UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND HISTORY SERIES 6 THEY CAME TO THUNDERBOLT COUNTRY University of New England History Series General Editor: Bruce Marshall Other titles Phillip A. Wright, Memories of a Bushwhacker (2nd edition) Anne Harris, Abington Pauline Kneipp, This Land of Promise The Ursuline Order in Australia, 18824982_._. Owen Wright, Wongwibinda Malcolm Saunders, Britain, the Australian Colonies and the Sudan Campaigns of 1884-85 JEANE UPJOHN Born in Tasmania, eldest daughter of a much travelled civil engineer, JeanO Upjohn spent most of her life learning about people. Following a career in public relations and journalism, she enrolled as a mature-age student at the University of New England. After graduating as B.A. and M.Litt., she became an editorial representative for a group of ocean- oriented magazines, and a columnist for a coastal newspaper. Her love of folk tales and a nose for newsworthy stories led her to Oral History. Ms Upjohn has published one other volume of folk history, The Jetty People, and a small book of childrens poems, Poems for Possums. Cover illustration: "A Selector's Home in New England, 1895"(photograph no. 1495 by Charles Kerry), in J.H. Maiden, The Forest Flora of N.S.W., 5, Parts 41-50, Government Printer, Sydney, 1913. .6Z6I .10/4s1P Main aw fo siaauold Nkt.4k,t$ at flitekt ea) W7" Jeanë Upjohn and The University of New England, 1988. This work is copyright. Apart from any fair dealings for the purpose of private study, research criticism, or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publishers. Printed by the University of New England, Armidale, NSW, 2351. Distributed by the University of New England Publishing Unit, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, 2351. Contents Foreword University of New England Series 1 ISSN 0729-7866 IntroIntroduction — They Came to Thunderbolt Country 5 1 The Road to Sandon County 14 2 The Family at West End 26 3 Crime and Punishment 31 4 Boys Will Be Boys 38 5 Practical People 40 6 The Gentlemen National Library of Australia Cataloguing in Publication entry 44 7 School Days 47 8 Death and Destruction Upjohn, Jeanê, 1921- They came to Thunderbolt country. 50 9 Accomplished Rogues ISBN 0 85834 735 0. 55 ISBN 0 85834 736 9 (pbk.). 10 Shades of Shame 62 1. Uralla Region (N. S.W.) — History. I. University of New 11 Circuit Court England. II. Title. (Series: University of New England history 69 series; no. 6). 12 Grand Openings 72 994.4'4 13 The Women 14 The Teamsters 80 15 Mother Love 87 Endnotes 95 li Foreword Three hundred years ago a wise parliamentary lawyer, John Selden, wrote two uncommonly perceptive sentences about the nature of history: Though some make slight of Libells, yet you may see by them how the wind sitts: as, take a straw and throw it upp into the aire, you shall see by that which way the wind is, which you shall not doe by casting up a stone — More solid things doe not shew the Complexion of the times so well as Ballads and libells. By `libells Selden meant what we should refer to as the raw material of oral history or folk history — old peoples recollections, popular sayings and ideas, songs and stories, none of them necessarily checked, authenticated, or even written down. Mere pub gossip, some would say: but others, more and more every year, would agree with Selden. It all depends on what kind of history you want. Those who seek a reasoned argument about past changes, carried out or presided over for the most part by great men or the occasional great woman, will seldom learn much from popular songs or old wives tales, though there are exceptions. For example, the politico-religious history of England for the century following 1660 will never be so memorably figured forth or in so few words as those of the anonymous old ballad, The Vicar of Bray: In good king Charless golden days When loyalty no harm meant, A zealous High Churchman was I And so I got preferment. To teach my flock I never missed Kings were by God appointed, And lost are those that dare resist Or touch the Lords anointed. ii They Came to Thunderbolt Country Foreword iii Chorus To these I do allegiance swear And this is the law that I'll maintain While they can keep possession: Until my dying day, sir: For in my faith and loyalty That whatsoever king shall reign I never more will falter I'll be the Vicar of Bray, sir. And George my lawful king will be When royal James possessed the crown Until the times do alter. And Popery grew in fashion, Chorus The penal laws I hooted down This old undeniably tells us much about the conventional And read the Declaration. subject-matter of history: — great changes in public institutions and the The Church of Rome I found would fit names ofgreat people who represented them; but it tells us a great deal Full well my constitution, more about the "Complexion of the times". Volumes could not better And I had become a Jesuit explain the increasing cynicism and materialism of English society and But for the Revolution. the English church after the Restoration, or why the second half of the Chorus eighteenth century is still known as The Age of Reason. If the historian is When William was our King declared interested in social attitudes and beliefs rather than deeds or events, then To ease the nation'sgrievance; folk history or oral history may be a better source than official With this new wind about I steered institutional records, and oral history is all the more valuable if it And swore to him allegiance. happens to be written down, no matter how many factual mistakes it may Old principles I did revoke, contain. Set conscience at a distance. Those who decry oral history do not care to remember that it was, and Passive obedience was a joke. still is, the origin of all history. The poetry which constitutes the A jest was non-resistance. `Homeric' epics was composed and passed orally from singer to singer Chorus for generations before it, Herodotus's Histories, or anythingan else was When royal Anne became ourQueen, written down in the Greek language; before in fact there was a written The Church of England'sglory, Greek language. Practically all we know of the first two hundred and fifty Another face of things was seen Years of English history was written down by the Venerable Bede who who And I became a Tory. died in 735, or by the compilers of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Occasional conformists base, worked over a century later. The 'First Fleet' bringing the English tells us, in 446 A.D. So I blamed their moderation, invaders to Kent arrived, the Chronicle And thought the church in danger was everything that happened in the first quarter of a millennium of English By such prevarication. history is oral history: what Bede learnt from old men's stories, or travellers' tales, orpossibly from the manuscript of Gildas, a monk, Chorus whose own book was necessarily based on the same kind of second, or When George in pudding time came o'er hundred-and-third hand, oral reports. And moderate men looked big, sir: But what of Bede's well known account of the Synod of Whitby held My principles I changed once more only four years before his own death? Surely that cannot be seen as And I became a Whig, sir; second hand or oral history? That depends on whether the historian And thus preferment I procured himself was actually present in the hall where the great lay and From our new faith's defender, ecclesiastical leaders of the time carried on their debate. It seems highly And almost every day abjured probable that he was an eye-witness of the event he describes and so, on The Pope and the Pretender. this occasion, aproper historian. If not, the accuracy of this account Chorus depends entirely on the memories and the veracity of his informants who The illustrious house of Hanover were in the hall. Similarly it is well known that even Hansard reports of And Protestant succession, Parliamenta ry oratory do not necessarily constitute an accurate record of iv They Came to Thunderbolt Country Foreword v what an M.P. actually said. One has only to compare a Hansard report of It aims simply to entertain, not to instruct or analyse or reason about any speech delivered by the former Premier ofQueensland, Sir Johannes thepast. Accordingly it has no structure, no logical line of progression — Bjelke-Petersen, with a 'live' delivery on T.V. of sounds from the same and no axes togrind. Folk singers, story tellers and vaudeville artists like people's tribune. thegreat `Mo McCackie' were no freer to get on with their business of Only history written by one who has himself or herself witnessed the entertaining the audience. Nor was the greatest entertainer of them all, events described can be entirely uncorrupted by the passage of stories, Francois Rabelais. The writer of these 'memoirs' has felt equally free to whether in oral or written form, through many minds. Which is not at all beguile the reader with any number of unrelated yarns about any number to say that such history alone can be 'real' or 'true' history. of differentpeople and topics, so long as they all had some connection t In the final analysis there can be no such thing.