pleasing pastoral and the association of beauty with usefulness’.158 So, while Ryan and Miller159 maintain that in colonial Australia picturesque and utilitarian perspectives were inextricably bound together, Smout and McEvoy clearly argue that these perspectives can be held independently.

Reading European Ideas of Australian Indigenous People Europeans in nineteenth century Australia held a range of views towards the Aboriginal people and these were mediated by their own experiences. For example, Christianity and romantic ideas about the ‘noble savage’ provided the rationale for viewing Australian Aboriginal people as potentially equal if they could only be ‘civilised’. As a consequence, Christian philanthropists in early colonial Australia believed that God created all people equal and they lobbied for improved treatment of Aboriginal people.160 On the other hand, phrenology was a popular mid-nineteenth century scientific theory among educated colonists. It assumed that intelligence and the ability to be ‘civilised’ was based on the size and shape of the skull and it was used to ‘demonstrate’ the inferiority of Australian Aborigines.161 By the 1890s Social Darwinism dominated colonists’ attitudes to Aboriginal people and was used to justify their dispossession. Most of the colonists to Western Australia viewed the Aboriginal people as inferior, but some also expressed humanitarian attitudes. Henry Reynolds wrote of humanitarians in Britain and Australia who questioned the morality and practice of colonisation.162 For example, , who came to the Swan River Colony in 1829, studied the Aboriginal people, believed they had been treated unfairly and advocated justice for them: These lands have descended to them [the Aboriginal people] from their forefathers from time immemorial. And their title deeds require not the wrangling of lawyers to prove them to be correct. They have the seal of Heaven

158 McEvoy, ‘Picturesque’, p. 874. 159 Ryan, The Cartographic Eye, p. 71; Ryan, ‘Exploring aesthetics: The picturesque appropriation of land in journals of Australian exploration’, p. 286. 160 Reynolds, ‘Racial Thought in Early Colonial Australia’, p. 46. 161 Reynolds, ‘Racial Thought in Early Colonial Australia’, p. 50; Reynolds, Dispossession, Chapter Four. 162 Henry Reynolds, This Whispering in Our Hearts, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, 1998. 67 – the sanction of Him who ‘divided to the nations their inheritance’. They are indisputable. Reflect. You have seized upon a land that is not yours. Beware, and do not…add to the guilt of dipping your hands in the blood of those whom you have spoiled of their country.163 Similarly, George Fletcher Moore acknowledged that Aboriginal people had suffered under colonisation and were dispossessed of their country. Using a nom de plume Moore wrote several letters to the Perth Gazette in which he suggested that the Government should implement plans that recognised the rights of the Aboriginal people, and asserted that they should be compensated for the loss of their land.164 On the other hand, Charles Bussell believed that they were miserable, worthless people and intimidation was the best way to deal with them.165 In relation to Aboriginal people and the colonists of this study, there are two pertinent questions: What did the colonists know about Aboriginal people and their relationship to the land? And how did the presence of Aboriginal people, and the colonists’ knowledge about them, influence their own sense of belonging? In Belonging: Australians, Place and Aboriginal Ownership, discussed in Chapter One, Peter Read asks: ‘How can we non-Indigenous Australians justify our continuous presence and our love for this country while the Indigenous people remain dispossessed and their history largely ignored?’166 Read spoke with non-Indigenous Australians who were aware of the injustices that occurred against the Aboriginal people when their land was taken during colonisation. As these Australians articulated different degrees and ways of belonging, they also dealt with this knowledge in different ways. Some believed that although what happened in the past was wrong, it is now time to move on and they felt no guilt for deeds committed by others; some felt guilty and tried to

163 Robert Menli Lyon, to Secretary of State, Jan 1833 Colonial Office 18/9 as quoted in Reynolds, This Whispering in Our Hearts, p. 73. 164 In his journal entry of 20th July 1833 George Fletcher Moore wrote, ‘I have just finished another long letter about the natives for the paper. I wonder if even you will recognise any of my handiwork under the signatures of either G. or F. or M. or “Philaleth”, under which I am writing these letters.’ See Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 259. 165 See for example, Charles Bussell to Fanny Bowker, The Adelphi, Nov 1832, BL, 3890A/6 and Charles Bussell, ‘A Draft of a letter by Charles Bussell on the treatment of the Aborigines’, date unknown, reprinted in E.O.G. Shann, Cattle Chosen: The Story of the First Group Settlement in Western Australia 1829-1841, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, facsimile edition, 1978, (first published by Oxford University Press, London, 1926), Appendix 7, pp. 173-179. 166 Read, Belonging, p.1. 68 explain how non-Indigenous Australians could articulate ways of belonging; while others argued that true belonging requires further justice and equality for Aboriginal people. In the following pages I consider whether the colonists of this study expressed similar ideas. Some colonists wrote very little about the Aboriginal people they encountered, and it apparently never occurred to them that their presence and claims to the country were denying the Aboriginal people of their land. Some of the colonists knew that the Aboriginal people were losing their land, but tried to justify their actions. I ask the question, did their awareness of the Aboriginal people’s plight change how they felt about Western Australia as home? Historians such as Neville Green have acknowledged the assistance that Aboriginal people rendered colonists in terms of native foods, sources of water and local geography,167 and Shoobert edited reports of expeditions that recorded examples of this assistance,168 but historians have not explored the question of how this knowledge influenced colonists’ lived experiences and their feelings of belonging. In Core of my heart, my country, discussed in the previous chapter, MacKellar wrote of women who covered ‘the spectrum of responses to indigenous land ownership’.169 Some ‘seemed blind to their role in the displacement of an entire nation of people’,170 some, like Elyne Mitchell, saw themselves as custodians of the land but never fully acknowledged that the original custodians of the Snowy Mountains were driven out, while a few women developed relationships with Indigenous women that helped define their own sense of place. In my own study, those colonists who were aware of Aboriginal knowledge, understanding and connections to the environment, were sometimes challenged and unsettled by this knowledge and, at times, this awareness accentuated the differences between their culture and the culture of Aboriginal people. However, the colonists’ understanding of the Aboriginal people did not enhance or

167 Neville Green, Broken Spears: Aborigines and Europeans in the southwest of Australia, Focus Education Services, Cottesloe, WA, 1984, pp. 129,130; James Cameron, ‘George Fletcher Moore’, Western Australian Historical Studies, 2000; Henry Reynolds, ‘The land, the explorers and the Aborigines’ in Susan Janson and Stuart Macintyre, Through White Eyes, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1990, pp. 120-131. 168 Joanne Shoobert (ed), Western Australian Exploration, Volume One, December 1826- December 1835: The Letters, Reports and Journals of Exploration and Discovery in Western Australia, Hesperian Press, Carlisle, WA, with Department of Land Information, Midland, WA, 2005, pp. 227, 228, 270, 271. 169 Mackellar, Core of my heart, my country, p. 15. 170 Mackellar, Core of my heart, my country, p. 16. 69 undermine their own sense of belonging or the extent to which they called Western Australia home.

Reading Social Class, Gender and Domesticity Several scholars have sought to understand how middle and upper-middle class women recreated ideas of domesticity in their new Australian environment but have not fully explored links between women’s roles and the landscape. Diana Archibald considered the extent to which women who migrated to Australia found their role in the new world problematic. 171 She asked: if the Victorian woman’s rightful domain was the home, and if this space defined her and ‘home’ was England, then how did she find a sense of identity and make a ‘home’ in Australia?172 Archibald turned to fiction to understand the lives of Victorian women in Australia because she argued that there was insufficient evidence to answer this question from archival records. Whereas Archibald concluded that only a few women would ever have a home away from England, I have found sufficient evidence from archival sources to argue a contrary position. As well as managing a household in colonial Western Australia many women also felt ‘at home’ there. Though Archibald did not discuss what she meant by home, perhaps her understanding of home was too narrow. By acknowledging that home can have a range of meanings and refer to more than one place, she may have reached a different conclusion. Emma Floyd explored the relationship between domesticity and gentility in rural colonial Australia.173 In her study of British gentlewomen in rural Australia, she found that the one place where they retained their ideas and practices of gentility was in their homes. She wrote about boundaries between their domestic space and the ‘hostile landscape of rural Australia’174 and stated: The subtle but clear demarcation of domestic space also helped her [the British gentlewoman] define the apparently conflicting areas of her emigrant life and

171 Diana C. Archibald, ‘Angel in the Bush: Expanding Domesticity through female emigration’ in Rita S. Kranidis, Imperial Objects: Victorian Women’s Emigration and the Unauthorized Imperial Experience, Twayne Publishers, NY, 1998, pp. 228-247. 172 Archibald, ‘Angel in the Bush: Expanding Domesticity through female emigration’, p. 229. 173 Emma Floyd, ‘Without Artificial Constraint: Gentility and British Gentlewomen in rural Australia’’ in Rita S. Kranidis, Imperial Objects: Victorian Women’s Emigration and the Unauthorized Imperial Experience, Twayne Publishers, N.Y., 1998, pp. 85-107. 174 Floyd, ‘Without Artificial Constraint: Gentility and British Gentlewomen in rural Australia’, p. 92. 70 provided a key strategy for maintaining some level of gentility against the odds.175 My evidence suggests, however, that the women did not always find the landscape hostile, and that the boundaries between women’s domestic space and the wider environment were more easily traversed than Floyd allows. While Floyd does not argue that women never left their homes, her focus on homes as places of safety underestimates their readiness to venture beyond these spaces. As well as finding that the boundaries between women’s homes and the wider landscapes were more permeable, I found that some women willingly brought elements from the landscape, such as pets and native plants, into their domestic spaces. Delys Bird was also interested in women, domestic space, and landscape, and using Eliza Brown as a case study, she argued that Eliza’s positive attitude to the environment around York, in the Avon Valley, was facilitated by her involvement in the family economy in ways that were unconventional for English middle-class women.176 Bird found that Eliza Brown, like other colonial women in Australia, recreated a Victorian ideal of domesticity, but that the usual feminine proscriptions for achieving this in her domestic space were stretched and became more flexible. Bird’s argument can be applied more generally to both the women and men of this study, and shows that, when gender and class roles became more flexible in the colonists’ domestic spaces, for some colonists, their sense of accomplishment in performing these tasks amplified their positive feelings toward the environment. While Archibald, Floyd and Bird were interested in middle-class women and domesticity in colonial Australia, Jeanne Kay’s focus was North America. In her call to include domestic spaces in regional historical geographies of Canada and the United States, Kay discussed the letters and memoirs of three women who settled in western North America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.177 She was interested in female economies and how men and women on the frontier moved between domestic and commercial spheres. Like MacKellar, she found that women moved beyond the domestic sphere. More uniquely, she also found that men worked

175 Floyd, ‘Without Artificial Constraint: Gentility and British Gentlewomen in rural Australia’, p. 90. 176 Delys Bird, ‘Women in the Wilderness: Gender, Landscape and Eliza Brown’s Letters and Journals, Westerly, No 4. December, 1991, pp. 33-38. 177 Jeanne Kay, ‘Landscapes of women and men: rethinking the regional historical geography of the United States and Canada’, Journal of Historical Geography, 17,4, 1991, pp. 435-452. 71 within the home and were engaged in domestic duties. ‘Real men’, wrote Kay, ‘washed dishes.’178 Kay suggested that these findings expand the notion of the heroic male in frontier discourse and challenge studies that assert that domestic boundaries were clearly demarcated in settler societies.179 An important aspect of colonists’ domestic space was the garden, and gardens and gardening as a pastime have been common in Australia since colonisation, but until recently they have not been of significant interest to mainstream historians. It is only since the 1970s that histories of Australian gardens and gardening have been written, ranging from chronological narratives to thematic approaches.180 The white newcomers to Australia brought with them seeds and the tools to garden. Along with the materials for gardening, the colonists brought their ideas and visions of gardens. These ideas and the meanings of Australian gardens have provided rich material for research.181 The dominant perspective of this research views colonial gardens as participants in the colonising process, reflecting the values of the colonists. Paul Fox’s study of six colonial professional gardeners and nurserymen exemplifies this approach:

178 Kay, ‘Landscapes of women and men’, p. 446. 179 In the North American context Annette Kolodny’s study of women’s fantasies and experiences of the frontier is one publication that brought women’s experiences to the forefront of frontier literature. In The Land Before Her Kolodny argued that on the frontier white women found themselves psychologically trapped in unfamiliar landscapes so they confined themselves to their gardens. 180 See for example, Beatrice Bligh, Cherish the Earth: The Story of Gardening in Australia, Ure Smith, in association with the National Trust of Australia (NSW), Sydney, 1973; Georgina Whitehead (ed), Planting the Nation, Australian Garden History Society, Melbourne, 2001; Katie Holmes, Susan K Martin and Kylie Mirmohamadi, Green Pens, Miegunyah Press, Carlton, Victoria, 2004; Richard Aitken, Gardenesque, Miegunyah Press in association with the State Library of Victoria, Carlton, Vic, 2004; Andrea Gaynor, Harvest of the Suburbs, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 2006. 181 Paul Fox, Clearings: Six Colonial Gardens and their Landscapes, Miegunyah Press, Carlton, Victoria, 2004; Holly Kerr Forsyth, Remembered Gardens: Eight Women and their Visions of an Australian Landscape, Miegunyah Press, Carlton, Victoria, 2006; Susan K. Martin, ‘ “there garden in much more forward than ours”: Place and Class in Colonial Australian Women’s Gardening’, SPAN, Journal of the South Pacific Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies, No 46, April 1998, pp. 45-55; Katie Holmes,‘ “In spite of it all, the garden still stands”: Gardens, Landscape and Cultural History’ in Teo Hsu-Ming & Richard White (eds), Cultural History in Australia, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2003, pp. 172- 185 and Katie Holmes, ‘ “I have built up a little garden’: the vernacular garden, national identity and a sense of place’, Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, Volume 21, No 2, April-June 2001, pp 115-121; Katie Holmes, ‘In Her Master’s House and Garden’ in Patrick Troy, (ed), A History of European Housing in Australia, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2000, pp. 164-181; Katie Holmes, Sue Martin and Kylie Mirmohamadi, Reading the Garden, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria, 2008. 72 Through their landscapes and their writings, colonial gardeners promoted the ideal of a land intensively shaped by disciplined human activity. This ideal was bound up with a moral imperative towards self-improvement, which in turn gained potency from the imperial narrative of progress and enlightenment. In this order of things, the ethical gardener could claim moral hegemony over the whole landscape.182 As does Fox, the newly published book, Reading the Garden, also considers the wide range of meanings gardens have had for European settlers in Australia.183 In Part One, Holmes, Martin and Mirmohamadi explore how gardens were bound up with the project of colonisation and how colonists used gardens to connect with the land to create homes. While they discuss functional roles of gardens (such as growing food), how they were sites of memory, loss and hope, and the complex attitudes some colonists had towards the uncultivated landscapes, their dominant approach to gardens in colonial Australia is similar Fox’s view. Gardens have helped disguise the destruction of the landscape and ‘their presence legitimized the activity of settlement and worked as a handmaiden to the clearing, colonizing process’.184 Other authors have focused specifically on the meaning of gardens for women in colonial Australia. Susan K Martin views gardening and empire building as synonymous activities.185 Through an analysis of two colonial women gardeners, Eliza Pohlman and Kate Currie, she shows how gender and class relations were negotiated through gardens and gardening. Martin argues that although the ways in which Kate and Eliza related to their gardens were different, the ‘humble details of hands-on gardening are always underpinned by, and constitutive of, colonial power relations of various sorts’.186 Women gardeners are also the focus of Holly Kerr Forsyth’s recent book and although her aim was to highlight how women responded to the environment through their gardens, she, too, was interested in how, ‘they reconstruct the landscape into their own vision of an English Arcadia’.187

182 Fox, Clearings, p. xvii. 183 Holmes, Martin and Mirmohamadi, Reading the Garden. 184 Holmes, Martin and Mirmohamadi, Reading the Garden, p. 24. 185 Martin, ‘ “there garden in much more forward than ours”’. 186 Martin, ‘ “there garden in much more forward than ours”’. 187 Kerr Forsyth, Remembered Gardens, p. 2. 73 Katie Holmes is another scholar to have taken a particular interest in the meanings women in Australia have invested in their gardens. 188 She views gardens as texts, and using written accounts of gardens by their creators, she contends that gardens were both a means of appropriating the land and a reflection of European values of order, control and rationality. She then took this argument further, stating that the garden can be read as an expression of individual and cultural aspirations. For example, she suggests that Winnifred Stephensen’s garden operated on three levels: as a personal space filled with memories of her husband; as an expression of nationalism; and as an expression of colonial land-taking and transformation.189 In a similar manner to environmental histories that pitch man against nature, Fox, Martin, Holmes, Mirmohamadi and Kerr Forsyth all see colonial gardening as a broadly political activity in which gardens become instruments of empire. Holmes and Hosking also wrote about the strong links between flowers and femininity. 190 They associate men with the tough manual labour required in gardens, vegetable growing and with the cultivation of lawns, and assume men did not appreciate flowers in the same way as women, and did not take an active role in cultivating them. Men may have been associated with flowers for the purpose of science or competitive display but it was unusual for them to grow flowers for pleasure.191 However, writing in the early 1890s, Mrs Rolf Boldrewood commented that her cousin, Mr James Riley, was ‘passionately fond of flowers, making periodical additions to his already fine collection’.192 Boldrewood’s observation and evidence from English studies by Davidoff and Hall, discussed earlier in this chapter, suggest that men, as well as women, took an interest in flowers and an active part in flower gardening. This is more consistent with my reading of colonists’ letters and journals and suggests that the gender boundaries in Australian colonial gardens were more flexible than Holmes and Hosking claim.

188 Holmes, ‘ “In spite of it all, the garden still stands” ’; Holmes, ‘ “I have built up a little garden” ’; Holmes, ‘In Her Master’s House and Garden’. 189 Homes, ‘ “I have built up a little garden” ’. 190 Katie Holmes, ‘Fertile Ground: Women and Horticulture’, Australian Garden History, Volume 10, No 6, May/June 1999, pp. 6-9; Susan Hosking, ‘“I ‘ad to ‘ave me a garden”: A Perspective on Australian Women Gardeners’, Meanjin, Volume 47, 1988, pp. 439-53. 191 Katie Holmes did note that men took pride in the cultivation of roses. Katie Holmes, ‘Fertile Ground’, p. 6. 192 Mrs Rolf Boldrewood, The Flower Garden in Australia: A book for ladies and amateurs, Melville, Mullen and Slade, Melbourne, 1893, p. iii. 74 Conclusion This chapter began by outlining significant aspects of nineteenth century British culture that influenced how the colonists responded to their new environments. Their ideas of nature, wilderness, civilisation, progress and people from other societies all shaped their interactions with the unfamiliar places they settled. An understanding of their perceptions of class and gender, and how they used their domestic spaces, also informs my discussions of how these were negotiated and modified in the Colony of Western Australia. The greater part of this chapter discussed how other scholars have, in a broad sense, approached questions of settler adaptation and belonging. It also looked at important studies of how colonists responded to the landscapes and the ways they used their domestic spaces. Each of these studies has contributed to a greater understanding of these issues, but each also has its limitations. The studies by Powell, Heathcote and Frawley that were concerned with visions and images were among the first to critically examine how Europeans responded to the Australian environment, wherein landscape was conceived of as a subject that influenced people’s behaviour. In a general sense they were also interested in the extent to which Europeans adapted and felt comfortable in new lands. However, the questions they sought to answer focused on perceptions rather than processes and they were more interested in setting up categories than nuanced exploration of individual responses and connections to landscapes over time. Work by Dunlap, Atkinson, Frost and Irwin on the transplantation of European culture to colonial Australia acknowledged the importance of culture in adaptations to new environments and answered questions concerning the extent to which colonial society was a replica of European society. While intuitively appealing, this approach is too broad to effectively unravel the process of belonging. In this thesis I take these ideas further and look more specifically at individual responses and distinguish between domestic space and the wider environment. I look at how the newcomers incorporated aspects of their environment, such as flowers and animals, into their ‘European’ spaces and then ask what these connections can tell us about how people become attached to place and the process of belonging. The arguments of Lines and Flannery are persuasive and fit with current understandings of European colonialism. They are generally accepted by contemporary Australians in a climate of increasing awareness of environmental degradation and

75 Indigenous dispossession, and they focus on the broad effects of white people’s impact on the environment. Although some degree of generalisation is necessary in order to make sense of the past, these studies cannot account for individual responses that were more complex than these grand narratives suggest. The interactive and relational approaches of Seddon, Bonyhady and Karskens are consistent with my sentiments in relation to these broad themes of belonging and adaptation. I agree that relationships between land and people are complex and my aim is to scrutinise selected individuals’ writings to understand more clearly the process of belonging and identify factors that contributed to or hindered this process. Art and literature are valuable sources that have assisted scholars to understand peoples’ imaginative and emotional responses to landscape. While art historians and literary critics can make general comments about whether landscape art and writing about the land conveys a sense of belonging or dislocation, it is more difficult for them to fully explore the complex, and sometimes contradictory relationships between individuals and place, and the process of feeling ‘at home’ or remaining alienated from the land. In relation to analyses of the picturesque, issues of class, gender and the domestic spaces of colonists in Australia, as well as to the awareness of Indigenous connections to the land, my reading of evidence left by the colonists I used is at least partially contrary to other scholars working on similar issues. The picturesque certainly influenced how the colonists viewed and described landscapes. However, I disagree with scholars who have adopted a post-colonial approach in which they argue that the picturesque created distance and detachment between the viewer and the scene being observed, that it was tied to assessments of the land’s use-value and that it facilitated the misappropriation of these landscapes. I maintain that the picturesque was not a political tool, but a way of expressing delight with the landscape. Following Smout, I also believe that a picturesque perspective was often held independently from a utilitarian one; they were not inextricably bound together. The studies on Australian colonial gardens and gardening by Fox, Kerr Forsyth, Martin, Holmes and Mirmohamadi have contributed to our understanding of the function and meaning of gardens in the brief history of white colonisation of Australia. At a time when even seemingly innocent activities of colonists, such as gardening or viewing landscape as picturesque, are seen as subversive and legitimise imperial

76 activities, claims about the culpability of gardens are engaging. However, this approach obscures other understandings of colonial gardens and gardening. Just as I find it mistaken to view the language of the picturesque as a means of legitimising colonialism, it is too contrived to view all colonial gardening as an imperial act of possession and dispossession. The simple gardens of vegetables, fruit and later a few flowers that the colonists of my study struggled to cultivate are hardly a sound basis for grandiose claims that equate gardening with empire building. So, rather than ask how colonial gardens reflected visions of European civilisation, my questions concerning colonists, their gardens and also their houses seek to explore in more detail how men and women used this space to adapt to their new environments. The garden has been seen as a buffer zone between the house as a refuge and the hostile environment beyond, but I question this demarcation. The boundaries between the house, garden and the land beyond the fence were more permeable than has been suggested. With regard to colonists’ understanding that the Aboriginal people had intimate relationships with the land and inhabited the continent before they arrived, I found that, at times, this knowledge unsettled the colonists, highlighted the differences between their cultures, but made no difference to their sense of belonging. This is in contrast to MacKellar, who concluded that settler women often developed a greater sense of place as result of contact with Indigenous people. In the chapters that follow, discussions of how the colonists responded to place in the Swan River Colony, shaped through their ideas of nature, wilderness, the romantic and picturesque, civilisation, people from other societies, class, gender, houses and gardens, all lead back to the major themes of home and belonging and assist in discovering more about the process of being ‘at home’ in colonial Western Australia.

77

78 Chapter Three The Upper Swan

Introduction George Fletcher Moore, Hester and William Tanner and Eliza Shaw were among the colonists who took up land grants near Guildford, on the Upper Swan, and their surviving letters and diaries have been valued as a record of the beginning of white settlement in Western Australia.1 However, there has been little detailed analysis of these published writings, not least in relation to belonging. Histories of the district have been written, but they are predominantly economic and social narratives that lack analysis of how the colonists responded to the landscapes and the extent to which they became attached to these.2 As indicated in the introduction, the environment of the Upper Swan was not as conducive to European forms of agriculture as early colonists to the area expected. Consequently, their first reaction was one of disappointment and this has become the predominant understanding of how colonists to the Upper Swan related to the land. It was not, though, their only response. This chapter discusses the complex ways in which these colonists responded to landscape and connected to place. It establishes the central arguments, provides an overview of the setting and biographical information on these colonists, and then draws on the evidence to discuss the major questions thematically. Perth’s theatre audiences were introduced to Eliza Shaw in 1971 when Nita Pannell performed the melodrama ‘Swan River Saga’. While searching for suitable material for this production, Mary Durack came across Eliza’s diary and letters. Following the success of the play and interest in Eliza Shaw, Durack subsequently wrote To Be Heirs Forever, a biography of Eliza Shaw set against the settlement at the Upper Swan.3 This was aimed at a general readership and, as well as narrating the story of Eliza Shaw, provided information about the daily lives of colonists on the Upper

1 Mary Durack, To Be Heirs Forever, Corgi Books, London, 1979; Moore, The Millendon Memoirs; Pamela Statham, The Tanner Letters, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1981. 2 Michael Bourke, On the Swan: a history of the Swan District, Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press for the Swan Shire Council, Nedlands, WA, 1987; Jennie Carter, Bassendean: A Social History 1829-1979, Town of Bassendean, Perth, WA, 1986. Ian Berryman stated that some colonists to the Swan River began to understand the soil and climate and began to develop an affinity with the land but this claim needs further investigation and supporting with specific evidence. Ian Berryman (ed), The Swan River Letters, Volume 1, Swan River Press, Glengarry, WA, 2002, p. 42. 3 Durack, To Be Heirs Forever. 79 Swan with a focus on local government policies concerning land tenure and labour. Durack wrote within a pioneer framework in which Eliza Shaw’s life was seen as a struggle against the land in an isolated location: ‘Those who remained [in the Colony] faced, with varying degrees of fortitude, the bleak fact of their unique isolation and what was to prove for many years a lonely and more or less friendless battle for survival.’4 Thus, Durack’s biography neither tried to understand whether Eliza Shaw made connections with the land, nor fully explored the extent and means by which Eliza Shaw became attached to her property on the Swan River. George Fletcher Moore wrote lengthy letters in journal form to his family. In 1834 Martin Doyle published extracts from Moore’s early letters in London.5 Then, fifty years later, a larger collection of his letters was published. This was the Diary of Ten Years, frequently used by researchers interested in the history of the Swan River Colony.6 However, both these publications of George Fletcher Moore’s letters were severely edited and are, in places, substantially different from the originals. Recently, James Cameron published accurate transcriptions of George Fletcher Moore’s letters written from the Swan River Colony, and these have been valuable for my research.7 The Tanner Letters, collected by Pamela Statham, includes letters written by William and Hester Tanner from the Swan River and also by Ellen Viveash, William Tanner’s sister, who emigrated with her husband to Tasmania.8 Although, as Statham suggested, it is interesting to compare Ellen Viveash’s experiences with the Tanners’,9 in this study I am only concerned with William and Hester Tanner’s letters. Statham drew particular attention to issues of land settlement that arose in these letters,10 but they also they provide valuable insights into the ways in which William and Hester Tanner related to place at the Upper Swan. These colonists shared a European culture and came to the same place at similar times, but the ways in which they connected to the Upper Swan were very different. George Fletcher Moore’s emotional attachment to place was largely based on his

4 Durack, To Be Heirs Forever, p.17. 5 Martin Doyle (ed), Extracts from The Letters and Journals of George Fletcher Moore: now filling a judicial office at the Swan River Settlement, Orr and Smith, London and W. Curry, Dublin, 1834. 6 George Fletcher Moore, Diary of Ten Years, UWA Press, Nedlands, 1978 (facsimile edition), first published London, 1884. 7 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs. 8 Statham, The Tanner Letters. 9 Statham, The Tanner Letters, p. xv. 10 Statham, The Tanner Letters, pp. xv-ix. 80 intellectual responses to the land. He tried to understand it using frameworks that were available to him, such as the picturesque, the utility of the land and science. This contrasts with Eliza Shaw, whose emotional connections to place were tied up with her connections to people, consistent with Sopher’s conclusion that it is people who make a place home.11 For Eliza Shaw, being ‘at home’ was more about being in a social environment where she felt comfortable than about becoming familiar with the physical characteristics of the landscape. Eliza Shaw’s property on the Upper Swan became home to her, not by viewing the landscape through a cultural lens that enabled her to make the unfamiliar somehow comprehensible, but by enacting in it essential life events including everyday dramas, celebrations and sadnesses. Tuan described this when he explained that the feel of a place, ‘…is made up of experiences, mostly fleeting and undramatic, repeated day after day and over the span of years.’12 While culture certainly had an influence on how Eliza Shaw responded to the environment, her emotional connections and the ways she turned place into her home depended primarily on her social connections: her friends, neighbours and most importantly, her children and grandchildren. Hester and William Tanner also demonstrate the importance of the social landscape. Although they admired some of the landscapes in the Colony, they constantly missed their family and friends in England and returned there permanently, thirteen years after first arriving in the Colony. While George Fletcher Moore, Hester and William Tanner and Eliza Shaw demonstrate different ways of connecting emotionally to place, they all, though to varying degrees, viewed and described the environment at the Upper Swan using picturesque and utilitarian perspectives. These seemingly contradictory persperctives appear in the same texts but make very different judgments about the land. As discussed in Chapter Two, some post-colonial scholars argue that the use of picturesque language in a colonial context was implicated in the misappropriation of the land, was a means by which colonists distanced themselves from that land, and was inseparable from assessing the land’s use-value. However, in a broad context of settlement, adaptation and utilisation of land in the Swan River Colony, the writings of Eliza Shaw, George Fletcher Moore and William and Hester Tanner do not support these arguments. Rather, it was their utilitarian approach to the land that underpinned the way they transformed and appropriated it. Shaped by Enlightenment ideas of improvement and progress, they

11 Sopher, ‘The Landscape of Home: Myth, Experience, Social Meaning’. 12 Tuan, Space and Place, p. 183. 81 shared visions of making the land profitable by adopting European agricultural practices. In this chapter I will show how their utilitarian approach was independent from their picturesque responses; address issues arising from the social landscape at the Upper Swan; and conclude with a more detailed discussion of attachment and belonging.

Colonists to the Upper Swan Today, the area along the Swan River from East Perth to Walyunga is known as the Swan Valley but the colonists did not use this term in the 1830s. They used the term ‘Swan District’ and the terms ‘Upper, Middle and Lower Swan’ to distinguish between places within the District.13 The town of Guildford was established in 1829. It is at the head of the navigable waters of the Swan River approximately 19 kilometres upstream from Perth, near the junction of the Swan and Helena Rivers (see Figure 3.1). In the early years of the Colony Guildford was an important market district and had its own administrative centre. The area upstream of Guildford was known as the Upper Swan district. Along the riverbank and floodplains there were narrow bands of fertile alluvial soil where a few native grasses and fringing flooded gums grew. Further from the river there were marri-wandoo-jarrrah woodlands that, in the Upper Swan during the 1830s, formed open rather than dense forests. This was partly due to the rainfall (the average annual rainfall at Guildford is 863mm),14 which is seasonal, but it was also the result of land management practices by the Aboriginal people.15 However, the most common plants were woody perennials unsuitable for European stock animals.

13 Bourke, On the Swan, p. 2. 14 http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_009022.shtml (accessed 20/07/08). Rainfall statistics for Guildford were recorded 1901-1954. 15 Cameron, Ambition’s Fire, pp. 20-21. 82

Figure 3.1 The Swan River Colony 1836 showing main areas of settlement.16

16 From Margaret Pitt Morison and John White (eds), Western Towns and Buildings, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1979, p. 8. 83

Figure 3.2 Landholders, middle and upper Swan, early 1830s.17 See the Tanner’s, the Shaw’s and George Fletcher Moore’s adjacent holdings in the top right.

Eliza Shaw (nee Cooper) was born in 1794 in Leicestershire and moved to Dublin as a child. She was well-educated in the classics, history, Bible studies and needlecraft. In 1813 she married Captain William Shaw, who joined the Leicestershire Militia. Although he had no inherited wealth, he received a reasonable income in the military. Their first child was born in Dublin, but the following year they moved to Kent and then to Thrussington, Leicestershire, where they had a very comfortable life with a nanny, cook, housemaid, laundress and groom. Then, in 1826 and aged only 38, William Shaw retired on a reduced pension. When he learned of the incentives for military and naval officers and the promise of good land, he decided to emigrate to the

17 From Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. xiv. 84 Swan River Colony. William and Eliza Shaw sailed on The Egyptian with their six children and two servants and arrived at Fremantle in February 1830. They established ‘Belvoir’ on the Upper Swan, (Fig. 3. 2 shows the Shaws’, the Tanners’ and George Fletcher Moore’s landholdings), where three more children were born, and remained in the Colony for the rest of their lives. Eliza Shaw died in 1877, aged eighty-two, having outlived her husband and five of their nine children.18

Figure 3.3 Eliza Shaw Figure 3.4 William Shaw19

Eight months after the Shaws arrived in the Colony, George Fletcher Moore came to the Swan River as a single man accompanied by four servants, but with similar hopes of becoming a major landowner. Born in December 1798 at Donemana in County Tyrone, Ireland, George Fletcher Moore was the son of Joseph Moore, a farmer and merchant. He studied law at Trinity College Dublin, graduated with a law degree in 1820 and practiced as a lawyer in Ireland for a few years before proceeding to the Swan River Settlement. Moore arrived at the Swan River in October 1830 and by November he had obtained half of William Lamb’s grant on the Swan River, near Ellen’s Brook, which he initially called ‘Hermitage’ but later renamed ‘Millendon’ (see Figure 3. 7), the Aboriginal word for the area.20 George Fletcher Moore was an active and prominent member of colonial society at the Swan River. He was a founding member of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society in July 1831 and was appointed commissioner of the Civil Court in February

18 Biographical information from Durack, To Be Heirs Forever. 19 Photographs of Eliza and William Shaw from Statham, The Tanner Letters, p. 33, courtesy of Battye Library. 20 J.M.R. Cameron, ‘Introduction’, in Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. vii. Moore also claimed land in the Avon Valley, 100 kilometres east of the Upper Swan, but he never lived in that area. 85 1832. In 1834 he became Advocate General, which meant that in effect he was a member of the Legislative and Executive Councils and therefore involved with interpreting colonial office instructions and drafting colonial legislation. In addition, he was a member of the board of trustees of the Anglican Church, director of the Western Australian Bank and a founding member of the local temperance society. These many appointments kept Moore in Perth during the week, but he returned to the Upper Swan on weekends and holidays.

Figure 3.5 George Fletcher Moore, ca. 184121

Moore also went on expeditions to explore the surrounding country. He journeyed north-east to the York and Northam districts and north to the Moore River and the coastal region near Champion Bay. While on these expeditions Moore sought

21 From Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. ii and original in BL, 1090P. 86 information about the land from the Aboriginal people and they helped him understand links between vegetation and topography.22 In 1841 Moore journeyed to Ireland and England to visit his father and returned to the Colony in 1843. His return coincided with an economic recession in the Colony and, as a result of his opposition to colonial policies that favoured leading land holders, by 1848 he was unpopular and his reputation was marred. In 1846 Moore married Fanny Jackson, the stepdaughter of Governor Clarke. Unfortunately, Fanny Jackson was unwell and in 1852 Moore again took leave so his wife could return to England. Her health did not improve and she died in 1863. Moore remained in England, where he died in December 1886. William and Hester Tanner were the last of the colonists who will be discussed in this chapter to leave England and take up land in the Swan River Colony, where they arrived with their household in February 1831. Like the Shaws, they came as a family, but they had more wealth and brought with them thirty other people including a shepherd and his family, six labourers, a thatcher, a miller and a bailiff.23 William Tanner was born in 1801 in Overton, Oxfordshire. Hester Tanner (nee Viveash) was born in 1804 in Calne, an old town in Wiltshire in the south west of England, east of Bristol. The question of why William and Hester Tanner immigrated to the Swan River Colony is unresolved. William Tanner owned land in England and shared a private income from his deceased father’s estate so there was no economic reason for him to leave his comfortable lifestyle. Pamela Statham suggested that one reason might have been his family’s disapproval of his Unitarian religious beliefs, which did not conform to their Anglican faith. Another possibility is that the Henty family, with whom he had been acquainted and who also immigrated to the Swan River Colony, may have influenced his decision.24 Certainly, their lack of an economic imperative for leaving England did not go unnoticed in the Colony as Eliza Shaw remarked: ‘being people of large fortune who left England merely because they were fond of seeing the world…the Tanners are a most worth[y] and charming family…they live in good style, having brought thirty-one servants into this colony with them’.25

22 Cameron, ‘George Fletcher Moore’, p. 23. 23 Statham, The Tanner Letters, p. 2. Biographical information on William and Hester Tanner is also from Statham, The Tanner Letters. 24 Statham, The Tanner Letters, p. xvi. 25 Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-33, letter to Ann Dibben, undated, from Belvoir, possibly 1832, BL, ACC 1698A (microfilm). 87 Although William and Hester Tanner found aspects of the landscape in the Colony attractive they never felt truly settled and after only four years they returned to England to visit family and friends. They stayed there for three years before departing once again for the Swan River. However, due to Hester’s ill health and William’s deteriorating financial situation they left the Colony for the final time in January 1844. William Tanner died in 1845 and Hester one year later in 1846.

Figure 3.6 William and Hester Tanner26

Viewing the Landscape When Eliza Shaw, George Fletcher Moore and William and Hester Tanner first arrived at the Swan River Colony they encountered unfamiliar landscapes. How did they make sense of them, so different from the ones they had left? As indicated earlier, they were

26 From Statham, The Tanner Letters, p. 4. 88 initially disappointed with the country. The land was not as fertile as they anticipated and much of the ‘good’ land around the Swan and Canning Rivers had been allocated by mid-1830.27 A passage from an early letter of Eliza Shaw evokes the extent of her dismay: ‘those who reported the land to be good deserve hanging’, she wrote.28 But while there is little doubt that many colonists to the Swan River felt disillusioned with the farming potential of the land, this was not their only response to the varied landscapes they observed. Eliza Shaw, William Tanner and Moore found much to admire in the scenery and appreciated the beauty of the flora. Although they were certainly interested in the productive capacity of the land they distinguished between land suitable for production and landscapes they described using language of the picturesque. Eliza Shaw clearly made the distinction between these perspectives when she described the outlook from their house: To the South, South/East and Northward of us our prospect is bounded by the range of blue mountains which form a magnificent amphitheatre…trees to the top of the first range which we can see at this distance…but they are stony and rocky unfit for cultivations except here and there.29 William Tanner, though, emphasised the usefulness of the land: It is just on the edge of an immense plain which reached to the Darling range and where that finishes the ground begins to slope down to the natural meadows and to the river, the sloping land is of a better description than the plain and will be laid down as meadows, producing now high grass but much mixed with rubbish.30 Tanner’s phrase ‘better description’ referred to the land’s ability to supply fodder for his stock and the ‘rubbish’ was probably woody perennial shrubs. He did not see the land as scenery that presented a pleasant prospect, as he was interested in the potential of the land to bring him more wealth. He also commented on the fertility of the soil: ‘Certainly

27 Statham, ‘Swan River Colony 1829-1850’; Cameron, Ambition’s Fire; Appleyard and Manford, The Beginning: European Discovery and Early Settlement of Swan River Western Australia. 28 Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-1833, letter to the Waghorns, 10/3/1830, BL ACC 1698A (microfilm). 29 Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-1833, letter to Waghornes, 21/1/1832, BL, ACC 1698A (microfilm). 30 William Tanner to his mother and sisters, Dec 1831, Baskerville, Swan River, Pamela Statham, The Tanner Letters, 1981, p. 27. 89 the poor soil produces good crops with a very little manure, and in the winter without any.’31 Unlike Tanner, George Fletcher Moore took pleasure in the scenery and the flowers and he wanted to learn about the flora and fauna but he, too, was also interested in the land’s productive potential. After an exploratory trip to the Canning River he described the country in terms of its aesthetics, geology and its usefulness: ‘The country there is beautiful, covered or rather studded with magnificent trees, but the substratum is ironstone, the clay strongly impregnated with it, hard and unmanageable, and having very little grass on it which (for immediate use) is the chief requisite.’32 Moore also distinguished between aesthetics and utility on a trip to the Calgan River: ‘The scenery here is romantic, the soil on the banks tolerably good.’33 There is no doubt that these colonists were intent on ‘improving’ the landscape. Cameron argued that a primary motivation for those willing to invest in the Swan River Colony came from the spirit of improvement that was prevalent during the early nineteenth century.34 ‘Improvement’ was even written into the colonists’ conditions of settlement. Before the colonists could acquire the title to their grant, and therefore assume ownership, they were required to ‘improve’ the land. This meant they had to cultivate a significant portion of their grant and erect fences and buildings.35 Their pride in these ‘improvements’ and ownership of the land was also evident. Eliza Shaw wrote that on seeing his grant William took satisfaction in the fact that ‘the beautiful spot which in point of landscape is magnificent not only belonged to him [but] one of the richest [river] flats in the colony was also ours’, and he took ‘the greatest pride and delight’ in the cultivation of the land.36 One of the colonists’ first tasks on their grant was to make a garden. As noted in Chapter Two, historians have most often associated colonial gardens with possession of the land and imperialism.37 They argue that as colonial gardeners cleared indigenous plants and replaced them with exotic species, they transformed and ‘improved’ the land to create landscapes that conformed to their European visions of cultivated

31 William Tanner to his mother and sisters, 10/10/1831, Baskerville, Swan River in Pamela Statham, The Tanner Letters, 1981, p. 12. 32 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 4, 19/11/1830. 33 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 203, 28/2/1833. 34 Cameron, Ambition’s Fire, p. 54. 35 Statham, ‘Swan River Colony’, p. 183. 36 Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-1833, 21/1/1832, BL ACC 1698A (microfilm) 37 See for example, Fox, Clearings. 90 environments. While these understandings of colonial gardens may be applicable to botanic gardens or the grand, large scale gardens of wealthy homesteads, the gardens of the Shaws, Tanners and Moore were simple and functional, concerned with providing much-needed fresh food. Eliza Shaw explained how she and William immediately prepared a garden: ‘We had scarcely got into our hut before a garden was formed, seeds in and all was bustle and stir.’38 Another motivation for growing food in colonial Australia, as Andrea Gaynor has argued, was the desire for independence, both actual and symbolic.39 Moore’s pride in his first steps toward self-sufficiency are clear: ‘By the bye, this day enjoyed for the first time some of the produce of my garden in the shape of a salad of mustard, cress & radish.’40 One month later Moore recorded that he had ‘some cabbage leaves from my own garden for the first time.’41 William Tanner was also proud of growing his own vegetables: ‘I think it is now nearly 2 months that we have had daily at dinner vegetables of our own growth, viz, various kinds of spinach and other greens, turnips, radishes, cabbage, and even potatoes.’42 In November 1830 tragedy struck the Shaw family when two of their sons drowned in the Swan River. A year later Eliza used romantic language to describe their gravesite: ‘their grave (which is one of the most beautiful and romantic spots in the world commanding noble and extensive views) is overshadowed by beautiful native Cypress, Black Wattle and other weeping shrubs.’43 In spite of her grief at having tragically lost two sons in what she could have described as a harsh and unforgiving environment, Eliza found beauty in this landscape. She did not wish that they were buried in English soil or their graves marked with oak or willow trees. Here her use of romantic and picturesque language does not suggest distance or appropriation but a melancholic appreciation of the landscape and a sense of attachment to a site of deep personal significance. Eliza Shaw noticed aesthetic qualities of the landscape suitable for painting, but she also found some of the country monotonous. She wished her friends ‘were able to bring paper and pencil and sketch some of our Australian landscape we have a sameness

38 Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-1833, 21/1/1832, BL ACC 1698A (microfilm) 39 Gaynor, Harvest of the Suburbs, pp. 48-66. 40 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 30, 28/6/1831. 41 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 32, 10/7/1831. 42 William Tanner to his mother and sisters, 10/10/1831, Baskerville, Swan River, Statham, The Tanner Letters, p. 11. 43 Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-33, letter to Waghornes, 3/2/1832, BL, ACC 1698A (microfilm). 91 certainly [but] in the whole of country still have many very beautiful spots for an artist.’44 Moore also commented on the monotony of the landscape near the hills, north- east of the Swan River, and found it difficult to locate distinctive landmarks with which to find his bearings. After two months in the colony he tried to explain his confusion: You cannot imagine any thing more puzzling than walking in the thickets. You have no object to steer by save your shadow or a compass; the one is always changing with the day and the other unless you keep your eyes constantly on it may mislead you also. It is a most singular country, not possessing those features of great Interest which I expected. There is, as far as I have seen, a great tameness and sameness in the scenery as of the same nature- undulating ground and extensive plains but no very striking objects no large rivers no lakes of any extent the plain subject to flood in the winter which is perhaps the case through all the interior.45 Several months later Moore described the country near the Swan River as attractive: ‘there is nothing sublime or grand in the objects, pretty landscape is rather the character of the country hereabouts’.46 Sometimes he went kangaroo hunting in the hills and valleys beyond his house and on one occasion wrote, ‘It is a beautiful picturesque valley or glen of not great extent.’47 In the autumn of 1831 he was charmed with the flowers that blossomed as a result of rain and used romantic language to convey the scene: ‘The spring of grass is amazing – everything green; beautiful little flowers, their heads like snow-drops, and having very much the fragrance of the hawthorn blossom, have sprung up in great profusion.’48 On a journey to explore the Avon Valley in the spring of 1831 Moore frequently referred to the landscape as picturesque. Although this was an expedition over land he was not expecting to inhabit permanently, the context of his language did not suggest an observer disconnected from his subject. The purpose of his journals was to communicate to others the nature of the land. As he explained: ‘You perceive that I have endeavoured to give my Father such a description of the country as may make it

44 Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-33, letter to Ann Dibben, undated from Belvoir, possibly 1832, BL, ACC 1698A (microfilm). 45 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 9-10, 28/12/1830. 46 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 18, 30/3/1831. 47 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 113, 3/5/1832 and George Fletcher Moore, Letters and Journal 1830-48, 3/5/1832, BL, ACC 263A (microfilm). 48 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 25, 12/5/1831. 92 something more familiar to his mind.’49 As well as his observations, Moore was accustomed to recording his feelings, and his pleasure and delight in the land is apparent. As he glimpsed his first sight of Mt Bakewell in the York district, he crossed ‘a fine stream and ascend[ed] a picturesque hill, feel[ing] rejoiced at being able to see around’.50 A few days later he ‘pass[ed] over a beautiful country for 7 miles and halt[ed] in a picturesque valley to rest in the middle of the day’.51 As he travelled through the York district he continued to describe the country in aesthetic terms. He followed a stream for a distance and remarked it was ‘running through a beautifully picturesque country, high hills rising abruptly from either side’.52 After almost nine years in the Colony when Moore was well-established and familiar with the land he continued to use romantic images to describe scenes that he found aesthetically pleasing. While on an excursion east of the Swan Valley with Mr Preiss, a German naturalist, Moore noted: ‘We visited a very picturesque glen about five miles away where there is a waterfall about 100 feet high, but there was not much water in it.’53 William Tanner also appreciated aspects of the landscape but he was more interested in the wildflowers than distant scenery. In the spring of 1831 he described the scent and colour of the flora by finding similarities between familiar plants and those that were unknown to him: We have a great variety of flowers, some of them very pretty, the greater number of these that have a scent, have that of bitter almonds, some smell like the Whitethorn, there are some plants known in the old world, the buttercup, lily of the valley (this I have not yet seen in flower), some of the grasses are very similar to yours if not the same kinds, the woodsorrel differs only in the colour of the flowers, there is a plant tasting like mint which the colonists call pennyroyal, but whether it be the same plant or not I don’t know the latter enough to say.54

49 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 18, 30/3/1831. 50 Moore, Diary, 15/9/1831, reprinted in Shoobert (ed) Western Australian Exploration, Volume One, December 1826-December 1835, p 259. 51 Moore, Diary, 20/9/1831, reprinted in Shoobert (ed) Western Australian Exploration, Volume One, December 1826-December 1835, p 260. 52 Moore, Diary, 4/10/1831, reprinted in Shoobert (ed) Western Australian Exploration, Volume One, December 1826-December 1835, p 263. 53 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 469, 26/7/1839. 54 William Tanner, letter from Baskerville, first page of letter missing, October 1831, Statham, The Tanner Letters, p. 20. 93 With the advent of another spring, Tanner’s interest and delight with the wildflowers was renewed as he observed: ‘The whole country is now covered with flowers, we find fresh ones daily, some of which escaped our observation last year, the grasses are just coming into ear.’55 It is possible that the flowers Tanner noticed on this occasion did not flower the year before, or it may be that Tanner was becoming more familiar with his surroundings and more observant, seeing things he had overlooked the previous year. Of the colonists who took up grants in the Upper Swan region discussed here, it was Moore who made the most detailed observations of the environment. He took pleasure in the flowers and the scenery and he was concerned about the productive capacity of the land, but he also adopted an amateur scientific approach as he tried to understand the landscape. He was particularly interested in the relationship between soil type and vegetation and by March 1831 he understood: There is every variety of soil from white sand to the deep black vegetable mould, each variety generally speaking having something of peculiar production, either of tree shrub herb or flower. On the white sand, Australian Mahogany is found in great abundance, and of excellent quality; on the clay grounds, the red and blue gum trees; sandy soils the Banksia, &c, but it would take too much time to be accurate in the enumeration of these.56 In the following years Moore continued to observe the soils and vegetation and made further observations.57 Women’s interest in botany and plant collecting in colonial Australia has been documented,58 but men were also involved in botany. As an amateur botanist, Moore used the Latin name for the flowers wherever possible.59 This knowledge, together with his sensitivity to the detail of his surroundings, assisted him to understand the flora and he wrote enthusiastically about the wildflowers: Great profusion of beautiful flowering shrubs & flowers now in bloom. There seems to be an endless succession. One called the Anigozanthus I believe is very

55 William Tanner to his mother, Baskerville, 23/9/1832, Statham, The Tanner Letters, p. 43. 56 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 13, 26/3/1831 57 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 153, 24/9/1832; p. 270, 22/8/1833. 58 D. J. and S.G.M. Carr (eds), People and Plants in Australia, Academic Press, Sydney, 1981; Susan K. Martin, ‘Gender, Genera, Genre and Geography: Colonial women’s Writing and the Uses of Botany’ in Caroline Guerin, Philip Butterss and Amanda Nettleback (eds), Crossing Lines: Formation of Australian Culture, proceedings of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature Conference, Adelaide, 1996; Judy Skene, ‘The Power of Naming: Women Botanical Collectors and the Contested Space of 19th Century Botany’, Historical Traces, Studies in Western Australian History, 17, 1997, pp. 1-12. 59 See Appendix II, ‘Flora and Fauna’ by Dr Ian Abbott in Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, pp. 496-503. 94 singular and beautiful - a greenish coloured flower issuing from a crimson stem. The green flowers at the top stand out like fingers or expanded honeysuckles. There is also abundance of clematis and another creeper of a splendid blue.60 As well as writing about the wildflowers, Moore collected specimens to prepare for a Hortus siccus,61 a collection of dried plants and flowers arranged systematically in a book specifically designed for this purpose. Sometimes he also collected varieties of plants and shrubs for the naturalist, Captain James Mangles.62 While Eliza Shaw, William Tanner and Moore viewed and described the land and the flora from a variety of perspectives, they were less interested in the fauna. European responses to Australian fauna were seemingly contradictory. Adrian Franklin noted that on the one hand Europeans were amazed that the animals did not fit known classifications, but on the other he argued that ‘there appeared to be a profound lack of interest in and commitment to faunal Australia by the new settlers’, and that the Europeans viewed the native animals as a resource.63 If, at first, the Shaws, Tanners and Moore were unsettled by the fauna and found them strange, they soon ceased to see them as a novelty and viewed them primarily as food or pests. William and Eliza Shaw, though, seemed disappointed with the fauna, perhaps expecting to find a game park, rather than shy, nocturnal marsupials. After only one month at the Swan River, William Shaw remarked, ‘I believe we are free from venomous reptiles as any land in the world in fact I wish the land abounded with more animals. I have only seen two kangaroos they were very large standing taller than myself.’64 Similarly, Eliza Shaw commented, ‘…of the quadrupeds of this Colony there is but little to say’.65 Many of the colonists’ comments regarding the native fauna were concerned with the problems they caused. Referring to native marsupials, Eliza Shaw was unimpressed by the damage they did to their poultry: ‘we also have a kind of squirrel here a devil, also native cats…make havoc amongst poultry and the native dog a species

60 George Fletcher Moore, Letters and Journal 1830-48, 27/8/1831, BL, ACC 263A (microfilm) and Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 39, 27/8/1831. 61 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 138, 8/8/1832. 62 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 32, 9/7/1831. 63 Adrian Franklin, Animal Nation: The True Story of Animals and Australia, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2006, pp. 14, 26 & 43. 64 William Shaw to Waghornes, Swan River, 14/3/1830, Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-1833, BL, ACC 1698A (microfilm). 65 Eliza Shaw to Waghornes, 16/7/1832, Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-1833, BL, ACC 1698A (microfilm). 95 of wolf, howls and prowls at night’.66 In the same letter she complained of the wild turkey, swans, ducks, golden winged pigeons, plovers, quails and crows because they destroyed the wheat.67 William Tanner’s initial observations of the native animals related mainly to their suitability as a food source: Of animals fit for eating we have kangaroos 2 kinds, 150lb wt to 60lb and about 3 kinds about the size of a hare, opossums. I hear that Mr Moore has brought home with him an anteater, this is the first I have heard of and don’t know if it be good food, 3 kinds of cockatoo larger than pigeons, pigeons 2 kinds, the wild turkey or bustard, emu about 70lbs wt the size of an ostrich – eats precisely like beef, swan, 3 or 4 kinds of duck, teal, bittern, quail, land-rail, water-rail, something of the crow kind, but not living on carrion, perhaps the rook but ‘tis not gregarious here, - all those are very good food.68 As William Tanner spent longer in the Colony he became more knowledgeable about the fauna and informed his mother: ‘I have to add to the list of native animals here, the lark and the jay, the latter is not of such fine plumage as yours, being black and white, the green Turtle too is found on the Coast, tho’ I think not in great abundance just at this part of it, I have yet seen only one.’69 Moore was also interested in the fauna as a food source. He gave accounts of eating turtles, pigeon, ducks, parrots and explained they were ‘all tending to our great desideratum in luxury – a supply of fresh meat’.70 He also ate possum and on one kangaroo hunt failed to kill any kangaroos, but came back with two kangaroo rats, a bandicoot and an eagle.71 Fresh meat was hard to acquire and the native animals the colonists killed supplemented the salted meat until their own stocks of domestic animals were large enough to cull. Although Moore’s most frequent references to the native fauna were as a source of fresh meat, he did observe and take an interest in animals that did not provide him with food. Consistent with Moore’s amateur scientific approach, he

66 Eliza Shaw to Waghornes, 16/7/1832, Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-1833, BL, ACC 1698A (microfilm). 67 Eliza Shaw to Waghornes, 16/7/1832, Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-1833, BL, ACC 1698A (microfilm). 68 William Tanner to his mother and sisters, October 1831, Statham, The Tanner Letter, p. 20. 69 William Tanner to his mother 21/9/1832, Statham, The Tanner Letters, 1981, p. 41. 70 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 25, 12/5/1831. 71 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 141, 23/8/1832 and p. 270, 22/8/1833. 96 bottled a snake that he sent back to England.72 His observations of frogs one autumn is also indicative of his interest in the fauna: The numerous frogs remind me that the moist weather and approaching winter have brought into active life an immense quantity of these creatures, some of which make a co-ax co-ax sort of noise, and others a most mournful and horrible bellowing which might be mistaken for the high note of a bull.73 These colonists to the Upper Swan saw the landscapes there through a variety of lenses. Eliza Shaw and Moore employed the language of the picturesque to express the beauty and attractiveness in the country, but their delight was not necessarily due to the land’s use-value. Moore was very interested in learning about the flora and fauna of the Colony and sometimes used their scientific names, though, like William Tanner, he also viewed them as food. Eliza Shaw’s description of the graves of her two sons as a romantic place is particularly poignant and suggests affection for, and attachment to, this site.

People and Home Social Class at the Upper Swan It is apparent that at the Upper Swan, Eliza and William Shaw, Hester and William Tanner and George Fletcher Moore saw themselves as members of the same social class they had belonged to in England and Ireland. Class mattered and so they strove to maintain their former ways of displaying it. Yet the colonial situation was different so they were forced to behave in ways not usually associated with their class. How did this influence their relationships with the environment? In Chapter Two I explained that romantic and picturesque attitudes to the environment in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were associated with the upper class and arose, in part, from the division between town and country. This argument that the wealthy classes in Europe were more likely to have embraced romantic attitudes to the environment because they did not rely on the land for their livelihoods is complicated by these colonists at the Upper Swan. Recalling Bird’s analysis of Eliza Brown’s letters from the Avon Valley,74 I argue that for some of these colonists, the sense of satisfaction gained from performing domestic tasks that were unconventional for English middle-class

72 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 153, 24/8/1832. 73 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 25, 28/5/1831. 74 Bird, ‘Women in the Wilderness’. 97 people heightened their positive attitude to the environment, and their efforts to remain ‘respectable’ assisted them to feel comfortable in the new society. The colonists at the Upper Swan were among the first free white settlers to establish themselves in Western Australia. They had arrived at a place with no, or very little, pre-existing European society and, as Penny Russell explained in relation to nineteenth century Melbourne, the colonists were aware that they were creating a new social order.75 In the society they left behind, land was an important indicator of class, status and political significance. At the Swan River Colony the amount of land granted to colonists depended on the value of their assets and the number of servants they brought with them. Therefore, as Pamela Statham has argued, divisions of class or hierarchy were reinforced as soon as the colonists established their land grants.76 William Tanner emphasised the importance of land ownership to secure and assert a prominent place in the colony. He explained to his mother: I think there are not more than three individuals here who have larger English incomes than myself, nor larger property, most of the settlers having laid out most of their property in investments for this place, perhaps seldom exceeding two thousand pounds. I think Peel and the Governor are the only two persons of larger landed property here than myself. I have 35,000 acres besides purchases and town allotments.77 From the beginning, the European society at the Swan River was stratified.78 Eliza and William Shaw, William and Hester Tanner and Moore were near the top of the hierarchy and it is clear that class mattered to them. However, their new situation and experiences modified how their class and status were imagined and negotiated. Margaret Grellier has argued that during the early years of the Colony social order was maintained by formally and informally manipulating relationships.79 Formal measures included the Master and Servant Acts, while the Church and the Temperance Society exerted informal pressure. In addition, she concluded that status was affirmed

75 Penny Russell, A Wish of Distinction, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria, 1994, p. 6. 76 Statham, ‘Swan River Colony 1829-1850’. 77 William Tanner to his mother, Baskerville, 21/9/1832, Statham, The Tanner Letters, p. 42. 78 Charlie Fox, ‘Social Class in Western Australia’ in J. Gothard and J. Gregory (eds), The Historical Encyclopedia of Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands. 2009, forthcoming; Tom Stannage, People of Perth: a social history of Western Australia’s capital city, Carrolls for Perth City, Perth, 1979, pp. 11-26. 79 Margaret Grellier, ‘Social Control Theory: One Perspective on Social Relationships in Australia in 1838’, The Push from the Bush: A Bulletin of Social History, No 6, 1980, pp. 3-22. 98 by attending social events such as the gentleman’s ball.80 In an environment where living conditions were simpler and not always indicative of membership of a British upper-middle or middle-class, Moore, the Tanners and the Shaws also affirmed and reproduced their status through informal relationships. In their writing they made many references to their position in colonial society and often commented that they associated with others of a similar standing. Writing from his tent at Fremantle one month after arriving at the Colony Moore informed his family, ‘I have taken half of a grant of a Mr Lamb …There are several very respectable persons settled near to it...’81 Eliza Shaw also reassured friends in England that their neighbours at the Swan River were ‘gentlemen’ and ‘ladies’: ‘All the neighbours round here are men of good family, have moved in the first circles in England, Ireland...’82 Similarly, William commented: ‘I am surrounded by settlers of wealth, gents and ladies – and all really good neighbours, industry of course, is the order of the day with us all.’83 Here, William also implied that although they were all ladies and gentlemen, their situation demanded that they work. Sometimes, too, their work consisted of tasks that would have been inappropriate for them to pursue in English society. William and Eliza Shaw explained: ‘People who rode in carriages in England are now weighing out ¼ pound of tea and ½ of rice.’84 As servants were in short supply in the Colony everyone, even ‘ladies’ and ‘gentlemen’, needed to ensure they had the bare necessities and organise these themselves.85 Eliza also asked their friends not to despise them for carrying out menial chores that she described as ‘homely occupations’.86 Moore had servants who helped him on his property but he still did tasks that were not usually carried out by a man of his standing. For example, he recorded

80 Grellier, ‘Social Control Theory’, p.12. 81 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 4, 19/12/1830. 82 Eliza Shaw to Waghornes, 3/2/1832, Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-33, BL, ACC 1698A (microfilm). 83 William Shaw to Waghornes, 27/5/1831, Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-33, BL, ACC 1698A (microfilm). 84 William and Eliza Shaw to the Waghornes, 10/3/1830, Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-33, BL, ACC 1698A (microfilm). 85 For the colonists’ complaints about servants see William Tanner, letter, Oct 1831, Baskerville, Swan River in Statham, The Tanner Letters, p. 23; Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 59, 2/12/1831 and p. 224, 25/4/1833; Moore, Letters and Journal 1830-48, 1/11/1831, BL, ACC 263A (microfilm); Durack, To Be Heirs Forever, pp.113-114. 86 Eliza Shaw to Waghornes, 12/7/1832, Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-33, BL, ACC 1698A (microfilm). 99 digging the vegetable garden, ploughing the land, washing sheep, constructing fences, sinking a well and building his own house. 87 Although in short supply, servants formed a significant part of society at the Upper Swan and were an important element of class structure there. The relationship between masters and servants was different to that in England and these differences have been accounted for in varying ways.88 However, the important factor for this study is that due to a shortage of servants, the Shaws, Tanners and Moore carried out tasks their servants would usually have undertaken. Some of this work was in the garden or on the farm, and this meant that they became very involved with the land. Mary Durack suggested that colonial society enabled Eliza Shaw to engage socially with people from a range of classes. Durack viewed Eliza as being ‘fulfilled, extended as never in England to the utmost of her initiative, freed from the conventions of her class to communicate with humble folk of like spirit’.89 Although class may not have been a barrier to social intercourse and Eliza’s activities were more varied than if she had remained in England, Eliza still thought of herself as a member of the social elite in the Colony. Certainly, living conditions and the social structure were different to those in England, but at the Upper Swan the importance of gentility survived. In a similar way to the Shaws, William Tanner justified his involvement with tasks not normally expected of, or associated with, people of their social standing: ‘People of all classes have (as must be expected in an infant settlement) felt the necessity of working at many things they were before unaccustomed to.’90 Although various tasks the Shaws and the Tanners carried out at the Swan River, such as erecting a wooden hut and doing the family laundry, were not usually seen as suitable for people of their class, this did not mean that class was less important. The physical and practical conditions in the colony made class boundaries appear less distinct, but in the minds of these colonists, class still mattered.

87 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, 17/10/1831, p. 54; 6/4/1839, p. 463; 29/10/1833, p. 292; 3/11/1831, p. 60; 17/2/1835, p. 372; 6/1/1832, p. 79. 88 Appleyard and Manford, In the Beginning, p. 183 argued that it was the colonial environment that destroyed the traditional service bonds between masters and servants but T.W. Mazzarol, ‘Tradition, Environment and the Indentured Labourer in Early Western Australia, Studies in Western Australian History, Volume III, Nov 1978, pp. 30-37 argued that these relations were breaking down in England but, because WA did not have a pool of unemployed poor people to draw from, the indentured servant was in a much stronger position to make demands on his employer. 89 Durack, To Be Heirs Forever, p. 177. 90 William Tanner to his mother and sisters, 10/10/1831, Baskerville, Swan River in Statham, The Tanner Letters, p. 12. 100 The Tanner family were wealthier than most of the colonists to the Swan River and, like the Shaws, they were keen to reassure their family in England that as far as possible they would behave in accordance with their position. William Tanner wrote of their accomplishment in building a fine house. He provided details about the interior and mentioned the use of glass, a rare luxury in the Colony, but admitted to having only one sitting room. The Tanners’ house was fitted with adornments and decorations that were signifiers of class and demonstrates the importance of the domestic environment in upholding and affirming class in a colonial context. William Tanner described Baskerville, on the Swan River, as being: Of a more polished description than may be expected in a place which 9 months ago was a wilderness. It stands in what in England would be called a park, and of course of immense extent. Our sitting room (we have but one) is 24 feet long, panelled something after the manner of old fashioned rooms in England, painted slate colour picked out with grey above instead of a ceiling are boards laid on joists, both painted white. The windows of the whole house are strictly gothic…The other end of the room is to have a glass door and bookshelves to match. The room is adorned or furnished with oil paintings which, tho’ not by great masters, are still highly valued by me, some good engravings, pair of globes, Ash Loo table, 2 mahogany dining tables, sofa, chairs and a very large oak medicine chest. The window curtains are of striped white muslin…91 In this passage William Tanner also explained that their house was situated in a park. It was common for Europeans in Australia to remark that parts of the country appeared to them like ‘parks’, and sometimes they likened them to ‘gentleman’s’ or ‘nobleman’s’ parks.92 Tim Bonyhady discussed this tendency to call open woodlands ‘parks’ and suggested that class was a factor in the colonists’ enthusiasm for open country with clumps of trees.93 In England these ‘parks’ that appeared natural, but were in fact planned and created, were only accessible to wealthy landowners. In Australia, though, it was possible for people of the middle-class to acquire and enjoy such landscapes.

91 William Tanner to his mother and sisters, 10/10/1831, Baskerville, Swan River in Statham, The Tanner Letters, p. 8. (A Loo table was a large Victorian card or games table.) 92 See for example, John H. Norcock, Mary Thomas, Henry Watson and J.F. Bennett in Eric Rolls, Visions of Australia: Impressions of the Landscape 1642-1910, Lothian Books, South Melbourne, 2002, pp. 132, 139, 151, 171. Karskens, ‘Nefarious Geographies, p. 19 also mentioned that open woodlands created by Aboriginal burning were favoured by the elite because they looked like the parklands of wealthy English landowners and were ideal for grazing stock. 93 Bonyhady, The Colonial Earth, p. 78. 101 Bonyhady also commented on the failure of colonists to acknowledge the role that Aboriginal people played in creating these ‘parks’.94 However, this was not always the case as the Bussells, discussed in Chapter Four, were aware that these ‘parks’ were created by Aboriginal land management practices. In addition, Bonyhady explained that in Australia colonists preferred open woodlands rather than dense bush, partly because they were suitable for grazing, but also for their picturesque appearance. He argued that this preference was further evidence of a direct link between economics and aesthetics in Australia. As I have already argued, and will refer to again later, this direct link was common to, but not always present in, colonists’ approaches to the land. In her study of Melbourne society in the nineteenth century, Penny Russell argued that colonists were aware that they had to create a social order. In this new society the practice of gentility was very important and needed to be displayed more overtly than in England where ‘women converted the ideals of gentility into a “genteel performance”’.95 In the Swan River, too, ideas of gentility and respectability were important and one way the colonists displayed their gentility and maintained class distinctions was to attend significant public and social events. At the first church service at the Upper Swan, Moore noted: ‘There were 28 attended. It was very gratifying. There were 13 of the higher class.’96 He then named those of the ‘higher class’. In September 1831 Eliza Shaw was extremely pleased to have been invited to the Ball at Government House, a grand event in the Colony’s social calendar. For Eliza and William Shaw it involved leaving the younger children with neighbours while they and their eldest daughter, Elizabeth, travelled to Perth for a few days. Eliza wrote at great length of the Ball to her friend Ann Dibben: …it [the Ball] would not have disgraced one of the first rate assemblies in England and it was the astonishment of many that such a number of females in such a Colony as this should be able to dance quadrilles, Spanish dances, and gallopades in the same style as they were, occasionally, however, in the course of the evening two sets of old fashioned country dances were danced for those who did not dance quadrilles etc.97

94 Bonyhady, The Colonial Earth, p. 79. 95 Russell, A Wish of Distinction, p. 1. 96 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 31, 9/7/1831. 97 Eliza Shaw to Ann Dibben, undated from Belvoir, possibly 1832, Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829- 33, BL, ACC 1698A (microfilm). 102 Eliza made the point that concessions were made to include dances that were familiar to those with less genteel education, thereby recognising a compromise in the usual class divisions. Eliza’s later letters were more concerned with her immediate family and estate business than with reassuring friends in England of their position, or providing information about the colony. However, even after many years of living a more ‘common’ lifestyle than she would have in England, class remained an issue for Eliza. In 1865 she wrote to her daughter Elizabeth of her disdain for the new immigrants recently arrived in the colony and declared, ‘but oh Elizth the neighbourhood -! We are surrounded by the vilest of the vile’ and ‘we have tramping vagabonds at all hours of night and day’.98 As an elderly woman Eliza sometimes spent time at White Peak near Champion Bay (now Geraldton) with her daughter, Elizabeth. On one such occasion she visited Mrs Sampson Sewell at their neighbouring farm and declared, ‘they have such a beautiful place House, garden, ground and the only cornfields I have seen and all kept in such neat and splendid order – their place is a perfect picture and their house a mansion furnished in first style and taste with every comfort’.99 These later letters suggest that Eliza’s awareness of conventional class distinctions were strong even after nearly 50 years in the Colony. Although she may have engaged in tasks unsuitable for members of her class in England and, as Mary Durack suggested, she communicated with people from classes lower than her own, Eliza Shaw still regarded herself as a ‘lady’. The prospect of land brought these colonists to the Swan River and was the most important signifier of class. Having acquired land it was then important to maintain class distinctions through their behaviours, which at the Upper Swan were modified by the colonial situation. Although they belonged to the landowning colonial gentry the Shaws, Tanners and Moore carried out a range of menial chores. Some of these tasks were closely involved with the land, but this did not mean that they were no longer members of the upper or middle-class. However, the activities that drew them to the land such as building their own houses, exploring their surroundings, farming and

98 Eliza Shaw to Elizabeth (daughter), 29/9/1865, Eliza Shaw, Diary and Letters 1857-1876, BL, ACC 2088A. Mary Durack suggested that Eliza Shaw was referring to an influx of lower class immigrants to balance the convict population, Durack, To Be Heirs Forever, p. 207. 99 Eliza Shaw to Mary (granddaughter), White Peak, 23/10/1876, Eliza Shaw, Diary and Letters 1857-1876, BL, ACC 2088A. 103 growing vegetables modified what it meant to be a ‘lady’ or ‘gentleman’ at the Upper Swan and provided them with opportunities for connecting with the land.

Colonists, Aboriginal People and Belonging Maggie MacKellar found that some settler women in Canada and Australia were able to connect with the land and develop a sense of place by learning about the environment and Indigenous culture from Indigenous women.100 For the colonists at the Upper Swan though, this was not the case. The colonists at the Upper Swan were acutely aware of the Aboriginal people’s presence and, to varying degrees, acquired knowledge about their culture and the close connections they had with the land. However, even for Moore, who, at times, defended their rights, this knowledge and understanding did not contribute to his own sense of belonging. Nor did his knowledge that Aboriginal people already occupied the continent diminish his belonging or ownership. The Shaws and the Tanners regarded the Aboriginal people as a nuisance. For the most part, they viewed them as an obstacle that impeded their efforts to grow their own food and raise animals because the Aboriginal people speared the colonists’ stock, took vegetables from their gardens and food from their stores The Shaws and Tanners knew the Aboriginal people relied on the land and they admired their hunting ability, but they associated these traits with savage peoples. Tom Griffiths has explained that although the Europeans brought with them a hunting culture, where the ‘hunt’ had an elite social function, they viewed subsistence hunting of the Aboriginal cultures as characteristic of savagery.101 The result was that, ‘for the colonists, these two forms of hunting symbolized the distance between their society and that of the Aborigines’.102 In the minds of the Shaws and the Tanners, savage peoples, not ‘civilised’ Europeans, hunted and gathered food from uncultivated land. The scant references to Aboriginal people in the letters of Eliza Shaw and William and Hester Tanner indicate they had little interest in the Aboriginal people’s beliefs, customs and relationship with the land. Although Eliza Shaw hoped ‘we may form a friendly communication [with them as] from my personal knowledge I have

100 MacKellar, Core of my heart, my country, Chapter Two & pp. 147-151. 101 Tom Griffiths, Hunters and Collectors: The Antiquarian Imagination in Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 12-14. 102 Griffiths, Hunters and Collectors, p. 12. 104 discovered traits of character in them which would do honor to any European,’103 there is little evidence that she developed an understanding of their culture. Indeed, Eliza and William more commonly used animal analogies to describe some of their behaviours: ‘They are great thieves and very swift of foot as they run like deer. They throw their spears which are their only weapons most dexterously both at fish and animals. They are like parrots repeating every word that is said to them.’104 William Tanner seemed even less interested than Eliza Shaw in them. In an afterthought he remarked one day: I had almost forgotten to mention one thing which is one of the disagreeables of this colony, namely the natives have lately become very troublesome. So much so that the other day 3 of them came (it is supposed the shepherds were asleep at the time) drove away upwards of 60 sheep on one of my neighbours, we immediately followed them and came up with at 10 miles distance where we found upwards of 40 of the carcasses, 2 of which were nicely roasted. We could not take any of the thieves they are very alert in their own bush.105 The Shaws and the Tanners gave little thought to how their lives at the Upper Swan impacted on the Aboriginal people. Eliza Shaw indicated that she wanted to be on friendly terms with them but it was more usual for the Shaws and the Tanners, when they considered them at all, to see the Aboriginal people as a problem to be solved. The little knowledge the Shaws and the Tanners had about the Aboriginal people served to reinforce their ideas that Aboriginal people were ‘primitive’ and did not enhance their feelings of attachment and belonging. Moore’s relationships with the Aboriginal people were more complicated and as indicated earlier he made many references to them in his journal. He was interested in the Aboriginal people, he gained much information about the country from them, occasionally he used their words in his journal and he assisted Francis Armstrong, and then later Charles Symmons and John Gilbert, to compile a vocabulary of their language.106

103 Eliza Shaw to Waghornes, begun 17/3/1833, Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-33, BL, ACC 1698A (microfilm). 104 William and Eliza Shaw to the Waghornes, 10/3/1830, Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-33BL, ACC 1698A (microfilm). 105 William Tanner to his mother and sisters, 15/10/1831, Baskerville, Swan River in Statham, The Tanner Letters, p. 17. 106 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, footnote 663, p. 461. Francis Armstrong often acted as an interpreter for the colonists, Symmons was appointed by the London Colonial Office as Protector of Aborigines in 1839 and Gilbert was a naturalist. 105 Moore learned about the geography of the country from Aboriginal people. For example, he recounted a conversation with Weeip:107 He [Weeip] tells me also that ‘Gogulger’ – gogglegur – (which Mr Lyon supposed to be their name for the Avon River) and ‘Gatta’ (which he supposed to be a great river at a distance beyond the Avon) are both only branches of the Swan in the mountains, and that Margin-ingara (supposed a continuation of the Gatta) is only a lake.108 Moore listened to their predictions about the weather and used words from their language to describe events from his day: This morning it rained very heavily & the sky looked dark. Yet the natives said ‘Manyeena moco no’ (tomorrow no rain)…The natives were right about the weather. This has been a fine day. By daybreak Doorbup was at my door wanting me ‘meaal’ (to see). I was amused by the name of a blackish coloured small bird which flits about in a very singular way. He calles it ‘Peewo-en, an exact imitation of one of its calls. He followed me a long time ‘ngnonan meal’ (to look for ducks), climbed a tree for an opussum but ‘Pottum no’.109 At first Moore called his property ‘The Hermitage’ but renamed it ‘Millendon’ after the Aboriginal word for it.110 These examples show how the Aboriginal people influenced Moore’s experiences and his connections with place and suggest that he respected their knowledge and how they understood the world. Moore advocated for conciliation between the colonists and the Aboriginal people and he expressed these thoughts in letters to the Perth Gazette. In July 1833 he wrote: Did it never occur to us then, that in thus extending the domain of Great Britain, in thus acquiring a territory for our country whilst seeking a fortune for

107 Weeip was an important Aboriginal man in his group who visited Moore regularly. Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, footnote 316, p. 28. 108 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, 9/9/1833, p. 278. Mr Lyon was Robert Menli Lyon, who arrived at the Swan River Colony in1829. He was a humanitarian who supported the Aboriginal peoples, but the colonists did not accept him and he left Western Australia in 1837. (See Reynolds, This Whispering in Our Hearts, pp. 71-76 for more information about Lyon.) 109 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, Wednesday 3/7/1833 and Thursday 4/7/1833, p. 255. Doorbup was an Aboriginal man who visited Moore on several occasions. 110 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, 4/9/1834, p. 346. 106 ourselves, we were about to perpetrate a monstrous piece of injustice, that we were about to dispossess unceremoniously the rightful owners of the soil?111 Moore continued to assert that the colonists should treat the Aboriginal people with kindness, justice and good humour, and remunerate them for their work but he also believed that it was reasonable to domesticate, ‘civilise’ and Christianise them.112 Moore’s public calls for the colonists to demonstrate humanitarian attitudes toward the Aboriginal people were also consistent with some of his more private thoughts. In May 1833 the authorities of the Colony let it be known that they wanted dead. The Aboriginal leader, Yagan, had allegedly speared three colonists as revenge for shooting his father, Midgegooroo.113 Moore recounted his attempts to mediate this conflict and after talking with Yagan and Henry Bull114 wondered: How could any man, unless a professed blood hunter, spring upon a man in cold blood and lead him to his death? How could any one that had a heart fire treacherously from a secure ambush upon a human creature, though he be a bold and reckless savage?115 Clearly, Moore viewed the Aboriginals as people, though ‘savage’, who should not be killed in cold blood. He knew, however, that most of the colonists wanted Yagan dead and observed, ‘There is no safety for us now, but in his death.’116 This statement foreshadowed Moore’s later thoughts that the Aboriginal people were an obstacle to the ‘success’ of the Colony. A year later Moore seemed to have changed his mind about Aboriginal people. He now expressed different views. It is difficult to know whether he held contradictory views or whether his attitude had changed over time, but it is clear that on this occasion he believed that Aboriginal people were preventing the settlers from farming and carrying out their daily occupations: They are a drawback upon our success which we had not calculated upon, a charge upon our lands which we were not apprised of, and a thorn in our sides which we can not get rid of and which constantly reminds us of the

111 George Fletcher Moore, writing as Philaleth, Perth Gazette, 27/07/1833, p. 119. 112 George Fletcher Moore, writing as Philaleth, Perth Gazette, 27/07/1833, p. 119. 113 For Moore’s account of these events see Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, pp. 233, 235,236. See also Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, footnotes 315, 324, 328. 114 Lieutenant Henry Bull had a land grant on the Swan River north of the Shaw’s land. See Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, footnote 60, p. 31. 115 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, 27/5/1833, p. 236. 116 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, 28/5/1833, p. 237. 107 inconveniences of its presence by the impediment to our exertions and the injury to our constitutions. In a public and colonial point of view this is the light in which this subject presents itself. What my private conduct is to their visits [is] between them and me & one God.117 While Moore may have valued their insights about the land, encouraged conciliatory measures between them and the settlers and, indeed, called some of them friends, he also believed the Aboriginal people were obstructing the goals of colonisation and that these goals were of primary importance. How, then, did Moore’s complex attitudes to the Aboriginal people and his understandings of their connections with the land influence his own relationship with place and his sense of belonging? Moore understood that the Aboriginal people had a close relationship with the land and he respected their superior knowledge of the land, but did it assist him to feel attachment or a sense of belonging to the Upper Swan? Moore’s knowledge and awareness of close links between the Aboriginal people and the land contributed to his feelings of familiarity and connections to place at the Upper Swan, but this knowledge also brought feelings of unease. His surprise at discovering that the Aboriginal people had a good understanding of the geography of the land accentuated his feelings of isolation from European culture and learning: I learned through the means of Mr Armstrong, who acts as a native interpreter, that the natives are all aware that this is an island, and that the sea which Tomghin spoke of is the sea which bounds the north coast. I had no idea that their knowledge of geography had been so extensive and accurate…Being without the assistance of books here, and having to speak merely from a dim and distant recollection of a former slender acquaintance with these subjects, one is naturally diffident now.118 On another occasion Moore thought about a story some Aboriginal people told him about the stars and he commented: ‘What a strange fable, but not more so than many fables of the Romans.’119 Moore was aware that the Aboriginal people had their own complex culture, comparable in some ways with that of classical civilisation. In this sense he understood that he and they were all part of a common humanity with legends to explain the world, but he nevertheless found their culture strange.

117 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, 17/9/1834, p. 350. 118 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, Thursday October 1835, p. 392. 119 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, 27/7/1839, p. 470. 108 The Aboriginal people influenced Moore’s connections to place by sharing their knowledge of the land with him and he respected their intimate relationships with it. The presence of the Aboriginal people, and Moore’s relations with them, may have affected his sense of self, but they did not influence his sense of belonging: the knowledge he gained from them did not amplify his feelings that ‘Millendon’ was home, nor did his awareness that his placemaking occurred on land which they inhabited, diminish his belief that his land was, in fact, his, nor that his place in the Colony was, in some sense, home. Like the women in MacKellar’s book, his interactions with the Aboriginal people assisted him to become more familiar with the place where he lived but, unlike MacKellar’s subjects, this did not contribute to his sense of belonging. Rather, Moore’s awareness of Aboriginal people’s intimate relationships with the land heightened the cultural differences between them and his early feelings of empathy and amicable relations with them did not enhance or undermine his own sense of belonging at the Upper Swan. The Shaws and the Tanners viewed the Aboriginal people as ‘savages’ who impeded their farming activities. Their knowledge that the Aboriginal people lived at the Upper Swan before they arrived had no impact on their home making and did not affect the way they related to the land. Ultimately, Moore came to feel as they did.

‘Where is home?’: Belonging in the Colony Eliza and William Shaw, Hester and William Tanner and George Fletcher Moore viewed and used the land in a variety of ways. In doing so they created connections and built relationships with their new environment. This was part of the process of how, in varying degrees, they came to feel a sense of belonging to the Upper Swan. They also developed feelings of attachment and belonging by forming relationships with the people around them and by creating a domestic space they called home. These colonists at the Upper Swan formed close social networks. In lieu of family support they shared equipment, food and information and they offered one another comfort and companionship. William and Eliza Shaw frequently shared their camp oven they used for baking bread.120 William Tanner described their neighbourhood as being, ‘very populous and we are all very friendly and are constantly visiting and receiving presents, as a lamb, haunch or leg of kangaroo, spareribs, leg of

120 Eliza Shaw to Waghornes, 21/1/1832, Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-33, BL, ACC 1698A (microfilm). 109 mutton, quarter of kid, etc., besides fresh butter and vegetables’.121 Eliza Shaw also valued her friends at the Upper Swan: ‘ours is the most friendly neighbourhood you can imagine… I am the richest person in the world possessing the best, the very best of friends in dear Old England, and certainly the most respectable, kind and worthy ones in Western Australia.’122 The importance of friendships to Eliza is particularly evident from one letter in which she declared that if all her friends were with her she ‘should not feel one regret at having left England’.123 George Fletcher Moore also valued contact with friends and neighbours in the Upper Swan. He listed the names of several visitors he received on the same day and asked rhetorically, ‘What do you think of that for a wilderness?’124 Moore was a busy man. He was busy with judicial affairs of the colony, with his own business affairs, with his farming and gardening and he made exploratory journeys beyond the hills. However, his house and property were important as a place of refuge and comfort, so he invested time and effort to make his house feel like a home. While a productive garden was a priority, Moore also created a garden for his pleasure and by the winter of 1832 he had planted roses as well as vegetables and fruits.125 When his property was fully established he invested additional resources in his flower garden and by 1837 it contained more than a few rose bushes. Moore explained: ‘I have a gardener making a little plantation of flowers and shrubs in front of the house…He supplied about twenty geraniums and stocks, and other things.’126 The impulse to grow plants from a remembered place has been discussed by Isis Brook, who argued that planting flowers from a place of attachment enables displaced people to make a living connection with their new environment.127 Holmes, Martin and Mirmohamadi also wrote of colonists who sometimes used garden plants to evoke memories of a distant home.128 As well as being aesthetically pleasing to Moore, his flower garden may have

121 William Tanner to mother and sisters, Dec 1831, Baskerville, Swan River in Statham, The Tanner Letters, p. 27. 122 Eliza Shaw to Waghornes, 21/1/1832, Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-33, BL, ACC 1698A (microfilm). 123 Eliza Shaw to Waghornes, 3/2/1832, Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-33, BL, ACC 1698A (microfilm). 124 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 393, Thursday [Tuesday], November 1835. 125 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 141, 24/8/1832. 126 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 423, 24/6/1837. Gender and gardening is discussed at greater length in Chapter Four. 127 Isis Brook, ‘Making Here Like There: Place Attachment, Displacement and the Urge to Garden’, Ethics, Place and Environment, Volume 6, No 3, October 2003, p. 228. 128 Holmes, Martin and Mirmohamadi, Reading the Garden, pp. 25-33. 110 helped him connect emotionally with his place at the Upper Swan. This way of understanding the urge to grow flowers is more empathic to the colonists than frameworks that primarily view exotic gardening as part of the displacement of the native flora under colonisation. Moore’s longing for a green aspect can also be understood as a means of creating a living connection with a new place. In a similar way to Isis Brook, who took comfort in finding a lush, green lawn while on holiday in Greece, Eliza Shaw and Moore associated a green garden with a place that was alive, gave them comfort and made their surroundings feel like home.129 Moore sowed lucerne in drills, just in front of the house, hoping it would stay green all year. 130 Eliza Shaw shared Moore’s vision of a green garden and she could not imagine a garden without a blade of grass.131

Figure 3.7 ‘Millendon’, George Fletcher Moore's house 1840s132

Although a bachelor, Moore wanted a pleasant, peaceful domestic space where he could relax and enjoy the comforts of home. In the Swan River Colony, as in Ireland and England, the home was a gendered space where women were expected to perform the domestic tasks.133 In Moore’s house, his servant, Letty, helped him with the domestic duties. When she went to Perth for the day he missed her and commented that

129 Brook, ‘Making Here Like There’, p. 231. 130 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, 2006, p. 234, 24/5/1833; Moore, Letters and Journal 1830- 1848, 24/5/1833, BL, ACC 263A (microfilm). 131Eliza Shaw letter to Waghornes, 10/3/1830, Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-33, BL ACC 1698. 132 By Elizabeth Irwin, BL 75257P in Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. vi. 133 See for example, Margaret Anderson, ‘Helpmeet for Man’: Women in Mid-nineteenth century Western Australia’ in Patricia Crawford (ed), Exploring Women’s Past, Sisters Publishing Ltd, Carlton, South Victoria, 1983, pp. 87-128. 111 the comfort of the house depended on her presence. 134 In the absence of sufficient domestic help Moore turned his own hand to tasks that made his house more comfortable. He made a lattice for a window out of grass tree leaves and a blind of linen.135 However, he wished his sisters could assist with ‘the housekeeping department in snuggifying things’.136 This is not a picture of the stereotypical male colonist portrayed within the pioneer myth, but his efforts to create a comfortable living space were part of the process, even for men, of turning their dwelling places into homes. These colonists at the Upper Swan worked to create comfortable dwellings they sometimes called home, but as discussed in Chapter One, home can carry a range of meanings. Fitzpatrick explained how references to home as a place of origin were a way of maintaining solidarity among family and friends and that in Ireland home was associated with a broad network of neighbours, and romanticised.137 When located in Australia, however, ‘home’ was more likely to be restricted to the house and the people who lived there. The Shaws, the Tanners and Moore all used ‘home’ to refer both to their place of origin and also to their houses and properties in the Colony. It is clear too, that while they often referred to England or Ireland as home, this did not preclude some of them from feeling attached to another place and calling it home. After only three years away from Ireland Moore articulated these tensions and turmoil about belonging: ‘How comfortable to be at home-at home! What singular beings we are. What ideas this word suggests. Where is Home?’138 After early disappointments with the country Eliza Shaw developed strong ties to their property ‘Belvoir’, but William seemed less able to adjust and rarely expressed contentment. Eliza derived much satisfaction and strength from her children and associated home with them. Before they established land at the Upper Swan they put up temporary shelter close to the river near Fremantle. Living conditions were difficult but Eliza was optimistic and affirmed, ‘we are happy with ourselves and that is everything’.139 Months later, when they were established on their land grant at the Upper Swan and Eliza left their children with friends for a few days while she, William and her eldest daughter attended the Ball at Government House, Eliza was anxious to

134 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 381, Wednesday June 1835. 135 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 59, 1/12/1831. 136 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 224, 25/4/1833, [emphasis in original]. 137 Fitzpatrick, ‘Ambiguities of ‘Home’ in Irish-Australian Correspondence’. 138 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 230, 13/5/1833. 139 Eliza Shaw to Waghornes, Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829-33, 21/1/1832, BL, ACC 1698A (microfilm). 112 return home to the children as, ‘amidst all the bustle and gaiety I felt as if real happiness to a mother was at home more than anywhere also, even if that home were a mud edifice in the wilds of Western Australia…so two days after the ball we turned our faces homeward.’140 Associating home with children was conventional for her role as a mother and assisted Eliza with the process of belonging in a new place. Many years later when the Shaws’ adult children were scattered from ‘Belvoir’ to Toodyay and Champion Bay, the importance of family in Eliza’s feelings of attachment to place was still evident. She lamented the distances – not from England to the Colony as she had twenty-five years ago, but between herself, her own children and her grandchildren. She wished they were closer for mutual help and comfort and felt that ‘we do indeed seem cut off from everything and everybody near and dear to us, and might as well be buried alive as far as family intercourse goes’.141 Eliza’s last letters and final diary entry when she was eighty-five years old convey the love she felt for ‘Belvoir’, and she wrote of this property as though her family had been there for centuries, rather than decades. In a letter from White Peak she expressed her regret at not being present for her daughter’s wedding: ‘it would indeed have given your Aunt and myself the greatest pleasure to have been at the Wedding was it not singular that Ellen was born at Belvoir – and also married at Belvoir.’142 These comments also signify the sense of family tradition Eliza felt had already been established at ‘Belvoir’. In the 1870s the financial situation of the property was grim and Eliza was eventually forced to sell it. She expressed her sorrow in her diary: ‘Oh! What a trial it will be to see it pass away’ and ‘Alas, how am I to write that poor dear Belvoir is advertised for sale.’143 Finally, as an old lady reflecting on her life, Eliza wrote to her granddaughter, Mary: ‘When I look towards dear old Belvoir and days gone by, and the joys and sorrows it has seen us all through, that my poor heart is very sad.’144 For Eliza, losing ‘Belvoir’ was like losing a part of herself. Seen through the eyes of the twenty-

140 Eliza Shaw to Ann Dibben, undated from Belvoir, possibly 1832, Eliza Shaw, Letters 1829- 33, BL, ACC 1698A (microfilm). 141 Eliza Shaw to Elizabeth (daughter), 29/9/1865, Eliza Shaw, Diary and Letters 1857-1876, BL, ACC 2088A. 142 Eliza Shaw to Mary (granddaughter) White Peak, 10/12/1876, William Shaw, Letters 1829- 1876, BL, ACC 1062A. 143 Eliza Shaw, Diary and Letters 1857-1876, 15/2/1876, 10/3/1876, BL, ACC 2088A. 144 Eliza Shaw to Mary (granddaughter) White Peak, 20/11/1876, William Shaw, Letters 1829- 1876, BL, ACC 1062A. 113 first century she was a newcomer to Western Australia, but Eliza saw ‘Belvoir’ as her place on the Upper Swan and as home; she belonged there. Whereas Eliza Shaw’s primary attachment was to her nuclear family, William and Hester Tanner felt attached to their extended family, most of whom remained in England. This was so important to them that they were unable to feel as though they belonged anywhere but England. Although they came to the Colony with the intention of staying permanently, they returned to England in 1844. They both appreciated aspects of Western Australia but the great distance from family and close friends was a focus of many of their letters and this, rather than the land itself, accounted for their lack of attachment to their property or to the Colony. On behalf of his wife William Tanner assured his family: ‘Hester now likes this country very much and only wants her immediate friends from Calne to complete her happiness.’145 Hester herself explained that her unhappiness arose from the great distance from her family and friends: I have a very strong wish to see my father and sister once again and induce them if I can to accompany us back, altho’ the last idea may be a vain one and I have very little hope of their leaving England to reside in a land so distant, yet when I think of never seeing them again [it] fills me with a sad lonely feeling…The climate is delightful 8 months of the year, the other 4 are much too hot. Our neighbours are pleasant and I think we are considered to be the head agriculturalists…I think we should be very happy here if we had our nearest relations with us which I think is the only bar to it.146 Two years later when they were on their way back to England for a short period via Tasmania, William Tanner wrote with more fervor for Western Australia, but his enduring sentiment focused on the expected pleasure of returning to England and the anguish at having to part, once again, from their friends when they came back to the Swan River Colony.147 George Fletcher Moore came to the Colony as a single man and did not marry until 1846. Described by Cameron as confident and outgoing, and by Stannage as having a ‘joie de vivre’, there was also a melancholy side to Moore, which is evident in

145 William Tanner, from Baskerville, first page of letter missing, October 1831, Statham, The Tanner Letters, p. 21. 146 Hester Tanner to Mrs Tanner, Baskerville, Jan 1833, Statham, The Tanner Letters, p. 51. 147 William Tanner to sister Jane, Baskerville, Tasmania, 20/8/1835, Statham, The Tanner Letters, pp. 129-131. 114 his original letters and diaries and The Millendon Memoirs.148 Moore experienced great loneliness and he often longed for his friends and family.149 In spite of his loneliness though, over time he came to think of his property at the Upper Swan as home. Moore’s thoughts about home reveal the complexities and tensions he experienced in the process of developing a feeling of belonging in Western Australia. In his first years in the Colony, Moore compared aspects of Western Australia with Ireland and referred to Ireland as home. From his tent in Fremantle he observed the soil and noted ‘hereabout it is mere bare sand but we must not judge of this by similar looking places at home, for all vegetables flourish on it and all cattle thrive on the scanty herbage.’150 Similarly, Moore described the ground near where he built his house on the Upper Swan and added: ‘I know not what appearance the land beyond the mountains may have but this looks not unlike home and might feel so too if my friends were here. Oh that some of you were here...’151 Clearly, in these early years in the Colony, Moore thought of Ireland as home but as time passed he began to call the ‘Hermitage’ home.152 This was the place he had built; it was where he took his meals, rested, wrote, read and contemplated. One of his earliest references to the ‘Hermitage’ as home occurred after he had been absent from the Upper Swan on an expedition to the Avon Valley. He remarked on the large interruption in his journal and wrote ‘You will hardly believe that I have only this night been able to seat myself at home.’153 Often it was periods away, sometimes for a few weeks or even a single day that prompted Moore to call the ‘Hermitage’ home.154 While Ireland was still his ancestral home, his property at the Upper Swan was a comfortable domestic space he welcomed after travelling and sleeping in a tent, and in this way the ‘Hermitage’ was home. As Moore explained: ‘I have been so much occupied of late, and so little at this place which I call my home, that I have got out of the habit of writing a daily journal as heretofore.’155

148 Cameron, ‘George Fletcher Moore’, p. 21; Tom Stannage, ‘Introduction’, Moore, Diary of Ten Years; Moore, The Millendon Memoirs. 149 See for example, Moore, Letters and Journal 1830-1848, 28/12/130; 13/3/1831; a Thursday in April 1832, BL, ACC 263A (microfilm). 150 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 4, 19/11/1830. 151 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 18, 30/3/1831. 152 ‘Hermitage’ was the name Moore initially gave his property before he renamed it ‘Millendon’. See Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 346, 4/9/1834. 153 Moore, Letters and Journal 1830-1848, 15/10/1831, BL, ACC 263A (microfilm). 154 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 479, 1/2/1840. 155 Moore, The Millendon Memoirs, p. 461, 28/3/1839. 115 Discussions concerning the colonial environment and how people came to understand their new place and form attachments have overlooked affective factors such as family and friends. George Fletcher Moore sought knowledge about the land and this knowledge assisted him to gain an understanding of the country that in turn did contribute to his attachment to the Upper Swan. Without his friends and family, though, this attachment would never be complete. Moore identified his unhappiness as being caused by this separation from his loved ones: ‘At times I feel very happy here; and if it were not for the want of my own family and old companions, I should be always so, as my occupations are of a healthy, happy, and innocent nature.’156 Hester and William Tanner appreciated aspects of the Colony’s environment but due to homesickness, ill health and financial difficulties they returned to England in January 1844. Had they stayed and lived long lives in the Colony perhaps they would have developed a sense of belonging. Or perhaps their attachments to family and friends in England would always have drawn their affections and sense of belonging there. Hester and William Tanner did not feel a sense of belonging at the Upper Swan but, contrary to many settler narratives, it was not the land that alienated them.

Conclusion It is clear then that the beliefs and values of George Fletcher Moore, Hester and William Tanner and Eliza Shaw influenced their responses to the environment at the Upper Swan. Using ideas and language of the picturesque they expressed their delight with aspects of the landscapes there. Their utilitarian responses, evident in their efforts to ‘improve’ the land, were elicited by their understandings of civilisation and progress. While they appreciated the scenery, particularly the spring display of wildflowers, they were also intent on transforming the land to make it productive in familiar ways. These quite opposite responses though, were not bound together, and indicate the complexity of understanding their relationships with the land. At the Upper Swan social class was largely maintained by forming social relationships with other people from the same class. Moore, William and Hester Tanner and Eliza Shaw reassured their family and friends in Ireland and England that they had worthy acquaintances and neighbours. They also made efforts to attend significant social events where they could reproduce and reinforce, both for themselves and those

156 Moore, Letters and Journal 1830-1848, 21/5/1832, BL, ACC 263A (microfilm). 116 around them, their position in society and this helped them feel more comfortable in the Colony. Though in Ireland and England members of the middle and upper-middle class were largely removed from the land and more likely to hold romantic ideas to wilderness or uncultivated landscapes, this was not the case for these colonists to the Upper Swan. In the new society they were the elites. At times they held romantic attitudes to the uncultivated landscapes, yet they were not removed from the land as their economic survival depended on their physical proximity to it. This problematises the idea discussed earlier, that romantic attitudes to the environment are usually associated with people removed from close, physical engagement with the land. At the Upper Swan, those of the English and Irish middle and upper-middle class held romantic attitudes to the land and they were also intimately connected with the daily activities of cultivating it. George Fletcher Moore connected to place through his house and garden. With minimal help to attend to the many and time-consuming domestic tasks, he adapted to these circumstances by doing some of these himself. Moore engaged in domestic work partly through necessity, but also to make his house comfortable and cosy; to make it feel like home. Moore’s garden was also a significant factor in helping him feel attached to place in the Upper Swan. At first he planted vegetables, but once his garden was productive and established, he grew flowers and took pleasure from these. In the Upper Swan class and gender roles of these colonists were modified in ways that encouraged place attachment by bringing them into more intimate contact with the land. These colonists’ beliefs about the stadial development of societies, the ‘noble savage’ and racial hierarchies all contributed to the unease they felt about the close relationships the Aboriginal people had with the country. The Tanners and the Shaws wrote little about the Aboriginal people, but the knowledge they gained about their lifestyle confirmed their beliefs that the Aboriginal people were ‘savages’ who successfully, but as ‘primitives’, lived off the land. The presence of the Aboriginal people did not contribute to, or diminish, their sense of belonging. Moore learned about the land from the Aboriginal people but this knowledge did not enhance his sense of attachment or belonging. Furthermore, although Moore was aware that the Europeans took the Aboriginal people’s land from them and he believed they should be compensated and treated fairly, this knowledge made little difference to how he felt about place at the Upper Swan.

117 Moore connected strongly to the place he frequently called home on the Upper Swan, but for him, as for William and Hester Tanner, the primary attachment remained to their place of origin. They all returned to England and even after Moore’s wife died, with no family or strong sense of belonging in the Colony, the connections that he had made were not strong enough to draw him back again. Of the colonists at the Upper Swan discussed here, it was Eliza Shaw who developed the strongest attachments. However, this did not come from a love of the land. It arose from her strong sense that her home was with her children and it gained strength from her longevity in the Colony.

118 Chapter Four Augusta and The Vasse

Introduction In March 1830 the ship, the Warrior, arrived at the Swan River Colony with emigrants from England eager to secure land. Among those aboard were Captain John Molloy and his wife, Georgiana, and John Garrett Bussell with three of his brothers. Like the emigrants who settled at the Upper Swan, they came expecting to be granted fertile land. However, they soon discovered that land suitable for European farming methods was in short supply and Governor Stirling recommended they travel further south. With Governor Stirling, several officers and two other principal settlers, the Molloys and the Bussells boarded another ship, the Emily Taylor, and arrived in Flinders Bay on 2 May 1830. They spent a few days exploring the country near the mouth of the , surveyed a site for the town of Augusta and decided to take up land there.1 This chapter is primarily concerned with the Bussell family. Reading their papers reveals them to be complex, interesting people who expressed diverse responses to the environment and who developed varying degrees of attachment to the Colony. They viewed the land from picturesque, utilitarian, Biblical and scientific perspectives, though their visions varied among different family members. Like those at the Upper Swan, class was important to them but they were more isolated than the community there, so maintaining class membership by associating with other colonists was difficult. Instead, where possible, they upheld their status by practicing class-appropriate behaviours in their houses. While the Bussell family thus sought to maintain the boundary between their class and the lower classes, their gender roles were malleable. Men were involved with household tasks as well as building and farming, and women were not confined to the house and garden. The first gardens the Bussells planted were for vegetables and fruit, but once the household had surplus food, both the women and the men grew flowers. As the Bussells explored and farmed the country they came into contact with Aboriginal people and though they sometimes relied on them to find their way and to locate food and water, the Bussells gave little thought to how their farming and home-making impacted on the Aboriginal people. Moreover, their awareness that the Aboriginal people inhabited the land before they arrived, and their interactions with them, did not contribute to, or undermine, their sense of attachment to the land.

1 Lines, An All Consuming Passion, p. 108. 119 At ‘Cattle Chosen’, the Bussell homestead on the Vasse, the household was extensive, almost akin to a village, but members of the family were individuals; some of them developed a sense of belonging to place in the Colony but others never felt that it was ‘home’. Before I explore ideas of belonging in relation to the Bussells, the ways in which they viewed the landscape, the ways they behaved to affirm their class and status, how their gender roles were modified, and their interactions with the Aboriginal people, I briefly discuss the environment at Augusta and the Vasse and other significant and relevant studies concerning the colonists to this area. I also provide further background to the Bussell family.

Colonists to Augusta and the Vasse The environment near the mouth of the Blackwood River, the Hardy Inlet, is an estuarine landscape with a variety of vegetation. Along the river banks there are salt-tolerant rushes, sedges and tall kangaroo paw. In the swampy land adjacent to the banks are samphire shrubs and paperbark trees. Growing in the higher ground further from the river are flooded gums, jarrah and marri with localised areas of karri trees (see Figure 4.1).2 Rainfall around Augusta is significantly higher than the Swan River with almost 1000mm falling annually at Cape Leeuwin.3 This corner of Western Australia between and Augusta has been identified as one of Australia’s biodiversity hotspots,4 and though some of the colonists to this area in the early nineteenth century admired the variety of the flora, more often they commented on the tall, dense forests and the trees ‘of stupendous magnitude and great hardness’.5

2 Ann Brearley, Ernest Hodgkin’s Swanland: estuaries and coastal lagoons of Southwestern Australia, University of Western Australia Press, Crawley, WA, 2005, p. 325-26. 3 http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw-009518.shtml (accessed 22/6/07) 4 http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/hotspots/facts.html (accessed 22/6/07) 5 John Bussell to his mother, Augusta, August 1830, BL, 337A/461. 120

Figure 4.1 Karri Forest6 The Vasse is the region surrounding the river of the same name. It was, and still is, quite different from the forests near Augusta. It is part of the Vasse-Wonnerup wetlands, a low-lying estuarine area that the rivers in the region flow through before reaching the ocean at Geographe Bay. The vegetation there is quite varied. Closest to the estuaries is a belt of samphires, Sarcocornia blackiana and Halosarcia pergranulata, and behind these there are rushes and sedges. Furthest from the estuarine land are open woodlands of various melaluecas, flooded gums (Eucalyptus rudis) and tuart trees (Eucalyptus gomphacephalus).7 These were the open woodlands the Bussells welcomed as suitable for raising cattle. Rainfall at Busselton, near the Vasse is 813mm per year,8 less than at Augusta and similar to the Upper Swan. Of the colonists who came to Augusta on the Emily Taylor, the name of Georgiana Molloy is the most well known. Georgiana Molloy (nee Kennedy) was the wife of Captain John Molloy.9 John Molloy had been a professional soldier since 1807

6 Karri forest, 1900-1909?, BL, image number 022059PD 7http://www.dec.wa.gov.au/management-and-protection/wetlands/wa-s-ramsar-sites.html (accessed 9/09/08) 8 http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_009515.shtml (accessed 20/07/08) 9 Biographical information on John Molloy is from Alexandra Hasluck, Portrait with Background: A life of Georgiana Molloy, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1955, pp. 7-13 and 25-27 and Lines, An All Consuming Passion, pp. 38-44 and 61. 121 and had fought in the Peninsular Wars and at the Battle of Waterloo, where he was badly wounded. Following Waterloo he remained in the army and was promoted to Captain in 1824. By 1829 he was forty-eight years old, single and ready to leave the army. He had heard that there were excellent opportunities in the new colony of Western Australia and decided to emigrate. Molloy was acquainted with Georgiana Kennedy and wrote to her proposing marriage. She accepted, they were married in August 1829 and sailed for Western Australia in October. Georgiana Molloy’s story is very engaging and has attracted considerable interest from historians, botanists and writers of historical fiction.10 Alexandra Hasluck and William J Lines have both written biographies of her and numerous articles have focused on her interest in the flora of southwestern Australia.11 Hasluck’s portrayal of Molloy is of a pioneer heroine battling the environment, whose special interest in collecting wildflowers gave her pleasure and an appreciation of the bush that helped compensate for the hardships of her life as a female colonist: The first years at Augusta demanded that she [Georgiana Molloy] lead a life of constant energy, and kept her at war with her surroundings. It was not until later, when they were more settled, that Georgiana grew to know the bush and to learn that she could turn to it as a consolation when life was hard. 12 In December 1836, after five years in the colony, Georgiana Molloy received a letter from Captain James Mangles, a keen amateur botanist, requesting that she collect native seeds on his behalf. Hasluck believed this was the turning point for Georgiana and noted that from this point on, the religious aspects so pronounced in her letters disappeared and she became more sensitive to her surroundings.13 Themes present in William J Lines’ account of Georgiana Molloy’s life in Western Australia are consistent with those in his other work.14 The invasion by the colonists, whose motives were primarily progress and profit; the destruction of the

10 Jessica White, A Curious Intimacy, Viking, Camberwell, Victoria, 2007 is a historical novel inspired by Georgiana Molloy’s life in the south-west and Janet West, Daughters of Freedom, Albatross Books, 1997 is a play about women in the Australian church, including Georgiana Molloy. 11 Hasluck, Portrait with Background; Lines, An All Consuming Passion; Marnie Bassett, ‘Augusta and Mrs Molloy’ in D. J. and S.G.M. Carr (eds), People and Plants in Australia, Academic Press, Sydney, 1981, pp. 357-373; Skene, ‘The Power of Naming: Women Botanical Collectors and the Contested Space of 19th Century Botany’; Hosking, ‘“I ‘ad to ‘ave me garden”’. 12 Hasluck, Portrait with Background, p. 127. 13 Hasluck, Portrait with Background, p. 148. 14 Lines, An All Consuming Passion and see for example, Lines, Taming the Great South Land. 122 environment to achieve these goals; and their impact on the Aboriginal people are all explicit in An All Consuming Passion.15 However, for Lines, Molloy was the exception and her botanising and gardening provided her with a means of relating to her new environment. Lines wrote of Molloy’s domestic life, her relations with her husband and other colonists, her garden and her growing attachment to the Australian bush, against a background of imperialism and the wresting of the land from its traditional owners. Georgiana Molloy shared with other colonists the hope of a better life, but Lines argued that it was her understanding of God, whom she believed did not intend humans to dominate over nature, that set her apart.16 In contrast with Lines, who viewed Molloy’s relationship with her surrounding environment as atypical, Maggie MacKellar drew on Georgiana Molloy to support her argument that settler women in Australia and Canada developed a physical intimacy with the land by venturing beyond the confines of the house.17 Like Hasluck, though, MacKellar argued that Georgiana Molloy’s early days were consistent with the stereotype of pioneering women displaced in an alien environment, but that this changed when Mangles requested her to collect the seeds of native flowers, enabling her to achieve a sense of place in her new land.18 While her flower collecting provided a focus for Georgiana and gave her a reason for exploring the bush, the evidence supports another interpretation: that Georgiana’s appreciation of the bush and other aspects of her environment were a gradual process that began as soon as she arrived in the colony. In an early diary entry Georgiana wrote: ‘Molloy and I set off for Perth town and were highly delighted with the country most beautifully wooded with magnificent aromatic trees and shrubs.’19 After two months of living in tents in Fremantle they sailed to Augusta. Within days of arriving there Georgiana Molloy gave birth to a daughter who lived for only nine days. Hasluck and Lines both conveyed how Georgiana must have felt after this tragic event. It would have been difficult to see the land around her as anything but foreboding and alien when dealing with her grief. Almost three years after the event she expressed these feelings in a letter to her friend, Helen Story:

15 Lines, An All Consuming Passion. 16 Lines, An All Consuming Passion, p. 330-331. 17 MacKellar, Core of My Heart, My Country, Chapter One ‘The Broken Bones of Home’. 18 MacKellar, Core of My Heart, My Country, p. 50-51. 19 Georgiana Molloy, Diary, 12/3/1830? BL, ACC 2877A. 123 …for language refuses to utter what I experienced when mine died in my arms in this dreary land, with no one but Molloy near me…The one I called after dear Mary was like ‘a little angel’. Its grave, though sodded with British clover, looks so singular and solitary in this wilderness, of which I can scarcely give you an idea.20 However, in the years between the death of her daughter and writing to her friend about her grief, Georgiana was gradually coming to know the bush. She found the general vista of the bush daunting, but long before her association with Mangles she was beginning to appreciate the native flowers and also the birds. At the end of 1832 she wrote to her sister: This is certainly a very beautiful place; but were it not for domestic charms, the eye of the immigrant would soon weary of the unbounded limits of thickly clothed, dark green forests. Our clime is heavenly…and I am sitting on the verandah surrounded by my little flower garden of British, Cape and Australian flowers pouring forth their odour (for the large white lily is now in bloom), and a variety of beautiful little birds most brilliant in plumage sporting around me. These little creatures seem quite delighted at the requisition they have made in our emigration and are much tamer than are the robin and sparrow in England…also a little bird of a complete blue colour all over resembling smalt or cobalt with short green wings and the honeyeater also minutely beautiful…The native flowers are all exceedingly small but beautiful in colour although that flies when dried.21 Although in terms of scenery Georgiana appeared to prefer a ‘domestic’ outlook she had clearly begun the process of becoming familiar with the flowers and the birds. Part way through this letter she drew a sketch of the head of the honeyeater to give her sister a better idea of the long curved beak that it used to retrieve nectar from the flowers. Georgiana’s interest in the native birds has been largely overlooked by historians but it is significant that she was interested in many aspects of her new environment, not only the flora.22

20 Letter to Helen Story, as quoted in Hasluck, Portrait with Background, p. 73. 21 Georgiana Molloy, letter to her sister Eliza Besley, 7/11/1832, BL, ACC 501A. Her statement that the colour ‘flies when dried’ refers to the tendency of dried and pressed flowers to fade. 22 Lines has commented briefly on Molloy’s interest in the native birds. See Lines, An All Consuming Passion, p. 138. 124 With the exception of Maggie MacKellar, who explored how a number of women, including Georgiana Molloy, gained a sense of place from their experiences in the land beyond their dwellings,23 historians have singled out Georgiana Molloy as unique; her appreciation of the environment and her positive engagement with the bush have been seen as atypical. Georgiana was certainly a woman to be admired for her pragmatism and adaptability at Augusta and The Vasse, and her forays into the bush contributed to the botanical knowledge of the wildflowers of southwestern Australia and helped her adjust to her new environment. However, this veneration of Georgiana Molloy has clouded the way in which other colonists have been viewed with regard to their connections and relationships with their new environment. To varying degrees, members of the Bussell family also developed connections with the unfamiliar landscapes in which they lived and worked, but to date, historians have not acknowledged this. In 1820 William Marchant Bussell, a clergyman at St Mary’s Church, Portsea, died suddenly leaving his wife, Frances Louisa (and hereafter Mrs Bussell), and nine children with only limited funds for their future education and employment.24 There was some provision from an insurance policy and, with extra help from family friends and parishioners, there were sufficient funds for the education of the eldest sons. John won a scholarship to Trinity College, Oxford, William was a medical student, Lenox joined the navy and Charles, Vernon and Alfred were at school. The girls, Mary, Frances (Fanny) and Elizabeth (Bessie) were educated at home and were expected to marry. Although the futures of John, William and Lenox appeared secure, Mrs Bussell was concerned for the prospects of her three youngest sons and in 1829 she decided they would leave Portsea and emigrate to the Swan River Colony. Portsea is an island off the south coast of England and it is part of the city of Portsmouth, most of which is located on this island. In 1801 Portsmouth was a significant urban town with a population of approximately 33,000.25 It was a bustling

23 MacKellar, Core of my heart, my country, see esp. Chapter One, ‘The Broken Bones of Home’. 24 Biographical information on the Bussell family is from Shann, Cattle Chosen; Rodger Jennings, Busselton “…outstation on the Vasse” 1830-1850, Shire of Busselton, Western Australia, 1983. Accounts of the Bussell family can also be found in the two principal studies of Georgiana Molloy; Hasluck, Portrait with Background, and Lines, An All Consuming Passion. 25 E.A. Wrigley, ‘Urban growth and agricultural change: England and the continent in the early modern period’ in Robert I Rotberg and Theordore K Rabb (eds), Population and History: From the Traditional to the Modern World, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986, p. 126. 125 port and naval centre and home to the Royal Naval Academy that had been established in 1729. In the midst of this commercial and naval activity Mrs Bussell resolved that her family should leave their urban lifestyle and sail to the colony of Western Australia where they planned to take up land and farm. This was a difficult decision for Mrs Bussell and in a letter to her niece, Capel Carter, she wrote of her anguish yet declared, ‘it is the only thing that can be done for this family’.26 John (aged 26), Charles (19), Vernon (16) and Alfred (14) went first with the expectation that they would build a home and clear some land before the rest of the family arrived.27 Almost three years later Lenox, Fanny and Bessie Bussell arrived at the Swan River Colony and then sailed on to Augusta in April 1833. The last two members of the Bussell family to leave Portsea for the Swan River Colony were Mary, the eldest daughter, and Mrs Bussell, who joined the others in August 1834.

26 Mrs Bussell, letter to Capel Carter, 29/7/1829, BL, 337A/290. 27 The second eldest son, William, had already entered the Royal College of Surgeons and did not emigrate. 126

Figure 4.2 Augusta and The Vasse showing the Bussell settlements28

Discussions about the Bussells’ history are complicated by their different dwelling places and households. A brief account of these events will place the discussions that follow in their geographical and temporal context. John, Charles, Vernon and Alfred built a house at Augusta as soon as they arrived there in May 1830, but at the end of 1831 John, Vernon and Alfred moved up the Blackwood River to a small peninsular where they established a settlement they called ‘The Adelphi’ (see Figure 4.2). John explained that they moved from Augusta because they wanted to avoid society and live on a smaller scale, they believed the hunting would be better further up river and they expected the farming to be more productive there.29

28 Augusta and The Vasse, showing the Bussell settlements from Lines, An All Consuming Passion, p. xi. 29 John Bussell to Capel Carter from The Adelphi, 11/12/1831, BL, 337A/464. John did not explain why he wanted to avoid the society at Augusta but Lines, An All Consuming Passion, p. 127 has suggested that ‘he preferred his own company and that of his brothers to membership in the struggling community at Augusta’, but Charles Bussell commented on the friendliness of the community at Augusta (see p. 150). 127 Meanwhile, Charles was appointed as the government storekeeper at Augusta in September 1831,30 though he made frequent visits to ‘The Adelphi’ and later to ‘Cattle Chosen’. During their time at ‘The Adelphi’, John explored land north of the Blackwood River and travelled through the Vasse region that was more open than the thickly forested areas near ‘The Adelphi’ and Augusta. For this reason he believed land at the Vasse was more suitable for cattle and crops and he applied for land there. In July 1832 he was granted 3,573 acres near the Vasse River.31 When Bessie, Fanny and Lenox arrived at Augusta in April 1833, Bessie and Lenox went straight to ‘The Adelphi’ while Fanny and her servant, Phoebe, remained at Augusta with Charles. In November 1833 a fire destroyed ‘The Adelphi’ and John, Vernon, Alfred, Bessie and Lenox returned to Augusta. In April 1834, after only a few months back at Augusta after the fire, John, Alfred and Vernon Bussell moved again, this time to their grant at the Vasse where they built ‘Cattle Chosen’. Mary and Mrs Bussell arrived at Augusta from England in August 1834 and joined the family at ‘Cattle Chosen’ the following February. By 1836 the Bussell family were living together at ‘Cattle Chosen’ and formed a small community there. The next ten years, though, saw many changes. Mary Bussell was the first of the siblings to set up an independent household. She married Patrick Taylor in 1837 and they moved to Candyup, a property near Albany. 1837 was also the year that John returned to England, ostensibly to marry Sophie Hayward and return with her to ‘Cattle Chosen’, but this relationship ended soon after he arrived back in England. Before sailing once again to the Swan River Colony John spent some time with his aunt and uncle in Plymouth where he met Charlotte Cookworthy (nee Spicer) whom he married in 1838. Together John and Charlotte journeyed to the Vasse with Charlotte’s children from her previous marriage. Here, at ‘Cattle Chosen’, Charlotte bore several more children and they lived there until John’s death in 1875. Early in 1845 ‘Cattle Chosen’ was divided among the Bussell brothers, with the exception of Lenox, who was not allocated any land.32 John, Charlotte and Fanny remained at ‘Cattle

30 Lines, An All Consuming Passion, p. 132. 31 Shann, Cattle Chosen, p. 55. 32 Lenox was quite unwell when ‘Cattle Chosen’ was divided and he died in June 1845. There is considerable mystery surrounding the last years of Lenox’s life. Shann, Cattle Chosen, p. 136 wrote that by 1841 Lenox was insane. Jennings, Busselton, p. 209 suggested his death was due to general physical weakness brought about by the mental stress due to ‘the responsibility and anguish associated with the native troubles of 1837’ and that ‘his system was too delicately balanced for the abrasive harshness of that primitive environment and the pressures it inflicted.’ 128 Chosen’. Charles moved to a property called ‘Sandilands’, north of The Vasse, near Busselton, where he died a bachelor in 1856. Vernon and his wife Mary Phillips, from Adelaide, farmed at Reinscourt, near Wonnerup, until Vernon’s death in 1860. After his death Mary returned to Adelaide with their children. Alfred farmed land near Broadwater and married Ellen Heppingstone in 1850. In 1857 they moved south to a property Alfred named ‘Ellensbrook’, where they lived until 1865 when they moved south once again and settled on the banks of the Margaret River, where they built ‘Wallcliffe House’. The last of the siblings to marry was Fanny. She married Henry Charles Sutherland in 1851 but was widowed after only five years. On Henry’s death Fanny spent several years at Albany helping her sister Mary, before returning to ‘Cattle Chosen’ where she died in 1888.

In a letter to Capel Carter, his sister Fanny expressed her concern about his emotional state. (Fanny Bussell letter to Capel Carter, 4/6/1835, BL, 337A/347)

129

Figure 4.3 John Garrett Bussell, 1840s?33 As the eldest son, John Garrett Bussell was the leader of the Bussell family and responsible for the success of their venture. He was a proud, well-educated man with a strong sense of duty. Secondary education in nineteenth century England placed great emphasis on translating and memorising great authors and John’s mind was filled with reams of Greek and Latin works.34 After secondary school he attended Oxford University where he received a degree in classics comprising studies of Greek, Latin, rhetoric, moral philosophy and logic.35 After completing his degree he had expected to

33 John Garrett Bussell, 1840s? BL, online image number 003049D. 34 Richard D. Altick, Victorian People and Ideas, WW Norton and Company, NY & London, 1973, p. 252. 35 M.L. Clarke, Classical Education in Britain 1500-1900, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1959, p. 98. 130 become a minister in the Anglican Church, but he left for the Swan River before his ordination. As well-educated sons and daughters of a clergyman, Anglicanism influenced how John Bussell and his siblings viewed the world. Thus, God presided over the natural order and the supreme authority was the Bible.36 Historians have described the period 1830-1880 as one of great change in terms of religion and the Church in Great Britain, a time when the dissenters and reformers forced changes in the structure of the Church.37 As Gates observed, it was also a time when ‘Changes in perceptions of the natural order shook Victorian culture to its core.’38 Many intellectuals were beginning to question the relationship between nature and God and between man and nature.39 So great were the intellectual changes during this period that Altick boldly claimed that it has not: ‘been thought necessary to call attention to the numerous paradoxes and inconsistencies with which so rich, restless, and complex a culture as the Victorians necessarily abounded.’40 Some of these paradoxes and inconsistencies are evident in the extant writings of the Bussell family. The idea of progress has been the dominant theme of previous studies of the Bussell family. E.O.G Shann’s account of their pioneering years in Western Australia emphasised the familiar colonial economic narrative.41 Shann explained that the colonial economy was one in which the pioneers first: …hunt and fish…Thence to a pastoral life…The herds grow, new pastures are found, and new patriarchs arise. The first group dissolves and the community multiplies in the land. At favoured spots agriculture increases the supplies of fodder, and supplements animal food with grains and fruits, while the production of a surplus enables the community to supplement its subsistence farming by purchasing the products of other lands enjoying other advantages.42

36 For a more complete discussion of these beliefs see for example James R. Moore ‘Freethought, Secularism, Agnosticism: The Case of Charles Darwin’ in Gerald Parsons (ed) Religion in Victorian Britain Volume 1 Traditions, Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 1988, pp. 274-319. 37 Gerald Parsons, ‘Introduction: Victorian Religion, Paradox and Variety’, in Parsons (ed) Religion in Victorian Britain Vol 1 Traditions, pp. 1-13 38 Gates, ‘Ordering Nature: Revisioning Victorian Science Culture’, p. 179. 39 Moore, ‘Freethought, Secularism, Agnosticism: The case of Charles Darwin’, p. 276. 40 Altick, Victorian People and Ideas, p. x. 41 Shann, Cattle Chosen. 42 Shann, Cattle Chosen, p. 69. 131 Shann’s approach assumed that the Bussells’ progress followed a series of stages, similar to the stadial view of development; they began as hunters, progressed to become shepherds, developed an economy based on agriculture and ended with a commercial economy.43 As indicated earlier, Lines emphasised the colonists’ goals of progress and improvement but he also framed the Bussells’ enterprises in terms of a war against the environment.44 However, this is not the whole story. Their relationships with the environments at Augusta and the Vasse were complex and sometimes contradictory. Furthermore, as Marian Aveling has noted, Shann did not write about the individual characters in the Bussell family; his study was primarily concerned with their process of settlement as a group and, for the most part, he did not explore the motives and emotions of the individuals, as I will do here.45

Viewing the Landscape As John Bussell and his family sat in the evenings in their dwellings at Augusta and The Vasse to write to their family and friends, how did they describe the land? It is easy to imagine that they found the dense hardwood forests near Augusta threatening, alienating and an obstacle to their goals of growing crops and raising stock. Nothing in their education or experience had prepared them for a rural life in such unfamiliar landscapes. Yet, at times, they found these landscapes beautiful and picturesque. This was not their only response to the land, though, and at other times they adopted utilitarian or scientific perspectives. Here, as in the previous chapter, I argue that the colonists used the language of the picturesque to appreciate the aesthetics of the environment, but that this was distinct from their utilitarian approach to the land. Although they did evaluate the land for its productive capacity, this was not inevitably tied to their admiration of the environment. There are, therefore, complexities and contradictions in the ways the Bussells viewed the environments they encountered. They were familiar with ideas of what constituted beautiful, romantic and picturesque scenery, but before they arrived in the Swan River Colony they were further removed from nature and the land. They had never built their own houses, grown their own food or tended to their stock, but in the

43 See for example, Maloney, ‘Savagery and Civilization: Early Victorian Notions’, pp. 153-58. 44 For example see Lines, An All Consuming Passion, pp. 132 and 246. 45 Marian Aveling, ‘Introduction’ in Shann, Cattle Chosen. 132 Colony, and in the midst of these very real landscapes, they retained their romantic attitudes but at times also viewed the land from a utilitarian perspective. Lines argued that the colonists at Augusta were unsure about how to view their environment, quoting from a letter John Bussell wrote to his friend C. Wells to illustrate his point: ‘The place is beautifully picturesque, but so wild so savage…’46 Lines then explained this apparent contradiction by asserting that John’s view of the land as picturesque and wild (wilderness) positioned nature as an object and thereby detached him and the other settlers from their surroundings.47 I argue, however, that John did find this landscape attractive, even though it may not have conformed perfectly to his ideas of picturesque beauty, and that Lines’ reasoning does not fully account for the complex views of the landscape that the Bussells commonly expressed. Lenox impressed upon his cousin in England the productive capabilities of the land at the Vasse compared with that at Augusta, but he also expressed a liking (though this was qualified) for Augusta. In a letter to Capel Carter he explained: The land [at the Vasse] is far preferable to Augusta for you can clear an acre in a day which would take you a month at Augusta. I should like Augusta if I could afford to employ labours [sic] in a very great number.48 Lenox continued to find favour with land at ‘Cattle Chosen’, their home on the Vasse River, and here again his preference for land was based primarily, but not exclusively, on its use-value: Vernon is putting in potatoes to very large extent he is our gardener and a most excellent one he is everything is in order and no weeds there is a most beautiful walk from one end to the other…what beautiful country this is for cattle. 49 Of all the members of the Bussell family, Charles Bussell best represents the stereotypical colonist for whom ‘improvement’ and ‘progress’ went hand in hand. While Charles occasionally admired the country on aesthetic grounds,50 most of his responses to the land were in terms of improvement and progress. He expressed amazement at the size of the trees but clearly believed that ‘man’ should tame this wild land:

46 Lines, An All Consuming Passion, p. 121; John Bussell to C. Wells, 11/7/1831, BL 3896A/3. 47 Lines, An All Consuming Passion, p. 121. 48 Lenox Bussell letter to Capel Carter, 1834?, BL, 337A/541. 49 Lenox Bussell, letter to Capel Carter, 183?, BL, 3897A/9. 50 Charles found the scenery near The Adelphi repetitive, yet conceded, ‘it is beautiful’. Charles Bussell to Fanny Bowker, The Adelphi, Nov 1832, BL, 3890A/6. 133 But nature has been permitted to waste, and man is sadly wanted to correct her too great luxuriance. The improvement, which in a wild country like ours the work of his hands in daily making, are in themselves almost a recompense for his labour…51 For Charles, the vast expanse of forest needed ‘improving’ and this meant cultivating and domesticating the land so that ‘progress’ could be made and the wilderness civilised. When Charles considered their ‘improvements’ after only one year he asked rhetorically, ‘what indifferent spectator could view these alterations and not be pleased?’52 Later, he even declared, ‘(for you cannot live on a spot without improving it)’.53 While Charles’ approach to the land was consistent with Lines’ view that the Bussells ‘preserved a strictly utilitarian attitude towards the soil’,54 evidence from the journals of both Fanny and Vernon is not. Although the first gardens the Bussells planted were initially to provide them with fresh produce, once their food sources were assured some members of the family created flower gardens.55 Katie Holmes, Susan Hosking and Helen Rayment have associated flower gardens in Australia with women as an extension of their nurturing behaviour, while proposing that men were primarily engaged in productive gardening.56 Vernon Bussell and his wife Mary, however, worked alongside one another and cultivated a flower garden together. Peter Read has written that people feel a psychological or emotional need to turn spaces into places by identifying some sites as different from other sites, and that the ways they do this are bound by their culture.57 Gardens are sometimes used in this way and Holmes, Martin and Mirmohamadi have demonstrated how Australian colonial gardens were used to nurture memories of other places and assisted with the process of attaching meaning to new places.58 Vernon and Mary’s flower garden can be understood as a way of making

51 Charles Bussell to Fanny Bowker, The Adelphi, Nov 1832, BL, 3890A/6. 52 Charles Bussell to Fanny Bowker, The Adelphi, Nov 1832, BL, 3890A/6. 53 Charles Bussell to Mary Bussell, Dec 1833, BL, 337A/159. 54 Lines, An All Consuming Passion, p. 131. 55 Ann Elizabeth Turner, daughter of James Woodward Turner, who emigrated with the Bussells and were their neighbours at Augusta, also planted a flower garden (Ann Elizabeth Turner, Diary, 30/3/1839 in Tom Turner, Turners of Augusta, Paterson Brokensha, Perth, 1956, p. 133) 56 Holmes, ‘Fertile Ground, Women and Horticulture’; Hosking, ‘ “I ‘ad to ‘ave me a garden”’; Helen Rayment, ‘Backyards and Boundary; The family in the Australian garden 1840-1914’ in Anna Epstein (ed), The Australian Family: Images and Essays, Scribe Publications, Melbourne, 1998, pp 107-16. Gender and gardening are also discussed in Chapters Three and Five. 57 Read, Returning to Nothing, p. 2. 58 Holmes, Martin and Mirmohamadi, Reading the Garden, pp. 25-33. 134 this space special to them and turning it into a place with meaning. One April day in 1840 Fanny noted that Vernon was employed in ‘ornamental gardening’ using five loads of stone.59 While this example is ambiguous as it is unclear if he was preparing a flower garden, extracts from Vernon’s diary in 1857 show that he created flower gardens for pleasure. In July of 1857 he wrote that he and Mary were ‘putting the flower beds in order’. 60 Two days later he was, ‘employed in hoeing chick weed and digging up Mary’s flower beds’.61 It is interesting that although Vernon and Mary worked together to create a flower garden, on this occasion Vernon associated the flower beds with Mary. Charlotte Bussell also referred to a flower garden at ‘Cattle Chosen’. In a letter to her friend, Fanny Bowker, she described their preparations for a visit from the Bishop that included adorning the house ‘with beautiful Geraniums from our garden’.62 While a productive vegetable garden was a priority for the Bussells it is clear that this was not their only form of gardening. As discussed in Chapter Two, some historians have cast the use of picturesque language in a colonial setting as a strategy for distancing the observer from the scene being viewed, thus facilitating appropriation of the land. Lines remarked that John Bussell used language of the picturesque to describe the environment and that he understood the picturesque to be that which pleased the eye, resembled a picture and separated the viewer from the scene: ‘A picture, in turn, was an object, an object that people stood before and looked at. The observer of picturesque scenery stepped back, detached and disinterested…’63 Lines has ascribed to John Bussell a very literal usage of the picturesque, overlooking the idea that picturesque modes of viewing and describing landscapes were part of his cultural tradition; a way of expressing delight with the scenery. Early in 1831 John Bussell wrote a letter from the house they built at Augusta where he described this house with a loft, windows and a rough granite wall. He then painted a verbal picture of his surroundings:

59 Fanny Bussell, Journal, 1/4/1840, BL, 337A/391. Fanny does not explain what she meant by ‘ornamental’ gardening but it is reasonable to propose that it was different from a vegetable garden and was a form of exclusively decorative gardening. 60 Joseph Vernon Bussell, Diary, 18/7/1857, BL, 337A/533 61 Joseph Vernon Bussell, Diary, 20/7/1857, BL, 337A/533 62 Charlotte Bussell, letter to Fanny Bowker (now Mrs Thomas Bussell), 5/12/1848, in Deirdre Coleman (ed), Women Writing Home, 1700-1920: Female correspondence across the British Empire, Volume 2, Australia, 2006, p. 232. 63 Lines, An All Consuming Passion, p. 121. 135 Amidst these trees which front my house are two which surpass in age and dimension their Sylvan Fraternity…These as well as all the vegetable kingdom of this strange country are evergreen, and trees of this species [of] Eucalyptus constitute the vast forest in the skirts of which my cottage rears its humble front. The place is beautifully picterreresque [sic] and fertile…64 There is no evidence here that John Bussell’s use of the picturesque created feelings of detachment. Rather, he used picturesque and romantic language to describe a place where he lived, not a place he observed from a distance and his remark on the economic potential of the land was in addition to, rather than tied up with his observation that this landscape was picturesque. With the exception of Mary Bussell, who did not write of the landscape, other members of the Bussell family also adopted a romantic perspective when they viewed and described the landscapes in the Colony. As we shall see, they found romance in the ‘wild’, ‘untamed’ country and also in cultivated, domestic environments that had a use value. In this way their romantic approaches to the land could be, but were not always, associated with the land’s potential to be productive. John Bussell’s picturesque and romantic approach to the landscapes he encountered was also framed by his classical education, with many of his descriptions incorporating references to Greek literature. In a report on the land around the Vasse River John declared, ‘Here was a spot that the creative fancy of a Greek would have peopled with Dryad and Naiad and all the beautiful phantoms and wild imagery of his sylvan mythology.’ 65 Lenox and Alfred Bussell also described the landscapes and their experiences of them from a romantic perspective, although without a strong background in the classics their impressions were not encumbered with Greek references. Lenox recounted how they fished, hunted kangaroos and enjoyed ‘camping’.66 After a hard day travelling by boat up the Vasse River Lenox wrote, ‘It was a most beautiful night, the moon shining in most romantic way…we made a large fire and went to bed with the moon and starry heavens as a canopy.’67 Alfred Bussell’s early letters are those of a youth who has embarked on a grand, romantic adventure in which he saw nature as honest, simple and

64 John Bussell to Capel Carter, April 1831, BL 337A/462. 65 John Bussell, ‘Mr Bussell’s Journal of an Expedition to the River Vasse, from the Blackwood. 10-21 November 1831’, in Shoobert (ed), Western Australian Exploration, Volume One, December 1826-December 1835, p. 269. 66 Lenox Bussell, Journal, April to July 1834, 337A/544. 67 Lenox Bussell, Journal, April to July 1834, p. 4, BL, 337A/544 and John Bussell, letter to Sophie Hayward, Nov 1832 from ‘The Adelphi’, BL, 337A/469. 136 Arcadian. He tried to persuade his Uncle to join them, and while he admitted there may be inconveniences, such as new occupations to be learnt, he believed his Uncle would enjoy life in the colony because, ‘our river is full of fish you are fond of gardening here is abundance of lands.’68 Pioneer narratives have drawn attention to the hardships experienced by Australian colonists, particularly the women. No doubt many aspects of their lives were difficult and even tragic, but there were also many delights and pleasures. Like their brothers, Fanny and Bessie Bussell described the environments at Augusta and The Vasse using romantic language. Fanny associated romance with the absence of buildings and cultivated landscapes and in a letter to her mother from Augusta in April 1833, she wrote, ‘It is here that one sees the magnificence of emigration; at the Swan, European comforts and luxuries have already robbed this life of somewhat of its romance, but here it is in all its wilderness and grandeur.’69 In a diary entry, also from Augusta, Fanny described how she ‘started off for a ramble over the beautiful country which lay before us in all the splendour of one of our lovely summer evenings’.70 The following month she described a trip to Dalton Island, owned by Captain Molloy, where she marvelled at the ‘beautiful woods, river, hills, and lagoons with the sun just rising upon this wide, wild, and almost uninhabited country…’71 Fanny’s description of the country as ‘almost uninhabited’ adds to the romance of the scene, but it also suggests that she knew that Aboriginal people lived there, though their presence in the landscape was less obvious than the settlers’ presence.72 Bessie wrote cheerfully of her days at ‘The Adelphi’ and also painted a romantic picture of her simple life at this isolated region of the Colony. By September 1833 their cottage was thatched and gave ‘the appearance of a comfortable little English dwelling’ and she was pleased with ‘the delightful look of civilisation that our cottage gave the surrounding woods.’ 73 Here, as with her brothers, Bessie commented on the pleasure that a cultivated scene provided. This appreciation of a domestic outlook, consistent with Uvedale Price’s aesthetic theory, cannot be ignored but it did not preclude an appreciation of uncultivated landscapes. Bessie was not in awe of the bush and she commented on the beautiful flowers: ‘the woods have the appearance of a garden that

68 Alfred Bussell, letter to his Uncle Bowker, Dec 1832, BL, 3886A/1. 69 Fanny Bussell, letter to her mother from Augusta, 21/4/1833, BL, 337A/334. 70 Fanny Bussell, Diary, Nov 1833, BL, 337A/387. 71 Fanny Bussell, Diary, Dec 1833, BL, 337A/387. 72 The Bussells’ interactions with the Aboriginal people are discussed later in this chapter. 73 Bessie Bussell, Journal, 1833, BL, 294A/7. 137 has received a great deal of cultivation but allowed to run wild for a season the birds are beautiful I have sent some feathers of a bird shot by John’.74 Bessie almost seemed surprised that she should find this scenery beautiful. It appeared less planned or arranged than English woodlands, yet she found here a sense of liberty she would not have had in England as she declared, ‘I am sure if I were to return to England I should soon pine for the delightful freedom of this “All that my [fancy?] ever pictured”.’75 John Bussell’s wife, Charlotte, spent most of her time in the domestic environment of ‘Cattle Chosen’ but when she ventured into the bush, she too, used romantic language to portray her experiences and surroundings.76 While on an excursion to visit neighbours, as the men pitched her tent, tethered the horses and milked the cow for their tea, Charlotte described the setting: There seemed so much romance in the whole scene, that I could scarcely believe it was real; it was a lovely night, so calm and still, no moon but all around us was lighted up by these brilliant fires and looked more beautiful than I can describe, therefore, I will make no further attempt…77 Mrs Bussell also found aspects of the country that pleased her and this made her optimistic about her family’s prospects in the Colony. After being reunited with her sons and daughters she was so happy she declared it impossible to be uncomfortable.78 Mrs Bussell was clearly proud of her children’s enterprises and one evening she took a stroll after dinner ‘to view their improvements [in] the most beautiful country eyes ever beheld’.79 While she expressed her approval of the ‘improvements’ she also saw beauty in the unimproved landscapes. She wished her friends could join her and regretted that they ‘will not make themselves Lords of portion of this beautiful country; the climate is heavenly’.80 Here, Mrs Bussell intertwined aesthetic appreciation with possession. A year later she still expressed satisfaction with her life in the Colony: ‘I am happier in my life and I believe I may say so of the whole party, the climate and country are lovely and I only wonder more do not take refuge in it…sometimes we have our little drawbacks,

74 Bessie Bussell, Journal, 1833, BL, 294A/7, p. 39. 75 Bessie Bussell, Journal, 1833, BL, 294A/7. 76 Charlotte Bussell is discussed more fully later in this chapter. 77 Charlotte Bussell to her friend, Fanny Bowker, in Coleman, (ed), Women Writing Home, 1700-1920, p. 227. 78 Mrs Bussell, letter to Emily Higgins, Augusta, 19/10/1834, BL ACC 337A/313. 79 Mrs Bussell, letter to Emily Higgins, Augusta, 19/10/1834, BL ACC 337A/313. 80 Mrs Bussell, letter to Capel Carter, Sunday before Easter, 1835, BL ACC 337A/314. 138 but where are those exempt?’81 Mrs Bussell took a large risk when she decided her family would emigrate and she maintained an optimistic outlook in her letters to friends and relatives in England. She viewed and described the land as beautiful and apparently did not find it alienating or threatening, but she did see land her family had cultivated as a sign of their success in the Colony. John’s cultural heritage gave him the tools to view the landscapes at Augusta and The Vasse from a picturesque, romantic and utilitarian perspective. He wrote his letters from a personal perspective using romantic imagery and language of the picturesque, and at times he expressed his feelings about people, places and events. As mentioned earlier though, the beginning of the nineteenth century was also a time when science and scientific methods were becoming increasingly influential as a way to understand the world and many Anglican ministers were also naturalists. Empirical understandings derived from observations were distinguishable from older forms of understanding derived from classical knowledge. As an explorer, and when on expeditions, John Bussell felt a responsibility to record his observations as accurately as possible. At times he used metaphors from Greek literature in these reports, but he was aware of his audience and to the best of his ability commented on the topography, vegetation and geology using the language of science. He noted the suitability of the land for grazing and agriculture, but when he observed other features of the land he tried to see it from a scientific perspective. Geology was a developing discipline in England in the early nineteenth century82 and this was reflected in John’s observations of some sandstone he came across on the beach: They do not however on closer examination appear to leave in them any thing analogous to incrustation but to be the harder parts of the rock that have resisted the action of the atmosphere, probably Zoophytes embedded in a more friable matrix83 On another exploratory excursion John observed some fossils:

81 Mrs Bussell, letter to Capel Carter, Sunday before Easter, 1835, BL ACC 337A/314. 82 Roy Porter, ‘Introduction’, Roy Porter (ed), The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 4. Eighteenth Century Science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003, p. 5; Yeo, ‘Science and Intellectual Authority in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Britain’; Geof Bowker, ‘In Defence of Geology: The Origins of Lyell’s Uniformitarianism’ in Michel Serres (ed), A History of Scientific Thought, Blackwell Reference, Oxford, 1995, p. 495. 83 John Garret Bussell, ‘Report of an excursion to the Northward from Augusta, by Mr J. G. Bussell, 1831’ in Shoobert (ed), Western Australian Exploration, Volume One, December 1826- December 1835, p. 224. 139 In high tides this Lake, which as we advanced became brackish, seems to cover a large surface which was then exposed and exhibited a continuous flat of limestone having its interstices filled with a coarse reddish sand; organic impressions of shells were numerous, its texture was always oolitic. 84 The members of the Bussell family were undoubtedly keen to ‘improve’ and ‘civilise’ the landscapes of the South West by cultivating the land, building houses and constructing fences but this was not their only approach to the environment. Their responses were complex and varied. John, in particular, viewed the land from many perspectives and used the language of the picturesque, classical metaphors and scientific language to express his observations. With the exception of Charles, who typically viewed the land as a resource, and his sister Mary, who did not write about the landscape at all, they were all delighted with the country. They frequently expressed the beauty and attractiveness of the land using language of the picturesque and romantic imagery, in ways which were often independent from their utilitarian visions.

People and Home Social class, Domesticity and Gender The Bussell family belonged to England’s middle-class and in the Colony they clearly still saw themselves as ladies and gentlemen. In the South West of the Swan River Colony they were landowners, members of the Colony’s ‘gentle class’. However, they did not relate to the land or live in the style of English landowners in the nineteenth century. By the 1700s English landowners no longer ploughed the soil, built fences or sowed the crops.85 Instead, the gentry were more interested in pursuing: …country sports; they took an obsessive interest in dogs and horses; they were often knowledgeable about natural history; and they self-consciously designed a rural landscape which would provide for both profit and recreation.86 In terms of lifestyle, although the Bussells had servants, they struggled to maintain a household that enabled them to behave as members of the English middle-class. This difference between how they saw themselves in terms of class and the way they lived on

84 Mr Bussell’s ‘Journal of an expedition to the River Vasse, from the Blackwood. 10-21 November 1831’ in Shoobert (ed), Western Australian Exploration, Vol One, December 1826- December 1835, p. 270. 85 P. K. O’Brien and D. Heath, ‘English and French Landowners, 1688-1789’ in F.M.L. Thompson, Landowners, Capitalists and Entrepreneurs, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994, p. 36. 86 Thomas, Man and the Natural World, p. 13. 140 a daily basis influenced the way they connected with the landscapes that surrounded them. Deidre Coleman argued that class distinctions in colonial Western Australia were turned on their heads as middle-class immigrants, particularly women, engaged in tasks usually carried out by domestic servants.87 Coleman used the example of Charlotte Bussell, who cleaned walls, scrubbed floors and polished furniture in preparation for a visit from the Bishop. Charlotte explained to her friend, Fanny Bowker (now Mrs Thomas Bussell): ‘So you see, although we are obliged to employ ourselves in out of the way occupations, it does not quite vulgarise us as some would imagine or render us unfit for the society of educated people…’88 However, this did not mean that class distinctions were unimportant to them.89 As with the colonists at the Swan River there were still ways in which the Bussells maintained differences between themselves and members of the lower classes such as labourers and servants. One of the ways was to continue to participate in the leisure activities of the middle-class. When Mrs Bussell described the daily activities that kept the girls busy such as sewing and kneading bread she added, ‘but we do not neglect the elegant occupations, we have our music and our dancing’.90 Another strategy was to use affirmations to convince themselves and their friends in England of their superior status. Mrs Bussell clearly saw her family as important, influential people who belonged to the elite society of the Colony. In an early letter from Augusta she wrote proudly, ‘with all our barbarity we are very considerable people…as well known in every part of Australia as the Governor himself’.91 Similarly, Fanny remarked that she had a visit from Mrs Molloy who ‘pronounced us more civilised than any other house in Augusta’.92 The Bussell women also used humour to help them adjust to a lifestyle that was not conventionally appropriate for ‘ladies’. Fanny described the dwelling that her brothers were constructing when John journeyed from Augusta to meet her, Bessie and Lenox when they arrived at the Swan River: ‘John left the three boys and Mr Green busy in wattling and daubing our banqueting hall, which from its open appearance has received

87 Coleman, (ed), Women Writing Home, 1700-1920, p xviii. See also Russell, A Wish of Distinction, Chapter Three. 88 Charlotte Bussell to Fanny Bowker, now Mrs Thomas Bussell, 5/11/1848 in Coleman (ed), Women Writing Home, 1700-1920, p 233. 89 Coleman (ed), Women Writing Home, 1700-1920, p xix. 90 Mrs Bussell, letter to Emily Higgins from Augusta, 19/10/1834, BL, 337A/313. 91 Mrs Bussell, letter to Emily Higgins from Augusta, 19/10/1834, BL, 337A/313. 92 Fanny Bussell, Diary, Nov 1833, BL, 337A/387. 141 the appellation of the temple of the winds.’93 In reality, John and his brothers were constructing a simple wooden cottage for the family. When Bessie left England she was willing to modify her expectations of what it meant to be a young, single, middle-class woman. Had she remained in England her pleasures would have been derived from social diversions and genteel activities such as decorative embroidery, music and reading. In contrast she admitted that while it may not be pleasing news to an English friend, ‘the gradual formation of a manure heap gives really infinite pleasure’. 94 This was written with a teasing tone as she tried to trivialise these ‘unbecoming’ interests. The Bussell men were also concerned with class and status. John referred to his family and the Molloys as the ‘gentle settlers’, whereas he thought Mr Turner ‘a nice little Cockney altho’ a Tradesman of considerable financial resources’.95 Charles recorded tanning bullock hides, planting potatoes and tending the vineyards and Vernon described how they thatched their own roof and constructed a chimney from stone.96 John was extremely observant and in his farm almanac from ‘Cattle Chosen’ he recorded the weather, the soil, the birth of calves and foals and the sighting of whales in Geographe Bay in great detail.97 Such complete and perceptive observations are associated with someone who is sensitive to their surroundings rather than removed or aloof from their environment. At Augusta and The Vasse the Bussells maintained their associations with the elite class of the Colony, but their daily engagement with the land resulted in them behaving very differently from landowners in England. In a practical sense they came to know the country they cultivated in ways that English farmers, rather than landowners, did, and developed intimate relationships with the land. The satisfaction they gained from carrying out manual labour and creating a home in what, to them, was wilderness, also amplified their feelings of connections to place. The letters and journals of the Bussell family record how they perceived the land and their endeavours at clearing it, building fences, planting crops and raising cattle and pigs, but they also wrote of their home and the work they did there. As colonisers, the

93 Fanny Bussell, letter to Mrs Bowker from the Swan River, January 1833, BL, 389A/10. 94 Bessie Bussell, Journal, Oct 1833, BL, 294A/8, p. 67. 95 John Bussell, letter to Capel Carter, April 1831, BL ACC 337A/462. Mr Turner was James Woodward Turner, a neighbour of the Bussells at Augusta. 96 Charles Bussell, Diary, 1845, BL ACC 337A/168; Vernon Bussell, letter to Capel Carter, August 1832, BL ACC 337/524. 97 John Bussell, Diary and Almanac, BL ACC 337A/510C. 142 Bussell brothers held visions of economic progress and improvement, but these were not their only visions. They also had a vision of creating an ideal home, even though, at first, women were not present. In Victorian England home was a refuge; a place to find comfort.98 Society in the Swan River Colony also placed great importance on the ideal home. Articles in Western Australia’s two weekly journals, the Inquirer and the Perth Gazette, reproduced this common view in the Colony; that an important function of the family was to foster domestic ideals.99 John and his brothers applied these ideals when they built ‘The Adelphi’, their house on the Blackwood River, ‘with its glazed windows (a luxury here) looking on the fairest prospect; its mantelpiece looking glass, its blazing hearth, its dressing and writing table…’100Alfred also expressed his desire to be settled and comfortable. When he and his wife Ellen journeyed south from The Vasse to establish a property near Margaret River, living conditions in their first year were rough. Ellen wrote to her mother: ‘Alfred is very anxious to have his home a little smart again but I tell him Rome was not built in a day and he must not be impatient.’ 101 Sentiments expressing the importance of a comfortable domestic environment are more usually associated with colonial women, but it is clear that John and his brother, Alfred, also held Victorian ideals of home. More significant though, is evidence that the Bussell brothers worked in their houses and engaged in domestic duties normally carried out by women. Before their sisters arrived the Bussell brothers had no choice but to cook, launder and sew for themselves. However, even when Fanny and Bessie joined the household the brothers continued to carry out some of these tasks. Fanny noted, ‘John is mending his canvas trousers with a sail needle and a palm.’102 Several years later she recorded on more than one occasion that Alfred was cooking and that John and Charlotte were doing the washing.103 Traditional gender roles were thus modified as men engaged in tasks traditionally associated with women.

98 Tosh, A Man’s Place; Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes; Catherine Hall, White, Male and Middle Class: Explorations in Feminism and History, Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge and Oxford, 1992. 99 See for example, Perth Gazette, ‘Home and its Pleasures’ in Marian Aveling (ed), Westralian Voices: documents in Western Australian social history, University of Western Australia Press for the Education Committee of the 150th Anniversary Celebrations, Nedlands, WA, 1979, p. 278. 100 John Bussell, letter to Sophie Hayward, Nov 1832, BL ACC 337A/469. 101 Ellen Bussell, letter to Mrs Bussell, Ellensbrook, 22/12/1857, BL, 3886A/4. 102 Fanny Bussell, Diary, Nov 1833, BL ACC 337A/387. 103 Fanny Bussell, Diary, 4/4/1840, 30/6/1840, BL ACC 337A/391. 143 As discussed in Chapter Two, previous scholarship on colonial women has focused on the difficulties women faced when they were wrenched from their domestic scene in England and placed in an environment that was not deemed suitable for women. While the Bussell women certainly found comfort in their domestic space, this was not as clearly separated from the bush as Floyd contends.104 Like the men, the Bussell women were not confined to their dwellings. They were more than a ‘helpmeet’ for men105 and, though responsible for the majority of the household duties, life in the Colony did not mean ‘bondage into domestic service’.106 When women crossed from the domestic sphere to environments beyond the house and garden, they became familiar with uncultivated landscapes. The Bussell women travelled between Augusta and ‘The Adelphi’, further up the Blackwood River and explored the land around their houses. Bessie wrote of her journey with John, Vernon, Alfred and their servant Dawson, from Augusta to ‘Cattle Chosen’ as an adventure. Though she began her account by describing this as a ‘perilous journey’ and it included river crossings on horseback, being carried through muddy streams and sleeping on the ground, she approached these new experiences with an optimistic spirit and did not express great fear or anxiety.107 Following the arrival of Mrs Bussell and Mary at Augusta, Bessie and Charles travelled up the Blackwood River to see the site of ‘The Adelphi’. As night fell they laid rushes on the floor and slept there.108 On another occasion Bessie described a picnic and boat trip on the river: ‘We then embarked once more and our four oars soon brought us to a beautiful peppermint tree…’109 At Augusta Fanny organised the house and cooked, but she also enjoyed her walks. She described how she ‘started off for a ramble over the beautiful country which lay before us in all the splendour of one of our lovely summer evenings’.110 Ellen, too, left her house and in August 1857 wrote, ‘Alfred and I went out to explore the country. Slept on the Margaret [River].’111 Four years later she was confident enough to travel on

104 Ann Elizabeth Turner, who came to Augusta with her family on the same boat as John Bussell in May 1830, also took frequent walks beyond the garden to the spring or the beach. (Ann Elizabeth Turner, Diary, 20/8/1839, Turner, Turners of Augusta, p. 137.) 105 Margaret Anderson argued that women in colonial Australia were the ‘helpmeet’ for men. Anderson, ‘ “Helpmeet for Man”: Women in Mid-nineteenth century Western Australia’. 106 Lines, An All Consuming Passion, p. 174. 107 Bessie Bussell, letter to her family at Augusta, November, 1835, BL 337A/277. 108 Bessie Bussell, letter to Capel Carter, April 1835, BL ACC 337A/268. 109 Bessie Bussell, letter to Capel Carter, undated, BL ACC 373A/314. 110 Fanny Bussell, Diary, Nov 1833, BL ACC 337A/387. 111 Ellen Bussell. Diary, 16/10/1857, BL, 1008A/2. 144 her own and in one diary entry recorded: ‘I walked all the way to the Margaret; found my cows and drove them home.’112 While Fanny, Bessie and Ellen Bussell spent time away from the domestic environment and Fanny and Bessie ventured into the ‘wilderness’ and tall forests at Augusta, Charlotte Bussell responded differently to her new environment. Charlotte arrived in Western Australia several years later than her sisters-in-law. She joined the Bussell family at ‘Cattle Chosen’ in 1839 and as the wife of John Bussell, the leader of the family, she quickly took up her position as head of the household: ‘Almost immediately I was installed by the wish of all our party into the office of housekeeper. My time was now fully employed, I might say, from morning till night.’113 Having arrived later than other members of the Bussell family she did not see the forest around Augusta or the Blackwood River, and nor did she experience travelling between Augusta and The Vasse. Charlotte Bussell entered a domestic environment and the landscapes beyond the house and garden were already partly cultivated. Although she occasionally journeyed in the carriage with John and her children to visit neighbours and spent the night in a tent,114 her primary concerns were domestic and her experiences fit more closely with the pioneer framework of colonial women in Australia. However, when she did leave ‘Cattle Chosen’ she expressed no fear of the bush and described her journey as ‘the most pleasant journey I ever had in my life’.115 After her night camping Charlotte recounted that they ‘again recommenced our journey and travelled until nearly sunset through this beautiful Australian forest…’116 Ventures into the bush were undertaken and enjoyed by the Bussell women as well as the men. Holly Kerr Forsyth’s clearly contentious argument that in colonial Australia the environment beyond the house and garden was the male domain thus fails to encapsulate the experience of women in the Bussell family.117

112 Ellen Bussell. Diary, 1/4/1861, BL, 1008A/2. 113 Charlotte Bussell to her friend Frances Elizabeth Cotton (Fanny) Bowker, Swan River after 22/5/1839 in Coleman (ed) Women Writing Home, 1700-1920, p. 219. 114 Charlotte Bussell to Fanny Bowker, 21/4/1842, in Coleman (ed) Women Writing Home, 1700-1920, p. 225-226. 115 Charlotte Bussell to Fanny Bowker, 21/4/1842, in Coleman (ed) Women Writing Home, 1700-1920, p. 225. 116 Charlotte Bussell to Fanny Bowker, 21/4/1842, in Coleman (ed) Women Writing Home, 1700-1920, p. 227. 117 Kerr Forsyth, Remembered Gardens, p. 6. 145 The Aboriginal People, the Bussells and Belonging Lines has argued that the Bussells viewed the land as empty and uninhabited because the Aborigines did not have the same concept of ownership as they did,118 and the Bussells therefore reasoned that the land was available for naming and claiming. However, as we have seen, some colonists acknowledged that the Aboriginal people were the first occupiers of the land, were aware of the importance of the country to the Aboriginal people and they promoted justice or recompense for the seizure of the land.119 The Bussells, too, knew that their footprints were not the first at Augusta or The Vasse, but unlike George Fletcher Moore, they did not believe that they had stolen or invaded Aboriginal people’s country. Writing about the country near ‘The Adelphi’ Charles remarked, ‘It is indeed almost incredible, that so fair a portion of the earth should have remained so long uninhabited save by its wretched Aborigines.’120 As noted earlier, Fanny also wrote about country that was ‘almost uninhabited’.121 John Bussell used an Aboriginal guide on an expedition from Augusta to the Swan River and he reported following paths made by the Aboriginal people through the open, grassy woodlands near the Vasse.122 The Bussells were constantly confronted with the presence of the Aboriginal people and as they went about their daily activities of constructing their houses, planting gardens, erecting fences and hunting the native animals they acquired some knowledge about the relationship the Aboriginal people had with the land. The Bussells understood that the land provided the Aboriginal people with everything they needed, but rather than seeing this through the prism of possession, they viewed it as evidence that Aboriginal people were ‘primitive’. John commented on their hunting and gathering practices: But man, alas! is more uncultivated than all, living on the rind of nuts the interior of which is poisonous. Fish which they catch with an ill constructed spear the kangaroo which however is a rarity as is also the opossum still more

118 Lines, An All Consuming Passion, p. 152-153. 119 Reynolds, This Whispering in Our Hearts; Reynolds, Dispossession, p. 76. 120 Charles Bussell, letter to Fanny Bowker, 1/11/1832, BL 3890A/6. 121 Fanny Bussell, Diary, Dec 1833, BL 337A/387. 122 John Bussell, ‘Account of the Country intervening between Augusta and Swan River’ and John Bussell, ‘Mr Bussell’s Journal of an Expedition to the River Vasse, from the Blackwood. 10-21 November 1831’ in Shoobert (ed), Western Australian Exploration, Volume One, December 1826-December 1835, pp. 227, 270. 146 the emu. Sometimes they content themselves with fern roots and grubs which they display great, I was going to say instinct in finding about the grass tree.123 Nevertheless, the Bussells were willing to rely on the Aboriginal people’s hunting skills and superior knowledge of the bush, for they sometimes turned to them for help. John Bussell learned from the Aboriginal people how to make fire from the flower stem of the Xanthorrhea (grass tree),124 Charles learned how to remove the hair of bullock hide before steeping it in the river,125 the Bussells traded damper or flour for wallabies,126 Mrs Bussell even drank a native tea called Tormantea made by the Aboriginal people,127and most crucially, the Aboriginal people showed them where to find water.128 While visiting her neighbour, Mrs Layman at Wonnerup, Charlotte Bussell wrote that the Aboriginal people were ‘invaluable in the bush, in acting as guides and making the most brilliant fires…’129 The Bussells were also well aware that the Aboriginal people had modified the landscape. John Bussell, for example, knew that they had managed the grassy country around the Vasse by using fire to partially clear the land to encourage the growth of grasses.130 This was a common practice that some of the explorers and colonists understood.131 John Bussell wrote a poem in April 1834 to commemorate their landing in Geographe Bay, with the intention of settling at The Vasse. In it he implied that the Aboriginal people had no concept of ownership, or investment in the land otherwise they would have resisted the invasion, so it was free for the Bussells to take. However, although a romantic view of the relations between the Bussells and the Aboriginal people, the last line in particular suggests that John knew that the Aboriginal people had a different relationship to the land than their own one that was based on sharing rather than ownership: Welcome as lover to the maiden’s eye Passed a wild native in his own wild land,

123 John Bussell to C Wells, 11/7/1831, BL 3896A/3. 124 John Bussell, letter to Capel Carter, Feb and April 1831, BL ACC 337A/462. 125 Charles Bussell, Diary, begun April 1845, BL ACC 337A/168. 126 Mrs Bussell, letter to Capel Carter, Sunday before Easter 1835, BL ACC 337A/314. 127 Mrs Bussell, letter to Capel Carter, Sunday before Easter 1835, BL ACC 337A/314. 128 Alfred Bussell, Journal, 30/6/1834, BL ACC 337A/119. 129 Charlotte Bussell, letter to Fanny Bowker, 21/4/1842 in Coleman (ed), Women Writing Home, 1700-1920, p. 226. 130 John Bussell, letter to Capel Carter, Feb and April 1831, BL, 337A/462. 131 Stephen J. Pyne, Burning Bush: a fire history of Australia, Hold, New York, 1991, pp. 160- 179 discussed the fire history of Britain and pp. 151 and 179 Pyne noted that John Ramsden Wollaston and Captain James Stirling were aware of Aboriginal fire management practices. 147 His friendly guidance shewed the spring hard by We filled our pails to cheer the thirsty band. With curious glance, our goods around he scanned Where they lay spread between us and the sea Nor grudged our habitation on the sand, Nor frowned to see our tent beneath his tree The earth he held alike to self and stranger free.132 It is clear that the Bussells were aware of the Aboriginal people’s presence and of their intimate and superior knowledge of the land. However, despite this and the assistance the Aboriginal people gave them, they still viewed the Aboriginal people as inferior. They were ‘savages’ and ‘wretched’, a lower form of humanity.133 John Bussell also expressed his anxiety and underlying fear of them: ‘They are here at present very peaceful, and yet there is something that makes one shudder when he crosses unawares in his path, the naked “Lord of the forest.”’134 Unfortunately, the peace that John wrote of did not last. As European settlements at the Vasse and the surrounding areas grew, relations between the colonists and the Aboriginal people deteriorated.135 Charles Bussell took a particularly hard line against them and shot a seven year old Aboriginal girl for allegedly stealing flour. Although he was charged with her death, he was dismissed with a fine and a severe caution after the court found that her death was an accident.136 As landowners and farmers it suited the Bussells to believe the official position that the land was empty before they arrived. However, they did not deny that the Aboriginal people were there before them. They learnt from them and at times relied on their skills and knowledge of the land, but this knowledge did little or nothing to influence their sense of attachment and belonging. Rather, John, Vernon, Lenox, Alfred, Fanny and Bessie’s attachment for Augusta and The Vasse was an attachment to an ‘improved’ landscape; to their houses, gardens and the land they cultivated. The Bussells did not think about the differences and similarities between their own and

132 Poem by John Bussell as reproduced in Shann, Cattle Chosen, p. 56. 133 John Bussell, letter to Capel Carter, Feb and April 1831, BL ACC 337A/462; Charles Bussell, letter to cousin, 1/11/1832, BL ACC 3890A/6. 134 John Bussell to C. Wells, July 1831, BL, 3896A/3. 135 See for example, Shann, Cattle Chosen, pp. 111-120, ‘A draft of a letter by Charles Bussell on the treatment of the Aborigines’ in Shann, Cattle Chosen, Appendix 7, pp. 173-179; Perth Gazette, 29/6/1833, 16/7/1842, 14/1/1843. 136 Reported in the Perth Gazette, 14/1/1843. 148 Aboriginal culture with the complexities and contradictions that George Fletcher Moore contemplated. John expressed some insight into the Aboriginal people’s way of life but this was pushed to the background as he established the Bussells’ farm. Even for him, the presence of the Aboriginal people neither enhanced nor diminished his sense of attachment or belonging. While the Aboriginal people influenced how the Bussells perceived the landscape, their presence made no difference to how they felt about their place in the Colony.

Attachment and Belonging at Augusta and the Vasse When the depths of the wood, and the still rolling river Afford me a spot where I’ve chosen a home137

Western Australia has little to recommend it in a world point of view and so removed from all religious privileges that it is anything but a desirable home.138

These four lines, the first couplet written by John two years after leaving England and the second extract written by his sister, Mary, after twenty years in the Colony, demonstrate the range of feelings expressed by members of the Bussell family concerning the degree to which they felt a sense of belonging in the Colony. How can these contrasting expressions of attachment be accounted for, and how do they assist in understanding the process by which some colonists came to call the places where they lived in Western Australia ‘home’? Although John, Lenox, Vernon, Alfred and Bessie lived at ‘The Adelphi’ for less than two years, this was the first place in the Colony to which they became attached. Despite the hardships and his disappointment in the pastoral capacity of the land there, John wrote affectionately of this place: There are few roofs under which I have lived an equal portion of time, that have afforded me an equal number of serene and happy moments…with truth that, in my hammock beneath my roof of rushes, I sleep with greater satisfaction to myself than I could under a velvet canopy in the spacious mansion of a munificent patron. 139 While this does not suggest that John identified with an Australian landscape, it gives the impression that he was attached to a romanticised ‘simple life’. In addition, his

137 John Bussell, letter to Sophie Hayward, Nov 1832, BL ACC 337A/469. 138 Mary Yates Taylor (nee Bussell), from King George Sound, 1/4/1854, BL ACC 3898A/19. 139 John Bussell to Sophie Hayward, Nov 1832, BL 337A/469. 149 familiar pieces of English furniture provided a sense of continuity, security and comfort in a rustic dwelling constructed of unfamiliar materials. Vernon also grew fond of ‘The Adelphi’ and he explained how they worked on this house before breakfast and for two hours in the middle of the day while the rest of the time they spent fencing and digging.140 He was proud of their achievements and this sense of satisfaction contributed to his feelings of connection to ‘The Adelphi’. However, his attachment was to the ‘improved’ landscape that he and his brothers had cultivated and constructed. Vernon expressed his feelings in a letter to his cousin: I don’t think, therefore, we shall ever desert it, indeed I hope we shall not, for I have formed a regular attachment for it, having seen it gradually improve, the forest by degrees levelling to the ground; a good garden rising, paths made to the most frequented parts, instead of the thick jungle that used to be and a good well of water and considering all these and that they are the work of our own hands, you will not wonder at the attachment.141 Bessie’s feelings for ‘The Adelphi’ were similar to Vernon’s. She, too, wrote with pride about the ‘improvements’ and the modifications they made to their grant on the Blackwood River. She also called ‘The Adelphi’ home, suggesting that this place was already a place of emotional significance for her. Three weeks after she left ‘The Adelphi’ to settle at The Vasse, she described the night before her departure: It was a lovely balmy moonlight night. We contrived to banish from our minds that we were going to leave the place that had formed so delightful a home, and the home, too, where we anticipated the meeting of so many dear relations who would have looked around on all the improvements with such wonder and delight.142 Although based at Augusta, Fanny spent time at ‘The Adelphi’ and she began to like the place. After the fire destroyed their house and they moved back to Augusta, she wrote that although everyone was kind to them in Augusta she longed to be home again at ‘The Adelphi’.143 Like Bessie, she indicated that ‘home’ was ‘The Adelphi’. Charlotte Bussell referred to ‘Cattle Chosen’ as ‘home’ as soon as she arrived there. When she reached Captain John Molloy’s house, across the Vasse River from

140 Joseph Vernon Bussell, letter to Capel Carter, Dec 1832, BL 337A/525. 141 Joseph Vernon Bussell, letter to Capel Carter, Dec 1832, BL 337A/525. 142 Bessie Bussell, Diary, December 1834, BL 337A/274. 143 Fanny Bussell, letter begun in October 1833, BL, 337A/335. 150 ‘Cattle Chosen’, she wrote, ‘the dogs began to bark and we felt we were near home.’144 In a later letter, when she explained why she was whitewashing walls, a task not usually appropriate for a woman of her social class, she justified her actions by writing ‘there was no one else at home…’145 Five years later Charlotte expressed contentment with her life in Western Australia: ‘A farm life still interests me exceedingly and very much do I continue to enjoy the life I lead here, and so would you, dearest.’146 Lines has suggested that the karri forest made the Bussells feel uncomfortable and they expressed relief when they arrived at the Vasse from Augusta, pleased to have reached more open country.147 While this was true to an extent, their feelings of affection for ‘The Adelphi’ should be acknowledged and understood. Peter Read has proposed that the process of marking out boundaries, clearing and working the land could be part of a bonding process with the land.148 At ‘The Adelphi’ the process of building a house, constructing fences, clearing the land and planting vegetables certainly assisted the Bussells to make connections with their place in the Colony. The Bussells were a large family, and together with the sense of community among the colonists at Augusta, they supported one another to alleviate the feelings of homesickness which were so apparent in the writings of William and Hester Tanner at the Upper Swan. Charles explained this sense of community at Augusta: ‘but owing to the exceeding smallness of this community a sort of friendship beyond that of common acquaintances has arisen among us and we appear in great measure like members of one family…’149 Nevertheless, the Bussells also experienced homesickness and sometimes thought of England as ‘home’. Soon after Mary arrived in the Colony she expressed regret about leaving England: ‘and again and again I reproach myself for coming and nearly think I ought forever to resign the thoughts of returning home’.150 One of Fanny’s early replies to Capel Carter in which she thanked her for her letters evoked similar sentiments: ‘they [Capel’s letters] were from home from a spot to which my affections cling with a tenacity almost dangerous. I dare not say how I am longing to be home

144 Charlotte Bussell to Fanny Bowker, after 22/5/1839 in Coleman (ed), Women Writing Home, 1700-1920, p. 218 (emphasis in source). 145 Charlotte Bussell to Fanny Bowker, 5/11/1848 in Coleman (ed), Women Writing Home, 1700-1920, p. 231. 146 Charlotte Bussell to Fanny Bowker, now Mrs Thomas Bussell, 17/2/1853 in Coleman (ed), Women Writing Home, 1700-1920, p. 236. 147 Lines, An All Consuming Passion, p. 162. 148 Read, Returning to Nothing, p. 8. 149 Charles Bussell, letter to Matilda, 6/4/1831, BL ACC 337A/150. 150 Mary Bussell, 23/9/1834, BL ACC 3898A/10. 151 again’.151 John Bussell did not express his homesickness as plainly as his sisters, but there were times when his thoughts were clearly of his home in England. His books were reminders of his life there: ‘My books those old companions of my former life…I clasp them as the old Greek did his recovered shield as it was restoring to his memory Troy and the sacred days of heroes.’152 Over time these feeling of homesickness dwindled for most of the Bussells and ‘home’ became both England and Western Australia. This change elicited reflections similar to those expressed by George Fletcher Moore at the Upper Swan when he contemplated where his home was located. These thoughts by Moore and some members of the Bussell family show that it was possible to have more than one home. At the age of 60 Alfred Bussell was an industrious man who described living in a happy, busy household with many visitors, music and songs in the evenings, though there was also a reflective side to his nature. In a letter to his sister-in-law, Charlotte (living in Europe after the death of John), he wrote, ‘but since I received your beautiful, long, happy letter from home a strange melancholy has possessed me, a deep yearning for the old land sowing brain seeds continually which alas, can bear no fruit for the old Australian exile’.153 As he reflected on his life in some ways he saw himself as ‘Australian’, but an ‘Australian exile’, nostalgic for England yet also displaced. England was his birthplace; the home of his heritage and his culture, but the Colony was where he had lived most of his life, married, raised his children, established two homesteads and helped to ensure that the name ‘Bussell’ was important in the European history of the South West corner of Western Australia. A sense of feeling ‘Australian’ and attachment to a place other than England arose, at least in part, from the Bussells’ engagement with the environments they encountered in the Colony. When they rested from their hard physical labour of building houses and cultivating the land, John and his brothers read books such as Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and works by Shakespeare and Swift.154 Lines explained that their reading material suggests they valued the ideas of empire and civilisation and that these books reinforced their European and imperial

151 Fanny Bussell, letter to Capel Carter, no date, BL ACC 337A/324. (Archivist has dated it 25/3/1830 but this cannot be correct as Fanny did not arrive in the Colony until 1833. Underline in original.) 152 John Bussell, letter to Capel Carter, Augusta, March 1832, BL ACC 337A/466. 153 Alfred Bussell, letter to Charlotte Bussell, Wallcliffe, 30/9/1876, BL, 337A/115. 154 Lenox Bussell, Journal, April to July 1834, BL ACC 337A/544, p. 4. 152 visions and identities.155 However, their interactions with the environment modified those visions and identities. Searching for stone suitable for building a chimney, hunting kangaroos and fishing led Lenox to refer to Australia as their ‘adopted country’ and John to see himself as an ‘old bushranger’. 156 So, although they continued to see themselves in some ways as English and felt a sense of belonging to England, their new experiences also influenced the way they perceived themselves and modified their ‘Englishness’. I have argued that the process of engaging in a very practical way with the landscapes of the South West of Western Australia provided a means by which some members of the Bussell family developed a sense of belonging and called the Colony home. However, as Peter Read argued, there are individual variations in how, and the extent to which, people form attachments to place.157 Mary and Charles Bussell, who shared the same cultural heritage and had similar experiences to their siblings, felt little attachment to the Colony and expressed great longing for their home in England. Charles was a serious, lonely and melancholic man who never married.158 He was also more pessimistic than his brothers. Whereas Charles noted the failure of their first potato crop, Vernon wrote that in spite of the stony ground that made digging difficult, they managed to grow melons, cabbages and carrots.159 In a letter to his Uncle in 1845 Charles sounded depressed. He felt as though he had been banished to the Colony and he wished for a wife, ‘whose presence would turn my wilderness into a garden’.160 He seemed to find some solace in the daily activities of the farm but amongst these brief accounts there are other hints that he was unhappy and in a letter to Fanny he expressed loneliness and bitterness at his situation.161 Perhaps he would have found happiness with the comfort and companionship of a wife, but it seems likely that his character and temperament contributed to his attitude to Western Australia and made it difficult for him to adapt to new situations and environments.

155 Lines, An All Consuming Passion, p. 192. 156 Lenox Bussell, letter to John Bussell, 30/1/1837, BL, 337A/543 and John Bussell, letter to Sophie Hayward, Nov 1832, BL, 337A/469. 157 Read, Returning to Nothing, p. 2. 158 John Wollaston also commented that ‘Charles was a sad melancholy, emaciated object.’ John Ramsden Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 3, edited by Helen Walker, University of Western Australia Press, Crawley, WA, 2006, 8/3/1856, p. 474. 159 Charles Bussell, letter to Mrs Bussell, 28/8/1830, BL ACC 3890A/3; Vernon Bussell, letter to Capel Carter, August 1832, BL ACC 337A/524. 160 Charles Bussell to his Uncle, 16/1/1845, BL ACC 3890A/9. 161 Charles Bussell, Diary begun April 1845, BL ACC 337A/168; Charles Bussell, letter to Fanny, 1856, BL ACC 3890A/8. 153 Mary Bussell was the only member of the family who moved away from The Vasse and although her sisters visited her in Albany on occasions, and Fanny lived with her for a few years, she felt both physically and emotionally isolated. Her early misgivings about leaving England and her thoughts written after 20 years in the Colony indicate that she had not developed any emotional connections to Western Australia. Mary found little to admire and her letters suggest a woman leading two lives: her physical life unfolding in Western Australia and her intellectual life securely in England. Her letters were primarily concerned with family news and social contacts, she wrote very little about her house or garden in Western Australia, or the Western Australian landscape, and she constantly longed to be back in England. Mary also felt isolated from her religious community, evident in her comment that Western Australia was not a desirable home partly because it was ‘so removed from all religious privileges’.162 When a new pastor was appointed at Albany, Mary wrote to Fanny that she hoped he would be faithful to ‘this poor neglected place’.163

Conclusion Previous writing on the Bussell family has focused on their efforts to transform their land grants of ‘wild’ landscapes into land that was domesticated, cultivated and profitable and argued that they were motivated by Enlightenment ideas of progress and improvement. By asking different questions concerning their responses to the environments they encountered, it is clear that their reactions to these environments were varied and nuanced. Their ideas of nature and wilderness were complex and varied. With the exception of Charles, whose approach to the land was primarily utilitarian and Mary, who was generally disparaging about the Colony, on many occasions the other members of the family described the scenery using picturesque and romantic imagery. John, Fanny and Bessie often used the language of the picturesque to express their pleasure with the landscapes. At other times they were more concerned with the use-value of the land, and described it as productive or suitable for cattle. Like the colonists at the Upper Swan, though, this was not inevitably tied to their picturesque aesthetic sensibilities. In addition, John Bussell incorporated Biblical and classical imagery into his observations and, in his reports of expeditions in the area, he adopted the language of science.

162 Mary Yates Bussell, letter to Fanny, Albany, 1/4/1858, BL ACC 3898A/19. 163 Mary Yates Bussell, letter to Fanny, Albany, 22/2/1858, BL ACC 3898A/25. 154 The history of the Bussell family also demonstrates how class and gender roles were modified in the Swan River Colony. At Augusta and The Vasse they engaged in activities not usually associated with the English middle-class. In spite of this they frequently reassured themselves and their family and friends that, where possible, they behaved in genteel ways. Establishing connections with other colonists of their class was more difficult for the Bussells than for those at the Upper Swan. They were isolated from Perth and the social scene there, so they maintained some signifiers of class in their home. In the evenings the women continued to practice dancing and music and their brothers read history and classical and romantic literature. The gendered division of labour in the English Victorian household was less marked in the Bussell family in the South West of the Swan River Colony than in England. In the early years when the brothers were on their own it is not surprising that they cooked, washed and mended their own clothes. However, even when their sisters joined them, sometimes they all worked together to complete domestic tasks. This was also the case in the garden as Vernon helped his wife, Mary, to grow flowers. Similarly, the divide between their domestic space and the environment beyond was not clearly differentiated as most of the women left their house and garden from time to time and even enjoyed doing so. Sometimes they accompanied their brothers on exploratory journeys and took walks through the bush for pleasure, or they enjoyed sailing on the river. The Bussells knew that Aboriginal people were present before they arrived in the Colony, but they did not consider that their own claims to the land might have represented the dispossession of the Aboriginal people. Their understandings of ‘savage’ peoples and their belief in the superiority of ‘civilised’ societies influenced their interactions with the Aboriginal people. In general they had very little regard for them, though they were willing to benefit from their superior knowledge of the land and at times relied on them for directions, water and food sources. There is no evidence that the Bussells’ knowledge and awareness of the Aboriginal people contributed to their sense of belonging in the Colony. The Bussell family was a prominent family in the colonial history of Western Australia, with a prosperous and thriving town, Busselton, named after them. Consequently, generalisations about them are a common, and sometimes useful way of referring to their colonial activities. However, members of the Bussell family were complex individuals whose emotional attachment to places in the South West of

155 Western Australia varied greatly. Although no members of the family developed an appreciation of the bush and the native flora to the same extent as did Georgiana Molloy, they did make connections with the places they lived in and found aspects of the country beautiful. Charles and Mary Bussell never felt at home in the Colony but John, Lenox, Vernon, Alfred, Fanny, Bessie and Charlotte did develop attachment to places that, through their endeavours, became significant for them. They called these places home and felt that they belonged.

156 Chapter Five Australind and Picton

Introduction Ten years after the Bussell family arrived in Flinders Bay and settled at Augusta, another group of immigrants sailed to the South West and anchored in the Leschenault Inlet. This group, led by Marshall Waller Clifton, arrived with the intention of founding a settlement and farming in the area. Clifton was Chief Commissioner of the Western Australian Company that was formed in 1840 and purchased land near Leschenault Inlet. Although a large town was planned for this area, after six years the Company folded and the scheme failed due to the financial insecurity of the Company, insufficient capital brought by the immigrants, and the unsuitability of the land for small farming activities.1 Clifton’s daughter, Louisa, and Reverend John Ramsden Wollaston, were also among the 442 immigrants who came to the Leschenault Inlet; together with Clifton’s surviving archival material, their extant journals further assist me to unravel the process of belonging. This chapter introduces these colonists and then explores and accounts for their responses to the environment. As in the previous chapters I focus on how they viewed and understood the land, how issues of class and domesticity were played out, how their knowledge of the Aboriginal people and awareness of their presence influenced how they felt about place in the Colony, and the extent to and the ways in which they formed attachments to the land. Here, Marshall Clifton’s and Wollaston’s reasons for emigrating influenced their responses and adaptations. Clifton’s responsibilities as Chief Commissioner of the Western Australia Company encouraged a utilitarian perspective, while Wollaston’s desire to bring religion to the Colony was a major influence in his reactions to the landscape. Their different economic situations also had an effect on their relationships with the environment. Clifton had an independent income, behaved as an English landowner, but connected less intimately with the land than Wollaston, who was dependent on the land for food. Wollaston helped his wife with domestic tasks such as washing and cooking and developed an empathy with women who usually carried out this work. Australind and Picton became ‘home’ for

1 Statham, ‘Swan River Colony, 1829-1850’, p. 198. See also A.C. Staples, They Made Their Destiny, Shire of Harvey, Harvey, 1979, Chapters 5-8 for an account of the settlement at Australind and the Western Australian Company. 157 Clifton and Wollaston in the sense that this was their place of comfort and companionship. They felt less ‘at home’ in the Colony.

Colonists at Australind and Picton The environment and climate near Australind and Picton is similar to that of The Vasse region. Leschenault Inlet, where the first colonists anchored, is also an estuary and the surrounding country is low-lying swampy ground. There are samphires and sedges in the saline marshes with swamp sheoaks (Casuarina obesa) adjacent. Mangroves also grow in the intertidal areas of the Inlet. Further inland the freshwater vegetation was predominantly swamp paperbarks (Melaleuca rhaphiophylla) and peppermint trees (Agonis flexuosa), but little of this remains as it was easily cleared for farming.2 The leader of the first colonists to this area was Marshall Waller Clifton. He was born in 1787, the eldest son of Reverend Francis Clifton and his wife Rebekah. Little is known about his early life but it is assumed he was well-educated and received instruction in both the classics and the sciences.3 It is evident from his journals that he was a keen horticulturalist and careful observer of his environment. A possible source of Clifton’s interest in natural history may have been Gilbert White’s The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne.4 White was a vicar in the village of Selborne who observed the birds, animals and plants in his locality in great detail. Over twenty years he recorded these observations in letters he sent to Thomas Pennant, a well known English zoologist and Daines Barrington, a Welsh barrister and a member of the Royal Society. First published in 1789, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne was immensely popular and is now considered a classic in natural history. It is quite possible that Clifton’s father, also a vicar in Hampshire, knew Gilbert White, or at least had a copy of The Natural History on his bookshelves, and Clifton is almost certain to have been familiar with the book. In 1828 Clifton was invited to join the Royal Society, a sign that he was respected for his knowledge of the natural sciences.5

2 Brearley, Ernest Hodgkin’s Swanland, pp. 225-226. 3 F. M. Johnston, Knights and Theodolites: A Saga of Surveyors, Edwards and Shaw, Sydney, 1962, p. 17; Australian Dictionary of Biography – Online Edition, http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A030401b.htm (accessed 23/7/08). 4 Gilbert White, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, B. White and Son, London, 1789. 5 Australian Dictionary of Biography – Online Edition, http://www.adb.online.anu.edu/biogs/A030401b.htm (accessed 23/7/08). 158 As a young man Clifton joined the Admiralty and was quickly promoted to secretary of the Victualling Board, a post that involved provisioning the Royal Navy Ships, including those sailing to the Australian colonies. In 1811 he married Elinor Bell who was from a prominent Quaker family,6 and from 1812 to 1835 they had fifteen children. In 1832 the Admiralty administration was reorganised, Clifton became redundant and retired on a pension of £600 per year.7 In order to stretch his pension Clifton and his large family moved to France where he came into contact with Colonel Latour and the Western Australian Company. The company’s aim was to acquire and develop land in the colony of Western Australia based on the principles of ‘systematic colonisation’ formulated by Edward Gibbon Wakefield and on which the colony of South Australia had been established in 1836. With Wakefield’s ideas driving the venture, the Western Australian Company acquired a total of 165,000 acres in the vicinity of Port Leschenault, near Bunbury on the South West coast (see Figure 1.1). The details of this scheme were complex, but essentially it was a plan whereby land owned by the Company would be divided into lots and sold to emigrants. The terms of sale included the retention of a portion of the value of their lot to pay for their passage and for public works.8 It was a scheme that was intended to appeal to ordinary people from overcrowded areas of England by the promise of attractive land for farming. Clifton’s vision for the town of Australind was also grand and included civic buildings and parks (see Figure 5.1). As proponents of the Wakefieldian approach to colonisation, the directors of the Western Australian Company believed that their plans for Australind were a superior form of colonisation to the Swan River settlement, and would avoid both a shortage of labour and the ‘evils of a convict population’.9 Furthermore, it was envisaged that whole communities could be transported and would flourish:

6 Elinor Bell’s first cousin was Elizabeth Fry, a Quaker famous for her work to reform the British prison system in the early nineteenth century. Emily K. Clifton, Alverstoke, Artlook, Perth, c1981. 7 Johnston, Knights and Theodolites, p. 22. 8 For details of Wakefield’s principles of colonization see Edward Gibbon Wakefield, ‘A view of the art of colonization’, Batoche Books, Kitshener, Ontario, Canada, 2001 (first published John W. Parker, London, 1849) and for details of how this was applied at Australind see Thomas J. Buckton, ‘Western Australia: comprising a description of the vicinity of Australind and Port Leschenault’, John Ollivier, London, 1840, Appendix H, BL, microfilm. 9 ‘The New Settlement of Australind in Western Australia’, extracted from the Monthly Chronicle, London, c. 1842, p. 4. 159 A new era has arisen in the method of settling new countries. Instead of the old plan of emigration we now have colonisation – one result of the principles of co- operation which is more and more coming into play. It is now understood, we hope generally – if not, the sooner the better – that emigration is a desolate precarious expedient; whereas colonisation, or an enlightened system, takes out to a new country a whole body of people – an organised society who begin with the comforts, refinements, means of knowledge, and enjoyment for which old countries have had to struggle upwards.10 These ideas were applied directly to the enterprise at Australind and the objective connections between England and this settlement were made explicit. A contemporary report bidding farewell to Clifton stated: In short, the colonies were so connected with the mother country in every way that he [Clifton] could almost say he then stood in their new colony in Australind itself, and it seemed to him as his native place, so fully did he feel the identity of his mother country and the branches which were now spreading over the vast Australian continent.11 In Clifton’s reply it is clear that he felt that the success of the venture was largely dependent on his leadership, as the land was evidently ‘superior to, and more desirable than any other spot located’.12 He concluded his farewell speech with a grand vision for Australind and although still on the shores of England announced: As an Australindian I speak and express the hope that at no distant period I may see the new settlement take an important station among the colonies of the British Empire, and Australind as the maritime capital of Western Australia, not only the emporium of trade and commerce, but distinguished for its high moral, religious and intellectual character.13

10 ‘The New Settlement of Australind in Western Australia’, extracted from the Monthly Chronicle, London, c. 1842, p. 3. 11 Quoted in Johnston, Knights and Theodolites, p. 33. 12 Quoted in Johnston, Knights and Theodolites, p. 33. 13 Quoted in Johnston, Knights and Theodolites, p. 36. 160

Figure 5.1 Plan of the intended town of Australind on Leschenault Inlet, Western Australia as finally arranged by Marshall Waller Clifton. London 1840?14 When Clifton arrived at Leschenault Inlet he was extremely optimistic. He also felt tremendous responsibility: to the directors of the Western Australian Company for the commercial success of Australind; for the well-being of the emigrants who came with Clifton; and to his own family. These visions and expectations embedded in the rhetoric of the enterprise influenced Clifton’s relationships with the land. Louisa Clifton was the eldest daughter of Marshall Waller Clifton. She had grown up in a wealthy household with servants and was educated at home by a governess. She was baptised in the Anglican Church but influenced by her mother’s faith she adopted many of the Quaker traditions. She was an excellent scholar and had a particular love and talent for painting.15 As a young woman she spent time in England and France. It was in Capecure, France, in 1840 that she began her diary and described her days before leaving for Western Australia.16 These early entries depict an idyllic

14 From http://nla.gov.au/nla.map-t291 (accessed 24/07/08) 15 See George Russo, A Friend Indeed, Vanguard Press, Perth, 1995 for biographical information on Louisa Clifton. 16 It is possible that Louisa Clifton kept a diary before April 1840 but it is not extant. 161 lifestyle in which she painted, walked for pleasure through beautiful gardens, read, dined, socialised and wrote letters.

Figure 5.2 Louisa Clifton and Marshall Waller Clifton17 It is hard to imagine the contrast between Louisa’s life in England and France and the first year of her life at Australind. It is therefore tempting to understand the contrast in terms of the pioneering narratives of white colonists striving to survive. Certainly, life was harder than in France and England, but for colonists with sufficient capital or an independent income, there were also many pleasures. Louisa’s account of their early months at Australind describes both hardships and happiness. It also makes it possible to understand how she began to connect with her new environment and offers a further challenge to the familiar narrative of pioneer women in the bush. Australind needed a minister to take care of the colonists’ spiritual needs, a challenge taken up by Reverend John Ramsden Wollaston, who arrived in Western Australia in October 1841, aged 50. He had five sons and two daughters and his decision to emigrate was based on the hope that his sons would have greater opportunities in the Colony. Once there he quickly purchased 115 acres of land from an

17 From Statham-Drew, James Stirling, p. 190, originals in Battye Library BA1073 and 225184P. 162 American whaler and on application was also assigned another 100 acres at Picton, near Australind.18 Although he expected to be paid as an Anglican minister, soon after arriving he discovered that he had no official position until he built his own church. So, until he completed his church at Picton in 1842, he and his family lived on his capital and what they could produce from the land. In 1848 Wollaston was transferred to Albany, and the following year Bishop Augustus Short appointed him Archdeacon of Western Australia.19 Wollaston was educated at Charterhouse School, London and Christ’s College, Cambridge. He was ordained in the Church of England and has been described by historian Geoffrey Bolton as a ‘Tory rural clergyman of the early nineteenth century’.20 During his years in Picton and then later at Albany, he kept a journal in which he recorded his experiences of cultivating his property, his efforts to build a church and his pastoral responsibilities. Although he expressed a wish that only his relatives and friends would ever read his journals, they were first published in 1948.21 The value of these journals for historians is considerable as they provide information about Wollaston’s own experiences, other colonists, the landscape and conditions in the colony in the 1840s and 1850s.22 They also provide rich material for understanding Christianity in colonial Western Australia.23 However, they have not been used to extend our understanding of how colonists in the South West responded to place. Reading Wollaston’s journals from this perspective reveals how Wollaston viewed the environment, the extent to which he became involved with domestic duties usually undertaken by women, how he reconciled himself to living in a manner not in

18John Ramsden Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals, Volume 1, edited by Geoffrey Bolton, Heather Vose and Allan Watson with Suzanne Lewis, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1991, May-November 1841, p. 126. 19 http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A020563b.htm (accessed 24/07/08) 20 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, p. xxx. 21 John Ramsden Wollaston, Wollaston’s Picton Journal (1841-1844), edited with an introduction and notes by Canon Burton and Rev. Percy U. Henn, C.H. Pitman & Son, Perth, 1948 and John Ramsden Wollaston, Wollaston’s Albany Journals (1848-1856), Paterson Brokensha, Pty, Ltd, Perth, 1954. 22 Wollaston, Wollaston’s Albany Journals (1848-1856), p. 10-12 and Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals, Volume 1, pp xii-xxx. 23 Rowan Strong, ‘The Reverend John Wollaston and Colonial Christianity in Western Australia, The Journal of Religious History, Vol 25, No 3. October 2001, pp. 261-285. Marian Aveling also drew on Wollaston’s published journals for her chapter, ‘Western Australian Society: The Religious Aspect (1829-1895)’ in C. T. Stannage (ed), A New History of Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1981, pp. 575-598. 163 accordance with his class and the objective ways in which he made connections with the landscape.

Responding to the Landscape Viewing the Landscape Marshall Waller Clifton often saw the land in terms of its utility and the profit that could be generated from it. This was due to his desire to fulfill the Company’s expectations for Australind as well as his own desire to succeed as an individual and provide for his family. Clifton made frequent journeys to explore land the Company had purchased, much of which was unknown to the Company directors and the colonists. He commented on the fineness of the grass and vegetation and declared he had ‘seen nothing finer & it proves that all this part of the Range is most splendid Cattle Country.’24 On another occasion Clifton described a tract of land as ‘a very fine flat & the back Country has some feed upon it & is altogether of a better description. This track begins on the Eastern side of a deep Gully. I think a good Farm might be selected there.’25 In these examples ‘fine’ equated with ‘profitable’ and there is little doubt that Clifton was anxious to convince himself that the land was suitable for agriculture. He was also eager to reassure the Western Australian Company that their investment was sound and he conveyed his optimism to the secretary of the Company: ‘I am sure however that the District will be most valuable. The soil, situation and climate is most favourable to the growth of the vine and I think also the mulbury [sic] tree…’26 In another letter Clifton noted that land owned by the Company was of excellent quality and, ‘cannot fail to render the country allotments most valuable to their purchasers.’27 Just as Clifton described land he deemed suitable for farming as ‘fine’ he disparaged country he saw as unsuitable for farming. This land near the north western boundary of the Western Australia Company’s estate was ‘poor miserable sandy Country with Mahogany & Scrub’.28 Similarly, on a visit to Perth he described some of the land there

24 MW Clifton, Journal, 18 November 1841, Transcription, P. Barnes. 25 MW Clifton, Journal, 8 March 1843, Transcription, P. Barnes. 26 MW Clifton, letter to Thos J. Buckton, 25 May 1841, Transcription of Letterbook No 1 of MW Clifton, BL, MN 1294/2 ACC 5122A. 27 MW Clifton, letter to CH Smith, 15 July 1841, Transcription of Letterbook No 1 of MW Clifton, BL, MN 1294/2 ACC 5122A. 28 MW Clifton, Journal, 23 September 1841, Transcription P. Barnes. 164 as ‘wretched’ and ‘miserable’, with ‘nothing but poor Bankisa & now & then a Mahogany’.29 Although Clifton was interested in the land’s productive potential, his eye for farming land did not preclude him from viewing the landscape in other ways. His unbridled enthusiasm for the country is evident in his correspondence to the secretary of the Company, as well as in his private journal. Although it is likely that he wanted to maintain the Company’s support by reassuring them, his enthusiasm was heartfelt. Clifton often expressed his fervour for the country using romantic imagery and language of the picturesque. He described the proposed site for the town of Australind in the following terms: The Town Site is really in every direction beautiful: its western front looking across the Inlet is commanding and the view delightful: its eastern view of the Brunswick is picturesque and full of quiet charm: and the southeastern angle has a most romantic view up and down the Collie and the junction of the Brunswick almost suppasses [sic] anything I have ever seen...Our position is agreeable and beautiful. I wish we have those with us who could paint the beautiful scenery around us, but I shall endeavour to get some sketches made to give the Directors some idea of it.30 He expressed similar sentiments in his journal regarding land opposite the proposed town site: The view from thence was romantic & delightful. At the foot of an almost precipice was the Bed of the Brunswick with a chain of Pools or nearly continuous Water. On the opposite side lay a low splendid alluvial tract, behind which again gradually rose the sloping Hills covered with gigantic Blue Gums. And over an extensive View of the Forest Scenery the Darling Range broke out in great beauty.31 Recalling Smout’s argument, discussed in Chapter Two, that attitudes to environment have always been shaped by considerations of use and delight, these two examples demonstrate that both publicly and privately, Clifton could appreciate the aesthetic qualities of the landscape independent of its productive potential.

29 MW Clifton, Journal, 27 October 1841, Transcription, P. Barnes. 30 MW Clifton, letter to Thos J. Buckton, 6 April 1841, Transcription of Letterbook No 1 of MW Clifton, BL, MN 1294/2 ACC 5122A. 31 MW Clifton. Journal, 26 April 1841, Transcription, P. Barnes. 165 Sometimes, too, his delight was expressed in scientific language. With his knowledge of natural science, Clifton’s use of botanical names for the flora is not unexpected, but as Chief Commissioner he felt obliged to give the Company as much information as possible about their investment. For example, he wrote to the Company secretary and described the flowers that grew in the area: Here every plant, shrub & tree seems to blow a beautiful flower. Flowers of extraordinary beauty, such as Candida Splendens, Huttia elegans, Candolia Anigozanthus, and a hundred others of equal beauty are already in full bloom, and I am told that before October, we shall have the whole of the vegetation in flower. It is a libel on Australian flowering plants to say, as I always heard in England, that they had no scent.32 Clifton also classified the soil, distinguishing between decomposed granite, quartz and ironstone detritus.33 As well as observing and classifying the natural world, he collected specimens of natural history on behalf of the directors of the Western Australian Company, presumably so they could evaluate the utility of the specimens. For example, Clifton sent samples of timber to the directors of the Western Australian Company that included the tea tree, mahogany (jarrah), the ‘woody pear’ tree, banksias, peppermint tree and the tuart along with samples of limestone, granite, quartz and ironstone.34 He would also have sent animal skins and flowers but he did not have access to the ingredients necessary for their preservation.35 Connections between science and the pursuit of empire have been well demonstrated and are apparent in Clifton’s attempts to fulfill his role as Chief Commissioner.36 Not only did he collect and classify specimens to satisfy his gentlemanly curiosity, but also to further the interests of the Western Australia Company and its goal of profiting from systematic colonisation. Louisa Clifton also used the language of the picturesque and the romantic to express how she viewed the landscape. However, without the responsibilities of her

32 MW Clifton, letter to CH Smith, 15 July 1841, Transcription of Letterbook No 1 of MW Clifton, BL, MN 1294/2 ACC 5122A. 33 MW Clifton, Journal, 14 October 1841, Transcription, P. Barnes; MW Clifton, letter to Thos J Buckton, 25 May 1841, Transcription of Letterbook No 1 of MW Clifton, BL, MN 1294/2 ACC 5122A. 34 MW Clifton, letter to CH Smith, 15 July 1841, Transcription of Letterbook No 1 of MW Clifton, BL, MN 1294/2 ACC 5122A. 35 MW Clifton, letter to CH Smith, 1 July 1841, Transcription of Letterbook No 1 of MW Clifton, BL, MN 1294/2 ACC 5122A. 36 David Philip Miller and Peter Hanns Peill (eds), Visions of Empire: Voyages, botany and representations of nature, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996. 166 father, Lousia’s approach to the environment was less utilitarian. Louisa viewed the landscapes of the Colony through the eyes of an educated young Englishwoman and also as an amateur artist. She found beauty in the country and on their second day anchored at Port Leschenault she remarked, ‘We were all struck by the pretty aspect of the country at the mouth of the inlet and in parts along the shore. Masses of beautiful foliage grow down to the water’s edge…’37 Similarly, a week later she wrote, ‘I cannot forget the exquisite beauty of the colony.’ 38 After three weeks anchored in the Inlet, Louisa and her family left the ship and spent their first night in tents on the land. Louisa was no doubt pleased to leave the boat and she was eager to portray her disembarkation positively to her brother Waller, who had remained in London. In her diary she transcribed a letter to him: I must attempt before I lie down for the first time in the bush, to give you some description of the picturesque, romantic scenes in which we are now engaged. We have just made our beds on the ground, arranged our tent for the night, and with the moon shining brightly through the canvas over head, solemn stillness reigning around a log fire, the chirling of grasshoppers and now and then the breaking of a wave on the distant shore… 39 Like the Bussells, Louisa would have been well acquainted with the picturesque and she used this term in the passage above to describe the domestic scene of their camp, rather than the distant landscape surrounding Australind. This was consistent with the approach of Uvedale Price and Arthur Young who applied the term to ‘improved’ or domesticated landscapes rather than the wilder scenery of Gilpin’s tourist visions.40 The following month Louisa used the term in a similar way and, after spending all day washing, a task she had never undertaken in England or France, wrote: ‘I have no inclination to explore. It is attended with so much fatigue, and the country is so similar everywhere, I think there is nothing to tempt me beyond the precincts of our own picturesque encampment.’41 While she described the distant environment as ‘beautiful’ she found aspects of this landscape lacking in sufficient variety to be termed picturesque.

37 Louisa Clifton, Diary, BL, MN 1294, ACC 398A, 18/3/1841. 38 Louisa Clifton, Diary, BL, MN 1294, ACC 398A, 26/3/1841. 39 Louisa Clifton, Diary, BL, MN 1294, ACC 398A, 5/4/1841. 40 Hemmingway, Landscape imagery and urban culture in early nineteenth-century Britain, p. 21 and 68. 41 Louisa Clifton, Diary, BL, MN 1294, ACC 398A, 18/5/1841. 167 She often viewed the landscape through the eyes of a painter and even commented that some scenes reminded her of the French views.42 During their first year at Australind, Louisa made several sketches of Leschenault Inlet, their camp and the early cottages. One of these sketches was embellished by a lithographer, T.C. Dibdin (Figure 5.4 is Dibdin’s lithograph, Figure 5.3 is Louisa Clifton’s original sketch). Barbara Chapman noted that Dibdin transformed an accurate sketch of the landscape into an arcadian scene.43 In keeping with picturesque conventions in the manner of Price and Young, more variety was added to the landscape in the form of people, sailing ships and extra vegetation on the sand hills. Louisa admired the romantic and picturesque paintings of Claude Lorrain but her sketches were attempts to portray the landscape as she saw it. She used these sketches to convey to her friends and family visual representations of her life at Australind. ‘I am so anxious’ she wrote, ‘to send dearest Frank and Waller and Priscy a few sketches of our present landscape.’44

Figure 5.3 Louisa Clifton, View of Leschenault Bay, 184145

42 Louisa Clifton, Diary, BL, MN 1294, ACC 398A, 20/6/1841. 43 Barbara Chapman, The Colonial Eye, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 1979, p. 113. 44 Louisa Clifton, Diary, BL, MN 1294, ACC 398A, 29/5/1841. 45 From Chapman, The Colonial Eye, p. 98. 168

Figure 5. 4 After Louisa Clifton, A View of Koombana Bay or Port Leschenault, Australind, lithographed by T.C. Dibdin c1840s.46

Like Clifton, John Ramsden Wollaston took his responsibilities seriously, but Wollaston’s obligations were associated with his clerical duties and his primary concern was with the moral improvement of his ministry, rather than the productive capacity of the land. With his knowledge of the Bible and his duties as a minister, it is not surprising that Wollaston often described the landscape using Biblical allusions and metaphors. At times, his early responses to the land evoke despair at being so far from his familiar environment and he used passages from the Bible to give him hope and strength. He explained that it was always his wish to: see a Country in a state of primitive nature, & now that wish has been granted; but the impression on my mind has been very different to what I anticipated. Nothing can be more depressing than the loneliness of the Bush away from any Settlement…that I have been almost tempted to shed tears at the desolateness of the Scene, had I not called to mind the ubiquity of the God of Nature, who can make a ‘wilderness like Eden & a desert like the Garden of the Lord’… 47

46 From Chapman, The Colonial Eye, p. 93. 47 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, May-Nov 1841, p. 128. 169 Wollaston also explained both the trials of the land and the food and water it provided in Biblical terms: I am reminded in this Country of many Scriptural allusions. - I have seen today ‘the Pelican in the Wilderness.’ - The account of God’s providence over his people in Egypt & the Wilderness in the 105th Ps. is such as might serve for a description of a like display of His Omnipotence & mercy, by a miraculous and overwhelming increase either of the common annoyances of this Country, to punish us for our sins; - or of its natural resources to sustain life, & prosper the work of our hands. Altho’ our streams are not held sacred, as with Pharoah & his people, we have abundance of fish…- Our land ‘brings forth frogs’, ‘we have all manner of flies,’ (and fleas) ‘in all our quarters.’ We have had ‘hailstones for rain’, & ‘flames of fire in our land’ are of constant occurrence. ‘Vines and fig trees’ yield our staple fruits.48 In the Christian tradition the pelican is sometimes seen as a symbol of Christ’s redeeming work,49 and in this passage Wollaston saw that in spite of the fleas, heavy rain and bushfires, God provided his family with fish in the Preston River and fruit and vegetables from the land. Wollaston’s understanding of ‘wilderness’ is also consistent with the Biblical idea of wilderness as an unwelcoming place, rather than the romantic idea of wilderness. These Biblical images were familiar to Wollaston and they assisted him to understand and accept the land and his place in it. On a broader level, Wollaston’s use of the Scriptures to understand the land reflects a Christian view of nature whereby God provided nature for humans’ use and, because God created nature it should be revered.50 However, Biblical metaphors and allusions were not the only way Wollaston ‘saw’ the environment. In the nineteenth century it was common for English parsons to be naturalists, and Wollaston’s Biblical images sometimes coexisted with scientific descriptions of the country. He expressed an interest in the botanical uniqueness of the flora: The shrubs and plants, when examined in detail, are, many of them, curious & beautiful; the flowers brilliant, & characterised generally by great delicacy of texture. The Grass Tree (or Black Boy) is most curious; the Zamia, or Palm,

48 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals, Volume 1, 1 Dec 1841, p. 146. 49 F. L. Cross (ed), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997, p. 1249. 50 Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, p. 150. 170 beautiful and graceful. Yet, not withstanding, I am very loth to believe there is any scenery to be found in the whole of this immense Country at all equal to that in the picturesque parts of England. The leaves of many of the trees and shrubs grow in a vertical position to the stem – wh[ich] is more curious than ornamental.51 One way in which Wollaston responded to the novelty of the flora and fauna was to collect specimens in a Hortus siccus, like George Fletcher Moore did at the Upper Swan.52 He noted, too, that there were many beautiful birds53 and he regretted he had little time for exploring and finding interesting beetles, marine plants and shells.54 Wollaston’s interest in nature also extended to the soil and using the prose of an amateur scientist he remarked that the ‘Soil of this Country varies in a remarkable manner; sand, however, greatly predominating…’55 Unlike most of the colonists discussed so far, Wollaston hardly ever used the language of the picturesque to describe the environment. He only used it when he went to Albany in 1848: The site of the Town is beautifully situated chosen, between two Hills, sloping down to the white sands of the harbour, of wh[ich] it commands a full view, with the Hills on the other side next to the open sea! – The white stone houses are picturesquely scattered about with their gardens, like an English Village. – No mud hovels as at Bunbury.56 Ryan argued that in colonial Australia, the likening of scenes to pictures was a ‘way of controlling their otherwise threatening otherness…The landscape itself is deferred; it exists only in so far as it reminds one of a European exemplum.’57 For Wollaston, this was clearly not the case. These houses, which reminded him of England, were comforting. He found the scene appealing and using the language of an amateur botanist, proceeded to comment on the novelty and uniqueness of the native flora in the region: ‘The trees, what few there are, are Cazuarina [sic] and dwarf Gums; the native

51 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, May – Nov 1841, p. 128. 52 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, May-Nov 1841, p. 143. 53 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, May-Nov 1841, p. 143. 54 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, Dec 1841, p. 144. 55 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, May - Nov 1841, p. 128. 56 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 3, 12/7/1848, p. 86. 57 Ryan, The Cartographic Eye, p. 61. 171 shrubs, Herbaceous plants, & other flowers, for the most part new to me, curious and beautiful.’58 Wollaston, Clifton and his daughter, Louisa, shared the same cultural heritage that influenced the ways they viewed and understood the landscapes of Western Australia. They were familiar with the picturesque, influenced by romanticism but also knew of scientific approaches to the natural world. Even with this shared background though, there were differences. Occupation, reason for emigrating, age and personality also influenced their responses to the environment. Wollaston’s familiarity with the Bible, his belief in his role as a spiritual leader and his faith were significant factors in how he responded. Louisa Clifton’s youth and freedom from responsibilities contributed to her optimistic approach, while her skill as a painter gave her an alternative way of expressing herself. Marshall Clifton took a keen interest in natural history and expressed delight with the landscapes, but his family and work obligations meant that his utilitarian approach to the land was particularly evident.

Using and Managing the Land In his public role as Chief Commissioner, Clifton behaved as a colonial gentleman riding across the country, assessing it for its potential economic value while enthusiastically praising the romantic and picturesque scenery. However, Clifton the gardener presents a softer image. Gardening was his favourite pastime and he worked side by side with his family and servants planting, digging and trimming to produce with pride a huge variety of vegetables, fruits and flowers. His accounts of gardening span all the years of his journal and they evoke his feelings about his garden: True Spring day with now & then a few drops of Warm Rain. All the plants & Flowers smelling delightfully. Left off Flannel Waistcoat. Gardening the whole day & planted Potatoes (Ashleaved & black) in the Home Garden. Another most exquisite soft Spring Day. The Scent of the Flowers very strong indicating Rain which came on at night. Planting Indian Corn in the home Garden.59 Throughout the years in which he wrote his diary, Clifton listed the huge range of vegetables he planted and he recorded the growth of all his crops and expressed delight, satisfaction and pride when he picked the produce. By August 1841, only three

58 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 3, 12/7/1848, p. 86. 59 MW Clifton, Journal, 23 & 24 September 1852, Transcription, P. Barnes. 172 months after he arrived at the Leschenault Inlet, he had planted radishes, lettuces, onions, cabbages, apple and pear trees, cape gooseberry, cabbages, herbs, melon, orange seeds, cucumber, marrow and peas.60 In August 1843 he noted that his men were engaged in making Elinor’s garden.61 Then, by 1845, Clifton himself was spending time and effort in flower gardening.62 He did not always name the flowers, simply recording that he spent time flower gardening, but he did record planting geraniums, stocks and wallflowers.63 As discussed in Chapter Two, flower gardening in Australia has usually been associated with women and femininity,64 but as with George Fletcher Moore and Vernon Bussell, in Clifton’s case this is not so. Clifton clearly enjoyed gardening and he spoke publicly on its pleasures and advantages. In a speech to the Legislative Council65 he announced that gardening ‘leads to early rising, a habit which is conducive to bodily health and mental energy and gives a power of enjoyment of all things’.66 Apart from his enjoyment of gardening and the benefits of being able to eat the produce, his substantial investment in growing vegetables had other benefits. Andrea Gaynor argued that the desire for independence, actual and symbolic, was both a powerful incentive for growing one’s own food in colonial Australia and a measure of status.67 Clifton’s garden produce was another way for him to display his success in self-sufficiency. Symbolically, it also helped to verify and maintain his standing in the colony as a respectable and independent gentleman. Clifton also took pleasure from flower gardening and, as has been suggested for other colonists in Australia,68 this may have been one way in which he turned space into place; a way of making this space meaningful to him and filling it with memories of his home in England. Wollaston’s primary reason for being in the Colony was to tend to the spiritual welfare of the emigrants and not to ‘improve’ the land, but his circumstances meant that

60 MW Clifton, Journal, 12 June, 3, 10, 12 August, 22 September 1841, Transcription, P. Barnes. 61 MW Clifton, Journal, 16 August, 1843, Transcription, P. Barnes. 62 MW Clifton, Journal, 23 April 1845, 9 September 1850, Transcription, P. Barnes. 63 MW Clifton, Journal, 23, 25 April 1845, Transcription, P. Barnes. 64 Holmes, ‘Fertile Ground: Women and Horticulture’; Hosking, ‘“I ‘ad to ‘ave me a garden”’. 65 The Legislative Council was a branch of the early colonial government. Members were nominated by the Governor. Its main function was to pass bills but these could be vetoed by the Governor. http://www.ccentre.wa.gov.au/index.cfm?event=earlyGovernment (accessed 13/07/08). 66 MW Clifton, MN 1294, ACC 698A microfilm, reel 3, fragment of speech delivered in the Legislative Council c. 1855. 67 Gaynor, Harvest of the Suburbs, pp. 48-66. 68 See especially Holmes, Martin and Mirmohamadi, Reading the Garden, Chapter Two. 173 in some ways he was more intimately connected with the land than Clifton. Less wealthy than Clifton, Wollaston and his family relied heavily on food they could grow, with potatoes and onions their staple foods.69 Consequently, he learned the best times and places to plant crops. By observing the land and experimenting, he found efficient methods to increase his productivity. He devised a system of improving the fertility of the natural gullies on his land (see Figures 5.5 and 5.6) and explained how this was achieved: after the trees are cut down & cleared off – a great quantity of tough-rooted aquatic plants have to be dug up & burnt – the sides are then thrown down to get as extensive a bottom level as we can – this is dug over, & prepared against the floods which cover the whole and remain for some days. As they retire the water is further absorbed. On the return of summer the Soil is in beautiful order, having imbibed rich sediment, & retains its Moisture, & when everything is burnt up on higher ground. The Crops are off long before the return of flood.70

Figure 5.5 John Ramsden Wollaston’s sketch of a gully in its natural state71

69 John Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2 (1842-1844), edited by Geoffrey Bolton, Heather Vose and Allan Watson with Suzanne Lewis, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1992, p. 74, 11/4/1843. 70 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2, 22/2/1843, p. 41. 71 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2, p. 43. 174

Figure 5.6 John Ramsden Wollaston’s sketch of his modified gully72

Wollaston was extremely proud of his efforts to produce food and he recorded his first harvest of wheat: ‘The first sheaf that was ever made by a Parson in this Country was made this day - Dec 7th.’73 Similarly, Wollaston expressed his satisfaction with his crop of maize and melons: ‘Our maize has quite recovered the attack of the Caterpillar, & is most luxuriant. We took great pains in preparing the ground – some of it is 9 feet high, & has several Cobs on each stalk. It’s [sic] handsome broad green leaves are most refreshing to the eye. Our melon crop promises well.’74 Wollaston’s family also related to the land in a physical sense. To supplement beef and mutton, which were too expensive for everyday eating, Wollaston and his sons hunted kangaroos, wallabies, bandicoots, cockatoos and fish.75 Working on the land and hunting the native animals was a matter of necessity, but it also meant that he developed a more intimate relationship with the land than did Clifton. Like his father, Wollaston’s 21 year old son, William, took an interest in the native flora and ‘discovered in a swamp, & transported into our garden, some delicate and elegant species of Wattle –

72 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2, p. 44. 73 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, 6/12/1841, p. 152. 74 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2, 5/1/1843, p. 23. 75 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, May-Nov 1841, p. 142, 6/7/1842, p. 231; Volume 2, 1992, 13/3/1843, p. 58. 175 not often met with hereabouts…’76 This was the first mention that the Wollaston’s garden contained decorative native plants as well as vegetables and fruits. They also brought native animals into their house. With Wollaston’s help, his son John made a large parrot cage with canes from the garden and they kept a tame white cockatoo they named ‘Bobby’, that stayed around the house and teased the cat and the dogs.77 Wollaston’s daughters had a kangaroo rat for a pet that ate from their hands and followed them.78 This willingness to nurture native animals and birds modifies Adrian Franklin’s argument that ‘farmers, hunters and bounty-hunters were systematically clearing away the native animals in a manner so cold and calculating that it betrayed their absolute lack of affection or admiration – or connection to them’.79 Although raising native animals and bringing parts of the bush into the garden could be interpreted as another way of ‘taming’ the land, it was also a way in which Wollaston and his family gained knowledge about the environment beyond the house and garden and made connections with their new environment. Though comfortable with his new environments, at times Wollaston was nostalgic for England. After seven years in the Colony he moved to Albany, where, with more time for gardening and colder winters than at Australind and Bunbury, he grew English flowers and shrubs. It is not clear whether Wollaston tended the flower garden himself but he described the Parsonage, his house in Albany, as standing ‘in a pretty garden: The geraniums and other flowering shrubs bordered by neat gravel walks recall the “thousand memories” of England, while the eye wanders with pleasure over the placid waters of the harbour…’80 There is no doubt that his garden evoked memories of England, and also assisted him to create a sense of place in his new home in Albany. Wollaston saw his church at Picton as an extension of his house and he worked hard to ensure that it was attractive by planting geraniums and other shrubs around it.81 Although built in an English style, the church was constructed from local materials. It had a timber frame, rushes for thatch roofing, wattle for wall panels and a clay floor coated with lime and ashes.82 He was extremely proud of his church and claimed that its

76 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2, 14/6/1843, p. 116. 77 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, 6/12/1841, p. 163. 78 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2, 14/6/1843. p. 116. 79 Franklin, Animal Nation, p. 79, (emphasis in original). 80 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 3, letter to Rev E Hawkins, 5/6/1852, p. 266. 81 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2, p. 103. 82 R.McK. Campbell and Van Bremen, I. H., St Mark’s Church Picton: Conservation Plan, Report commissioned by the Anglican Parish of Carey Park, Bunbury, WA, 1998. 176 opening was the most important event of his life.83 During his first sermon in the church he declared: ‘I have never felt more strongly than at this Moment that, by Emigrating with my family to this country & throwing in my lot amongst you, I have obeyed the call of God.’84 Wollaston’s Church gave his presence in Western Australia a purpose, fulfilling his role of bringing Christianity to the Colony; it made him feel worthwhile and helped him to settle into place there. Wollaston had always decorated his house with English evergreens but for their first Christmas in Western Australia he used branches of wattle that he described as being ‘a very fair substitute for Laurel, & excepting in length of the leaves, somewhat resembling it. - But the force of the symbol appears by no means strong as in England, where there is contrast with leafless trees.’85 When he had completed his church at Picton he also decorated this at Christmas ‘with our only substitute for holly & laurel, the black wattle, & then increased the effect by the addition of Palm Leaves (the Zamia)’. 86 As well as decorative adornments they became a symbol of Wollaston’s readiness to accept new ways to celebrate old traditions. As discussed in Chapter Two, historians have used the term ‘hybridity’ to describe the way colonists mixed British and Australian elements in their new culture. In Wollaston’s case this hybridisation could be seen in the food he ate, his gardens with both English and native flowers, his native pets, the Church he built with local materials to a European design and his use of native flowers to celebrate English traditions. This practice of incorporating aspects of the Australian environment into English traditions indicates a willingness to adapt and improvise in a new place, but more importantly it provided opportunities for Wollaston and his family to engage emotionally with the land around them. Life at Australind was physically demanding for the Wollaston family but their farming, vegetable growing and hunting meant that after three years Wollaston was able to write with conviction: ‘We have gathered experience in many things. The climate, seasons and soils we understand better.’87 This physical intimacy with the environment paved the way for Wollaston to develop an attachment to Western Australia. In contrast, Marshall Waller Clifton appreciated the uniqueness and aesthetic beauty of the

83 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, 20/9/1842, p. 240. 84 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, 20/9/1842, p. 245. 85 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, 25/12/1841, p. 165. 86 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2, 26/12/1842, p. 12. 87 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2, 27/7/1843, p. 149. 177 landscape but he saw this separately from his own land where he maintained English practices and an English outlook. Although Clifton admired the native flora he did not record incorporating any indigenous flowers into his own garden. His garden was full of vegetables, fruits and flowers from England, consistent with the image of colonial gentlemen who transposed a little part of England onto a different environment. Clifton and Wollaston both used the land to grow food and flowers, they felled timber to build houses, sheds and fences but they also demonstrated a conservationist sensibility. Clifton issued information and instructions to new settlers at Australind that specified the amount of food they would be allocated, their working hours and their eligibility for a hut. He forbade them to fell any trees without first receiving permission from him: ‘He will also be allowed Fire wood without charge provided he uses only dead wood on the Ground of the Stink Wood but it is positively forbidden to cut any Tree without special leave from Me.’88 The following month, while clearing land to build a road, Clifton recorded in his journal: Another most delicious Day. Out the whole of it superintending the clearing of the Road near the Terrace, choosing Mahogany Trees in the Line of Road to cut, and arranging various points with the Settlers. Put forth Notices requiring the Emigrants who had struck their Tents to put them up again; and forbidding Persons to cut Timber or take away Firewood on any of the Allotments; or from the Streets without Special License given by me.89 Why did Clifton issue these instructions? It is possible that they were another means of affirming his role as leader of the settlement, but he was not an unreasonable man who made arbitrary regulations. It is possible that his rationale for prohibiting settlers from cutting down trees was based on his knowledge of woodland management in England. With his interest in horticulture, as a member of the Royal Society and as a gentleman who lived in Hampshire, not far from the New Forest, it is quite possible that Clifton had come into contact with woodland management practices there. It is widely accepted that trees in Britain have been used and managed for centuries.90 Before the British Forestry Commission was established after the First World War, woods were administered privately and there was great variety in how they

88 MW Clifton, Journal, 12 April 1842, Transcription, P. Barnes. 89 MW Clifton, Journal, 23 May 1842, Transcription, P. Barnes. 90 Oliver Rackham, The History of the Countryside, J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, 1986; Oliver Rackham, Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape, J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, 1990; G. F. Peterken, Woodland Conservation and Management, Chapman & Hall, London, 1981; Smout, Nature Contested. 178 were managed. The first laws relating to forests were concerned with deer but from 1184 there were laws that also preserved woodlands and controlled pasturage.91 By the seventeenth century much value was placed on and care was taken with many of the woods, and by the early nineteenth century naturally regenerated woods were valued over plantations.92 Specific management techniques widely practiced and understood by woodmen and managers of forests included the practice of coppicing, whereby underwood trees are cut to near ground level at regular intervals then grow again. A typical British wood consists of underwood and timber trees, usually oak, and while the felling of underwood was routine, the felling of timber trees was infrequent and called for special notice.93 Perhaps Clifton viewed the larger trees around Australind like the oak trees in British woodlands and believed they needed protection from indiscriminate clearing. Wollaston learnt to modify natural shallow gullies to retain moisture and thus produce fruits and vegetables more efficiently, but he was also aware of the potential for erosion to carry away soil in larger gullies. In Albany he heard of a case where water had washed away fencing, soil and a cottage and he advised that this gully should be ‘kept clear in future, as an outlet in case of future accidents, the sides sloped down & planted with native shrubs, wh[ich] will soon interlace their roots, consolidate the earth, & be ornamental as well as useful’.94 While Wollaston’s basic understanding of erosion does not make him a conservationist, it does demonstrate that he advocated practices that would preserve the environment, even if his motive was to prevent further accidents. These actions by Clifton and Wollaston support Bonyhady’s argument that there were individuals in this period who expressed concern for the land and acted in a positive way to preserve it.95

People and Home Social Class, Gender and Domesticity The Western Australian Company wanted Australind to resemble an English village with relations between masters and servants the same as in England. Society would be hierarchical with everyone aware of his or her place. To what extent, though, did this

91 Peterken, Woodland Conservation and Management, p. 15. 92 Smout, Nature Contested, pp. 49 and 60. 93 Rackham, The History of the Countryside, p. 100. 94 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals, Volume 3, 12/7/1848, p. 86. 95 Bonyhady, The Colonial Earth. 179 occur? Were relations between master and servant maintained or was the practice of colonisation different to the theory? How did these social relationships influence Clifton’s and Wollaston’s experiences of their environments; both their domestic environments and beyond their homes and gardens? For Clifton, little changed. With his Navy pension and his annual salary from the Company, he had the means to engage enough servants, who, together with the labour provided by his family, allowed him to continue to live as a gentleman. From time to time he dismissed his servants for various minor offences but he was able to replace them with little trouble. He rarely complained of a lack of servants; a problem remarked upon by other colonists. The following extract from his Journal for January 1842 describes the servants in his employ and his relationship with them: 2 Jany Sunday. A cooler day with some Cloud & strong Wind….I agreed to take Smith as my Sevt from tomorrow & to put Brown on the Establishment in lieu of him. Hooper having wished to give up the care of Horses & Dogs, I desired Moorsome for the present to undertake it. Clewlow & Robt Hooper to construct a Kiln for burning Lime. 10 Jan I found Benjamin not at work and I told him that as He was reported to Me not fit to be employed as Carpenter, I shd, as soon as putting up Mr Austins's House was completed, reduce him to a Labourer. Mrs Whitely came to complain that Whitely was Drunk at Birch's as He had been for the last few Days. I went there myself and found him beastly Drunk; I sent him away threatening to discharge him and I called Mr Birch to severe account for already allowing Men to get drunk in his House. He said that Whitely had had nothing there - but got Drunk at his own House & then came there & laid down: I told him He ought not to admit him in that State.96 Even when Clifton was no longer Chief Commissioner he continued his gentlemanly lifestyle and did not change his relations with his servants. After the Western Australian Company folded, Clifton continued to engage indoor servants, outdoor labourers and a shepherd.97 He still saw himself as a gentleman and still had enough wealth to behave as one. Relations with his servants were similar to the situation

96 MW Clifton, Journal, 2, 3, 10 January 1842, Transcription, P. Barnes. 97 For example see MW Clifton, Journal, Transcription, P. Barnes, 16 and 28 Jan 1851, 6 March 1851. 180 he left in England. He supervised most of the manual work and chose to carry out himself, only those tasks he enjoyed. Wollaston was not in the same situation. Until he built a church, he and his family lived from his capital and what they could produce from the land. They were able to hire some servants but Wollaston found them scarce and expensive.98 When Picton Church was built and Wollaston was granted an annual stipend he hoped it would enable him to maintain his servants.99 As well as being of practical assistance, the presence of servants in the households of the English middle-class was a sign of status. Wollaston was therefore aware that his way of life at Australind without servants was more consistent with that of a lower class. He described how colonial living changed his perception of labourers and how gender roles in the household were modified. In Wollaston’s first entry, dated November 1841, he gave an overview of his first six months in the colony. Here he was conscious of his reduced circumstances and felt the need to defend this situation, while at the same time expressing his gratitude in a fashion consistent with that of a humble clergyman: The House indeed (as are very many of the colonists’ first residences) is nothing but a Hut, or string of Huts, such as a Labourer in England wd [would] not think much of; but having the Winter before us and the rains already descending, we gladly & joyfully & I hope, thankfully, took as early possession as we could. Thus I obtained, almost immediately on landing, 115 acres of land, substantially fenced in, five of them cleared for a Garden & planted with fruit trees & a fair quantity of vegetables.100 Wollaston also drew attention to a variety of hardships for middle-class people wishing to emigrate. He explained, ‘while we are compelled to live as day labourers, literally earning our bread in the sweat of our brow some omission of civilised forms cannot be avoided’.101 These experiences of manual work also gave Wollaston new empathy with English labourers. After he killed and ate a wild pig that was ruining their garden he commented: I used to laugh & affect to be disgusted at the Village ‘Hog Feasts’ in Cambridgeshire, whenever a poor Labourer killed his pig - but now I can fully

98 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, May-Nov 1841, p. 138. 99 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, 20 October 1842, p. 254. 100 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, May-November 1841, p.126, (emphasis in original). 101 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, May-November 1841, p. 132. 181 enter into the Zest of the thing, even in the hottest weather, & can pardon the gormandizing of the poor family, knowing what it is to work & live many days without fresh meat.102 Special occasions were a way of displaying and maintaining class membership. By January 1844 Wollaston was living in Bunbury with his wife and youngest daughters while his sons remained on their Picton property. Wollaston recorded a celebratory meal on New Year’s Day when all his children joined him and they dined with more ceremony than usual. Here, too, the land (called ‘Bush’), is perceived as a challenge to middle-class refinement: On this Occasion, & only since I came here, I made use of my Plate; wh[ich] turned out very bright, as it came cleaned from England, & somewhat dazzled our three-years unpractised Colonial eyes. I am glad that I can go back a little to the common decencies & comforts of a Gentleman’s table, for the sake of my Boys. John indeed himself remarked that on this account, if on no other, he must come & see us occasionally, to wear down a little roughness acquired by a Bush life. It is well my boys are aware of this, & wish to correct it.103 In addition to commenting on how some of their own behaviours were modified in the colonial environment, and how they strove to maintain their respectability, Wollaston observed how other colonists acted out their class positions. On a visit to the Molloy family at Augusta Wollaston observed: Altho’ the Dining Room has a clay floor & opens into the Dairy, the thatch appears overhead, & there is not a single pane of glass on the premises (the windows being merely square frames with shutters) yet our entertainment, the style of manners of our Host and Hostess, their dress & conversation, all conspired to show that genuine good breeding & gentlemanly deportment are not always lost sight of among English emigrants. 104 Wollaston also compared his own status with Clifton and commented that in a letter published in the Inquirer, Clifton had been ‘quizzed for his grandiloquent ways’ and was referred to as ‘Waller 1st’.105 Wollaston noticed (and was possibly a little disgruntled) that Clifton retained his gentlemanly standing in the Colony. Although

102 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, 21 March 1842, p. 199. 103 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2, 2 January 1844, p. 214, (emphasis in original). 104 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, 17 Dec 1841, p. 158. 105 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, 23 May 1842, p. 220. 182 Clifton continued to regard himself as a rural gentleman after his position with the Company ceased, Wollaston saw things differently: All the foolishness about the ‘Commissioner’ has now vanished! A great improvement in our contracted society here – cast as we all are upon a new Shore, & all having to struggle alike for our subsistence; among whom therefore no silly pretensions of one above another in the same class shd [should] appear…106 Wollaston may have derided Clifton for his ‘silly pretensions’ among people of the same class, but behaving in accordance with one’s class was still important to him. Calling, or visiting, was an important leisure activity in Victorian England with prescribed etiquette regarding time of visit, length of visit and what to wear. Colonists attempted to continue this practice, though as Wollaston remarked soon after he moved to Albany, these customs were relaxed in the Colony: ‘We have had two or three more calls upon us – but there is no form here. – Today walked to Strawberry Hill, & called on Lady Spencer.’107 Although class and status were important to Wollaston, to support his wife and ensure their household operated efficiently, he participated in tasks not usually associated with English middle-class men, assisting his wife with a variety of domestic duties. In the heat of February 1842 he wrote: ‘I have been helping my poor Wife to wash her things to-day.’108 The next month he helped his wife wash five dozen pieces of laundry. Wollaston commented that clothes became particularly dirty in this country and declared: ‘I shall never be hard upon Washerwomen again as long as I live, but think they are perfectly justified in eating & drinking, gossiping & complaining as much as they please.’109 Wollaston also assisted with the preparation of meals and on one occasion he killed and dressed a chicken.110 1843 was another difficult year and he wrote of working hard outdoors in the fields, the garden and also indoors. Mary was unwell early in the year so he cooked, washed dishes and cleaned the knives.111 He continued to help with the washing, which he again remarked was an onerous task.112 In Bunbury he continued to assist Mary with

106 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2, 5 January 1844, p. 215. 107 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 3, 18/7/1848, p. 89. 108 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, 16 Feb 1842, p. 188. 109 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, 31 March 1842, p. 200. 110 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, 18 March 1842, p. 194. 111 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2, 21 January 1843, p. 27. 112 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2, 17 Feb 1843, p. 36-37. 183 the cooking: ‘I must now see to our dinner having just put the mutton into the oven just as I began to write; it must be now baked enough.’113 In the Wollaston household at Australind and Bunbury the gender divisions of labour became blurred in the process of adapting to different social and environmental conditions. As Bird has argued,114 more flexible gender roles in the Colony assisted women to connect more positively to the environment, and here, I also suggest that this was the case for some men. The sense of satisfaction that Wollaston gained from assisting his wife with the housework connected him more firmly to place. Other boundaries in the Wollaston household also became more flexible. MacKellar has clearly shown how women in Canada and Australia frequently ventured beyond the confines of their house and garden and developed connections with the land.115 Similarly, just as Wollaston helped with the washing and cooking, women in his family sometimes stepped away from their domestic spaces. His daughters accompanied him into the bush to gather banksia cones and wood for the fire as well as the fruit of a tree that Wollaston called a ‘wild pear’. 116 Nor were the Clifton women relegated to the house and garden. Clifton’s daughters frequently accompanied him on horseback to view the construction of a road, to visit friends or simply to ride for pleasure.117

Colonists, the Aboriginal People and Belonging Like the colonists discussed in the previous chapters, John Wollaston and Marshall and Louisa Clifton came into contact with Aboriginal people. In Wollaston’s journals there are many references to Aboriginal people, but the Cliftons seldom wrote of them. With a reasonable income and little need of their knowledge of the land, Marshall Clifton was indifferent to their way of life and was not interested in understanding their relationship with the country. In his official position Clifton wrote about Aboriginal people as a Christian philanthropist. While on his outward voyage he addressed the settlers concerning their treatment:

113 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 3, 3/6/1848, p. 69. 114 Bird, ‘Women in the Wilderness’. 115 MacKellar, Core of My Heart, My Country. 116 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2, 18 July 1843, p. 141. The ‘wild pear’ Wollaston referred to would probably have been Xylomelum occidentale, commonly known as the ‘woody pear’ of the Jarrah forest of south-western Australia. C. A. Gardner (ed) Wildflowers of Western Australia, West Australian Newspapers Ltd., Perth, 1959. 117 MW Clifton, Journal, 2, 5, 8 October, 25 November 1841, Transcription, P. Barnes. 184 We should recollect that as fellow men, the natives are entitled to be regarded by us, if we profess ourselves to be Christians, with the same humanity and justice as is due from one man to another in a state of civilization…that in taking possession of their Country we may in the first place appear to them to be committing a vast act of injustice towards them…118 In correspondence to Thomas Buckton, the secretary of the Western Australian Company, Clifton’s approach was similar. He informed Buckton that, ‘the aboriginal inhabitants of the Country are in tribes or (perhaps more properly speaking) large families who occupy a certain extensive district and subsist by means of fish, birds and animals which they catch, grubs of a large description taken out of the Black Boy (Xanthorea)…’119 He continued: ‘We have hitherto found these poor people perfectly harmless and good natured…They are always laughing and happy and I can only describe them as being “good humoured idle beggars”…They are acute and intelligent, but I am convinced not capable of civilisation or mental cultivation.’120 However, Clifton’s private thoughts on the Aboriginal people were quite different to his official position. In May 1841, one month before the above letter to Buckton, he wrote in his journal: Jugan and his wife pigged together close with Us & I was entirely disgusted with the savage brutality of this Native. In fact they are all Murderers & fellows who are a disgrace to human Nature and have not one redeeming quality. The selfishness of the Man & his brutal unkindness to his Wife & refusing her almost anything We offered her made me detest this Race more than ever.121 Similarly, in September 1841 Clifton recorded his observations of a corroboree: ‘A corrobory [sic] of the Natives at Tea Time by the Store which we all attended, but it was degrading to Human Nature to see Men in such a state of Monkeish action.’122 After 1841 Clifton made even fewer references to the Aboriginal people, only mentioning from time to time how he used their labour as servants and mail carriers.

118 Marshall Waller Clifton, ‘Draft on address given to settlers while on the outward voyage concerning the treatment of natives and local animals and birds’, 1/2/1841, BL MN 1294, Microfilm Reel 4. 119 Marshall Waller Clifton, letter to Thomas J. Buckton, 8/6/1841, BL MN 1294/2 ACC 5122A transcription of Letterbook No 1 of MWC, p. 169. 120 Marshall Waller Clifton, letter to Thomas J. Buckton, 8/6/1841, BL MN 1294/2 ACC 5122A transcription of Letterbook No 1 of MWC, p. 171. 121 MW Clifton, Journal, 6 May 1841, Transcription, P. Barnes. 122 MW Clifton, Journal, 13 September 1841, Transcription, P. Barnes. 185 The contrast between Clifton’s public and private writing about the Aboriginal people may be partially explained by his desire to be judged favourably by members of the humanitarian movement in England during the 1830s and 1840s, which, as Reynolds suggests, was at the peak of its power and influence.123 Privately, though, he judged the Aboriginal people harshly. Clifton knew that the land supplied the Aboriginal people with everything they needed, but in his eyes only ‘savage’ people lived a subsistence way of life. In a similar way to George Fletcher Moore at the Upper Swan, who knew that European settlement had dispossessed Aboriginal people, this made little difference to Clifton’s farming and home making. Louisa Clifton first wrote about the Aboriginal people while still aboard their ship, the Parkfield, when it was anchored off Port Leschenault before they had set up their camp. She was shocked: I never witnessed so affecting a sight as this display, of the degradation of humanity. They do not look like human beings, so thin, so hideous, so filthy, [illegible] and painted red faces and hair, and pieces of rush pushed through their hair. I feel distressed at the idea of living among such a people, so low, so degraded a race.124 Three months later she described the place where they landed, before they had settled, as being a ‘wild untrodden wilderness.’125 Louisa knew Aboriginal people lived there yet their presence mattered little to her. However, only one month later she thought that the punishment for Aboriginal people caught stealing flour was too harsh and she appealed for a more humanitarian approach: ‘When will justice appear upon earth? Not I fear while white man who professes Christianity falls so far short of acting up to its first principles.’126 In the same diary entry she also wrote: ‘I cannot help liking these people, especially the children.’127 Perhaps her attitude towards them ‘softened’ as she spent more time with them. However, it is unlikely that her thoughts about the Aboriginal people, or her knowledge that they inhabited the land before Europeans arrived, either enhanced or diminished her attachment to Australind.

123 Reynolds, This Whispering in Our Hearts, p.10. 124 Louisa Clifton, Diary, BL MN 1294, ACC 398A 20/3/1841. 125 Louisa Clifton, Diary, BL MN 1294, ACC 398A, 16/6/1841. 126 Louisa Clifton, Diary, BL MN 1294, ACC 398A, 2/7/1841. 127 Louisa Clifton, Diary, BL MN 1294, ACC 398A, 2/7/1841. 186 John Wollaston regarded the Aboriginal people as ‘savages’,128 but, unlike Clifton who was intent on civilising and improving the land, Wollaston was intent on civilising the people. As Strong noted, after a year of living in the Colony Wollaston ‘subscribed to the common missionary view which upheld their full humanity’.129 Bolton also observed that he ‘showed a paternalistic but genuine concern for the Nyoongar Aborigines displaced by colonisation’.130 Wollaston believed that if Aboriginal people had the same opportunities and education as Europeans, they would be equal to white people in their intellectual accomplishments.131He was particularly concerned for Aboriginal children because he believed that the most effective way to bring Christianity to Aboriginal people and ‘civilise’ them was to separate the children from their own culture and educate them in Christian schools.132 Consequently, in 1853, after much correspondence with his superiors, Wollaston established a school at Albany for Aboriginal children.133 He firmly believed that he was fulfilling his obligations as a minister in the Anglican Church by setting up a missionary school but as Strong observed, ‘Wollaston demonstrates how easy it is for a good-hearted person to perpetrate great injustice in the name of Christianity…’134 Wollaston knew the Aboriginal people were ‘Possessors of the Soil’,135 and that the Europeans were responsible for ‘the ussurpation [sic] of the Ground & the secret destruction of the poor Aborigines’136 and while these phrases are evidence of his humanitarian attitude, they were embedded in his nineteenth century missionary zeal. Although he showed concern for the Aboriginal people and knowledge of their plight, he still viewed them as ‘savages’ and, while he worked hard to establish the missionary school at Albany, there is no evidence that his work and his knowledge that the Aboriginal people had been dispossessed of their land influenced how he felt about his own place in the Colony.

128 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2, pp. 16, 90. 129 Strong, ‘The Reverend John Wollaston and Colonial Christianity in Western Australia’, p. 282. 130 Geoffrey Bolton, ‘Preface’, The Wollaston Journals, Volume 3, p. x. 131 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals, Volume 2, ‘Summary of Two Years Experience’, p. 90. 132 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 3, letter to Reverend Ernest Hawkins, Albany, 5/12/1849, p. 153 and Private Journal of 3rd Archidiaconal Visitation, 21/2/1853, p. 303. 133 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 3, pp. 365-71. 134 Strong, ‘The Reverend John Wollaston and Colonial Christianity in Western Australia’, p. 282. 135 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 3, letter to Colonial Secretary, Albany, 30/11/1852, p. 287. 136 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 3, Private Journal of 3rd Archidiaconal Visitation, 1/3/1853, p. 311. 187 Wollaston admired the Aboriginal people’s knowledge of the bush137 and had some sympathy when they retaliated against the settlers for grazing stock where yam grew best, but he saw the conflict between the Aboriginal people and the settlers as an inevitable ‘consequence of Colonisation among savages in all parts of the Globe’.138 Though his reasons for being in the Colony were very different to Clifton’s, their shared awareness and knowledge of the Aboriginal people accentuated the differences between European and Aboriginal cultures. It did not contribute to any connections they made with the land or to their sense of belonging. Like the colonists at the Upper Swan and the Bussells at Augusta and The Vasse, Clifton’s, and even Wollaston’s knowledge that the Aboriginal people occupied the country prior to their arrival neither heightened nor undermined their attachment or sense of belonging.

Belonging at Australind and Picton Marshall Clifton and John Wollaston were similar ages when they emigrated to Australind and both remained in Western Australia for the rest of their lives. They both owned property and called Australind ‘home’ but their emotional connections with the landscape were different. While Wollaston was proud of his achievements regarding the produce he harvested from his land, land and ownership were not the focus of his life. In contrast, Clifton’s possession of land at Australind was very important to him. He was proud of the land he owned but his sense of ownership extended beyond his property. His strong sense of ownership, together with his enthusiasm for the country and his obvious pleasure in his garden may suggest some degree of attachment to Australind, but ownership and belonging do not necessarily occur together. Read’s conversations with many non-Indigenous Australians about different ways of belonging suggest that belonging may occur without owning land.139 Similarly, MacKellar’s study of women’s visceral response to place does not tie these concepts together. She categorically states that ‘it is not necessary to own land to have a sense of place.’140 While Read and MacKellar found that belonging can occur without ownership, conversely, owning land or property does not ensure that belonging will occur; Clifton’s

137 See for example, Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals, Volume 2, p. 132; Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 3, pp. 90-93. 138 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 3, p. 311. 139 Read, Belonging and Read, Returning to Nothing. 140 MacKellar, Core of my heart, my country, p. 18. 188 and Wollaston’s ownership of land at Australind did not mean they were emotionally connected to it. The ambiguities of the word ‘home’ have been discussed in the Introduction and the ways in which Clifton and Wollaston used ‘home’ offers some insight into their attachment to Australind. Like the Bussell family, Wollaston used ‘home’ to refer to both Australind and England but Clifton predominantly used ‘home’ to mean his house and property at Australind. Wollaston’s and Clifton’s use of the word ‘home’ are consistent with David Fitzpatrick’s explorations of ‘home’ in Irish-Australian correspondence, discussed in Chapter Two, where he suggested that references to emigrants’ place of origin as ‘home’ was a way to maintain solidarity with family and friends, whereas when ‘home’ was located in Australia it was typically restricted to the household environment. When Wollaston used his journal reflectively he associated home with England and his family and friends there: ‘I must ever cling to my Native home & those I’ve left behind.’141 More frequently though, he used the word ‘home’ to mean his house at Australind: ‘Still working at Bunbury – we go home tomorrow’142, ‘I must stay at home this week…’143 and ‘we reached home at half past five.’144 When Clifton used ‘home’ in Western Australia he also meant his property or household. Typical examples include: ‘Returned home to Tea’, ‘Reached Home before breakfast…’ and ‘All the ride home, Country most beautiful…’145 Clifton’s use of ‘home’ as the place where he returned for food, shelter, rest and companionship is consistent with his pragmatic approach to his journal and it cannot be assumed that he felt settled or ‘at home’ in Western Australia. Although he did not write in his journal of longing for England, a letter he wrote to John Wilson Croker in 1846, five years after he arrived in Western Australia, reveals that he was feeling unsettled. Clifton confided in Croker: ‘The Derangement of the Affairs of the Company, (with whose affairs however I am still troubled) has grievously damaged me, & I must make up my mind to settle here, for I cannot bear to leave those of my Family who have married and settled here in this neighbourhood.’146 Here, any attachment Clifton felt for

141 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2, 14/7/1843, p. 138. 142 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2, 15/9/1843, p. 171. 143 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2, 6/11/1843, p. 193. 144 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 3, 8/7/1848, p. 85. 145 MW Clifton, Journal, 15 June 1845, 3 Sept 1848, 3 January 1843, Transcription, P. Barnes. 146 Marshall Waller Clifton, letter to John Wilson Croker, 13 January 1846, Transcript, State Library of New South Wales, Citation No: MLDOC 1004, (emphasis in original) http://image.sl.nsw.gov.au/Ebind/doc1004/a463/a463000.html (accessed 31/07/06). 189 Western Australia seems to have been to his family, rather than the land. Clifton connected best to the land through his gardening, where he seemed most content, but it is difficult to say whether his attachment went beyond this. In spite of his delight with many aspects of Australind and the surrounding areas, and his self-consciousness of being a landowner, perhaps he always felt an English gentleman in an attractive, though predominantly un-English, landscape. At first Wollaston felt alienated from the land and he also questioned the extent to which he felt settled. With all the hard work to be done he thought it ‘quite a common misnomer to call the colonist a Settler for the first few years’.147 Initially he found the bush depressing and lonely with a silence that was sometimes broken ‘by the horrid screech of the great black, or white, Cockatoo…’148 He also yearned for his friends and on the last day of 1842 took solace in his journal where he thought of them: ‘At my time of life, I cannot but cling to them & my native land. New associations have little interest with me.’149 However, in spite of his nostalgia for friends and family, with time he gradually developed feelings of attachment for Western Australia. With wattle in his garden, a Kangaroo Rat as his youngest daughter’s pet, a green wheat field and English vegetables in the garden, their property was a blend of Australia and England. Their house, too was a hybrid of the new and the familiar: At this moment the scene around me is very much like an English common labourer’s cottage, for I am writing in the old hut, mud walls and the thatch above, a large log on the hearth of the mud chimney, a common black oil lamp and table of plank (with holes inserted for legs), a broken window patched with paper, a dog before the fire and cat at my elbow; but what is not English, kangaroo skins drying on a board over the beams and four emu legs in the chimney corner draining off the oil they contain in order to preserve them for the legs of a work table.150 Wollaston called Australind ‘home’. He built his church there and seemed to feel an emotional connection to this place but was unsettled again when he moved to Albany in 1848. Aged 57, he found this change difficult:

147 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2, ‘Summary of Two Years Experience’, p. 94, (emphasis in original), 148 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 1, p. 128, May-Nov 1841. 149 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2, p. 19, 31/12/1842. 150 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 2, 20/5/1843, p. 104. 190 It takes time to be reconciled to any change of residence wh [which] is likely to be permanent for any long period. – One knows not where to look for things; new objects & new faces cause at first a vacuity in the mind, & disturbance of associations in persons of my age wh[ich] are trying and dispiriting. In fact, we have no Home on earth – I must not look for it there. – There is so much duty in this Country that I can never allow myself to pray or wish for more than to be allowed health and strength to go thro with it. That I have been so long left entirely to myself by the Church at Home, & Sidney [sic] has been painfully felt, altho’ I am sure it cd [could] not be helped. – These sentiments, I fear, betray a hankering after things forbidden – Friends, relatives & my Native Land.151 Wollaston turned again to religion in the face of unsettledness. ‘Home’ was heaven and his duty as a Christian minister in Western Australia was more important than fulfilling his longing to be with friends and family in his country of birth. Louisa Clifton also experienced a longing for landscapes and people she had left behind, but at times, she, too, felt that Western Australia could be home. On her first sighting of Australind she described the feeling as one of ecstasy after such a long voyage and she referred to Australind as her ‘adopted homeland’.152 There was some doubt about where they would establish the settlement and on hearing that they were to remain at Australind and not go on to Port Grey, further north, Louisa Clifton was pleased: ‘This place [Australind] offers a home we never could have felt on an uncivilised uninhabited territory.’153 On their first night off the boat and in tents at Australind Louisa Clifton again associated ‘home’ with ‘civilisation’, and she described how she felt about the land. In a reassuring letter to Waller, her brother in London, she wrote: …we sat down to a welcome repast, and with more comfort than we could have imagined possible…I feel a sensation of ‘home’ in this place; civilisation is partly known. There are only 3 or 4 settlers, but there is the truest hospitality and kindness, and instead of being out of reach of any human beings, we have at once met with a hearty welcome and with ready assistance and co-operation. 154

151 Wollaston, The Wollaston Journals Volume 3, 10/8/1848, p. 102, (emphasis in original). His statement that he felt left isolated by ‘the Church at Home & Sidney [Sydney]’ was a reference to his common complaint that Western Australia was largely ignored by the bureaucracy of the Church. 152 Louisa Clifton, Diary, BL, MN 1294, ACC 398A, 17/3/1841. 153 Louisa Clifton, Diary, BL, MN 1294, ACC 398A, 28/3/1841. 154 Louisa Clifton, Diary, BL, MN 1294, ACC 398A, 5/4/1841. 191 Louisa’s surviving diary reveals a complex woman and a range of expressed emotions. There were times when she felt despair and longed for England and times when she revelled in her new venture. While she may have pined for a verdant landscape she saw beauty in much of the scenery around Australind. Her experiences further strengthen the argument that people can have more than one ‘home’ at a time and different ‘homes’ carry different meanings. England may always have been her ancestral ‘home’ but she also referred to her place in Australind as ‘home’. She was beginning to feel attached to this place where she was living with her family and where other colonists extended their warmth.

Conclusion In a similar way to members of the Bussell family, Wollaston and Marshall and Louisa Clifton viewed and responded to the landscape in a variety of ways. As Chief Commissioner Clifton was primarily concerned with the productivity of the land and this influenced his responses to it. He did, though, use the language of the picturesque in his enthusiastic descriptions of the scenery. A scientific perspective is also evident in Clifton’s descriptions of the environment as he sought to give the Western Australian Company complete and accurate information about the country in which they had invested. Louisa Clifton approached her experiences of arriving and settling with optimism and a sense of adventure. She used romantic imagery and the language of the picturesque to describe Leschenault Inlet and the surrounding country. She also used her artistic talent to sketch these landscapes accurately to communicate what she observed, and although familiar with picturesque paintings she did not embellish her sketches in this style. Wollaston’s primary approach to the land was as a minister of the Church of England and his descriptions are scattered with Biblical allusions and metaphors. He appreciated the flora at Australind but did not find the environment there picturesque; he only used a picturesque perspective to describe the settlement at Albany. Wollaston was less inclined than Marshall and Louisa Clifton to describe the landscape in romantic terms and this is consistent with the argument that those struggling to make a living from the land are less likely to view it from a romantic perspective. At Australind, Wollaston and his family lived as day labourers and grew much of their own food. As well as doing work that in England would have been done by their

192 servants, Wollaston helped his wife with the washing and cooking. Although these were hardships for Wollaston, his reduced circumstances resulted in a physical intimacy with the land that gave him the means to forge stronger emotional connections with the environment around Australind. His social class also influenced Clifton’s relationship with the environment at Australind, but in a very different way. His ability to behave as an English landowner with the capacity to hire servants and labourers removed the necessity for him to engage directly with the land, except when he chose to do so. His direct contact with the land was therefore on his own terms, and he was able to remain aloof from the ordinary, day- to-day activities of growing food. Clifton’s position as Chief Commissioner was short- lived but he remained an English landowner and this affected his feelings of belonging. Marshall Clifton and Wollaston had very different views about the Aboriginal people. In his official capacity Clifton expressed a sense of the impact of colonisation on the Aboriginal people, but in his private writing he saw them as brutes and a disgrace to human nature. In contrast, Wollaston believed the Aboriginal people could achieve the same intellectual abilities as Europeans if they had the same opportunities. However, in terms of how their awareness and knowledge of the Aboriginal people affected their connections with the land and their attachment to the Colony, these differences were of no consequence. Both Clifton’s and Wollaston’s awareness of the Aboriginal people and their attitudes towards them had no bearing on their attachment to the Colony and the ways they understood it to be home. The Cliftons and Wollaston all attributed different meanings to the word ‘home’ and show how it was possible to have a ‘home’ in more than one place, but to what extent did they feel they belonged at Australind? Louisa Clifton found the landscape attractive and called Australind home. Her father came to Australind aged 53. He tried to understand and accept the land with the aid of science, a romantic sensibility and a utilitarian approach. He never expressed feelings of alienation from the land, but neither did it become ‘home’ because his ‘homeland’ remained in England. Instead, his attachment to place in Western Australia was anchored by the ties he felt to his children. Wollaston, on the other hand, struggled with his sense of belonging. While he had invested emotionally in the Colony through his work and family and developed a physical intimacy with the landscape, his sense of belonging was complicated by his belief that there was no ‘home’ for him anywhere on earth; he would find this in heaven. He guiltily admitted to thinking often of friends and family in England, his

193 ‘Native land’, while he steadfastly made real connections with place in Western Australia.

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194 Chapter Six The Avon Valley

Introduction During the same period that the Bussell family, Wollaston and Marshall Clifton were establishing themselves in the lower South West of the Colony, other colonists were exploring land with a view to establish European settlements 100 kilometres north east of the Swan River in the Avon Valley (see Figure 3.1). In July 1830, a group led by Ensign Dale explored the area around York. Six months later the region had been surveyed and land grants issued, but due to the distance from the Swan River, settlement was relatively slow and much of the land was taken up by absent landlords who never intended to live there.1 This chapter explores how Eliza Brown, Henry de Burgh, Janet Millett and Gerald de Courcy Lefroy responded to the landscapes of the Avon Valley and discusses the ways in which and the extent to which the places there became home. The picturesque is still evident in their writing, although Lefroy was too preoccupied with issues of utility to find beauty in the landscapes. The discussion of domesticity shows that although de Burgh and Lefroy worked on the land, as single men living in simple houses with little domestic help they also had to carry out domestic tasks. The Victorian domestic ideal also influenced the men’s attitude to their houses and they spent time and effort making these as comfortable and welcoming as possible. From time to time the women also rejected traditional gender roles in the household as they ventured beyond the domestic space. In this chapter, too, the social landscape emerges as an important factor in influencing belonging in the Avon Valley.

Colonists to the Avon Valley York and Northam are the major towns in the Avon Valley district where the climate is Mediterranean, characterised by warm dry summers and winter rain. On average, York has 450mm rain per annum and in the hottest month of January the average maximum is 33.6 degrees celsius.2 The Avon Valley has some of the best agricultural land in Western Australia with red and brown soils and river flats which, before European farming practices, were well grassed and lightly timbered with York Gum (Eucalyptus

1 Donald S. Garden, Northam: An Avon Valley History, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1979, p. 6 2 www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_010144.shtml (accessed 5/10/08). 195 loxophleba), Wandoo (Eucalyptus wandoo) and Raspberry Jam trees (Acacia acuminata).3 Along the stream banks are the river gum (Eucalyptus rudis) and sheoak (Casurina obesa).4 Typically there is a herbaceous ground layer that appears like grass from a distance but is mostly sedges and rushes mixed with spring annuals.5 The Avon River only flows during the winter and early spring and for the rest of the year it is a series of deep pools and shady trees with abundant bird life. Among the first colonists to settle in the Avon Valley were Eliza Brown, her husband, Thomas, and their two children who came to Western Australia in 1841.6 Before emigrating they lived in Dorchester, Oxfordshire, near the Thames River and north of the Chiltern Hills, where Thomas was a road surveyor. Peter Cowan suggested they left England because Eliza preferred a warmer climate,7 but this seems a superficial reason to leave a comfortable lifestyle in Oxfordshire in favour of the colony of Western Australia, particularly when much of the fervour associated with the initial enthusiasm of the Swan River Colony had dampened by the early 1840s and the Colony was experiencing an economic depression. William Bussey, Eliza’s father, was a wealthy gentleman in Cuddeson, Oxfordshire and perhaps Thomas thought it prudent to try to prove himself worthy to be Eliza’s husband, independent of her family. However, even in the Antipodes independence eluded Thomas because his father-in-law lent them money for their ventures in the Colony, and this financial debt proved to be a continuing burden. In the mid nineteenth century, the county of Oxfordshire, in the south east of England, was a rural environment with rolling green hills. Wealthy landowners had large gardens that were ‘natural and picturesque’, with their houses ‘springing out of a velvety lawn surrounded by clumps of trees and grazing herds.’8 Although the landscapes of the Avon Valley were undulating and rural, they were very different to those of Oxfordshire: they were less planned or ‘improved’, much drier with evergreen eucalypts and acacias, and the newcomers saw little evidence of Aboriginal occupation. However, despite the differences and the obvious hardships and difficulties Eliza Brown

3 J.S. Beard, Plant Life of Western Australia, Kangaroo Press, Kenthurst, NSW, 1990, p. 115. 4 Beard, Plant Life of Western Australia, p. 117. 5 Beard, Plant Life of Western Australia, p. 121. 6 Biographical information on Eliza and Thomas Brown is from Peter Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture: the letters of Eliza and Thomas Brown at York in the Swan River Colony 1841-1852, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle, 1977. 7 Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, p. ix 8 Mavis Batey, ‘Landscape Gardens in Oxfordshire’, in Stephen Butler, Sarah Ross & Alison Smith (eds), Of Oxfordshire Gardens, Oxford Polytechnic Press, Oxford, 1982, p. 54. 196 experienced near York, she found much to admire in the landscapes there. Eliza was keen to reassure her father of her well-being and also that the money he lent Thomas had been wisely invested. Her letters are therefore optimistic and downplay their difficulties; indeed they express a genuine affection for their home at York. After ten years farming at ‘Grass Dale’, their property near York, Thomas was appointed to the Legislative Council so he leased Grass Dale and the family moved to Perth. Then, after only one session, he took up the position of Police Magistrate at Perth and then Fremantle. Ten years later, in 1861, he was appointed Resident Magistrate at Champion Bay where the family lived until his death in 1863. After Thomas’s death, Eliza shared her time between Champion Bay and Guildford, where her adult children lived. She returned to England in 1860 to see her father before he died, but she then came back to the Colony where she died in 1896. Henry de Burgh, along with his brother, Robert, also came to the Swan River Colony in 1841. Henry was born in 1816 and was the fourth child of Reverend Thomas Burgh.9 The family lived in Oldtown, County Kildare, Ireland and Thomas Burgh was Dean of Cloyne from 1823 to his death in 1845. Henry was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he read law and classics. However, he did not have sufficient funds to set up a practice as a lawyer and the prospect of owning land was enticing. He had intended to settle permanently in the York area and his departure and return to Ireland in 1846 was quite sudden. Just before he left Western Australia he was building a house, possibly in anticipation of his marriage to Sophie Roe, and he was a member of the Beverly Committee of the Road Trust and honorary secretary of the York Agricultural Society. His reasons for leaving are unclear, but William and Margaret de Burgh suggested that his mother urged him to return to Ireland to manage the family business as his father’s health was failing.10 On his return to Ireland, Henry de Burgh lived in Dublin, but maintained business interests in Western Australia. Though he intended to return to the Colony at some stage this ambition was never fulfilled and he died in Ireland in 1876. In 1843, two years after Eliza Brown and Henry de Burgh arrived in Western Australia, another emigrant from Ireland, Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, took up land in the Avon Valley. Lefroy was born in 1819 and his father, Henry Lefroy, was a vicar at

9 Biographical information on Henry de Burgh is from William and Margaret de Burgh, The Breakaways, St George Books, Perth, 1981. Note also that the family changed their name from ‘Burgh’ to ‘de Burgh’ in 1848. 10 De Burgh, The Breakaways, p. 102. 197 Santry, near Dublin.11 De Courcy12 passed the examination to enter Trinity College, Dublin, but possibly due to a shortage of funds he did not attend. In 1841 Henry Maxwell Lefroy, de Courcy’s second cousin from the English branch of the Lefroy family, went to Western Australia and took up land in the York district. Henry returned to England briefly, visited his Irish cousins and encouraged de Courcy and his brother, Anthony O’Grady Lefroy, to migrate to Western Australia. Both Anthony and de Courcy had some farming experience in Ireland but they each paid the Burges brothers, who had also taken up land in the York district, £50 to teach them about farming in the Colony. Gerald de Courcy Lefroy’s journal lasts from October 1844 when he and Anthony leased ‘Springhill’, until about the time of his marriage to Elisabeth Brockman in March 1852. Elisabeth was the eldest daughter of W.M. Brockman of Herne Hill. In June 1853 they returned to Ireland and farmed in County Cork but this venture was not a success. They left Ireland once again and travelled to New Zealand late in 1859. In February 1860 they then went back to Western Australia where de Courcy took up a number of leases in the southwest, including ‘Treedale’, ‘Karri Hill’ and ‘The Jayes’. He died as a result of injuries incurred in a reaping accident in December 1878. Three years later Elisabeth returned to her family home at Herne Hill, where she died in 1908. The last of the colonists discussed in this chapter arrived in Western Australia in December 1863. Janet Millett and her husband, Edward, hoped that a warmer climate would bring relief to Edward who suffered from tic douloureux, a neuralgia that causes extreme pain to one side of the face.13 They may also have been inspired to emigrate to the Swan River Colony by their visit to the International Exhibition in London in 1862 where there was a display on Western Australia. Edward Millett was a clergyman and he took up the position as the Anglican Chaplain at York. Unfortunately, his health did not improve in the warmer climate, so after five years they returned to England. As mentioned in the Introduction, while living at York, Janet Millett began compiling notes for prospective emigrants and on her return to England she completed these and

11 Biographical information on Gerald de Courcy Lefroy and Anthony O’Grady Lefroy is from R. E. Cranfield, From Ireland to Western Australia, Service Printing Co. Pty Ltd, Perth, 1960 and Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, edited by Bruce Buchanan, privately printed, Perth, WA, 2003. 12 Gerald de Courcy Lefroy went by the name ‘de Courcy’ rather than ‘Gerald’. 13 Background information on Janet and Edward Millett can be sourced in Rica Erickson’s introduction to Millett, An Australian Parsonage. 198 published them as An Australian Parsonage or the Settler and the Savage in Western Australia.14

Viewing the Landscape In the 1840s Eliza Brown, her husband and their two children lived in a simple two- roomed cottage near York, far from the landscapes of Oxfordshire. As with the colonists discussed in the previous chapters, Eliza Brown was influenced by the picturesque tradition of landscape aesthetics. Four months after arriving in the Colony she described the site of their cottage: Grass Dale is the name of the estate, it is about eleven square miles in extent and has a range of hills running though one part of it, the highest of which is called Mount Matilda. At the foot of this is our dwelling, a cottage consisting of two rooms, it is roughly built but of exceedingly picturesque appearance from the extreme beauty of the site where it is placed, rugged rocks are heaped in wild confusion around a fertile valley stretches itself for full two miles and a half like a green lawn in front of lowly habitation. There is an outhouse near which serves as a temporary sleeping place for the men, adjoining a stockyard where the bullocks, mares, etc are penned at night. 15 Eliza’s understanding of what constituted picturesque was consistent with the approach of William Gilpin and Uvedale Price, discussed in Chapter Two, who argued that roughness, irregularity and variety were defining characteristics of the picturesque.16 For Eliza it was the rugged rocks that provided the contrast with the more landscaped appearance of the valley and this roughness and variety contributed to its picturesque character. This description using language of the picturesque does not set her apart or distance her from the land. To the contrary, Eliza lived in the cottage she described as picturesque and she viewed the rocks and the valley every day. The picturesque was a familiar way of seeing and describing landscapes which assisted Eliza to make unfamiliar environments meaningful.

14 Millett, An Australian Parsonage. 15 Eliza Brown, letter to William Bussey, Grass Dale, 3/7/1841, Cowan, (ed.), A Faithful Picture, p. 23. 16 William Gilpin, Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; On Picturesque Travel; and on Sketching Landscape, London, 1792 discussed Hussey, The Picturesque; Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque. Uvedale Price, Essays on the Picturesque, 1794 discussed in Hussey, The Picturesque, and Birmingham, Landscape and Ideology. 199 Eliza enjoyed spring in the Avon Valley. She was also becoming familiar with the names of some of the shrubs and had learnt a new word, ‘bush’, to describe the landscape: It is now the Australian spring, the wild flowers tinge the bush (which means all parts of the country that is not thick forest or cleared land) with their beautiful colours, pink, golden, blue and lilac. Mount Matilda is clad in pink being thickly carpeted with the pink flowers…beautiful flowering shrubs, the Mimosa with its amber blossom and Jam Tree likewise flourish there in abundance and are now in bloom.17 However, when it came to the trees, she had other thoughts and preferred the oak, elm, ash, rowan and hawthorn of Oxfordshire, with their verdant green foliage and symmetrical shapes. The asymmetrical eucalypts, with their sprawling branches and blackened trunks did not fulfill Eliza’s idea of a perfect tree: Above these [the wildflowers and flowering shrubs] tower the red gum, white gum and mahogany trees, but these are not handsome. It is seldom we meet with a perfect tree, they nearly all show a great number of naked branches and the trunks in most instances are blackened in consequence of the native fires destroying the bark, or rather converting it into a case of cinders.18 Richard Hayman has explored the symbolism of trees and woodlands in Western civilisation and argued that during the nineteenth century in England, trees, particularly the oak tree, became strongly associated with English nationalism.19 Stephen Daniels has also discussed the powerful symbolism of trees and noted that English enthusiasm for trees reached its apogee by 1800.20 It is thus possible that Eliza’s preference for English trees was bound up with her ideas of England. Eliza was not alone in her preference for the trees of England and her dislike of the eucalypt. Eucalyptus trees were often derided in published descriptions of Australian scenery in the mid nineteenth

17Eliza Brown, letter to William Bussey, Grass Dale, 2/10/1843, Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, p. 38. The Mimosa and Jam tree are both Acacias (wattles). 18 Eliza Brown, letter to William Bussey, Grass Dale, 2/10/1843, Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, p. 38. 19 Richard Hayman, Trees: Woodlands and Western Civilization, Hambledon and London, London, 2003, pp. 79-96. 20 Stephen Daniels, ‘The political iconography of woodland in later Georgian England’ in Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels (eds), The Iconography of Landscape, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 1988, pp. 43-82. 200 century.21 So, while Eliza was able to see beauty in the native wildflowers and shrubs, she was unable to adapt her ideas of what constituted a ‘handsome’ tree and admire eucalypts. At times, Eliza viewed the land from a utilitarian perspective and this is evident in her assessment of the ‘progress’ she and Thomas made as they modified and ‘improved’ the land so as to provide for their children. However, Eliza’s goals were modest; her family’s survival with a modicum of comfort was what she wanted most. She described with pride their achievements since arriving at Grass Dale: Great progress has been made since we have been here in many things. Stock yards are put up in the same substantial manner as the garden fence I once described to you. Mr Brown has done all the ploughing with his own hands and an additional quantity of land has been cleared, also a portion of the walls of the house put up. But his work is at a stand still at present, it being the season to plant, trench and manure the garden which is a matter of too great consequence to be neglected. A season passed of necessary work to be done there would put us back so much in one of the enjoyments of life, a well cultivated and fruit bearing garden. Besides we can have no wine until we produce it for ourselves, that article from necessity having long been done away with.22 Henry de Burgh came to Western Australia in 1841, the same year as Eliza and Thomas Brown. Most of his diary entries were matter-of-fact accounts of his activities, but there were occasions when he expressed his feelings. His descriptions of the landscape included the language of both the picturesque and the romantic. Romantic ideas are evident in de Burgh’s account of his journey to Western Australia. While in South Africa on route to the Colony he wrote of the ‘great beauty of the shrubs and some of the birds…and how preferable to see Nature in her wild state…’23 Once in Western Australia he continued to describe the environment in romantic terms and although he did not use the term ‘picturesque’ to describe the landscape, his writing sometimes showed that he was familiar with ideas of the picturesque. He recorded his first impressions of a property called ‘Springhill’, near York, leased by the Lefroy brothers:

21 Tim Bonyhady, Images in Opposition: Australian Landscape Painting 1801-1890, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1985, p. 117. 22 Eliza Brown, letter to William Bussey, Grass Dale, 17/8/1844, Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, p. 48. 23 Henry de Burgh, Diary 1841-1844, BL, ACC 248A. 201 Springhill is unexceptionally the prettiest and most favoured spot I know: to all the other advantages that it possesses in common with other places, it commands large views of clear land naturally, with many springs of fresh water and a beautiful variety of high hills, and otherwise undulating scenery – Of course there are many places I have seen that I would rather own in point of marketable value, but never have I seen the place that I would rather own to reside on than the estate that would be formed by the junction of Springhill with the adjoining property of ‘Wilberforce’ …and the back run which they naturally command along the Swan River, would make as desirable a residence as any in the world…24 Here de Burgh put economic motives aside and expressed his desire for this land that impressed him aesthetically. In his observations, he distinguished between land as useful and land that delighted him, suggesting that these two approaches to the land were not necessarily bound together. In the passage above de Burgh also mentioned his desire to own land and this, together with his aspirations to be independent, are apparent in his diary. His first months at York were spent at Samuel and Lockier Burges’ farm, ‘Tipperary’. Here, Henry and his brother, Robert, gained local farming knowledge before setting out on their own. By February 1842 de Burgh was ready to leave ‘Tipperary’ and was ‘anxious to settle somewhere we should call the place our own…’25 He was excited on the first night in his own hut and wrote, ‘neither before or after do I ever remember ever having felt so perfectly self contented and independent as the first night we slept in that hut – everything around us was our own!’26 His desire for independence was more important to de Burgh than material signs of belonging to a ‘civilised’ society and is also evident in a passage where he described clearing the land. He enjoyed this task and explained: ‘burning the large trees and making a clearance before one gradually causes an incessant exhilaration that does not sleep and the more so when you feel that the improvements are entirely your own’.27 Although he was content to live simply, he was still keen to ensure his financial success and to this end he was enthusiastic about

24 De Burgh, Diary 1841-1844, BL, ACC 248A, p. 11. ‘Springhill’ was taken up by Edward Hussey Burgh when he came to Western Australia in February 1837. (see de Burgh, The Breakaways, p. 39) 25 De Burgh, Diary 1841-1844, BL, ACC 248A, 23/2/1842. 26 De Burgh, Diary 1841-1844, BL, ACC 248A, 23/2/1842. 27 De Burgh, Diary 1841-1844, BL, ACC 248A, 23/2/1842. 202 ‘improving’ the land. He wanted to be a successful farmer and hence progress was a personal goal. Janet Millett arrived in Western Australia in 1863, twenty-two years after Eliza and Thomas Brown and Henry de Burgh. She, too, was well-versed in the picturesque and used it to describe parts of the landscape. She was unconcerned with its finer theoretical points and, in the manner of Gilpin, used its language to describe scenes that she thought were suitable for painting. She found Perth worth painting by virtue of its variety with the wide river, trees, scrub, substantial buildings and gardens and wrote: ‘Whether approached by the river or the road, the picturesque appearance of Perth cannot fail to excite admiration.’ 28 On another occasion, while on her way to visit a friend at ‘Egoline’, a nearby property, she described the views as being ‘so picturesque that for a mile or two farther we passed our time in admiring them…’29 Janet also used ideas of the picturesque to describe a paperbark tree. This account was rich in detail and aimed at a reader with no prior understanding of these trees: Their shapes were very picturesque, being much twisted and gnarled; the whiteness of the bark contrasting well with their green foliage, which is close and thick, affording more shade, in spite of the smallness of the leaf, than many other of the Australian trees.30 As well as describing scenery and trees as picturesque, Janet Millett used the term to describe details of domestic environments. She noticed how other female colonists decorated their simple dwellings: In many bush huts, when the women have a taste for decoration, pink everlastings are tied up in thick bunches and inserted in a close compact row between the top of the hut wall and the sloping edge of the unceiled rafters, so as to form a cornice, beautiful in itself, and also in picturesque harmony with the rude materials of the dwellings.31 Here, it was the contrast of the beautiful flowers with the roughness of the timber that made the image picturesque. Although this usage of the term was a long way from either the scenery of Gilpin’s tourist vision, Young’s cultivated landscapes or Price’s ideas based on the rustic images of seventeenth century Dutch paintings, Janet Millett used the general principles of the picturesque and, like Eliza Brown, adapted her

28 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 21. 29 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 267. 30 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 47. 31 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 161. 203 understanding of this concept to describe and understand new and unfamiliar environments. In this way, like Eliza Brown, she used familiar concepts and language to describe and understand new observations and experiences. Janet Millett valued scenes she termed picturesque and she was disturbed to think that some colonists would destroy these scenes close to where they lived. She observed that they left no trees, either living or dead, standing near their houses but that: ‘This custom, which at first I deplored as involving a willful disregard of the picturesque, I soon learned to be a sad necessity, on account of the prevalence of bush fires.’32 In contrast with the view that the colonists hated trees,33 she clearly shows that this was not always the case. However, she was not sad about the loss of these trees for environmental or ecological reasons, but mourned the loss of the scene that they created.34 Like de Burgh, Janet Millett also described landscapes using romantic imagery and ideas of the picturesque without using the term ‘picturesque’: We therefore came to a stand, and determined, in colonial phrase, to ‘bush it’…Nevertheless, I was glad for once to feel the solitariness of a night in the open bush, even at the expense of a little privation…The picture was beautiful as we lay looking at the stars in the blue-black vault overhead, against which every twig and branch shone white as it caught the firelight, whilst the perfect stillness carried with it a sensation of awe.35 Although Janet Millett found much to admire in the scenery around York and deemed many aspects picturesque, she also commented on the absence of features of other parts of the landscape. She remarked that this would be a problem if one became lost: The scenery possesses sufficient variety to please the eye but no strikingly distinctive features to remind a person that he had wandered from the way, or to help him regain it. The trees shut out the distant view and seem to be endlessly repeated…can find no parallel excepting on a raft at sea.36

32 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 96. 33 See Hancock, Australia, p. 33 and discussed in Chapter Two. 34 Caroline Jordan, Picturesque Pursuits: colonial women artists and the amateur tradition, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria, 2005, p. 176 also noted that some calls for conservation and preservation were made in the name of the picturesque. 35 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 268. 36 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 265. 204 Her metaphor of the trees being akin to a raft is consistent with Carter’s idea that the forests appeared as wilderness.37 However, his further assertion that forests and plains were ‘places where space failed to congregate into picturesque forms, where nature failed to speak’,38 suggests that landscapes that did not fit with European ideas of beauty alienated the colonists, leaving them feeling lost. While Janet drew a parallel between being in the forests and on a raft at sea, suggesting that it would be easy to become lost there, this does not mean that she always felt lost or disoriented in the landscape near York, unable to relate to it in positive ways. Furthermore, contrary to Carter’s claim that forests were places where ‘nature failed to speak’, Janet found ‘picturesque forms’ in the forest (the ‘bush’). As with many of the colonists discussed in the previous chapters, Janet Millett was delighted with the wildflowers. She noted that even the ‘sand plains are for three months of the year brilliant with the most beautiful flowers’.39 She appealed to a common appreciation of flowers among English people to help her readers relate to the landscapes around York: The land is essentially a land of flowers, and myriads of lovely plants overrun the ground which are the ornaments of our conservatories at home. To mention two species familiar to all gardeners: we have gathered all kinds of blue lobelias, and also a plant closely resembling the scarlet variety as well, and we have seen the sloping sides of the watercourses thickly covered with the favourite acacia armata in full bloom…40 Janet Millett saw the landscape in a variety of ways. She thought some of it lacked distinctive features but most of her observations were favourable. She frequently used ideas and language of the picturesque to describe her surroundings, and she was prepared to adapt her ideas of what was beautiful scenery to the landscapes she encountered. Even in the dry season she appreciated the river and its banks near York, which, although different to the rivers of England, had its own peculiar beauties such as the nooks shaded by the paperbark trees and the wide grassy spots with permanent water holes.41 Her use of the language of the picturesque did not create distance or detachment and nor did it serve to enhance her domination of the landscape. The

37 Carter, The Road to Botany Bay, p. 289-290. 38 Carter, The Road to Botany Bay, p. 290. 39 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 110. 40 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 98. 41 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 61. 205 picturesque was part of her cultural heritage. It was an aesthetic tool; a means of viewing and understanding the landscape and then describing what she saw in a way that would be useful to her readers. Gerald de Courcy Lefroy’s approach to the land was in many ways similar to that of Charles Bussell. With the exception of , where he thought the scenery was beautiful,42 he found little to admire in the landscapes of the Avon Valley and for Lefroy, use and delight were usually bound together. His usual responses to the landscape were based on its usefulness, and he had no inclination for or tendency to use romantic or picturesque descriptions. He often categorised the country as ‘good’ or ‘bad’: ‘good’ country was suitable for farming and ‘bad’ country was not. In this he was similar to settlers on the American frontier who also deemed land unfit for agriculture as ‘bad’.43 While exploring the land approximately 130 kilometres north of York near the town of Moora, Lefroy came across country, where, for the first time since being in the Colony, he imagined he might be able to live: Found out some Good country and water. Slept in the bushes close to a lake. There are five of them, covered with ducks and some swans. If I remain in this Colony I saw to day the place that will be ours if I can. Have seen nothing like it since I came to the Colony. It really is a pretty place and plenty of water.44 The following year after exploring with the Gregory brothers, he wrote: ‘Riding all day. The first part good land and the rest very bad. Rain all day.’45 Four days later he reached the Irwin River where , the Surveyor General, had reported fine country suitable for sheep. Lefroy did not agree. He thought the feed of poor quality and grumbled, ‘but what can Government officers know about a good sheep run’.46 Later on the same journey he recorded that he ‘Slept on the verge of the bad Country’.47 Then, when he returned he commented: ‘I don’t think there is any more good Country in this side of New Holland, at least in the latitude of sheep farming.’48 However, despite his lack of enthusiasm for the farming potential of much of the land and his tendency to quickly classify it as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, he did write

42 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 9/3/1845. 43 Yi-Fu Tuan, Passing Strange and Wonderful: Aesthetics, Nature and Culture, Kodansha America Inc., New York, 1995, p. 145. 44 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 30/11/1847. 45 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 13/6/1848. The Gregory brothers were Augustus Charles and Henry Churchman who arrived in Western Australia in 1829. 46 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 17/6/1848. 47 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 20/6/1848. 48 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 21/6/1848. 206 differently about the landscape. Occasionally, even before his love for Elisabeth Brockman blossomed, Lefroy expressed a satisfaction with the landscapes around him. Early in 1847, while taking some mares to ‘Springhill’, he reflected on the day and wrote, ‘What a pleasure to be in the bush.’49 It is difficult to know exactly what he meant by this but his enjoyment seems to have arisen from his independence and freedom, rather than from an appreciation of the bush itself. After Lefroy’s romantic interest in Elisabeth began, his general demeanor improved and his responses to the landscape became more positive. Early in 1851 he secured land near Gingin and reported, ‘The fead [sic] much better than I expected. It will make a very good cattle station.’50 Three days later he felt the same: Went out to the coast only 5 miles off. Some fead [sic] along the river. What pleasure to look at plenty of water, fresh and running…Found a beautiful little spot for my house. I intend making this my home instead of my sheep station. It is much cooler and plenty of water and every convenience for building and a lovely spot for a vineyard 12 miles from Gingin…I have not seen a place in the Colony I have taken such a fancy to.51 But these positive feelings did not last long and in May 1851 he decided to make Walebing, near Moora, his home as he now thought that this was ‘much the nicest place, one of the prettiest in the Colony’.52 Lefroy found farming hard work but one redeeming feature of life in the Avon Valley was the prospect of owning land. Shearing was a task that Lefroy found particularly hard and he indicated that he had had enough, ‘unless on a place of our own’.53 He vowed that ‘If we remain in this Country, this is the last place I will be on that is not my own and then I will have my tillage land enclosed.’54 These colonists to the Avon Valley viewed the landscapes there in ways that were similar to the colonists discussed in the previous chapters. Eliza Brown and Janet Millett frequently wrote about the attractiveness of the landscapes and they were familiar with language of the picturesque and romantic imagery. Henry de Burgh used romantic descriptions but he was also very interested in the utility of the land. Sometimes, though, he distinguished between use and delight. In contrast with Eliza

49 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 23/2/1847. 50 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 4/2/1851. 51 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 5/2/1851. 52 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 8/5/1851. 53 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 18/9/1846. 54 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 15/8/1847. 207 Brown, Janet Millett and de Burgh, Lefroy rarely appreciated the beauty of the landscapes independently from their productive potential. He usually responded negatively to the land, though his attitudes softened a little after he became engaged to Elisabeth Brockman, suggesting that his general outlook on life also influenced the way he viewed the land. Although de Burgh and Lefroy viewed the landscapes differently, they both responded positively to land they owned, or to the prospect of owning land.

People and Home Domesticity, Social Class and Gender in the Avon Valley In colonial Australia, as in typical Victorian English households, the domestic sphere was primarily associated with women. However, in the Avon Valley the environment modified how women used these spaces. In Delys Bird’s study of Eliza Brown’s letters and journals, discussed in Chapter Two, she argued that the economic survival of the Brown family depended upon the willingness and ability of Eliza Brown to take on new and difficult tasks, and that this contributed to her positive attitude toward her new environment and a growing attachment to her place in the Avon Valley.55 Here I extend Bird’s analysis of Eliza Brown’s involvement in the family’s business affairs and argue that Eliza Brown’s experiences beyond the house and garden also facilitated her attachment to place. Although Eliza probably spent most of her time in their house cooking, cleaning, doing the family laundry, mending clothes and tending to the children, she did not describe these activities in letters to her father. She was careful not to bore her father, nor tire him with what she described as ‘nonsense’.56 Instead, she wrote of matters she thought were of interest to him such as the price of sheep, wheat, expeditions to explore ‘new’ country, the mineral wealth of the land and their family finances.57 Like the Bussell women and Louisa Clifton, Eliza also pushed the physical boundaries of her domestic world. She gave horse riding lessons and accompanied Thomas on excursions to Perth and Champion Bay.58 As Bird noted, Eliza’s motivation for taking the journey

55 Bird, ‘Women in the Wilderness’. 56 Eliza Brown, letter to William Bussey, Grass Dale, 4/7/1846, ‘ Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, p. 70. 57 See for example, letters to William Bussey, Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, pp. 34, 44, 66, 71, and 72. 58 Letter to William Bussey, 3/7/1842 (note from W. Bussey should be 1841), p. 23; Thomas Brown to William Bussey, 22/6/1845, p. 63; Eliza Brown, Narrative of Journey from York to Champion Bay, May and June 1851, pp. 146-152, all in Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture. 208 from York to Champion Bay was to see the land and to participate in decisions Thomas made about the suitability of the land for farming.59 The Brown’s household also differed from the usual in the way work was delegated to servants. Eliza Brown’s life in her cottage at York was very different from her life in Oxfordshire where she lived in a large house with domestic help. She adapted to these changes but was anxious that her father would approve of the way she lived. She was happy that her children spent more time outdoors but was worried about their educational prospects: ‘The children thrive in our gypsy mode of life as regards robustness of frame and activity of limbs, but the coming to this country has a great disadvantage for children in one respect, the dearth there is of good instruction.’60 However, six years later, in 1849, she was thinking of sending her son, Kenneth, to a school in Western Australia and assured her father that it was quite respectable: ‘There is now a school in the Colony quite equal if not superior to the generality of schools in England where I think we shall make some effort to send Kenneth. It is kept by Mr and Mrs Taylor in the Swan, very near the Viveash’s.’61 At times, the colonists who had bought or leased land were forced to engage in work normally associated with the working class. In the middle of 1847 Thomas Brown cut and hauled sandalwood to supplement the family’s income from the farm. Eliza was embarrassed to tell her father of this and explained with reference to the virtue of hard work: You will naturally think this is getting very low in the world to be a hewer of wood and what in England is called a waggoner, but there is nothing derogatory in being so occupied in this country, hard work falls to the lot of nearly all the rural gentlemen, the idle are disrespected.62 Newcomers to the Avon Valley saw the arrival of convicts in Western Australia in 1851 as a mixed blessing.63 On the one hand they were welcomed as a source of

59 Bird, ‘Women in the Wilderness’, p. 37. 60 Eliza Brown to William Bussey, 17/8/1843, Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, p. 49. 61 Eliza Brown to William Bussey, 24/6/1849, Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, p. 84-85. 62 Eliza Brown to William Bussey, 29/6/1847, Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, p. 74. 63 Prior to the 1980s and Pamela Statham’s work on convicts in Western Australia it was generally argued that convicts were brought to the Colony to ease the general labour shortage, but it has now been established that this was not the case. The impetus to bring colonists to Western Australia came from a relatively small group of powerful pastoralists from the Avon Valley. See Pamela Statham, ‘Why Convicts I: An Economic Analysis of Colonial Attitudes to the Introduction of Convicts’ and Pamela Statham, ‘Why Convicts II: The Decision to Introduce Convicts to Swan River’ both in C.T. Stannage (ed), Convictism in Western Australia, SWAH, 209 labour, but associating with convicts, even as servants, was not desirable for the free settlers, especially those who regarded themselves as ‘gentle’ men and women. Eliza reluctantly admitted to her father that they had taken on convicts at ‘Grass Dale’: ‘I am afraid you must look down upon us with contempt since we have harboured convicts. I must own that my pride is taken down a few notches, perhaps it will prove a wholesome castigation.’64 Eliza was proud of their achievements at York but like Lefroy she was conscious of how her dwelling compared with others in the region and with cottages in Oxfordshire. She felt it necessary to make this explicit to her father and she gave him comfort by arguing that they had not lowered their standards too much and were respected by other colonists in the Avon Valley. She defended their house at York: It is said we have the nicest residence over the Hills and I assure you we should not be ashamed to show it in comparison with any cottage in the neighbourhood of Oxford or elsewhere. I prefer it to Elm Cottage. Our garden is a boon that would be appreciated in any country.65 Sometimes, Janet Millett also used her domestic space in ways that were unexpected for the wife of a pastor who had come to the Avon Valley from England in the 1860s. When she described working in her house and garden she did not delineate clear boundaries between these and the world beyond. In a similar way to the Wollaston family at Australind, evidence that these boundaries were permeable can be found in the animals she chose to keep in her house, in the extension of her domestic space to the bush and the lack of distinction she made between garden flowers and wildflowers. Janet wrote in detail about the native animals she ‘adopted’ that took the place of domestic pets and even children. She brought animals into her house that belonged to the bush and could have been seen as threatening. She kept a kangaroo that ate from their table, a kangaroo rat that was fond of hiding in their beds, a possum, a ‘mountain devil’ and a rosella. She wrote affectionately of ‘Possie’, the possum, and explained how she would sometimes ‘hide under our eider-down quilt, and there would sleep the whole day through, waking up, if I caressed her, to lick my hand with the affection of a dog’.66 Another favourite pet was ‘Timothy’ the ‘mountain devil’:67

Volume 4, 1981, pp. 1-10 and 11-18; Pamela Statham, ‘Origins and Achievement: Convicts and the Western Australian Economy’, Westerly, Volume 30, No 3, 1985, pp. 37-44. 64 Eliza Brown to William Bussey, 2/4/1851, Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, p. 115. 65 Eliza Brown to William Bussey, 20/6/1845, Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, p. 61. 66 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 209. 210 I forget how we became possessed of it, but at all events a ‘Mountain Devil’ heads the list of all our Australian pets. His tail (for a domestic animal acquires a personality that rises above the neuter gender) being so rough with thorns afforded a capital holding place for the string by which we tethered him in the garden, choosing a sandy spot where he could find plenty of ants for food…68 Janet Millett’s adoption of these animals from the bush as domestic pets was a way of understanding and gaining knowledge of the native fauna, as she clearly knew that thorny devils ate ants. The companionship she gained from keeping these animals also suggests a willingness to reach out and make emotional connections with elements of the wider landscape. Janet Millett also adapted her domestic arrangements to a climate more conducive for outdoor living. At times she relished the opportunity to leave the house and enjoy a picnic: In the latter end of the winter months it was a great pleasure to set aside some particular afternoon for the purpose of taking a party of children into the bush to gather everlastings, and to drink tea out of doors. The favourite spot was Mount Douraking, where we could sit and watch the effect of sunset over the vast forest.69 The English tradition of drinking tea persisted in this colonial setting but it was not restricted to a makeshift drawing room or the kitchen. Sometimes Janet and her husband enjoyed the warm evenings by spreading out their opossum rug in the garden and watching the stars.70 Philosopher Isis Brook has argued that when people are displaced they use plants from their former home to connect to a new place.71 Janet planted flowers from England and the Cape in her garden at York, but when the garden was dry it did not conform to her image of gardens and she found it desolate. With the coming of the rains she expressed delight with the change in both the flowers in her garden and the native flora in the bush: Whilst the transformation was effecting in the garden, which had lately looked so desolate, the bush was not behind in assuming a new appearance. The wattle,

67 The contemporary common name is ‘thorny devil’ (Moloch horridus). 68 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 184. 69 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 161. 70 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 172. 71 Brook, ‘Making Her Like There’. 211 which is one species of the many kinds of Australian acacia, led the van amongst the indigenous flowering trees, and showed its pale yellow blossoms before May was over.72 Janet Millett also enjoyed walking through the bush. She did not view it as threatening and after a brief stay at a nearby inn she wrote: ‘We had gone there for two days change of air and for the pleasure of wandering in the bush.’73 While Janet Millett was prepared to modify how the spaces of her house were used in colonial Western Australia, she clung to her ideas of middle-class respectability. She believed the incomes of chaplains, lower Government officials and school teachers were too small to maintain their position in society and therefore she did not recommend that these people leave England and immigrate to the Colony.74 She also stated that the wealthy man or capitalist in Western Australia would not find much to attract him and nor would he find many companions of his own class.75 By the time Janet Millett had moved to York, convicts had been brought to the Colony, and like the Browns, she and her husband used convicts, as well as Aboriginal people, as servants. She viewed the presence of convicts as an unfortunate necessity that reflected poorly on the free settlers: ‘That this is a great drawback to the colony in the eyes of respectable immigrants it would be useless to deny.’76 Although most colonists believed Aboriginal people were inferior and ‘uncivilised’, their presence in some white households was tolerated at this time and their labour was often exploited: ‘All the better class of colonists in the bush have their favourite natives, who, in return for old clothes and food…will consent to act as cleaners of pots and pans, as well as hewers of wood and drawers of water.’77 Apart from Janet Millett, the colonists discussed so far all arrived before convicts were brought to the Swan River and, with the exception of Marshall Clifton, they had difficulty engaging labourers and servants. Consequently, they had little choice but to do most of the work around their homes and farms themselves. Usually distant from the land, they found themselves working closely with the soil and this was one way in which they had the potential, at least, to develop connections with the land that could lead to feelings of attachment. However, partly because Janet Millett was able to

72 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 155. 73 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 189. 74 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 405. 75 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 391. 76 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 403. 77 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 74-75. 212 hire servants, and partly because she and her husband were not farmers, she had fewer opportunities to engage with the land in a physical sense. The importance of a comfortable domestic environment for men and the ways in which some men modified traditional gender roles to create it have already been discussed in relation to the Bussell brothers, John Wollaston and George Fletcher Moore. In the Avon Valley, de Burgh and Lefroy also engaged in domestic tasks in an attempt to create an ideal home. Living away from a household where women met their domestic needs and having to assume responsibility for these daily tasks was a new experience for both men. Lefroy was particularly preoccupied with domestic matters, despite the fact that he subscribed to the prevailing belief of the time that women were best suited to and should do household tasks. However, in his first years in Western Australia, he had no alternative but to run his own home. Lefroy’s ‘work’ inside his house involved baking bread, making butter and sewing and his reactions to these tasks varied from pride to resentment. He was proud of his efforts to mend his trousers, once remarking, ‘I am a foreman tailor.’78 In April 1847 he made a frieze coat and declared, ‘I am an excellent tailor.’79 He also made a carpet from kangaroo skins and bags from numbat skins. Marvelling at his skill he commented, ‘I wonder what I will turn my hand to next.’80 Several months later he made a pair of white satin shoes for a friend, Laura, for the Ball at Government House in Perth, commenting, ‘The first time I ever turner shoemaker.’81 However, underneath his veneer of pride in his self-sufficiency was a certain ambivalence: ‘I took the bread out of the oven before dinner. Very good batch: I will soon be a professed baker and every thing else but what I was intended for.’82 A little later he wrote: ‘So here I am, myself, an old native and my dogs…So I am now that that I hate the most of anything in this world cook, slut, butler, Devil and dairy maid.’83 On this occasion Lefroy believed that all this housework was beneath him.

78 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 8/5/1846. 79 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 15/4/1847. A frieze was coarse woollen cloth. 80 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 8/7/1849. 81 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 30/12/1849. 82 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 4/10/1845. Buchanan suggested that Lefroy intended to be a clergyman. 83 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 4/8/1847. In Middle English ‘slut’ means kitchen maid or drudge (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, fifth edition, 2002, Volume 2, p. 2882). Buchanan noted that ‘Devil’ was used in the sense of a junior worker (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 2002, Volume 1, p. 663 explains that ‘devil’ can be ‘a person employed in a subordinate position to work under the direction of or for a particular person’). 213 Lefroy had a high regard for himself and considered that his status was higher than the colonial middle-class: ‘For there is more virtue and strict morality among the middling classes, so called, than I am sorry to say there is amongst my own.’84 The scorn he sometimes expressed at having to perform domestic tasks was related to his ideas about class and ‘civilised’ society. ‘Civilised’ people were educated, wealthy and behaved according to certain social conventions. For a ‘gentleman’, domestic work was demeaning and reminded Lefroy of his reduced circumstances: ‘I am heartily sick of this kind of work and life. I wish I was a steward at home. I am getting very discontented and I think not without reason.’85 He also missed the social interaction that he was accustomed to and even believed his life would have been better in India than at the Swan River Colony. He wrote in one outburst: I wish to God I was reading or writing in India or some place out of this it is not [a] better life than the African slave in the farthest part of America no one to go see of my own equal no Ladies no not one nor money in the beggarly place to make fun such a way for a young man of my dedication to spend the flower of his youth…86 At times Lefroy felt that he was wasting the best years of his life because he lacked opportunities to attend parties, meet ladies and to go dancing and drinking with like-minded companions. He welcomed a visit by Mrs Nash and, although he was aware that his household was unprepared for lady visitors, he enjoyed her company: ‘I could almost fancy myself home amongst [those] I love how different are the manners of a Lady educated as a lady…’87 When he received overnight visitors he was aware that he could only offer simple accommodation but was pleased when visitors remarked that ‘We had the nicest and cleanest house they had seen over the hills notwithstanding no table no chairs.’88 From time to time he attended social events in Perth where he enjoyed the company of other ‘gentlemen’. On one occasion he reflected on ‘A gemans [gentleman’s] party at Government House…18 of us, everything nice. It reminded me of home, the first time since I left.’89 However, when Perth society engaged in gossip he felt that this did not befit a man of his class: ‘I for one do not like it. It makes me seem

84 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 4/7/1849. 85 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 23/5/1847. 86 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 5/1/1845. 87 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 2/5/1845. 88 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 28/10/1844. 89 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 12/5/1849. 214 if I did not care for myself, making myself too common.’90 Similarly, he was also critical of the women in the colony. He discussed this matter with a companion and they agreed that women in Western Australia were inferior to those in Ireland because their education was not of a high standard.91 On the subject of Elisabeth Brockman’s education, he made the point to his companion that he was happy that she was not brought up in Perth.92 Although Lefroy thought he was superior to most people he met in the Colony and sometimes resented carrying out domestic tasks, he spent time making the interior of his house comfortable and pleasant. He decorated his bedroom with pictures from the London Illustrated News, his favourite being a copy of a painting by Dubufe entitled ‘La fleur de Salons’ which he intended to frame.93 He also expressed his wish to complete his domestic scene with a wife: Spent most of this day getting my things in my new house and setting it up. It looks nice and is very comfortable…I wish you could see me how snug and happy and contented I feal [sic] in my own little mire. A nice fire and not a nice wife. I only need her to finish me.94 Several months later he again expressed his desire to marry: ‘My greatest pleasure would be to have some one to share my daily little comforts with and make my labour light and pleasant.’ Over a year later, and still single, Lefroy prepared a room in his house for servants but was still consumed with getting a wife: Commencing a room at the end of my abode for a man and his wife. I must get one; the female so useful for washing and mending and keeping the place clean and tidy and much more Christian like and a mark of civilisation to see one moving about.95 In August 1851 Mr Brockman permitted Lefroy to become formally engaged to his daughter, Elisabeth Brockman, an event which buoyed Lefroy’s spirits considerably and his perspective on life became more positive. Since coming to Western Australia Lefroy had not seen the environment or his circumstances favourably, but with his romance blossoming he became both more optimistic about his future in the colony and more sensitive to the surrounding landscape. Now with Elisabeth in his life he

90 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 22/71849. 91 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 27/9/1845. 92 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 21/10/1849. 93 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 1/7/1849. 94 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 10/6/1849, (underlined in source). 95 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 15/7/1850. 215 ‘Gathered some beautiful wild flowers, the same I gathered for my own girl and put them in glass on my sideboard.’96 One of the first tasks of colonists who leased or purchased land was to prepare a vegetable garden and on acquiring his land Lefroy planted cabbages, cauliflowers, onions, carrots and turnips. He also planted flowers for his enjoyment and to remind him of his home in Ireland: his sister, Dodo, had sent him some seeds that he planted in June 1847.97 The importance of these flowers was evident when his lambs ruined them: ‘At the sheep again all day. Put the lambs into my garden. They destroyed everything in it. Oh what a pity. Splendid onions and carrots and worst of all, my flowers…’98 This attempt to grow flowers was not an isolated one. When he established a house at Walebing he again set aside space for a flower garden.99 Like Lefroy, Henry de Burgh was a single man whose circumstances required him to carry out the domestic tasks necessary for running his house. Unlike Lefroy, though, de Burgh seems to have been perennially optimistic. While he spent most of his time on masculine activities usually associated with ‘pioneering’ such as clearing the land of trees, reaping barley, shearing, pressing wool, fencing, digging in the vegetable garden and carrying out various business deals associated with his farming, he also spent time on domestic activities. He recorded his first efforts at cooking and admitted, ‘My primary attempt at cooking rather ludicrous, with some practice however, I succeeded pretty well.’100 By 1844, however, he had clearly mastered the skills of cooking and baking to such an extent that they had become routine activities.101 De Burgh described a variety of other household tasks. He wrote of making mattresses filled with leaves of grass trees for sleeping in the open air,102 and he made tables and other kitchen furniture using timber from the Woorock forest.103 As well as cooking basic meals he made cayenne pepper from chillies and capsicums that grew in a friend’s garden at Guildford.104 He also devoted time to reading, usually in the evenings or when he was unable to work due to an injury.105

96 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 14/9/1851. 97 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 5/6/1847. 98 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 4/8/1847. 99 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 15/5/1851. 100 De Burgh, Diary 1841-1844, BL, ACC 248A, 5/4/1842. 101 De Burgh, Diary 1841-1844, BL, ACC 248A, 22/7/1844, 1/8/1844. 102 De Burgh, Diary 1841-1844, BL, ACC 248A, 11/5/1842. 103 De Burgh, Diary 1841-1844, BL, ACC 248A, 21/6/1842. 104 De Burgh, Diary 1841-1844, BL, ACC 248A, 1/8/1842. 105 De Burgh, Diary 1841-1844, BL, ACC 248A, 23/2/1842. 216 Creating comfortable domestic spaces was important for these colonists and in the absence of women in their houses, Lefroy and de Burgh cooked and sewed as well as farmed. Lefroy also planted flowers in his garden and Janet Millett kept an array of pets in her house. While Janet Millett and Eliza Brown spent most of their time in their homes they were not confined to this space, and Eliza Brown’s positive responses to the environment were amplified by working outside her house doing tasks that were unconventional for English middle-class women. However, Lefroy’s involvement with domestic tasks and any sense of accomplishment he derived from these did not strengthen his attachment. All these colonists were concerned with maintaining their respectability, although sometimes they behaved in ways not usually associated with people of their status and Eliza Brown, in particular, justified these behaviours in her letters to her father.

The Colonists, the Aboriginal People and Belonging Like some of the other colonists discussed in the preceding chapters, Eliza Brown, de Burgh, Lefroy and Mrs Millett did not write a great deal about the Aboriginal people. There is, however, enough material to comment on how they viewed them and how their ideas of home and feelings of belonging were affected by their knowledge of the Aboriginal people. In a similar way to the colonists of the earlier chapters, those in the Avon Valley viewed the Aboriginal people as ‘savage’ and ‘inferior’ but believed they could be ‘civilised’ with education and religious instruction. Some of Lefroy’s thoughts, though, were extremely brutal. Eliza Brown initially viewed the Aboriginal people as ‘uncivilised’ but useful as servants if they could be persuaded to stay on the farm.106 She thought that one Aboriginal boy, Corell, who helped with their flock of rams for several months was ‘a fine interesting fellow…When not at his occupation he is a parlour guest and fine romps he has with the children.’107 Through contact with Aboriginal people, her son, Kenneth, became quite ‘adept at the Native language.’108 Eliza also had some knowledge about the way the Aboriginal people managed the land. She knew they lit bushfires to encourage the grass to grow more luxuriantly, though she thought this practice made the

106 Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, 26/9/1842, p. 25; 2/10/1843, p. 40. 107 Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, 2/10/1843, p. 39. 108 Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, 2/10/1843, p. 39. 217 bush less attractive as it stripped the trees of their leaves.109 However, seven years later, she wrote that the Aboriginal people had become troublesome and thought they needed to be taught to obey European laws: ‘Thou shalt not steal’ will be a difficult commandment to teach them and I fear they will not be obedient to it without very harsh measures. It is much to be regretted that loss of life should be the consequence.110 Although she knew that the Aboriginal people, who worked on her farm and played with her children, had lived on and managed the land before she arrived in the Colony, she nevertheless gave no thought to the possibility that the colonists had appropriated it. She wrote of her own farming and home making as though the Aboriginal people had no rights to this land at all. In his diary Henry de Burgh only mentioned the Aboriginal people a few times. While he clearly knew they lived in the Avon Valley his lack of interest in them suggests he was ambivalent towards them. One of his diary entries about Aboriginal people is consistent with his romantic perspective on the landscape. On the day he took up his lease of Goonderding Farm he felt pleased and reflected: It was a lovely moonlit night and several natives were around – a very large flock of sheep and lambs were bleating around us and the dark outline of the ascending tribe in the distance gave a beautiful effect. It was my first night under such circumstances. I mean in a sheep station of my own and altogether it gave me a buoyancy of spirit nearly amounting to the romantic which I shall not easily forget.111 In this passage Aboriginal people served no function other than to add to the romanticism of the scene. In another of his few references to Aboriginal people he wrote: ‘We made our arrangements to remain some time with the Burges at Tipperary as they called their place in memory of home, but I always preferred the native name of “Twalgening”…’112 It is unclear why he preferred the Aboriginal name but it is consistent with his romantic imagery and does show that he knew their name for this place, yet, like some of the other colonists, this knowledge made little difference to his attachment to the Avon Valley.

109 Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, 2/10/1843, p. 37. 110 Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, 25/12/1850, p. 110. 111 De Burgh, Diary 1841-1844, BL, ACC 248A, 7/5/1843. 112 De Burgh, Diary 1841-1844 BL ACC 248A, no date, 1841. 218 Lefroy expressed inconsistent views on domestic tasks, and in a similar, though more extreme way, he expressed contradictory attitudes towards the Aboriginal people. Like the Bussells and George Fletcher Moore, Lefroy enlisted the help of Aboriginal people when he went hunting and he also knew a little about their culture.113 He seemed to show some humanity towards them – for example, assisting them when they were wounded114 - and he often used Aboriginal words in his journal.115 On one occasion he wrote, ‘The poor little native was very ill.’116 However, he immediately followed this with sadistic comments about the Aboriginal people: I have got a lot of old ones about me, only the one young man. Two old woman [sic] had such a fight yesterday. I made them stick to it until they broke one anothers heads most gloriously. They were old and infamously ugly.117 Similarly, in June 1851 Lefroy wrote: It has always been my opinion that where it is necessary for the white man to usurp the Country of the savage and the natives, after they are made to understand the consequences of stealing and murder and then do not attend to our laws, they ought on the very first occasion to be taught a severe and lasting lesson. It is more charitable and farr [sic] less blood will be shed than go on tampering with them, shooting a few now and then, so leading them who care so little for the death of a few of themselves to think either we are afraid or are satisfied, so leading them on to commit more and more destruction, giving them time to brude [sic] over the few deaths and then retaliate on the loan [sic] white man as they find him. Follow them up, hunt them down, shoot them at their fires, anywhere you meet them. They are all guilty.118 Clearly, Lefroy reserved his greatest feelings of hatred for the Aboriginal people. Indeed, his use of the phrase ‘usurp the country’ in relation to colonisation indicated that whilst he recognised Aboriginal ownership of the land at some level, he thought it the right of the British to seize it. Yet, Buchanan, who edited and annotated Lefroy’s journal, cited a letter written by Lefroy in the winter of 1866 (15 years after Lefroy had written so harshly about the Aboriginal people) in which Lefroy requested that the

113 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 19/8/1847; 16/7/1849. 114 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy l, 14/3/1847. 115 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 8/10/1845; 4/5/1846; 29/5/1846; 30/6/1846. 116 Lefroy, The Journal, of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy 14/2/1847. 117 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 14/2/1847, (emphasis in source). 118 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 6/6/1851. 219 Governor supply the Aboriginal people with blankets.119 On the strength of this letter Buchanan suggested, ‘De Courcy’s attitude to and treatment of “natives” as recorded in his Journal was rather more sympathetic than that of many of his time.’120 While some of Lefroy’s attitudes suggested he was ambivalent towards the Aboriginal people, Buchanan’s claim seems quite extraordinary. Even if Lefroy’s attitudes had softened over the years, it is clear that, like Charles Bussell, he did not even consider that the Aboriginal people had been unfairly treated under colonialism. Lefroy expressed no attachment to or feelings of belonging in the Colony, and as he built his house and farm, his dislike of the Aboriginal people may have given him another reason to feel dissatisfied with his life there. The title of Janet Millett’s book, An Australian Parsonage or, the settler and the savage in Western Australia, is the first indication of how she viewed the Aboriginal people: as savages whose lives contrasted with her own settled, ‘civilised’ culture.121 During her stay in the Colony she made superficial observations and had brief interactions with the Aboriginal people of the area whom she referred to as the Barladong people. She also referred to York as Barladong ‘for reasons which will be readily understood when the limited character of the population of the colony is considered.’122 By this she was probably alluding to the convicts whom she believed gave the Colony a bad reputation. In a similar way to de Burgh’s use of ‘Twalgening’ rather than ‘Tipperary’, her use of the ‘native’ name for the area, rather than the colonial name, is also consistent with her romantic approach to the landscape. However, her primary attitude towards the Aboriginal people was paternalistic and while she was, at times, sympathetic to their plight she thought their culture was decidedly inferior. In particular, she did not understand their spirituality and their lack of religion, as she understood it, signified their inferiority. Thus she supported the conversion of the Aborigines to Christianity through the efforts of missionaries.123 Janet Millett and her husband lived near the centre of York and did not earn their income from farming. Her contact with the Aboriginal people was primarily through Khourabene, her favoured Aboriginal servant, though she also used other Aboriginal

119 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, p. 272. 120 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, p. 272. 121 Millett, An Australian Parsonage. 122 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 38. 123 Mrs Edward Millett, ‘West Australian Natives’, The Net, Oct 1, 1872, pp. 151-55 and 171-76 BL, PR 8679/YOR/132. 220 people as servants and took care of Aboriginal children from time to time. They did not rely on information from the Aboriginal people for extra food that may have been procured from the land and she remained ignorant both of the edible native flora and the fact that gathering was the major source of Aboriginal food: Born, however, in a country that is devoid of indigenous fruits or grains fit for man’s use, the native’s existence has depended not on the cultivation of the soil, but on that of his five senses; and that they should see like a hawk and track like a bloodhound, or should resemble the bee in his power of steering a direct course through pathless forests, are the natural results of that cultivation…124 She also believed that the lack of edible flora resulted in their nomadic lifestyle: In fact, the barren character of their native soil, especially as to grain and fruits, compelled them to live perpetually in light marching order, and to restrict their worldly goods to the furs which they wore for clothing, and to the weapons which they manufactured for hunting or for war.125 Janet Millett knew some Aboriginal people but her contact with them did not contribute to her feelings that Western Australia was home. She viewed them as ‘noble savages’ and romanticised their life in the bush: ‘no one can form a just opinion of them until he has seen them in their natural state, far away from towns and living the free wild life of the bush’.126 But unlike the women of Maggie MacKellar’s study discussed earlier, where contact between settler women and indigenous women assisted the settlers to gain a deeper understanding of the environment and their relationship to it,127 Janet appeared to learn nothing from the Aboriginal people. Janet Millett did acknowledge that the Aboriginal people ‘possessed’ territory and had sentiments that were ‘very strong with respect to ownership in the soil’.128 Although she did not understand their rights or responsibilities as custodians of the land, she believed that, ‘each family of the tribe has its own especial tract of land within that territory, together with the springs of water thereupon; here he can light his fire and build his hut without fear of molestation’.129 She also realised that the Aboriginal people had ‘their own game laws, and that by these Khourabene [their servant] was prohibited

124 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 71. 125 Millett, ‘West Australian Natives’, p. 152 in BL, PR 8679/YOR/132. 126 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 13-14. 127 MacKellar, Core of my heart, my country. 128 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 228. 129 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 77. 221 from shooting for us any longer’.130 She saw similarities between the Aboriginal people’s situation and the Britons when the Romans invaded England: They [the Aboriginal people] continued to oppose the appropriation of the land until cowed into submission, and seemed little disposed to treat the invaders with as little hospitality as our own ancestors showed toward Julius Caesar, for whose ill reception by their forefathers modern Britons are not in the habit of expressing much remorse…and the revenge taken by the natives of Australia upon those who seemed to them to be guilty of similar infractions of the laws and customs of their country, has certainly been far less severe than was the judicial severity of our Norman and Saxon ancestors.131 She therefore realised that as a European colonist she was, in fact, invading Aboriginal homes but this did not affect how she felt about her home at York. Like George Fletcher Moore at the Upper Swan, she separated what she knew about the Aboriginal people and the loss of their homes from her emotional responses when making her own home in the Colony. It is difficult to say how she and Moore achieved this separation. Perhaps they believed Aboriginal people thought differently about the loss of their land because they regarded them as ‘savages’. Lefroy’s attitudes to the Aboriginal people were the most extreme and violent of the colonists discussed in this study but even Janet Millett, who expressed unease about what was happening to the Aboriginal people, did not personalise this unease and relate it to her own home making in the Colony. This is consistent with the colonists discussed in the previous chapters and further suggests that the colonists’ awareness of the effects that colonialism had on the Aboriginal people did not disrupt their home making and farming. Nor did it influence their sense of belonging in the land that they had appropriated.

Belonging in the Avon Valley The concluding paragraph in Alexander Hasluck’s introduction to Eliza Brown’s letters described Eliza as a champion of colonial women: The reader is left, however, with admiration for the way she had adjusted to a new way of life in the colony, and to a lack of much companionship of her husband, and to frequent childbearing in difficult circumstances, and to the last

130 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 227. 131 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, pp. 228-9. 222 blow of a break in her father’s loving regard for her. Eliza Brown had suffered several tragedies in the deaths of children in her early married life, as the letters show. Other tragedies were to befall her. One can live too long.132 While Hasluck acknowledged Eliza Brown’s adjustment and adaptation, she did not describe the genuine fondness Eliza developed for her new environment. While Eliza undoubtedly experienced grief and hardships, while she missed her family in Oxfordshire and planted English flowers in her garden at ‘Grass Dale’ to give her pleasant memories of her home far away,133 she also came to feel at home in Western Australia. After four years in the colony Eliza made a declaration of her commitment: The only thing for which I should think of quitting this Country for a short period would be the meeting again with you [her father] and if this longing were to be gratified without the necessity of leaving for the purpose it is not very likely that I should ever say good bye to Western Australia.134 Her husband, Thomas Brown, also commented on his wife’s happiness with the colony: ‘Mrs Brown is much delighted with the Colony as ever and would not exchange poverty here for riches in England.’135 Eliza Brown was not motivated by wealth and did not share with other colonists the quest for social and economic advancement. It is probable that she derived pleasure and contentment from her children, her husband, the work they did together in the house and on the farm and also from the surrounding landscape that she appreciated. Eliza used the word ‘home’ in a similar way to the geographer, Relph, who understood ‘home’ to be an intense form of attachment to a specific setting or environment that is more important than most other places.136 For Eliza, ‘Grass Dale’ had become a place of primary significance. When her husband began thinking of going to settle at Champion Bay, Eliza expressed her regrets: You know my predilections with respect to our present abode, and I do assure you I shall cast many a wistful glance behind and I am afraid there will be many lingering thoughts of regret if it is my fate to leave it…137 Thomas Brown though, was less enthusiastic about the Colony and never expressed a sense of belonging in Western Australia. He felt out of place in the Avon Valley: ‘I have been like a fish out of water ever since I have been here, as I could not

132 Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, p. xii. 133 Eliza Brown to William Bussey, 14/12/1843, Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, p. 43. 134 Eliza Brown to William Bussey, 17/11/1845, Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, p. 64. 135 Thomas Brown to William Bussey, 3/9/1848, Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, p. 82. 136 Relph, Place and Placelessness, pp. 39-40. 137 Eliza Brown to William Bussey, 2/4/1851, Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, pp. 114-115. 223 see the bright side which Mrs Brown did.’138 After nine years in the Colony Thomas’s sentiments had changed little: ‘I never had a wish to leave prosperity in England where I always felt comfortable and happy for the chance of what might be done in any other country.’139 Like Eliza, he sometimes referred to ‘Grass Dale’ as ‘home’ but the meanings he attributed to Grass Dale were very different to those of Eliza. For Thomas, ‘home’ was the place he returned to from working on the farm or from a business trip in Perth. It did not signify belonging and attachment; rather, his understanding of ‘home’ is consistent with David Fitzpatrick’s findings regarding Irish immigrants to Australia in which their ‘home’ in Australia was restricted to the household environment and did not necessarily suggest warmth and sociability.140 Thus, when Thomas decided not to travel north seeking copper he thought it better to ‘remain quiet at home’.141 Similarly, in a letter to Eliza at ‘Grass Dale’ from Perth he wrote, ‘I need not say how flattering it is to my vanity to find you are desirous I should be Home at Christmas…’142 In contrast with Eliza Brown, Janet Millett regarded York as a temporary home. After a few days in Fremantle Janet Millett was anxious to ‘turn our steps towards our new home...’143 She wrote affectionately of her time there and used the word ‘home’ to refer to the parsonage, but she did not express a strong attachment to either her house or the surrounding landscapes. Having arrived at the parsonage in York, once she had unpacked their possessions, put the house in order and familiarised herself with the garden she felt settled in and ‘at home’.144 Her use of the word ‘home’ to refer to the house and garden where she and her husband lived was similar to the way in which Thomas Brown used it. After visiting friends she was pleased to return to the place that contained their personal possessions and provided them with shelter and comfort, but she did not become attached to her home at York in the same way as Eliza Brown did to hers. Janet’s use of ‘home’ to refer to her household, rather than as a place to which she was attached, may be at least partially due to the fact that she was compiling a book, rather than writing a personal diary. Janet Millett and her husband were not farmers and, in contrast with Eliza Brown’s direct engagement with the country, she was removed from daily contact with

138 Thomas Brown to William Bussey, 14/12/1843, Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, p. 46. 139 Thomas Brown to William Bussey, 21/12/1850, Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, pp. 108-09. 140 Fitzpatrick, ‘Ambiguities of “Home”’. 141 Thomas Brown to William Bussey, 29/12/1849, Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, p. 89. 142 Thomas Brown to Eliza Brown, 13/11/1851, Cowan (ed), A Faithful Picture, p. 126. 143 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 38. 144 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, p. 69. 224 the land. Thomas Dunlap has commented on the increased interest with nature in Australia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and argued that as the settlers became more urban and removed from nature and the country they ‘played there with more intensity and attached more meaning to it’.145 In the case of Eliza Brown and Mrs Millett, who lived in the middle of the nineteenth century, it was the other way around; Mrs Millett was further removed from the land but it was Eliza Brown who attached more meaning to it. Gerald de Courcy Lefroy found little that pleased him in the colony of Western Australia. He liked the scenery at Rottnest Island, but from his arrival in 1843 to late 1850 he frequently expressed disdain for the land and the people there. He often expressed his unhappiness and his regrets on emigrating. In 1847, for example, he wrote: ‘I hate this place more and more daily. It is too far away from those I love.’146 Again, two years later, he commented: ‘This is an odious place, not one to talk to. I wish I was out of it and will be as soon as I can.’147 He felt ‘as if this place was not to be my home; perhaps it is from my utter dislike and detestation of nearly every one in it.’148 Then, in the middle of 1850 Lefroy received a letter from Elisabeth Brockman’s father, which permitted him to court Elisabeth, although they had to wait one year before they could become formally engaged. As mentioned earlier, this affair of the heart changed his outlook. During their courtship, whenever Lefroy saw Elisabeth his spirits were lifted. After an evening with Elisabeth, Lefroy wrote that this was ‘the most truly happy and pleasant Evening I have spent since I left home’.149 Two months later he spent all Christmas Day with her and he declared it was his happiest Christmas since leaving Ireland.150 Lefroy often referred to his place in the Colony as ‘home’ in a similar way that Thomas Brown viewed ‘Grass Dale’: the house was a comfortable place to take meals and to retire to in the evenings. In his diary he noted that he had, ‘remained at home had prayers’, ‘got home by half past 4 o’clock’, and on Christmas Day 1844 was ‘happily at home’.151 Used in this way, ‘home’ was the dwelling place where he ate, rested and where he kept his personal belongings, but it was not a significant place for which he

145 Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora, p. 108. 146 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 19/6/1847 147 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 24/2/1849 148 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 2/10/1849 149 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 4/10/1850 150 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 25/12/1850 151 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 10/11/1844, 24/12/1844, 25/12/1844. 225 felt affection and attachment. However, as well as changing his general outlook, since courting Elisabeth, Lefroy felt more positive towards the land. In January 1851 he took out a lease on land near Gingin, was pleased with what he saw and mused, ‘I think that will be my home.’152 This was the first time Lefroy considered that Western Australia might be a place where he could belong and where he could feel a sense of ‘being at home’. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he admitted that without Elisabeth he would have left Western Australia.153 Unlike Eliza Brown, Lefroy spent many moments lamenting both the physical and emotional distance between himself and ‘civilisation’. Like his fellow colonists Lefroy hungered for letters to connect him with the society he had left behind. Wondering if a ship had come from England with letters for him he wrote: I am here not only farr, farr [sic] away from my own, but I may say nearly at the pale of civilyuation [sic]; no one to converse with but my own thoughts…It always makes me low spirited and unhappy when I am by myself.154 Times when families traditionally gather to celebrate festivals were particularly difficult for the colonists and on Boxing Day of the same year Lefroy again expressed his unhappiness: ‘My heart is unhappy whilst I am here.’155 Lefroy’s loneliness was exacerbated because he was unable to adapt to the quiet life around York. He journeyed to Perth for business and social purposes and he may have been happier there. He enjoyed some of these trips, but at other times he considered Perth no substitute for Ireland. In January 1850 he decided to leave Western Australia and go to Port Phillip because he believed: It is impossible to get on worse here. The extent and capabilities are so very small and I have lost the best of my years here in abject slavery and when after spending months separate from all the rest of the human species I go down to Perth and there I am even more lonely than by myself, no one to speak to, no sociable companion.156 He wrote in the same vein a month later: If I should see any chance of my getting on here I should not like to leave, but certainly as it is, I will. The total want of gentleman and Ladies society is bad

152 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 26/1/1851 153 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 29/10/185. 154 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 13/5/1849. 155 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 26/12/1849. 156 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 14/1/1850. 226 enough without the place having no natural resources of her own to allow a person to advance beyond what I call pedling. I hate the place more and more every day as long as I do not settle down, and until I do I can never feal [sic] contented or happy and therefore cannot get on as I would.157 Lefroy’s happiness was at least partially dependent on having regular social contact with suitable companions, and the lack of these opportunities in the Colony adversely affected his capacity to belong there. It is ironic that Lefroy remained in Western Australia, probably never really feeling that he belonged there, whereas Henry de Burgh returned to Ireland, though it is more likely that he would have become attached to the Avon Valley, had he stayed. De Burgh came to the Colony with the intention of staying permanently. His optimism made him open to new ventures and possibilities. He also maintained a utilitarian outlook, being keen to own and farm land. However, the extent to which Henry became attached to his property or the Colony is difficult to ascertain as his diary is less reflective than the diaries of colonists such as Lefroy or George Fletcher Moore. De Burgh referred to Ireland as ‘home’ but he made no references to his properties in the Avon Valley as ‘home’. Though he missed his family and friends, had he married before returning to Ireland and raised a family in the Colony, it is possible that he would have become attached to his place there. This, however, is speculation. Due to his early return to Ireland and the matter-of-fact style of his diary, there is no evidence that de Burgh developed a sense of belonging in the Colony.

Conclusion In this thesis so far I have shown that ideas about the romantic and picturesque were major influences on how the colonists viewed and described the landscapes they encountered in the Colony. Lefroy, though, is the exception. He found nothing romantic or picturesque in the Avon Valley, being preoccupied with the use-value of the land; thus whether land was ‘good’ or ‘bad’ was based on its potential to be productive. His attitude to the country in the Avon Valley only softened a little when he described land he owned and after he was engaged to Elisabeth Brockman. Ownership and independence were also important to Henry de Burgh but, like the other colonists, a romantic perspective is also evident in his writing. Eliza Brown

157 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald de Courcy Lefroy, 17/2/1850. 227 sometimes described the country using the language of the picturesque. Though Eliza appreciated the scenery and the wildflowers, she did not like eucalypts, as they did not conform to her European ideas of beauty in trees. Janet Millett wrote to inform prospective emigrants about the Colony. She used the language of the picturesque in many of her descriptions of the country and she had a broad understanding of what constituted picturesque scenes. However, she also found aspects of the country monotonous. This chapter has also shown how the traditional gender boundaries in middle- class England and Ireland in the nineteenth century were more permeable in the Colony. Both Eliza Brown and Janet Millett were engaged in activities that took them beyond the household, and these gave them opportunities to make connections to place. Eliza Brown accompanied her husband on exploratory trips and she taught horse riding. Janet Millett also left her house and garden to visit friends in the district, walk in the bush and occasionally she travelled to Perth. Like Wollaston at Australind, she brought native animals into her house and treated them as pets. Just as the women’s roles were more flexible in the Avon Valley, as single men with little domestic help, Lefroy and de Burgh had to do their own household tasks. Lefroy was ambivalent towards domestic duties; sometimes he was proud of his efforts at sewing or cooking, but at other times he resented the fact that he had to perform these duties at all. He did not find much to like about the Colony, but he gained some pleasure from making his house homely and planting flowers in his garden. Apart from de Burgh, who seemed unconcerned about respectability, the colonists in the Avon Valley were all vitally concerned to maintain their position in society. Eliza Brown’s concerns were mainly aimed at reassuring her father that they were still respectable people even though circumstances in the Colony meant that they had to do work that she did not consider appropriate. She was, though, keen to ensure that her children would receive an education in the Colony that was equal in standard to a good English education, and she was uncomfortable about hiring convicts as servants. Though Eliza was aware of her position in society, it was not a central concern and it had little bearing on her sense of belonging. Like Eliza, Janet Millett also felt that associating with convicts, even as servants, was inappropriate for middle-class people and she warned that wealthy English people wanting to emigrate to the Colony would find it difficult to associate with others of a similar class. However, her awareness of class and status may have inhibited her sense of attachment. Lefroy’s writing was

228 dominated by his preoccupation with respectability. He frequently wished that he were back in a society where he could socialise with people from the same class and hence he felt that he did not belong in the Colony. These colonists in the Avon Valley all came into contact with the Aboriginal people and made at least brief mention of them in their writing. Eliza Brown knew the Aboriginal people who worked for them: she thought them ‘uncivilised’ but useful and they had little affect on her sense of belonging. Janet Millett also knew the Aboriginal servants who worked for her, she saw them as inferior, was patronising towards them and, although she knew more about the Aboriginal people than Eliza Brown, her knowledge of them and their relationship to the land did not affect how she related to her home at York or the wider environment. Henry de Burgh’s few references to the Aboriginal people were couched in romantic language but there is insufficient evidence to say how they impacted on his attachment. Lefroy’s attitudes were contradictory and, at times, vicious. It seemed they were yet another reason to dislike the Colony and he felt further alienated by their presence. Eliza Brown expressed an attachment to the landscapes in the Avon Valley and was more settled there than her husband, Thomas. This may have been due, in part at least, from her involvement and close connection with their children and the knowledge that they, too, would probably settle in the Colony. Like Eliza Shaw in the Upper Swan, Eliza Brown’s sense of belonging was shaped by feeling ‘at home’, by carrying out the ordinary activities of life and by sharing these with people she loved. Janet Millett appreciated the landscapes in the Avon Valley and made a comfortable house there that she called home, but without any family, and because she returned to England after only five years, she did not develop a sense of belonging. Henry de Burgh was a similar age to Lefroy when he arrived in Western Australia, both were from Ireland and both were sons of clergymen. They both took up land in the Avon Valley and though their paths crossed there, they did not become friends. De Burgh was an optimist and a romantic who found beauty in the Avon Valley, but returned unexpectedly to Ireland after only five years. However, a sense of ownership and independence were important to de Burgh, as they were to Lefroy. Throughout the eight years of Lefroy’s existing journal he expressed feelings of isolation and dissatisfaction with the social milieu in the Colony. This, together with his pessimistic outlook, made it difficult for him to develop a sense of attachment and belonging to place there. The subjects of this chapter confirm the importance of the

229 social landscape in influencing the extent to which they felt a sense of belonging in the Colony.

230 Chapter Seven The Eastern Goldfields

Introduction Set in the 1890s, thirty years after Janet Millett lived in the Avon Valley, and in the semi-arid landscapes of the Eastern Goldfields (see Figure 7.3), this chapter varies considerably from the previous chapters in both time and place. Though Europeans came to the goldfields to achieve independence and wealth, their means of doing so were different to those who settled in the South West. In some ways it therefore provides a contrast with the preceding chapters, but there are continuities. The primary motivation for middle class people to leave their homes and travel from England and Ireland to the Swan River, the far South West and the Avon Valley in the first half of the nineteenth century was land or religion; but this was not the case for those who travelled to Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie in the 1890s. They came for gold. The hope of finding gold or making the most of the opportunities that arose from rapidly expanding new towns lured thousands of men to the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia. Once towns had been established, married women joined or accompanied their husbands and single women also came seeking work. Existing narratives of life on the goldfields in the 1890s are characterised by romantic recollections of pioneers or grim stories of disease.1 In contrast with these pioneering narratives is Vera Whittington’s excellent medical and social history of the goldfields during the 1890s.2 However, missing from all of these stories and analyses are accounts of the intellectual and emotional landscapes of men and women who, for at least a few years, settled there. This chapter will redress one aspect of these omissions.

1 Arthur Reid’s collection provides much information about life on the goldfields during the 1890s (Arthur Reid, Those Were the Days, Barlcay and Sharland, Perth, 1933). However, this is a highly romanticised account from the point of view of an educated male, which does not take account of women’s experiences or class differences. Similarly, Mates and Gold (N. K. Sligo, Mates and Gold: Reminiscences of Early Westralian Goldfields 1890-1896, Hesperian Press, Victoria Park, W.A., 1980) is a collection of stories about travelling, camping and the mateship of white male prospectors. Colourful Tales of the Western Australian Goldfields (Norma King, Colourful Tales of the Western Australian Goldfields, Rigby, Adelaide, 1980) captures the excitement of searching for gold, the interesting characters to be encountered, as well as tragedies such as the fire in the Mount Charlotte Mine in 1897 that killed five men. Daughters of Midas (Norma King, Daughters of Midas, Hesperian Press, W.A., 1988) is an account of women on the goldfields that included stories of single women, married women, nurses and prostitutes. Although King wrote of women’s experiences, this is another narrative in the pioneering tradition with little analysis. 2 Vera Whittington, Gold and Typhoid: Two Fevers, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1988. 231 It will discuss the ways in which Charles and Campbell Deland and Maude Wordsworth James, who lived on the Eastern Goldfields in the 1890s and early 1900s, developed an attachment to the area and connected with the wider environment in ways that have not previously been described. While, at times, the Deland brothers and Maude James viewed the goldfields landscapes from a romantic perspective, in contrast with the other contexts I have discussed, the picturesque was virtually absent. For Europeans, the landscapes of the goldfields were harsh and usually associated with masculine activities, yet for the Deland brothers, domesticity was central. While they made connections with the landscape, they never expressed feelings of belonging to the Goldfields. Maude was also preoccupied with her house, garden and her social milieu, and it was through her connections with the community that she came to feel a sense of belonging in Kalgoorlie. Again, in this chapter, the social landscape emerges as a significant factor in influencing belonging.

Colonists to the Eastern Goldfields3 The environment of the Eastern Goldfields was harsh and alien to the white newcomers who made their way there from Europe, the eastern colonies or from milder areas of the colony of Western Australia. The region is a vast undulating plain with occasional ranges of low hills, there are no permanent rivers, the vegetation is characterised by open eucalypt woodlands, with saltbush and bluebush scrub on the more calcareous soils.4 The eucalypts, which dominate the vegetation, have adapted to survive in an area where the average rainfall is low and unreliable. This region supports more species of eucalypt than found in areas of the state with higher rainfall,5 yet Europeans in this area generally failed to notice this diversity and often commented on the monotony of the landscape. Geologically, the area is characterised by belts of granite and greenstone and the majority of the region’s mineral wealth is found in the greenstone belt. The climate has been classified as semi-arid to arid with hot summers and mild winters.6 Average summer maximum temperatures are in the mid to high thirties and extended periods of

3 Although this chapter spans the years 1895-1907, by which time Western Australia was a state, not a colony, I have retained the term ‘colonists’ for consistency. 4 Beard, Plant Life of Western Australia, 155. 5 Margaret G. Corrick & Bruce A. Fuhrer, Wildflowers of Southern Western Australia, Five Mile Press in association with Monash University, Victoria, 1996, p. 13. 6 Bureau of Meteorology, Goldfields-Eucla Climatic Survey, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, 2000, p. ix. 232 high temperatures are common. These hot conditions occur when dry continental winds persist for many days. They are the winds responsible for the dust that the European people complained about when they came to the Eastern Goldfields in the 1890s, and that was exacerbated when the land was denuded of trees, chopped down to supply fuel to water condensers, locomotives and mining machinery. The goldrush of the 1890s began west of Kalgoorlie in the Yilgarn district.7 In 1891 the centre of the most productive goldfields in Western Australia was the town of Southern Cross, 230 kilometres west of Kalgoorlie. When the government announced its intention to extend the eastern railway from Northam to Southern Cross, confidence in the area’s gold-producing potential increased. Prospectors were enticed to the district and continued to push further east in their quest for gold. Two of these prospectors were Arthur Bayley and William Ford who, in 1892, found gold at Coolgardie.8 Almost overnight Southern Cross was deserted as hundreds of men made their way to Coolgardie by cart, horseback or on foot. A year later Patrick Hannan, Tim Flanagan and Daniel Shea found gold at Kalgoorlie and Samuel Brookman and William Pearce staked their claim at Boulder. The rush was on. As Kalgoorlie was established, more men, women and their families joined the prospectors to set up businesses, or to find work in a variety of positions demanded by the rapidly expanding town. With a population of 9,617 in 1891,9 Perth was small compared with the capitals of the eastern colonies during the 1890s, but there were, at least, substantial buildings, roads, pavements, banks, houses and public gardens. On the Eastern Goldfields, however, European settlements were just becoming established. The most common form of housing was ‘tents’: temporary constructions of canvas with wooden frames and floors of sand or canvas. Furniture was basic and usually made from packing cases and old kerosene tins. Wealthier people such as mine managers lived in brick houses with corrugated iron roofs and were able to bring special items of furniture from their previous houses.10 Fresh water was scarce, very expensive to buy and with the heat, the dust and the prevalence of typhoid, life was tough for many newcomers, unused to such

7 Appleyard, ‘Western Australia: Economic and Demographic Growth, 1850-1914’, p. 219. 8 The story of Arthur Bayley and William Ford’s discovery of gold at Coolgardie and the ensuing rush is well documented in Martyn J. and Audrey Webb, Golden Destiny: the centenary history of Kalgoorlie-Boulder and the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia, City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Boulder, Western Australia, 1993 and Geoffrey Blainey, The Golden Mile, St Leonards, NSW, 1993. 9 Statistical Register of Western Australia 1896, Government Printer, Perth, 1901, p. 5 10 See for example Erickson and Taylor (Firm), Mine manager’s house: Sons of Gwalia, East Perth, Heritage Council of Western Australia, 1998. 233 conditions. However, the rate of growth was rapid and by 1897 Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie had a combined population of 9,700, 11 significant buildings and published more than one daily newspaper. The Deland brothers came from Gawler, a prominent town north of Adelaide. Campbell Deland arrived on the Eastern Goldfields in June 1895, aged 24. His younger brother, Charles, arrived in 1896, aged 19. Their father, Benjamin Edward Deland, was born in Jersey, England in 1830 and emigrated to South Australia in 1855 where he started work as a builder and architect.12 Their mother, Jane Deland (nee Combe), was Benjamin Deland’s second wife.13 Benjamin Deland was a prominent citizen: he was a Councillor and Mayor of Gawler in 1885-86, a member of the Royal Gawler Benevolent Association, a member of the Lodge of Oddfellows and a committed member of the Congregational Church. In the 1890s Gawler was a flourishing town and acted as a gateway to the land north. It was also an important centre for the manufacture of agricultural implements and mining and machinery. Gawler had a rich social and cultural life and was sometimes referred to as ‘the Athens of South Australia’.14 The landscape around the town consisted of mallee-covered plains, much of which were cleared for agriculture by the 1840s.15

11 Western Australian Yearbook, Registrar General of Western Australia, Perth, 1898. 12 Biographical information of Benjamin Edward Deland is from E.H. Coombe, History of Gawler 1837 to 1908, Gawler Institute, Gawler, 1910, p. 270. 13 Michael Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, Wakefield Press, Netley, SA, 1986, p. 2 14 Dr Philip Payton, The Cornish Farmer in Australia, Dyllansow Truran, Cornwall, 1987, p. 57. 15 Coombe, History of Gawler 1837 to 1908, p. 14, stated that a traveller, Mr J. Smith, reported that the land around Gawler was mostly cultivated in 1841. 234

Figure 7.1 Charles Combe Deland16

Figure 7.2 Edward Campbell Deland17 (referred to as Campbell) While living on the Eastern Goldfields, Campbell and Charles Deland described their experiences in letters they wrote to family and friends. These were later collected by Michael Best and published as A Lost Glitter.18 In his introduction, Best discussed issues in their interpretation and noted that the Deland brothers’ letters to their parents were more optimistic than those to other family members and close friends.19 He also

16 Charles Combe Deland, Best (ed.), A Lost Glitter, Plate 9. 17 Edward Campbell Deland, Best (ed.), A Lost Glitter, Plate 8. 18Best (ed.), A Lost Glitter. 19 Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, p. 7. 235 drew attention to Benjamin Deland’s displeasure when his sons took up a mining lease, as he considered this inappropriate work for people of their class.20 Benjamin Deland’s involvement with the Benevolent Association, the Lodge of Oddfellows and the Congregational Church, together with references about their moral well-being in the letters to and from his sons, suggest that the Deland family adhered to a strict moral and religious code. As religion had been a central part of their lives in Gawler, Campbell welcomed the first opportunity to attend Church on the goldfields and gladly informed his parents: ‘Last Sunday I went to the Wesleyan Service, it seemed so strange and nice to be in a Church again, after being nearly 9 weeks without one.’21 Mr and Mrs Deland were very anxious about their adult sons leaving home and living on the goldfields where they were exposed to a much more robust life of coarse language, excessive alcohol consumption and prostitution. Like Eliza Shaw, who often reassured her father that all was well in the Colony, Campbell’s and Charles’ letters assured their parents that they had not been led astray: How can we thank you dear father & mother for the training you have given us, for neither drink, smoking or other temptation of the sort have any thought, for we are able to see now the worst side of the thing & are able to hate it more. May God give us the power to still hold firm to our convictions…22 Michael Best suggested that the most memorable image to emerge from these letters is one of Campbell and Charles recreating civilised domesticity in an alien environment.23 Certainly, the detail they provide about their domestic arrangements is quite remarkable. Although this may have been for the benefit of their parents, their obvious pride in the way they kept their tent in order and prepared their meals is significant in light of the highly masculine environment of the goldfields, expecially as they came from a society where their involvement with housekeeping duties in the domestic sphere would have been minimal. I, too, am interested in the priority they placed on their domestic environment, but rather than focus on the creation of ‘civilisation’, the primary concern of this study is to explore the connections they made between their domestic space and the wider landscape and the extent to which they became attached to the Goldfields.

20 Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, p. 2-3. 21 Campbell Deland to his parents, 21/11/1895, Kalgoorlie, Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, p. 65. 22 Charles Deland to his parents, 17/3/1896, Deland, Edward Campbell, Papers, BL, ACC 880A/31. 23 Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, p. 19. 236 The reasons Campbell and Charles left South Australia are not made explicit in their letters, but it is likely they came to the goldfields seeking wealth, experience and adventure, like many others from the depressed eastern colonies.24 When Campbell first arrived on the goldfields he stayed in Southern Cross for three months, where he worked as a bookkeeper for a local businessman and his wife, Mr and Mrs Rockcliffe. He then set off for Kalgoorlie where he pursued various business interests. He imported eggs, flour and chaff from South Australia and opened a bakery with Jim Ellis, a man whom he met in Southern Cross. Campbell’s brother, Charles, arrived in Kalgoorlie at the end of February 1896. Charles initially worked with Campbell in the bakery, but later worked in stores at Mt Ida, 120 kilometres north-west of Menzies, and then at Yerilla, east of Menzies.

24 Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, p. 10. 237

Figure 7. 3 Western Australian goldfields, 189925

25 Western Australian goldfields, 1899, Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, Plate 7. 238

In June 1896 the bakery business collapsed. Campbell’s efforts to re-establish it were unsuccessful and he spent the next twelve months settling his business affairs in Kalgoorlie. Meanwhile, Charles returned to South Australia at the end of 1896 and became engaged to Effie Wyllie. Then, in January 1897, he left South Australia again for the goldfields and in the middle of that year joined Charles on the mining leases, where they tried their luck as gold prospectors. They returned to South Australia in 1897, the same year that Maude Wordsworth James came to Kalgoorlie. Maude Wordsworth James was born on 19 December 1855 aboard the Morning Star in the Indian Ocean approximately 2,500 kilometres south west of Western Australia. Her parents, Thomas and Alicia Crabbe, had sailed from Bristol in October bound for Melbourne as unassisted immigrants. Born in Gloucestershire, Thomas was a solicitor and after marriage he spent some of his adult years in Staffordshire and Cambridgeshire. Alicia (nee Bernard) was born in Charleville, County Cork in Ireland. When the couple boarded the Morning Star they had three children. Maude was their fourth. Between 1856 and 1871 Alicia bore another six children. Maude spent her childhood in Victoria, moving from Williamstown, a Melbourne suburb, to Portland, Dunnolly and Maryborough. She met her husband, Charles Wordsworth James, in Maryborough and they were married at the All Saints Church in Bendigo on 3 November 1875. Maude was 19 and Charles was 25. Their first son, Cyril Haughton, was born in Bendigo, Victoria in 1878. Two years later Maude bore a daughter who died when only 16 days old. At some stage between 1878 and 1883 they moved to Hobart where their third child, Tristam (b.4/3/1883) and another daughter, Yolande (b. 15/7/1889) were both born. Maude’s husband, Charles, was a civil engineer who obtained work in Kalgoorlie in 1896. After working there for almost a year he telegrammed Maude and asked her to join him. Maude and their children arrived in Kalgoorlie in March 1897, they settled in Mullingar, a locality of Kalgoorlie, and she kept a journal until 1907. In this journal she recorded her impressions of life in Kalgoorlie. She also included copies of letters she sent to friends and family, photographs, sketches and newspaper articles. Maude left Kalgoorlie in 1907. It is not known if she went immediately to South Australia but she became known in Adelaide during World War I for singing recitals of her own compositions. She died in North Adelaide in October 1936.

239 Viewing the Landscape Unlike most of the colonists of the preceding chapters, the Deland brothers and Maude Wordsworth James were not interested in the capacity of the land to grow crops and raise stock. Initially, the Deland brothers worked in the goldfields towns for wages and observed the land from a distance. However, when they left the towns and went prospecting they engaged more intimately with the land and responded with utilitarian and romantic perspectives. Maude and her husband lived in the town of Kalgoorlie. Maude’s life revolved around her domestic environment and her social contacts in town and she did not need to venture beyond these spaces. She was interested in the world around her and took a particular interest in the price of gold and the share market, but she was not engaged with the physical landscape in the same way as the colonists who came to Western Australia to farm the land. She observed the landscape from her house and the town and never really appreciated the arid environment. The Deland brothers and Maude James initially observed and responded to the semi-arid landscapes of the Eastern Goldfields in ways that were typical of European responses to Australian deserts in the nineteenth century. They saw the desert as a uniform expanse of flat, empty plains. Aboriginal people were aware of variations in the flora and topography of the deserts, but European explorers did not notice these differences; instead their accounts emphasised the monotony of the desert landscapes.26 It was not until the 1930s and 1940s that non-Indigenous artists in Australia began to see the beauty of the desert and their works influenced the way the desert was imagined.27 Post-colonial interpretations of why European people failed to appreciate the desert have focused on issues of naming and possession. Critics such as Paul Carter argue that without significant elevated landmarks explorers were unable to control and identify with the space, so reinforcing the idea that nineteenth century Europeans found the desert alien and incomprehensible.28 However, while ways of viewing landscape are influenced by culture and knowledge, the evidence examined here suggests that experience is also a significant factor that modifies cultural approaches to landscape. After Charles and Campbell Deland had spent some time prospecting and camping in the Eastern Goldfields they became familiar enough with the terrain to see that it was

26 Roslynn D. Haynes, Seeking the Centre: The Australian Desert in Literature, Art and Film, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998, p. 32. 27 Haynes, Seeking the Centre, p. 5. 28 Carter, The Road to Botany Bay, p. 288. 240 not featureless and dull, and they began to appreciate aspects of their desert environment. Campbell Deland arrived in Southern Cross in June when temperatures are usually mild. He was in good spirits and his first impressions of the town were favourable but he did not view the surrounding landscape as beautiful. In 1894 the population of Southern Cross was approximately 50029 and Campbell saw ‘a fair sized township’ with: three or four brick buildings…All the rest are either wood, galvanized iron or canvas and bags. It is a true mining town, everything is put up in a most temporary manner. There is plenty of stone, both slate and limestone, but it has not been used yet…There is plenty of timber everywhere and the underbrush is very thick, but there is not water of any kind excepting what is found on the rocks…I do not at all wonder that these mines were not found before, now that I have seen the country. It is impossible to see more than a mile around you when you are in the train and there is absolutely nothing to distinguish any particular spot by, nothing to form a landmark of any kind.30 Like other accounts of the goldfields in the 1890s, Campbell commented on the lack of features in the landscape, but he also noted an abundance of timber. However, this was to change by the end of the decade as, in a similar way to the woodlands around Kalgoorlie, most of the timber was cut down to use as fuel for the railways or condensers that removed salt from the water used in mining.31 Charles’ early observations also included the sameness of the country and suggest that he was largely ignorant of the wildflowers that bloom in the spring: Of flowers there are none except perhaps a minute one on the trees & bushes at seeding time. The scrub is monotonous & so similar that it is impossible to travel other than by the compass as landmarks there are none…32 Away from the towns where the eucalypt woodlands had not been cut for timber, the country was more attractive to Europeans and it was particularly pleasing after good rains. After a trip in September 1896 from Kalgoorlie to Broad Arrow (40

29 Lyall Hunt (ed), Yilgarn: Good Country for Hardy People, Yilgarn Shire, Southern Cross, Western Australia, 1988, p. 163. 30 Campbell to his parents, 18 June 1895, Best (ed.), A Lost Glitter, p. 29. 31 Hunt (ed), Yilgarn: Good Country for Hardy People, p. 87. 32 Charles to his parents, 17/3/1896, Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, p. 80. 241 kilometers north of Kalgoorlie) and Hayes New Find (60 kilometres north east of Kalgoorile), Campbell remarked: I was very much surprised & pleased with all the country I saw. The Lakes are splendid, magnificent sheets of water…The country out in these back districts is simply lovely now, wild flowers in every direction, beautiful grasses and with the bright black Iron stone beads which cover the surface, the white quartz reef here & everywhere and the many coloured lodes & formations with the bright green trees & bushes above, the country is a perfect picture. It almost makes me long to be out in it, so different to the dry sandy country around here.33 Campbell’s observation that this country was ‘a perfect picture’ is a reminder that even a century after picturesque aesthetics reached their pinnacle in British culture, this approach to viewing and describing landscape was still in use. However, perhaps because it was no longer such a dominant approach,34 the picturesque aesthetic was less prevalent in Campbell’s observations than for the colonists discussed in previous chapters. Both the Deland brothers appreciated the wildflowers and through these they found ways to make connections with the landscape. While Campbell was in Southern Cross his mother sent him some violets, flowers long associated with constancy. Without access to European symbols of love and remembrance, Campbell chose native boronia as a means of expressing his feelings for his mother: In return I am enclosing you a little piece of Beronia [sic], it is the most noted of Wild West Austrln [sic] plants. There are several varieties, some very beautiful in colour, but this one is noted for the beautiful scent it has. People over here will give anything to get a piece of it, as one does not see a flower in SX [Southern Cross] from one weeks end to the other…The Beronia grows wild in places around Albany and was sent up here by a friend to the postmaster. I hope the scent will be in it when you get it…35

33 Campbell to his parents, 8/9/1896, Best (ed.), A Lost Glitter, p. 117. 34 By the middle of the nineteenth century picturesque approaches to landscape were less dominant as general romantic approaches became more popular. McCalman (ed), An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age, pp. 646-47 and 723. 35 Campbell to his mother, 7th August 1895, Best (ed.), A Lost Glitter, p. 39. 242 In the spring of 1896 Charles wrote to Effie that he had ‘pressed some good specimens of the native flowers of this part…’36 The following winter he again found the bush attractive: Cam & I went for a walk into the bush this afternoon, which is now looking nice & green. We found a few ferns and two little flowers but they withered quickly. In about 3 weeks the ground will be a sight as the wild flowers are coming up thickly.37 Later the same month Charles picked some yellow boronia and placed it in his tent, not being content to leave it outside. 38 Charles also reflected on his delight with the wildflowers and seemed surprised by his feelings. It seems he thought about garden flowers in a different way to wildflowers, and this heightened awareness of the flora may have been a way of relating to aspects of the landscape that he had some experience with, and assisted him to feel more comfortable there: Our weather has been splendid again this week and only one shower of rain. The scrub is looking beautifully green and a few weeks will bring flowers. I am still very fond of wild flowers. It may seem strange that I never took a fancy for garden flowers but so great a liking for wild ones. I well remember how thoroughly I enjoyed keeping my eyes open for orchids when I used to send them to you.39 When Campbell first arrived at Southern Cross the country still had timber and he did not comment on the dust in the town. This was in contrast with Maude Wordsworth James who expected sand and wind but was unprepared for the willy willys that shrouded the town with layers of red dust. Coming to the Eastern Goldfields from Tasmania, Maude was accustomed to a vastly different landscape: a land of high rainfall, large rivers, mountains and forests. She recalled the journey by train from Coolgardie to Kalgoorlie: ‘After leaving Coolgardie, we continued our journey over the same sort of country, through which we had come, - only, the farther we went, the redder the dust, and the drearier it all seemed.’40 Maude’s descriptions were brief: it was as though the landscape defied description and she could not see past the plains and the dust. Similarly, her first impressions of Kalgoorlie were not favourable. The photograph

36 Charles to Effie, 3/10/1896, Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, p. 121. 37 Charles to Effie, 4/7/1897, Hayes New Find, Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, p. 187. 38 Charles to his parents, 25 July 1897, Hayes New Find, Best (ed.), A Lost Glitter, p. 192. 39 Charles to Effie, 18 July 1897, Hayes New Find, Best (ed.), A Lost Glitter, p.190. 40 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 10 of unpaginated section of Journal. 243 below (Figure 7. 4), taken from Mt Charlotte near the town centre, illustrates how Maude might have seen Kalgoorlie on her first days there.

Figure 7. 4 Kalgoorlie from Mt Charlotte, 189741

Maude found little to admire in the environment around Kalgoorlie and she seldom commented on the desert landscapes; perhaps, having commented on the dust and the dreariness, she did not think they were worth describing. However, as with most of the colonists of this study, she enjoyed seeing wildflowers and hoped to venture into the bush near Albany, where she landed on her way to Kalgoorlie, to admire the flowers she had heard about: The wild-flowers of this Western Australian Colony are I believe very beautiful – but I have not yet seen any, with the exception of some star-like everlastings of a pink shade of a lovely hue, that were brought from some where [sic] in the vicinity of Southern Cross. Albany is the home of the boronia, and I greatly regret not having stayed there for a sufficient time to have explored the bush, and gathered it in its wild state.42 The wildflowers, though, did provide Maude with a way to connect emotionally with the environment near Kalgoorlie. When Yolande died from complications of scarlet fever in June 1898, Maude wrote about violets and how this flower symbolised the love for her daughter (Yolande means violet) and for this reason violets would always be special for her. However, as she spent more time in Kalgoorlie new flowers

41 Kalgoorlie from Mt Charlotte, 1897, BL, J.J. Dwyer collection, image 010188PD. 42 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 8. 244 acquired meanings of love and remembrance. For example, she placed a bunch of everlastings over a photograph of Yolande and she sent some to a friend to remind them of her enduring love and friendship.43 Maude also used native flowers at Christmas and, in a similar way to John Ramsden Wollaston at Australind in the 1840s, substituted native flora for European flowers, such as holly and ivy, traditionally used for decorations: For decorations, instead of holly, which in Hobart I used to get from Mrs Allport’s wonderful old tree, I had salt bush, instead of ivy – eucalyptus and in place of flowers, which are rarities indeed, I adorned the table with a kind of wild hop that grows quite gaily in the desert soil near Mullingar, and which is pale green in colour and quite fitted for artistic use. 44 While this substitution demonstrates a pragmatic approach to the problem of obtaining foliage for decorating the house at Christmas, it was also a means by which these colonists made the unfamiliar familiar, and came to feel comfortable in their ‘new’ environment. It took knowledge and experience to see variations in the arid landscapes and after nearly five months on the goldfields, Campbell Deland was more aware of the gold-bearing capacity of the land and of the differences in elevation. His perception of the landscape had changed over time. At the end of October 1895 he took a trip to Black Flag and Broad Arrow, describing the country in glowing terms: Some of the first country we passed through was very finely timbered and good gold bearing country, then we came to what they call the lake country, or ridge after ridge of Sand Hills till you get to the salt lakes…After coming to the lake country we suddenly came into high Hills of Ironstone & Granite, this is the Black Flag line of country & is about 24 miles from here. The timber becomes very thick and heavy & the reefs and lodes of iron stone are very prominent… When you get on the rises you can see over the country for miles & miles. One can see what magnificent country it would be if there was only plenty of water. From descriptions given us & the ideas we had at home the country was almost generally supposed to be nothing but sand plains, instead of that there are Hills & Mountains in all directions and Timber everywhere. It is one thing that

43 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, pp. 116 and 65. 44 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 125. 245 puzzles me so much, that there should be so much fine timber everywhere & yet such a scarcity of water. The trees must get their moisture from somewhere.45 One year later Campbell claimed to ‘know’ the country and felt more relaxed about travelling through these landscapes away from the town and his domestic space.46 By ‘knowing’ he meant that he recognised landmarks and could find his way from one place to another. This was a familiarity with the land, rather than a deep understanding acquired over many years. However, with this familiarity came a degree of understanding, and his feelings of alienation from the land declined. He now took pleasure in the colours of the land and the vegetation, but a utilitarian perspective was also evident as his delight with the ridges was due to their gold bearing potential. Here, use and delight are both present but they are not always bound together in Campbell’s letters. In 1896, for example, he separated his utilitarian evaluation from a description of the beauty of the place, in a letter to his parents: The mines around here are still turning out good and I hardly like to anticipate the future. There are so many of them it must be without doubt the most wonderful gold mining country in the earth. The whole country is nothing but ridges of gold bearing country with sand plains and salt lakes between, and these ridges of country are very beautiful just now, every colour under the sun from jet black to purest white, sometimes bowling along over the ground like asphalt, at other times ankle deep in soft white decomposed lode formations. Every colour is to be found…The Gum trees & bushes now are at their best, bright green with the new foliage.47 In mid 1897 Campbell and Charles Deland left their work in town and went prospecting. Their letters from the fields focused more on the environment than on their domestic arrangements and show that the two men were beginning to relate more intimately with the land. During this time they also viewed the land from a romantic perspective, and it seems likely that their romantic response was facilitated by their willingness to adapt to the harsh conditions. Thus, although their life in some respects was harder, with fewer comforts such as tables and chairs, they enjoyed the relative freedom of this lifestyle and believed that living outdoors among nature was a positive, virtuous experience and it provided a means of escaping from the pressures and

45 Campbell to his parents, 29 October 1895, Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, pp. 61-62. 46 In a letter to his parents, 5 October 1896, Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, p. 122, Campbell explained that he now knew the principal landmarks of the country and was unlikely to get lost. 47 Campbell to his parents 5 October 1896, Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, p. 122. 246 constraints of society. In a letter to his fiancée, Effie Wyllie, Charles expressed his pleasure with living close to nature. He retired at sunset and rose with the call of the birds and the dingoes and took pleasure in being in tune with the rhythms of night and day.48 Similarly, to his friend, ‘Miss Mary Ann’, Campbell wrote of his enjoyment of living outdoors: I have got quite to like it, the going to bed early. The beautiful fresh night air and day and being up at least half an hour before the sun of a morning, it is altogether a pleasant free life and I would rather now sleep in a tent than in a stuffy iron or wood house…we keep our tent warm by having a bucket of nice hot coals in the middle of the floor. 49 However, these romantic ideas about the morally uplifting character of prospecting were only present under certain conditions. Charles and Campbell had been on the goldfields long enough to feel relaxed about being in the bush and although they had not made large profits from their business and waged employment, they had enough money to be secure. Furthermore, the letters in which these attitudes were expressed were written when the temperatures were mild, the bush was relatively green and the wildflowers were prevalent. Had they gone prospecting in the summer when they first arrived, it is likely that their descriptions of the bush and their lifestyle would have been less positive and certainly less romantic. At times Maude James also viewed the landscapes near Kalgoorlie from a romantic and picturesque perspective. Though she did not use the term ‘picturesque’, according to Gilpin’s understanding that picturesque refers to a scene that was suitable for painting, Maude’s description of sunsets would fall most appropriately into this category: The sunsets are most beautiful in the West, and I often stand enraptured at the lovely glowing colours – now a brilliant crimson – now a mass of golden tints – then fading into paler shades – each combination most exquisite in itself.50 Maude’s romantic approach was primarily directed towards her house, rather than the landscape. Once accustomed to living in a canvas house Maude commented: Our camp looks quite pretty tonight under the subdued light of hurricane and Rochester lamps. The verandahs are covered in with canvas, and laid with

48 Charles to Effie, 13/6/1897, Hayes New Find, Best (ed) A Lost Glitter, pp. 179-80. 49 Campbell to Miss Mary Ann, 18 June 1897, Hayes New Find, BL, ACC 880A/68. 50 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 4. 247 coconut matting, which Father takes under his special protection…I like my tent for sleeping in as it so quickly cools, and altogether as camps go ours is not at all to be despised.51 During her time living in the Eastern Goldfields, Maude wrote less about the landscapes there than many of the colonists discussed in the previous chapters. She did appreciate the wildflowers and described the sunsets using romantic imagery but she was not living on the land, or farming, and she had fewer opportunities to become familiar with the environment beyond her house and garden. As the next sections show, Maude’s domestic environment and her social networks were her primary concerns and became the objects of her attachment. The Deland brothers responded to the desert landscapes in a similar way to Maude until they left the towns to go prospecting, where they camped on the goldfields. Here, the outdoor life facilitated their romantic sensibilities and they formed emotional connections with the land through the wildflowers.

People and Home Domesticity, Social class and Gender on the Goldfields Although by the late 1890s families were living in Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie, there were still many more men than women on the goldfields. In this highly masculine environment, myths emerged about the typical prospector. Narratives of the goldfields52 tell of white male prospectors who embodied many of the qualities of Russell Ward’s legendary bushman: they were independent, resourceful, loyal to their mates but with a tendency to larrikinism.53 The implied relationship that these prospectors had with the land is adversarial, in which those who survived did so in spite of the harsh landscape. In contrast to this masculine image, however, there is evidence which suggests that the Victorian ideal of domesticity could also be found on the goldfields in the 1890s. Like Lefroy and de Burgh in the Avon Valley, Charles and Campbell Deland were very concerned with their domestic environment and spent much time and effort ensuring their dwelling places were as comfortable and organised as possible and, like

51 MWJ, letter to Cyril, 31/12/1898, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 96. Hurricane and Rochester lamps were kerosene lamps. 52 See for example, Sligo, Mates and Gold; King, Colourful Tales of the Western Australian Goldfields. 53 Russell Ward, The Australian Legend, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1966 (first published 1958), p. 2. 248 other men discussed in this study, they also carried out a range of domestic tasks. In the James household though, gender roles were more consistent with typical late Victorian middle class households and Maude’s role could be described as a ‘helpmeet’ for her husband.54 Families discussed in the previous chapters lived on farms, where work was carried out at home, but for Charles home and work were separate. As well as a place of reassurance and comfort, Maude’s house and garden were important in assisting her to develop connections with the physical landscape of the goldfields and also with the community. Travelling as young single men the Deland brothers did not arrive on the goldfields with a large range of household goods. Nor did they bring luxury items such as a piano or brass candlesticks, as some families did.55 The interiors of their dwellings were functional and practical, using inexpensive items readily available, but they did invest considerable time and thought in organising the interior spaces of their houses. The detail they provide in their letters and the frequency of the descriptions about their living spaces suggest that they felt a need to create order and a refuge, or at least an image of this for their parents. As they became more familiar with the landscapes and when they were prospecting and enjoying living outdoors, their attempts to recreate the function and aspects of the atmosphere of their house in Gawler suggest the importance, even to young men with an adventurous spirit, of feeling ‘at home’ in the places where they retired each evening, woke each morning, ate their meals and wrote letters to loved ones. Campbell Deland spent his first few nights in Southern Cross in his employer’s store, but he soon moved into his own dwelling. This was typical of early housing on the goldfields, being constructed of canvas on a wooden frame, and Campbell described this for his parents: I have a wire stretcher that has been lying unclaimed in the store for a long time, three blue blankets, my little rug and a large rug I bought here for 1 pound at the store last night, it is a beauty. Then I fixed up a table out of a couple of cases so as to make two cupboards, and a dressing table, then I have another case for my wash stand &c. I have bags on the ground at present but am collecting the lids of

54 Margaret Anderson argued that women in Western Australia during the mid nineteenth century were ‘helpmeet’ for men. Anderson, ‘ “Helpmeet for Man”: Women in Mid-nineteenth century Western Australia’. 55 Ann Lily Miller brought her Brinsmead piano with her to the Goldfields all the way from Tasmania. Ann Lily Miller, Journal, BL, MN 1658, ACC 5088A. 249 cans to make a floor for it then I have a bucket wash bowl, small round mirror, camp-pot with pannican combined, a spare pannican & glass candle stick, & tonight I have my first visitor in as George Jeffries came in for a while and we had hot cocoa, cake, condensed milk, & bananas for my supper…56 When he moved to Kalgoorlie to work in the bakery with Charles, Campbell again described his living arrangements: The four roomed house is furnished all but the lining & that we intend to have done during the week. It is built of House canvas & arranged so that it can easily be covered with iron later on. We have not got much furniture as yet, plenty of Chairs two good tables & a wire mattress bedstead each. The Kitchen we have fitted up nice & cozey [sic] with shelves Cupboards &tc.57 Charles was equally concerned with domestic arrangements and he described these for Effie while camping at Hayes New Find: We have two tents rigged up on a flat plain of salt bush scrub and about a mile through dense scrub to the nearest neighbour…Once more I am in the realm of cooking utensils and house keeping but our furniture being limited to a bunk made of two bags threaded on two sticks which rest on four others driven in the ground. We have a table of like sticks covered with a case, and chairs to match the suite. Our dining room is of boughs laid on a framework of sticks but the walls are trans everything.58 The brothers also cooked many of their own meals with pride. Campbell spent his first Christmas on the Goldfields with friends and they cooked Christmas dinner together: We had two nice fowls for dinner, fresh potatoes, onions & cabbage, then plum puddings and preserved apricots & fresh stewed plums, with oranges to finish up. We cooked the dinner in the bake house oven, and we all enjoyed it very much.59 One Sunday, with a group of friends, they travelled by cart and bicycle to some leases a short distance from Kalgoorlie. For lunch they enjoyed a picnic prepared by Charles and the women. Charles explained to his mother:

56 Campbell Deland to his parents, Southern Cross, 27/6/1895, Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, pp. 33- 34. 57 Campbell Deland to his parents, Kalgoorlie, 11/4/1896, Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, p 84. 58 Charles Deland to Effie Wylie, Hayes New Find, 21/5/1897, Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, p 170. 59 Campbell Deland to his parents, 30/12/1895, Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, p. 68. 250 When we arrived there the others did some opening up & prospecting on the line of reef until Mrs. E. [Ellis], Lucy & myself had boiled the billy & set dinner. Dinner was fine, cold ox-tongue, cold boiled pork & apple pie, hop beer, soda water & tea.60 On the Eastern Goldfields preparing a meal outdoors could be a cooperative affair, where men and women worked together. Indeed, Charles seemed to enjoy cooking and relished the opportunities afforded to him in an environment where gender roles were more flexible: Yesterday evening I made some pan-cakes just like Mother makes & my word they did not keep in stock long. I often indulge in a little fancy cooking & blanch-manges are almost a daily article. My efforts tonight were devoted to fried onions & potato chips at which I am also a great success. Nearly all the cooking devolves upon me & I do not object in the least for it always has an interest for me while others as a rule dislike it.61 These images of the Deland brothers attending to their living spaces and cooking are not usually associated with life on the goldfields, where tales of romance, adventure and hardship have dominated. While Campbell and Charles were not able to create a typical middle-class Victorian domestic environment, they did not abandon the ideals of home that they had learned provided a safe and comfortable refuge where they could eat, rest and find companionship. Maude and her husband, Charles, used the space in their house in ways that were more conventional for middle class families in Australia in the 1890s. This also contrasts with the Bussell family, where boundaries between men and women’s work and the spaces they inhabited were less distinct and where men, even when women were present, worked in the house. Maude was responsible for all the cooking, cleaning and laundry and her husband did not participate in these domestic tasks with the exception of brushing and sweeping the garden paths.62 Charles still valued Victorian middle-class domestic ideals and retired to their house in the evenings for comfort and companionship after working in an office in town. The James also had financial means to employ domestic help, and after Maude was ill and unable to do all the work around their house and garden they hired a woman to assist her.

60 Charles Campbell to his mother, Kalgoorlie, 29/4/1896, Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, p. 87. 61 Charles Campbell to Effie Wylie, Hayes New Find, 30/5/1897, Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, p. 175. 62 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, pp 120, 275. 251 Just like the Deland brothers, Maude Wordsworth James spent much time and energy in making her house comfortable. Her journal also details the changes they made as their financial situation improved. Their first dwelling at Mullingar consisted of ‘two tents 10 x 2 and 6 x 8 feet arranged as bedrooms. Another tiny tent as a dressing-room. With a small unlined corrugated iron kitchen beside them.’63 By 1907 the canvas had been replaced with timber weatherboards, there were verandahs, a brick chimney, linoleum on the floors and the property was fenced.64 Maude also decorated their house with items of sentimental value. Literature concerning the interiors of early Australian houses has focused predominantly on the extent to which an Australian style developed prior to 1914 and how the interiors of houses can contribute to an understanding of their occupiers’ way of life.65 Serle and Lang discussed the style of Maude’s living room and noted that the tuck-pointed bichrome brick over the fireplace was an interpretation of English Victorian and Edwardian styles.66 More interesting for this thesis, though, is to consider if and how the items with which she decorated her house are indicative of her emotional connection to the Goldfields. Initially she decorated her house with ornaments and trinkets that had meaning for her, ‘treasures’ from Tasmania and Victoria. But as the years passed she displayed trinkets and gifts from Kalgoorlie. The interior of Maude’s first house at Mullingar was simple, with furniture made from local materials, but it was decorated with various ornaments from her previous homes. There were: some camp chairs, a dresser made of gunpowder boxes, which is quite a triumph of art in its way, a tiny safe, two boxes, a table, my photographs and Charlie’s engineering instruments…We also have four forks, some cutlery, four spoons, a little china, a tin opener, a bowie knife (presented by Mr Jack Macmillen and which is used by the family for cutting bread, or string, or for carving, as the circumstances suit), a few pots and kettles, and a Tasmanian shell as a sugar spoon set in solid silver, which lends an air to the establishment…67

63 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 12. 64 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 247, 312. 65 Jesse Serle, ‘British-Australian Domestic Interiors’ in P. Freeman and J. Vulker, The Australian Dwelling, The Royal Institute of Architects, Canberra, 1991, pp. 11-21; Jesse Serle and Terrance Lang, Australians at Home: A Documentary History of Australian Domestic Interiors from 1788-1914, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1990. 66 Serle and Lang, Australians at Home, p. 391. 67 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 47. 252 During her early years in Kalgoorlie, Maude’s photographs and various trinkets and mementos were a means of making her new, unfamiliar environment feel more like ‘home’. Maude made this explicit after a visit back to Tasmania and Victoria in 1902: ‘since I brought over the few family treasures that are left to us, and deposited them at ‘Rydal Camp’, it [her house in Kalgoorlie] has seemed more like a real home than it did before’.68 Gradually, as Maude became part of the community in Kalgoorlie, ornaments and trinkets she acquired there also became important and were placed with pride on the mantelpiece. Among these were prizes and trophies she had won and they included: A silver buttonhook…a scent bottle for the highest score at a Bridge Tournament – a Dorothy Bag, and a silver swan spoon for a croquet tournament – a bangle and many trinkets – as well as a lovely presentation purse from the Mullingar Club which I value much, and which was quite a surprise to me.69

Figure 7. 5 The drawing room and mantelpiece of Maude Wordsworth James, c.190770 By 1907 the memorabilia that adorned Maude’s mantelpiece (see Figure 7.5) suggest that being part of the Kalgoorlie community had become more important. This

68 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 270. 69 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 290. 70 From Serle and Lang, Australians at Home, p. 391. 253 interpretation is strengthened further by her comments regarding her social milieu. Like many of the colonists discussed earlier, she strove to maintain her position in society and her involvement in the community was critical to this. She commented that she was ‘a born aristocrat in my ideas and tastes’.71 Although this was a turn of phrase, as she and her husband were members of the professional middle class rather than the aristocracy, it is an indication of how she perceived herself. The gender of her social milieu was also important and she was relieved to find that there were other women to whom she could relate: When I first viewed the tiny canvas house and noted the scattered population, and remembered the toiling and striving that went on amongst the men on the field I hardly expected to find pretty houses and artistic rooms. Yet, before we had been many days in the place, I had quite a little medley of visitors and in returning the calls, I was greatly interested to learn that there were quite enough gentle people to find kindred spirits amongst and, though the proportion of men is something enormous, yet there are refined and cultured women enough to form quite a little coterie in themselves.72 Soon after arriving Maude was pleased to be invited to tea with the Mayor and Mayoress and the wife of their Irish doctor. Although she declined these early invitations due to her family duties, it was important to her to receive them.73 Throughout her journal she recorded many of her invitations to a variety of occasions and she even listed the attendees. Possibly due to his work commitments, her husband was unable to accompany her to these various social events and she expressed her regrets about this: Before I tell of our family news I will give you an idea of how civilised the Kalgoorlieites are getting. Lately I was asked to join both French and German conversational classes at a friend’s house. Cinderallas are held every fortnight at the Miners Institute in the winter time, and I believe they are very successful, while at the races the gathering is quite a fashionable one. Charlie is not able to take me to dances, races, or any of the frivolities for which, between ourselves,

71 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 18. 72 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 6. 73 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a p. 10. 254 my soul sometimes longs – For in a place like this these gatherings are the only means by which one can meet new people and make new friends.74 It seems that Maude was unable to attend dances and the races, but even so, she attended enough social gatherings to make new friends. To her delight, when their eldest son, Cyril, who had been working in New Zealand, came to Kalgoorlie and lived with the family for a few months, he bought his mother a new evening dress and took her to the theatre and the races.75 The opening of the Coolgardie Water Supply Scheme in 1903 stood out as an important day for Maude and she noted what people wore and with whom she spoke.76 Maude also participated in the community through her subscription to the Miner’s Institute that gave her access to the library there and her active involvement in the Anglican Church and its various charitable activities.

Maude’s Garden Maude’s connections with the community were important to her but she did make some connections with the physical environment of the goldfields. As discussed earlier, she made emotional connections to the environment through the wildflowers but she made more enduring connections through her garden. Gardens can be seen as places where, as Katie Holmes has argued, gender differences are created and negotiated.77 Maude James’ garden could also be viewed in this way as roles were clearly differentiated; Maude and the children tended the plants while Charles raked and swept the paths. Within the objective restrictions of the climatic conditions, she fashioned her own vision of a garden. She even planted pale green cress in the shape of her Christian name across the centre garden bed. More significant, though, was the part Maude’s garden played in providing her with a way of relating to the environment of the goldfields. It is sometimes assumed that before the Coolgardie Water Supply Scheme opened in 1903 there were no gardens in Kalgoorlie, due to the lack of water. Water was scarce and expensive but it was still possible to have a garden, and articles in the Kalgoorlie Miner indicate the interest in gardening shown by the community.78

74 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 105. Cinderallas were social events. 75 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 152. 76 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 271. 77 Holmes, ‘Fertile Ground: Women and Horticulture’. 78 Andrea Gaynor and Jane Davis, ‘People, Place and the Pipeline: Visions and Impacts of the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme, 1896-1906’, Marnie Leybourne and Andrea Gaynor (eds), Water: Histories, Cultures, Ecologies, University of Western Australia Press, Crawley, 2006, pp 24-25; The Kalgoorlie Miner, 10/4/1897, p. 6 and 26/5/1898, p. 4. 255 European and Tasmanian ideas of gardens were necessarily modified on the goldfields and instead of the green lawns and English flowers that thrive in Tasmania, Maude created paths and borders from quartz stones (see Figure 7.6), and she grew native and hardy exotic plants. Soon after they moved from their rented dwelling in town to their own house at Mullingar, Maude wrote with pride of their garden: Tristram is the gardener-in-chief, Yolande, herself the fairest flower, is his assistant and I am their chosen companion and put enthusiasm into all their little plans for the improvement of the camp and its surroundings. We wander about with baskets, securing quartz and crystals from various leases, and adorning the grounds with them…and proud I am of my newly found powers of horticulture and stone gatherature. The trees on our area are cherished, and all have been christened with due ceremony. Lady Maude is a gumtree with a gravelled walk leading to it, a box turned upside down for a table under it, and a few chairs, and some afternoon tea things which Tris gave me and which are in frequent demand. In fact it is my only reception room. And with the clear blue sky above us as a panoramic ceiling, the terracotta earth for a carpet, which to the artistic eye forms a pretty scheme of colouring, the white quartz stones we have collected all around and the green Australian gums in the distance – What can one wish for more? …We have a gloomy looking gum that always appears to me as though ravens should be hovering over it; a she-oak sort of shrub that we call our Xmas tree; a Boronia sent me by the Town Clerk, and plentifully watered by the family tea leaves…while Tristram’s cress and his grape vines, and passionfruit cuttings give fair promise for the future. And altogether the other trees…are tended with the greatest care and we contemplate growing flowers in one of the beds we are busy laying out, when the opportunity occurs of our getting some seeds from the other colonies. 79 Although it has been argued that Europeans in Australia were slow to incorporate native flora into their gardens,80it is clear from Maude’s writing that her garden contained native plants. She even searched the surrounding landscape for native

79 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 16. 80 Bligh, Cherish the Earth, pp. 116 & 118 suggested that it was not until the twentieth century that gardeners appreciated and incorporated indigenous flora into their gardens but this has been challenged by recent research. See for example, Holmes, ‘I have built up a little garden…’ Furthermore, a report by the Coolgardie Forest Ranger praised the suitability of a native hibiscus for cultivation in local gardens (The Kalgoorlie Miner, 9/12/1898) indicating that it was not uncommon for residents of the goldfields to include indigenous flora in their gardens. 256 plants and transplanted these into her garden.81 Maude and her family also embraced the existing vegetation on their land and placed stone borders around the trees. One of their gum trees that Maude called ‘Lady Maude’ was of special significance. She always liked this tree but after Yolande died in June 1898 it became even more significant: I am penning this under the somewhat meagre shade of my own special gumtree, the one I have told you, where I spend many hours in reading or writing, or thinking. And which is now to me a sacred shrine, as it was the favourite resting place of my little girl, who used to sit up among the branches with her child friend from Tasmania.82 Paul Carter wrote that gum trees symbolised the idea of place for the newcomers to Australia as they ‘emerge in the literature of travelling and settling as fundamental expressions of the newcomers’ desire to inhabit’. 83 The gum tree was thus associated with home, but Maude’s gum tree was also personalised as a shrine. Maude was proud of her quartz paths but she longed for a green outlook, and in 1899 she sowed some oats that ‘gave the garden quite a farm like appearance’.84 The following winter she once again grew oats and had a photograph taken of them for the local newspapers. Her success at creating a small patch of green vegetation was obviously important to her. It showed her skills as a gardener in a place where creating a green garden was a challenge, but it was reflected a yearning for green pastures and verdant, picturesque scenery that she and others on the goldfields clearly felt deprived of.

81 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 16. 82 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 102. 83 Carter, The Road to Botany Bay, p. 264. 84 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 102. 257

Figure 7.6 ‘Our Camp at Mullingar’ showing Maude's gum tree and stone paths, c. 189885 The first exotic plants that Maude grew were kitchen plants but Maude hoped to grow flowers as soon as possible. As the garden became more established Maude experimented with different annuals. In 1901 she was pleased with the amount of green in her garden and she ‘also had some very good double white stocks and plenty of mignonette, and between these and the bush flowers, I have kept my camp adorned quite prettily, and have been able to give away a good many flowers as well.’86 The following year Maude added bouganvilleas, cosmos, sunflowers, parsley and a white dolicas.87 Thus, Maude’s garden, with its mixture of native and exotic plants, as well as local stones, may be seen as one way in which she made connections with the environment beyond her domestic space. It was a place where she could express her creativity, grow plants that reminded her of special places and people, and create a feeling of permanence and belonging. By actively seeking indigenous plants for her garden she also formed a relationship with the natural environment.

85 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 76. 86 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 186. 87 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 270. 258 The Deland brothers, Maude Wordsworth James, Aboriginal People and Belonging Campbell was the only colonist of this study who did not write about the Aboriginal people at all, but he must have seen them because he was prospecting and camping with Charles when Charles wrote about them in his letters. It is difficult to know why Campbell did not comment on the Aboriginal people, but perhaps he thought that they were not worth writing about and that his family would share his uninterest. While Campbell made no mention of the Aboriginal people, Charles and Maude wrote briefly of them and their perceptions were consistent with the Social Darwinist stereotypes common to non-Aboriginal people in Australia at the end of the nineteenth century. Although Michael Best suggested that Charles Deland was more sympathetic towards the Aboriginal people than most, he agreed that he was patronising.88 Maude James was also patronising toward them, portraying them as both dirty and lazy.89 As with the colonists discussed in the preceding chapters, Charles’ and Maude’s awareness of the Aboriginal people’s connections to the land did not affect their own relationship with the land or their sense of belonging. On the contrary, this knowledge seemed to highlight the perceived differences between their white, European culture and Aboriginal culture. Charles Deland’s attitude toward the Aborigines was clear. He grouped them with the kangaroos, as if they were part of the native fauna: ‘There are of course no kangaroos or in fact any living creatures native to this country, the blacks even coming from other parts.’90 On one occasion Charles acknowledged the superior ability of two Aboriginal women to see the gold in stones they were classing for the battery, but his attitude was one of amusement rather than respect.91 The presence of the Aboriginal people seemed to have been of no significance for Charles and certainly did not affect his relationship with the landscapes of the Goldfields. Maude saw herself as a pioneer who contributed to the ‘improvement’ and ‘civilising’ of Kalgoorlie. She viewed the Aboriginal people as inferior and used poetical tropes and clichés in her writing, describing them on one occasion, as the ‘dark

88 Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, p 15. 89 Charles to his parents, undated but probably March 1896, Best, (ed), A Lost Glitter, pp 73-74; MWJ, Journal, BL ACC 4739a, p 8. 90 Charles to his parents, 17/3/1896, Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, p 78. 91Charles to Effie, 20/6/1897, Best (ed), A Lost Giltter, p. 182. 259 hued early inheritors of the soil’.92 However, she also understood that white people did not ‘discover’ the Goldfields and she did have some insight into their plight when Europeans occupied the land. She acknowledged in a poem that the Aboriginal people were dispossessed of their land, but beyond making reference to it, it did not affect her own feelings of attachment: Ere the white man had wrested the soil from the black It stood on a spot you now see- And perchance the poor black man had once his own home ‘neath the shade of that old gum tree.93 Though Maude was aware that the Aboriginal people possessed the knowledge and skills to live in an environment that white people could not survive in, this did not assist her to develop connections with the land or contribute in any way to her feelings of belonging. Maude appreciated the beauty of the sunsets on the Goldfields, but the attachment she felt was not to the places where most of the Aboriginal people lived. Rather, it was directed towards her house and garden and arose from the people with whom she formed strong connections.

Belonging on the Eastern Goldfields The Deland brothers found beauty in the landscapes of the goldfields during spring and were impressed by the land’s gold-bearing capacity but their connections to the land were tenuous. They made homes in the goldfields towns and enjoyed their lifestyle while prospecting, when they found a way to connect with the land through the wildflowers, but they did not feel that they belonged there. Maude, though, did develop feelings of attachment and belonging. After a few years she settled into life in Kalgoorlie and by 1907 she thought of Mullingar, the suburb where she lived, as her ‘dear Mullingar’.94 The period of time spent on the goldfields can partially account for this difference. The Deland brothers stayed only two years while Maude lived there for ten years. That Maude owned her house, while the Deland brothers lived in temporary dwellings, either in lodgings in the towns or on mining leases while prospecting, was also a factor that influenced their connections to place on the goldfields. Although, as I

92 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 102. 93 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 68. 94 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p 327. 260 have argued earlier, belonging and a sense of place can occur without ownership,95 the evidence here suggests that the Delands’ peripatetic lifestyle decreased the likelihood of them becoming attached to place. Furthermore, the influence of family and differences in personalities cannot be ignored. It is evident from their letters that the Deland brothers came from a close family with a strict moral code: they missed their home in Gawler and were lonely. This is not unexpected, but their attachment to family was so great that all their accounts of their experiences on the goldfields were filtered through an awareness of how their parents would respond. Letters to Campbell and Charles from family members in South Australia also influenced how the brothers wrote of their experiences. Mrs Deland, in particular, was always anxious that her sons were well, comfortable and abstaining from alcohol, and she continually expressed her anxiety that her sons might come into contact with drunk and violent men.96 Her letters advised care and caution and drew the required responses from Campbell and Charles. When Charles joined Campbell in Kalgoorlie, Campbell was aware that his parents would very much feel the loss of their sons and he wrote to reassure them that their home was with them in Gawler: I do hope you will not feel the Gap that we two boys have made, too much. You may be sure that we shall both do our best to do what we can so as to return to you as soon as we can. This place will never be a home.97 However, less than a week later Campbell wrote: ‘It almost seems like part of home since Charlie came. I do not feel as I were in a strange country and place.’98 Clearly, the presence of significant people was crucial in the process of creating a ‘home’ for Campbell. An early letter from Charles also commented on his feelings of isolation. He told his parents that his only real pleasure was the thought of those ‘on your side’ and he did not make friends, only business acquaintances.99 People from the eastern colonies were often referred to as ‘t’othersiders’ and Charles wrote as though he had crossed a line that symbolised his separation from the social circles from which he had drawn much of his comfort and security.

95 See Chapter Five and Read, Belonging, and Read, Returning to Nothing; MacKellar, Core of my heart, my country, p. 18. 96 Mrs Jane Deland to Charles, 7/9/1896, Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, p 114. 97 Campbell to his parents, 2 March 1896, Best (ed), A Lost Glitter, p. 72. 98 Campbell to his parents, 8 March 1896, BL, ACC 880A/31. 99 Charles to his parents, 17 March 1896, Best (ed.), A Lost Glitter, p.79. 261 When the brothers lived in the town and ran the bakery business they made few connections between their canvas house and the landscape beyond. They observed the landscape but their primary interest was with the economics of baking bread and selling flour. Given that they were young men in a young, male town, it is surprising that they did not connect more with the social milieu: other than their involvement with the Congregational Church they did not seem to participate in the social life of the town at all. If they did, they did not tell their family about it. Perhaps they felt so bound by the values and morals of their family and religion that they had no interest in socialising in what they perceived to be a dissolute and godless place. From the perspective derived from the brothers’ letters, their attachment to family was so great it seemed that in everything they did and thought, they were aware of their parents’ opinions and wanted their approval. The photograph below (Figure 7.7), from the collection of Edward Campbell Deland, shows a miner with ‘a letter from home’ and it is easy to imagine that this was Charles or Campbell, sitting in their camp and reading letters from family and friends. These family ties were further strengthened when Charles became engaged to Effie Wyllie from South Australia. Although there were times when they expressed happiness and wonder at their surroundings and they made some connections with the Goldfields landscapes, they never really adjusted to life there and did not make significant or lasting connections with the land or the towns.

262

Figure 7. 7 ‘Letter from home’, 1895100 Maude did become attached to Mullingar and often called it home. As demonstrated in earlier chapters, the word ‘home’ can take on different meanings and these meanings can coexist and surface at different times. There were times when Maude referred to England as ‘home’ although she never lived there; once she referred to Ireland as ‘home’ and there are many instances in her journal when she called her house in Mullingar ‘home’. In her early days in Kalgoorlie her house was her home in the sense that it was the centre of their domestic life. This was where the family came together each day to eat, sleep and relax and for Maude it was where she cooked, cleaned and wrote her letters and journal.101 The importance to Maude of home as the centre of her domestic life and her family was particularly evident after she and Charles returned to Kalgoorlie after holidaying in Perth and Bunbury: The little camp looked shabby and the roads were dusty, and alas, my dear old gum tree was dead and the town seemed uglier than ever. But after all, home is home the wide world over, and we were both glad to get back, and my tent was cool and my wooden bush bed more comfortable than any I had slept in while I

100 Henderson, E.W., ‘Letter from home’, 1895. Miner reading letter from home in Edward Campbell Deland’s collection of photographs, BL, online image number 000632D. 101 See for example MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a pp. 14, 127. 263 was away, and best of all, our children were with us once more, looking well pleased to have us back.102 In 1902, when she had returned to Kalgoorlie after a trip to Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia, she referred to Kalgoorlie as home in the sense that this was where she felt she belonged. It was during this holiday that Maude brought back to Kalgoorlie a few family treasures and she wrote that her home in Kalgoorlie now ‘seemed more like a real home than it did before.’103 Although Maude never lived in Ireland this was the family home of her mother. She thus referred to Ireland as her ancestral ‘home’ and wished that her sons could meet and love ‘our own ‘people’ at last.’104 Maude’s husband was from England and he still had many family members living there, so England was ‘home’ for Maude in the same way that Ireland was an ancestral ‘home’, and particularly for the benefit of her sons, she expressed a wish to visit England: ‘If we can ever afford it, I should like much to go home to England.’105 Here, ‘home’ refers to a place of common ancestry. The desire to visit was primarily motivated by a yearning to show the ancestral ‘home’ to the next generation so they may have gained a greater understanding of who they were and where they came from. This kind of belonging implied in identity coexisted with the sense of belonging, attachment and affection that Maude felt for Mullingar. Interestingly, Maude did not use the word ‘home’ to refer to Tasmania, yet this is the place she missed the most. At the end of a particularly trying day her thoughts turned to Tasmania.106 She missed the water, ferns and trees, many of her ornaments and decorations in her house were from Tasmania and she wrote most frequently to her friends there. However, by 1907 she had made a life for herself in Kalgoorlie and was happy. As we saw for Eliza Shaw in Chapter Three, attachment to place does not necessarily mean attachment to land, but can refer to domestic space or a specific locality. Furthermore, the writings of Maude Wordsworth James and the Deland brothers clearly show that the social and cultural environment can have a very significant impact on the process of belonging. Recalling Powell,107 who argued that information-sharing networks are important when adapting to new environments, it was

102 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 174. 103 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 270. 104 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 94. 105 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 288. 106 MWJ, Journal, BL, ACC 4739a, p. 127. 107 Powell, Mirrors of the New World, p. 24 and cited in Chapter One. 264 Maude’s immersion in local groups and organisations that sustained her and enabled her to feel that she belonged in Kalgoorlie. On the other hand, the Deland brothers’ lack of information-sharing networks on the Goldfields made it more difficult for them to belong there. Family ties and values and community associations were the primary influence on Maude Wordsworth James’ and Charles and Campbell Deland’s ability and willingness to engage with and develop an attachment to the land.

Conclusion While the Deland brothers and Maude Wordsworth James came to landscapes quite different from those discussed in the previous chapters, and at a time when Perth had become a centre of significance in a self-governing Colony,108 there were also similarities in the process by which they and the other colonists established connections with place. The most significant difference in the way the Deland brothers and Maude James responded to the land compared with the colonists discussed in the previous chapters was the relative lack of separation between use and delight. This arose from their different reasons for coming to these new places. With the exception of John Wollaston and the Milletts, the colonists discussed in Chapters Three to Six came to acquire and work grants of land. In their responses to the land, their assessment of the land as useful and their expressions of delight could be, and often were, independent and separate. On the Goldfields, while the Deland brothers and Maude James were dependent on the mining industry, unlike the colonists to the South West they were not directly dependent on the land for their survival and this influenced their responses to the land. Although when Charles and Campbell Deland went prospecting they viewed the land from both utilitarian and aesthetic perspectives, the separation between use and delight was less apparent. For the most part, the Deland brothers and Maude Wordsworth James focused on their domestic environments. With the exception of Best’s A Lost Glitter, domesticity has not been a central concern of previous writing on the Eastern Goldfields during the 1890s. However, contrary to the dominant image of men working away from home in highly masculine environments, insensitive to their living spaces and the local flora, like the colonists in the previous chapters, the Deland brothers demonstrated a willingness to engage in

108 The Swan River Colony became self-governing in 1890. http://www.ccentre.wa.gov.au/index.cfm?event=researchSelfGovernment (accessed 13/7/08). 265 domestic tasks not usually associated with men. Their letters also confirm the importance of the domestic environment in assisting men to feel comfortable in, and make connections with, unfamiliar places. The Deland brothers’ and Maude James’ focus on domesticity may explain their limited observations and discussions of the Aboriginal people. Charles and Maude both viewed them as inferior and were condescending to them. Charles’ appreciation of and connections with the landscape were independent of his awareness and knowledge of the Aboriginal people. Maude did develop feelings of belonging for her place at Mullingar, but the Aboriginal people played no part in this process. As well as focusing on their domestic spaces, when the Deland brothers were in the towns of Southern Cross and Kalgoorlie, they were concerned with their business activities. They commented on the absence of geographical features in the environment, but had fewer opportunities to engage with the landscape than colonists of the previous chapters. However, when they left the towns and went prospecting, they appreciated the spring wildflowers and made connections with the environment through the flora. They also became familiar with various landmarks and gained knowledge of geological aspects of the country. Charles and Campbell Deland illustrate the importance of social networks in the process of belonging, but their lack of a strong local social network inhibited their attachment to the Goldfields. At first, Maude responded similarly to Charles and Campbell finding the goldfields depressing, but as she adjusted and became part of the community she came to feel that Kalgoorlie was home. This was reflected in her domestic space as gradually, the trinkets in her house included mementos from Kalgoorlie. In addition, she connected with place through her garden in ways similar to colonists discussed earlier. Her attachment to place was also based on her relationship with friends, neighbours and her social contacts, and in this way her sense of belonging was similar to Eliza Shaw’s in the Upper Swan. For Maude, Charles and Campbell, though in different ways, the social landscape again emerges as a significant factor in attachment and belonging.

266 Conclusion Longing or Belonging?

In a rather provocative essay, published in 2000, Richard Nile remarked, ‘Unbelonging has run pretty close to the bone of being Australian.’1 He then suggested: The time has now come, I’d reckon, to take a break from the sun, to shake off some of the flies and to take a swig from the waterbag, to spell under the ghost gums and to listen for a moment to the breathing of this quiet land. Melanomas and all, we are Australians. We need to think ourselves into the place. We have made our lives here. In the end that is something pretty considerable. Perhaps it really is time to reconcile our spirit and our stories to place, the beginning point, I would venture, of our peculiarly Australian civilisation.2 Nile’s writing reinforces the idea that Australia was established by unsettled settlers and that ‘going to the “other side” was akin to dying’.3 It assumes that ‘Australia developed as a place of forced necessity and last resort’4 and was peopled with unwilling emigrants. It also assumes that non-Indigenous Australians have been unable to make a place here, have been unable to belong, and suggests that settler belonging has only recently become possible. I disagree with these assumptions. I contend that at least some settlers have been thinking themselves into place since they arrived here. Settler belonging may have emerged recently in Australian academic discourse, but settler belonging is not new. I have argued throughout this thesis that some of the earliest colonists to Western Australia developed an attachment to place, called it home and felt a sense of belonging there. I have shown how the motives, ideas and experiences they brought with them influenced their responses to the landscape and discussed how their interactions with place and people contributed to their feelings of attachment and belonging. They did not simply transplant a culture, a way of life or a civilisation onto another place, unaware of and unaffected by the land. Alan Atkinson recognised this when he wrote about Europeans on the Cumberland Plain, west of Sydney: A sense of place depends on the understanding that a sum may be more than its parts, that a geographical point, whatever its mere black-and-whiteness on a

1 Nile, ‘Civilisation’, p. 49. 2 Nile, ‘Civilisation’, pp. 56-57. 3 Nile, ‘Civilisation’, p. 49. 4 Nile, ‘Civilisation’, p. 49. 267 map, can house something absolute, even some immortal spirit. Such a sense crept very gradually into the collective imagination of Europeans in Australia.5 Atkinson hinted that Europeans were becoming attached to place and starting to belong but he did not explore these ideas further. How did Europeans on the Cumberland Plain feel about place there? Did they call it home? Did they feel a sense of belonging? Perhaps the source material is not rich enough to ever know? Atkinson also wrote that during the period 1815 to the 1870s, it is difficult to know what the Europeans in Australia thought about the country.6 However, those discussed here disclosed enough for me to say with confidence that some of them became attached to place and called it home, and a few connected deeply enough to belong and to be ‘at home’ there. From the 1830s to the early 1900s and across geographical regions as diverse as the thickly wooded forests at Augusta and the semi-arid plains around Kalgoorlie, I have discussed how colonists responded to the landscapes they encountered, settled in and made homes. Some of the variations in the responses between those who settled in the Eastern Goldfields and those who settled in the milder regions of the South-West can be attributed to geographical factors, but geography and time of settlement made little difference to the colonists’ broad responses and to the process of belonging. The Deland brothers and Maude Wordsworth James initially found the goldfields’ landscapes difficult to appreciate and were more concerned with making homes in the towns there than exploring the country and observing the flora. This contrasted with most of the colonists to the other regions, who often described the country as picturesque and attractive. When the Deland brothers left the towns and went prospecting they did begin to interact more closely with the land and at times found it beautiful. However, while there were similarities in the initial responses of the Deland brothers and Maude, when they left the goldfields they felt very differently about place there. While the Deland brothers longed for their home in South Australia, Maude felt that she belonged in Kalgoorlie. One of the most significant factors that influenced the process of belonging was the social landscape. The extent to which an individual felt ‘at home’ in the Colony depended to a large degree on the strength of their relationships with their family, friends, neighbours and their local community. The Deland brothers remained firmly connected to their social networks in Gawler, South Australia, whereas Maude made

5 Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia: A History, Volume One, p. 197. 6 Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia: A History, Volume Two, p. 334. 268 connections to place in Kalgoorlie through her family, friends and social groups. The importance of the social landscape can also help explain why, in general, the women felt a greater sense of belonging than the men. Their closer relationships with family, friends and neighbours in Western Australia that strengthened over time were important to them and gave them a way of connecting with place. For the women, home was also associated with people. The length of time that the colonists lived in the Colony also had a bearing on belonging. As Tuan wrote: ‘attachment is seldom acquired in passing.’7 Eliza Brown, Eliza Shaw and Maude Wordsworth James all developed a sense of being ‘at home’ in Western Australia and all lived there for at least ten years. Personality also influenced how these settlers responded to the environment. Pessimists such as Lefroy and Charles Bussell reacted more negatively and found it harder to adjust to life in the Colony than Bessie Bussell, Eliza Brown and Henry de Burgh who were more cheerful, and viewed life positively. Another significant outcome of this study is the recognition that the colonists’ responses were very complex. While some complexity might be expected over the time span and regions covered here, and perhaps even within one family,8 my reading and analysis has revealed that even individuals could be contradictory. The reactions of John Bussell and John Wollaston, in particular, were highly nuanced. John Bussell viewed the country at Augusta and the Vasse from an array of perspectives. He appreciated its beauty on aesthetic grounds and used romantic, picturesque and classical imagery to express these sentiments. He also saw the land in terms of its productive potential and through the prism of science. He valued the Victorian ideals of home and domesticity but in the colonial environment he was prepared to take on household tasks usually carried out by women or servants to achieve these. He thought of England as home, yet he also became attached to his home in the Colony and affectionately called himself an‘old bushranger’. John Wollaston’s primary motivation was his wish to bring Christianity to the European and Aboriginal people of the Colony. His descriptions of the landscape were framed in Biblical language, and while he was clearly influenced by Biblical views of

7 Tuan, Space and Place, p.184. 8 Bolton, Land of Vision and Mirage, p. 15 recognised this in his assessment of the Bussell brothers’ responses to their environment in the south-west of Western Australia, but in such a general history it is not possible to analyse detailed differences within individual family members. 269 nature and wilderness, this was not the only lens through which way he saw the environment. He was a complex man whose responses cannot simply be categorised as ‘religious’. He was curious about the world around him, he appreciated the botanical uniqueness of the flora and he had an interest in the fauna. His attachment, too, was complex. Wollaston was nostalgic for England, felt an emotional connection to place in the Colony and called his house there home, and yet felt that his true home was with God. Despite the complexity of the colonists’ responses, common themes emerge. Across all the regions, picturesque and utilitarian perspectives, and the performance of class and gender roles, were significant in understanding the process of attachment and belonging. Conversely, across all regions, awareness of Aboriginal people had little impact on this process. Picturesque and utilitarian perspectives to the land were evident in most of the colonists’ writing. Previous analyses of such responses have argued that these are inseparable and implicate European settlers in the colonisation process, but these analyses discount the colonists’ aesthetic appreciation of the land. Therefore their relations with the land are seen as negative and adversarial and it is assumed that belonging is not possible. However, I contend that the colonists used the picturesque as a way of viewing and describing landscapes that pleased them and that this appreciation could be independent from utilitarian perspectives. From this viewpoint the colonists are seen in a different light. Though they were part of a colonial project, they also responded as individuals who were delighted with the landscapes around them and expressed this using the familiar language of the picturesque. Ideas of class and gender were also adapted to conditions in the Colony. Boundaries between gender divisions became more permeable and class, while still important, was reproduced and maintained in different ways. Where possible, the colonists associated with others of the same status, visiting friends and attending significant social events. In their homes they continued appropriate leisure activities, practicing needlework, playing music and reading literature. Frequently, though, they behaved in ways they thought were not appropriate for their class, and they rationalised these by explaining their new, and sometimes difficult conditions, hoping their family and friends would understand. As the women willingly worked and lived beyond their domestic spaces they responded positively to the landscapes. By working in the home, some men felt a sense of accomplishment that amplified their feelings of attachment.

270 Similarly, their efforts to remain respectable made them feel more comfortable in their new environments. Gender roles and their interaction with class underwent significant adaptation. Some colonists defied simple stereotyped roles. Rather than reinforcing the clichéd image of the masculine pioneer concerned only with physical work on the land, this study has examined the lives of men who adorned their houses with curtains, pictures and flowers, and who cooked, washed and mended their own clothes. Though men’s involvement with domestic tasks often, but not always, stemmed from necessity, I have shown how, in order to uphold Victorian ideals of home and domesticity, men undertook tasks they viewed as ‘feminine’. I have also shown how men challenged stereotypes in the garden. Typically, their role has been seen as solely utilitarian, tending only to the vegetables and fruit. However, George Fletcher Moore, Vernon Bussell, Marshall Clifton, John Wollaston and Gerald de Courcy Lefroy all grew flowers. Conversely, while women spent most of their time working indoors, they regularly left their domestic space to accompany the men on various journeys and also to enjoy a walk through the bush, or perhaps by the river. These findings contribute to the literature that challenges the stereotypical, and still popular, view of women in colonial Australia that locates them firmly within their houses and gardens. All these colonists knew that the Aboriginal people occupied the country when they arrived and, to varying degrees, they were also aware that the Aboriginal people knew the land intimately. They were willing to learn practical skills and knowledge about the land from the Aboriginal people, but this contact did not facilitate their attachment to place. Some colonists were unsettled by the connections Aboriginal people had with the land. George Fletcher Moore had great respect for Aboriginal people’s knowledge of their country and he wrote about the injustices of colonialism. However, in later journal entries he viewed the Aboriginal people as an obstacle to settlement. Janet Millett compared colonialism in Western Australia with the Roman invasion of England but this had no impact on how she responded to the landscape, her affection for her house at York or her sense of belonging in the Colony. Lefroy used the word ‘usurp’ to describe how the colonists acted towards land they knew Aboriginal people inhabited, but his attitudes to them were the harshest of all. Clearly, even though the colonists must have known that Aboriginal people inhabited the land, this knowledge and their interactions with the Aboriginal people had little effect on their home making and feelings of belonging.

271 This thesis emerges from and contributes to an increasingly rich body of writing on settler belonging. It recognises that some colonists did feel a sense of belonging and it contributes to a greater understanding of how this occurred. In this way it fills a gap in the literature and I hope that it will stimulate further discussion and research. To conclude, I return to the colonists to show, for the last time, the depth, the great variety of their responses and the longing, as well as the belonging, they expressed about their place in the Colony. Lefroy longed for places other than the Colony and he made it clear he did not belong there: Nearly all my spirits are gone. I wish I had lots of books and I should never care to leave my house or place. I hate this place more and more daily. It is too far away from those I love.9 In contrast, Eliza Shaw expressed strong feelings of belonging. In the last pages of her diary the majority of her entries recorded mundane events and business transactions. She listed receipts for outgoing expenditures, noted when the wine was bottled, the chaff cut, her everyday dealings with domestic and farm servants and the weather. These are the ordinary, routine activities that Tuan believed contribute to feeling ‘at home’ in a place.10 For Eliza, these were the events that accumulated over more than forty years and contributed to the belonging she felt when she realised she had to sell ‘Belvoir’ to solve her financial problems. In February 1876, a year before she died, she wrote in her diary, ‘Oh! What a trial it will be to see it pass away.’11 Again, the following month she was still trying to accept this situation and reflected, ‘Alas, how am I to write that poor dear Belvoir is advertised for sale...’12 Eliza wrote of ‘Belvoir’ as though it had been in her family for many generations, but it had only been forty-six years since she arrived at the Swan River Colony from England. Maude also became attached to place in Western Australia. She felt at home in Kalgoorlie and that she belonged there, and, since I began with Maude’s story I will end with a poem she wrote just before she left Kalgoorlie:

9 Lefroy, The Journal of Gerald De Courcy Lefroy, 19/6/1847. 10 Tuan, Space and Place, p. 183. 11 Eliza Shaw, Diary, 15/2/1876, BL, ACC 2088A. 12 Eliza Shaw, Diary, 10/3/1876, BL, ACC 2088A. 272 Mullingar in 1907

The Suburb of Kalgoorlie I now call my Mullingar For all of the early settlers, ‘mongst the few left there we are, I named the streets, and poems wrote for each new tiny child, And I have dwelt there from the time when all around was wild.

So civilised the place has grown that it you’d scarcely know, But all the same it’s never changed in this one fact I vow, That much the nicest people seem to congregate up there, And there are found the fairest homes and the most healthful air.

Our Croquet Club is solvent, quite unlike all other Clubs, Requests for memberships in it are growing like the shrubs, The Tea House is a meeting place for men and women fair, Who throw dull care away when they are gathered there.

The mallets will be offered us, in singles for to play, Or tournaments got up for prizes every croquet day. But for the present we’re content to go on as we are, And glad I am that I still dwell in my dear Mullingar.13

13 MWJ, Journal, ‘Mullingar in 1907’, selected verses, p. 327. 273

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