Blue Mountains History Journal Issue 2
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Blue Mountains History Journal 2; 2011 BLUEHISTORY MOUNTAINS JOURNAL Blue Mountains Association of Cultural Heritage Organisations Issue 2 September 2011 Back to Contents Editor Dr Peter Rickwood Editorial Board Associate Professor R. Ian Jack John Leary OAM Associate Professor Carol Liston Professor Barrie Reynolds Dr Peter Stanbury OAM Design Peter Hughes Cover Photo Driving bullock outside The Post Office in Beowang before the telephone was installed in 1916 (MW&MIHS, Shaw Collection, photo 95/125; Field 1995) Blue Mountains History Journal 2; 2011 http://www.bluemountainsheritage.com.au/journal ISSUE No 2 SEPTEMBER 2011 ISSN 1838-5036 CONTENTS Editorial Peter Rickwood The Martindale Family and the Sketchbook John Low of Mary Elizabeth Martindale Over a Century of Worship at Medlow Bath Clair Isbister, Robert King & Peter Rickwood A History of the Postal and Telephone Mary Reynolds Services of Mount Wilson A Secret Army in the Blue Mountains? Pamela Smith EDITORIAL The inaugural issue of The Blue Mountains History husband on a tour of inspection of the road over the Journal was favourably received by historians and Blue Mountains. This paper also includes a long- local librarians, and subsequently the National Library needed account of the activities of the Martindale has issued an ISSN number which is shown in our family in NSW. banner above. This accords a welcome degree of scholarly recognition of our journal. From the first Some ten years ago, the late Dr. Clair Isbister prepared, issue of the journal we learned a number of lessons in with assistance from Robert King, a manuscript on St respect to layout and typography, so for this second Luke’s Church, Medlow Bath and Helen Plummer issue various improvements have been made which we Phillips, a significant benefactor to the church. As trust will meet with the approval of readers. junior authors, Robert and I have brought the first of these topics to completion. But we have expanded the The four articles in Issue 2 cover a spread of villages scope of the paper beyond Clair's main interest, St from Mount Wilson to Springwood and range in topic Luke's Church, to all places of religious worship in from the travels of the Martindale Family to an account Medlow Bath, by adding sections on the little known of the New Guard. Between those subjects are histories histories of the Cave Church and Roman Catholic of religious worship in Medlow Bath and of Postal and worship in the village. Telephone services in Mount Wilson. Mary Reynolds, the indefatigable Research Officer of Our eminent local historian, John Low, has contributed the Mount Wilson & Mount Irvine Historical Society, a fascinating paper about the sketches that Mrs has published extensively on various aspects of the Martindale made in 1860 whilst accompanying her histories of the families and properties of those hill Back to Contents Blue Mountains History Journal 2; 2011 stations. The topic of her paper in this Issue is the planned activities while protecting the identities of history of the Postal and Telephone Services and she most of those involved. details some of the intrigue associated with their establishment. BMACHO is grateful to the Commonwealth Department of the Environment and Heritage for Finally, the current President of BMACHO, Pamela funding, through the GVEHO Grants Program, which Smith of the Springwood Historians, has provided a has assisted in the publication of this issue of The Blue brief account of the New Guard, a paramilitary group Mountains History Journal. that operated in the Blue Mountains in the 1930s. This is still a topic that is difficult to tackle because of the Dr Peter C. Rickwood, secrecy that surrounds the history of this group, the Editor restricted access that still applies to key documentation, and the sensitivities of surviving Extracts from this publication may be reproduced relatives of the members of that group. However provided the source is fully acknowledged. Pamela has managed to convey the extent of the Back to Contents Blue Mountains History Journal 2; 2011 THE MARTINDALE FAMILY AND THE SKETCHBOOK OF MARY ELIZABETH MARTINDALE John Low 39, Highland St, Leura, NSW 2780 grizzlybear3au@yahoo Abstract In 1860, during a journey along the Western Road across the Blue Mountains, Mary Martindale created a series of watercolour sketches as a memento of her trip. In their modest way they depict road conditions, people and vehicles, buildings and landscape scenery. Mary was the wife of Captain Ben Hay Martindale who spent three difficult years in NSW responsible for roads, railways and the electric telegraph. Soon after this excursion Ben resigned and the family returned to England where Mary died in 1902. In 1930 her daughter donated the sketchbook to the Mitchell Library. Largely ignored, it provides a valuable impression of travel in the years before the railway. Keywords: Martindale; Western Road; travel; art; women; Blue Mountains Introduction In the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, there are 19 small watercolour sketches (the largest measuring 22 x 30.5 cm), collected, in no apparent order, under the title Our Trip to the Blue Mountains NSW 1860 (Martindale 1860b). In their modest way they record the impressions of a young English gentlewoman, Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Martindale, who travelled along the Western Road across the Blue Mountains in the mid-nineteenth century. While other nineteenth century women, including Elizabeth Hawkins (Mackaness 1965, pp.102-117), Louisa Meredith (Meredith 1973), Sophia Stanger (Mackaness 1965, pp.255-266) and Rachel Henning (Adams 1985) have all left letters and journals that vividly record the difficulties and drama of early road travel in the Blue Mountains, the sketches of Mary Martindale provide a visual account, a travel journal without words. Both sketching and painting were common accomplishments among educated women of the nineteenth century (Hammond 1993; Jordan 2005; Kerr & Broadbent 1980; Sayers 1989). Indeed, drawing was “unstoppably popular and widely taught” as an appropriately moral and innocent component of a middle to upper class woman’s “ornamental education” (Jordan 2005, p.18). Such work was generally limited and conventional in its artistic ambitions, and was almost always pursued as recreation and for consumption within the domestic circle of family and friends. Uninhibited by expectations of a public audience, however, it often revealed a greater honesty in its depiction of subject matter, a quality prized by social historians. A sketchbook was an indispensible companion on any special journey at that time, and the sketches of Mary Martindale have all the above characteristics. Nevertheless, though made reference to by art historian Joan Kerr (1980; 1992), they have been largely ignored, even by Blue Mountains historians. Figure 1. Ben Hay Martindale (Anonymous 1 Back to Contents Blue Mountains History Journal 2; 2011 Background and Arrival in Australia While the details of Mary Martindale’s early life are minimal (IGI Family Search website; Ancestry website), it is clear that she came from a family of some social standing. Born in 1824 at Dover, Kent, she was the third daughter of Mercy (née Hollams) and Thomas Knocker and was the granddaughter of Sir John Hollams, five times Mayor of Upper Deal, Kent. Her cousin, also Sir John Hollams (1820-1910), became a well-known nineteenth century solicitor and author of a popular book of legal reminiscences. On 12 September 1848 Mary married Ben Hay Martindale (Anonymous 1848), a young engineer born in London on 1 October 1824 (Abbott 1974), the son of Benjamin & Sophia Martindale of Martindale, Westmorland (now Cumbria). Educated at Rugby School and the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, he was commissioned as second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers in 1843 and posted to Gibraltar the following year and then, in 1846, to the Ionian island of Corfu which had been under British authority since the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. The marriage took place on Corfu in the Palace of St. Michael & St. George, the seat of government and the residence of the British Lord High Commissioner (Figure 2). Two of their children were born on the island, Mary dying there and Frederick surviving for only a short time after their return to England in the early 1850s. In September 1856 Ben joined the staff of the Inspector-General of Fortifications in London; by then he had the rank of Captain and eventually rose to Colonel (Figure 1). After some initial hesitation, and on the urgings of another Royal Engineer, his old Figure 2. Palace of St. Michael & St. George, Corfu teacher and at that time the (Anonymous n.d. a) Governor of New South Wales, Sir William Denison, he accepted an offer from the colonial Government of New South Wales to become Chief Commissioner of Railways, a position that also carried with it responsibilities for Roads and the Electric Telegraph. In 1857 the Martindale family, Ben, Mary, and Alice, Arthur and Katherine, their three young children all born since their return to England, accompanied by a servant, Miss Smith, sailed from the Port of Plymouth aboard the Centurion, “a fine clipper vessel” with comfortable first class cabins that were “carpeted, and lockers with morocco cushions all round.” (Mitchell 1980, p.221). Following their arrival in Sydney on Sunday 28 June 1857 (Anonymous 1857), the family took up residence among the Sydney gentry at 30 Upper William Street North (now Bayswater Road) on Woolloomooloo Hill (Sands & Kenny 1858-1859, pp.95, 180, 272). Described by Sir Thomas Mitchell as “the most picturesque hill around Sydney” (Mitchell 1980, p.11), this location had begun to attract the growing elite of Sydney’s government officials, professional men and their families. Though subdivision of some of the original grants had begun, Woolloomooloo Hill was not yet densely settled and was favoured with broad views of both the harbour (Figure 3) and the city skyline.