THE RIVERS
AND THE SEA
(with a touch of Broulee)
by Stuart Magee
for Natalie and Lincoln
- the lights on the hill -
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| Front cover |
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| Back cover - words by Robert Macklin, Canberra 2009 |
FIVE TALES
CONTENTS
1 The Orion, Sydney to London, 1947
2 The S.S. Orion
3 Hilda Zanadvoroff
4 Kippers
5 The Clyde River
1. THE ORION, SYDNEY TO LONDON, JULY 1947
My parents were born and raised in County Monaghan, Ireland, he in 1900, she in 1905. When they were about to be married my father’s mother announced that she had been to see her doctor. He had pronounced that she had a ‘weak chest’ (who in Ireland in the 1920’s didn’t?) and if she did not depart for a warmer climate such as the USA, South Africa or Australia, she would shortly be dead. A dramatic announcement, underlined by my father’s realization that his mother and his father - a delightful but unworldly old Presbyterian parson - would not be able to undertake such a voyage and re-settlement unaided.
So it was that the young couple agreed to accompany the old pair to Australia. For various reasons I need not parade before you here, it was Australia that had been decided upon. There they would remain for twelve months to get the old pair settled in and then, it was solemnly promised by my father to my mother, they would return to Ireland.
When told of this my mother’s father, a farmer and a horse dealer, was greatly saddened. He had three sons and three daughters and my mother was a favourite. “I’ll not see you again” he said to her quietly but with great conviction and no words of denial or comfort would sway him from that belief.
They arrived in Sydney on the S.S. Barabool in October 1931. Sydney, they had been assured was the place where the land of milk and honey commenced, the land of unlimited opportunity where no man lacked a job. Looking down from the side of the boat as it docked, my father asked someone beside him why there was such a long line of men queued up. “They’re looking for work” he was told.
Sydney of the 1930’s depression years was not quite the place to leave your elderly and impecunious parents to fend for themselves, particularly as there was no entitlement to social security for new arrivals. When my father’s father died within the year the escape route was completely blocked - the return to Ireland was not possible in terms of family responsibilities and, after a year or two of living on savings while my father battled for a job, it wasn’t financially possible either. My mother’s desolation was heightened by the fact that her father too had died within the year.
In 1943 my mother went back to work as a school teacher, the absence of men at the war having opened up some job opportunities. In Ireland she had taught for a few years after graduating in Education from Trinity in Dublin. By 1947 she had put a bit aside and shipping was again moving between England and Australia after the end of the war. She booked herself on the first available boat leaving Sydney for London. Accordingly, leaving behind my father who could not take the time off work, but with her one and only offspring in tow - she had nothing else to show after 16 years in Australia - she set off for ‘home’ on the S.S. Orion in July 1947. She was 42: I was 14. We were to be away six months. For my part it was a prospect that couldn’t be bettered - out of school for the rest of the year, and on this wonderful boat. We had a large plan of the boat which, deck by deck, showed every room and cabin and I pored over it for hours.
My father sailed with us from Sydney as far as Melbourne. In Melbourne we went ashore and had a final grand lunch at Menzies Hotel - grand lunches weren’t the usual order of our day - and then went back on board. We were standing about in mum’s cabin when my dad suddenly grabbed me for a huge hug and then told me to go up on deck while he and Mum said goodbye. It was only then it dawned on me that this wasn’t any old goodbye, and a little later when I looked down from the deck of the boat and spied him disconsolate at the wharf-side it sank in that we wouldn’t see him for a long time. I cried hard, but briefly.
It was said that a late change in the design of the Orion resulted in an extra deck being added on and that she was therefore a bit top heavy. I have no idea if there was any truth in that, but she certainly behaved like there was. Beam-on to the sea she rolled hugely and ponderously from side to side, and we had not quit Port Phillip Bay before my mother, a particularly poor sailor, took to her bunk in the cabin she shared with one other woman. There she remained, “praying for death” she said later, till we berthed at Fremantle about a week later.
For my part, the big seas of The Bight were no trouble at all and simply provided another dimension to the new and wonderful world of life aboard ship. I don’t know how many decks were available to passengers in our Tourist Class section - the Orion carried two classes of passenger - but I think it was about six. The lowest deck was H, or Hell Deck as the inhabitants of the six and eight berth cabins declared it. In the tropics they abandoned their bunks at night and slept wherever they could up on the open or top deck which I think was D. A to C existed only in First Class. However many decks there were, there was a lot of territory to be explored and if you were on the top deck and looked down the narrow centre of the staircase it was a long way down and you could see the coil of the bannisters going down into the bowels of the ship. Indeed, if you leaned out over the centre, waited for the ship to be vertical, and then let go a big slow spit you could watch the silver orb descending, flight by flight of stairs, till the roll of the ship took it off course and it would hit a bannister with a most satisfactory splat. You didn’t linger long at the site of the crime.
There were five other kids about my age - three boys and two girls. One of the girls, with black glossy hair, perfect white skin and very blue eyes was going to Scotland to live. It seemed a terrible waste. A games room and the small swimming pool were the centre of our lives, but we were everywhere and into everything. The only area that defied our best efforts was the door leading to First Class. It was impregnable. Even one of the deck hands with whom we were matey and who knew most of the tricks, couldn’t get us through that door. There were a couple of vantage points where you could stand and gawk at those more fortunate than ourselves but they, somehow, never saw us.
Not the least cause of our curiosity about the goings on in First Class was the fact that the 1947/48 Wallabies were aboard and travelling First. We strove mightily to get close but failed. It was months later, when an uncle took me to see the Wallabies play Ulster, that I managed to get into the dressing room after the game and was able to assure Nick Shehadie - later Sir Nicholas, Lord Mayor of Sydney - that I was an old shipmate of his. I got to Lansdowne Road too, in Dublin, to see the Wallabies beat Ireland, but that’s another story.
Having been provisioned in Sydney, the Orion boasted a marvellous table. We were in the first of the two sittings at each meal, not that it made a difference, and there was an extensive menu of excellent dishes at each of those meals. Each day, it may even have been for each meal, there was a new menu printed on good paper, with an interesting picture on the cover. We had a collection of those menus for many years.
Organised entertainment was limited during the day but expansive each night. There would be a concert or a dance, whist drives, fancy dress, quizzes - it was endless and each night an excellent supper would be wheeled in at about ten o’clock. There was an abundance of highly professional and obliging stewards and, quite frankly, the passengers were wholly spoiled. Dear knows what sorts of indulgences were being laid on in First Class.
Then there was the boat itself. The Orion was just on 24,000 tons, not all that big as ocean liners go and, like all boats, had a personality, a presence, a ‘life’ if you like. It had its own smell - not objectionable but distinctive - and its own noise. It throbbed and droned 24 hours a day. The passage-ways with their metal walls were narrow and windowless. The cabin I shared with a man whose face now escapes me completely was a small inside one without any porthole and the air vent didn’t produce much air. I don’t recall the toilet and shower rooms at all. The boat was moving and flexing all the time. If it was going with or into the sea, as was the case going across the Australian Bight, the boat pitched and you alternated between walking uphill or downhill. If the sea was on the beam, the boat rolled and you weaved from side to side as you walked. It seemed odd when you got back on shore. Sometimes in a big sea she dwelled so long heeled over on one side you hung onto something and wondered if she would ever come back up. At the table, soup plates, glasses and cups were never filled near the top. Even then, you became good at tilting your plate with one hand while using the other to catch something sliding about the table. If my memory serves me, the tables had folding edges which could be turned up in really bad weather. Bad weather made life hard for the dining room stewards but that was offset by the fact that lots of seats, sometimes whole tables, were vacant on those days. There was always at least one seat occupied at our table.
There was a lot of living done on the top deck which was horseshoe- shaped, and you walked, if that was what your mother deemed fit, from one side around to the other and back, a great deal. There were quoits to be tossed at a low pole, or over a net, or shoved along the deck with a broom-shaped thing. Older people sat in rows of deck chairs, chatted, read, snoozed or wrote letters. Groups of younger adults formed loosely, talked animatedly, played guitar, sang, flirted and soaked up the ship with the sun.
There was a bulletin board where, daily, data would be posted on the miles travelled to noon that day, the weather to be expected in the next 24 hours including the speed and direction of the winds, the barometer reading and direction, the anticipated speed of the boat and its expected position in 24 hours. There were those who, next day, would note that expectations had not been fulfilled and would proceed to wise speculation on the reasons why.
The Purser opened his office during certain hours and there you could cash travellers cheques, receive or send cables and, I’m sure, do a range of things important to older people. What you couldn’t do was make a telephone call. There was a shop where you could buy things including a range of Orion mementos - one of my sons has a two-bladed silver ‘Orion’ pocket knife I brought back for my dad. He reamed his pipe with it for years.
The Captain would arrive for a tour of inspection each day, flanked by about four officers. I found it was better to keep out of his way. As he and his group swept briskly and forcefully through the passage-ways I think he wanted not so much to see as to be seen. If there was anything he did want to see or hear it wasn’t boys and their questions.
When my mother emerged from her cabin as we moved into Fremantle, pale and a deal thinner, (“Every cloud” said she “has its silver lining”) she found the boy-child had gone quite feral in a week. This, added to the fact that she had hardly been smothered with care and attention during her time of trouble (though I think I called on her at least once or twice) resulted in the imposition of a period of stern rule. No longer, for instance, could I race my mates to see which of us would be first into the dining room - no, a decent interval after the gong had rung I would accompany my mother to the table and hold her chair for her. Sheech!
The run from Fremantle to Colombo took, I think, about ten days - ten longish days. My mob, the six of us, were still lapping it up though flagging slightly. The twenty and thirty year olds were finding or re-discovering deep and meaningful relationships and just asked to be left in peace. However, amongst the forty-pluses there were some for whom the indulgences of ship board life were becoming too available. They were bored, and any shortcoming was apt to be picked up for complaint. I recall after dinner one night, when we had worked our way through the three excellent courses (and ‘seconds’ of dessert were readily available), when one old codger at our table announced loudly “A piece of cheese wouldn’t go astray, they’re a bit skinny aren’t they?” Then there were the two old fellas, neither of them with change out of seventy, who came near to blows in a tug of war over a contested deck-chair. At supper-time, stewards bearing platters of sandwiches and savouries balanced on one hand above their head had to cope with people who couldn’t wait for the platter to be put down on the table. They were, I suppose, minor matters but difficult to understand in the context of the wonderful treatment we enjoyed - particularly as it was less than two years since we had emerged from the straitened days of food rationing and Australia’s Austerity Programme. Perhaps it was the tropics. Certainly the nights were oppressive and the air to our small cabins was not cooled.
We crossed the Equator a few days before Colombo. King Neptune came aboard, with his guard of mermen armed with terrible tridents, and those crossing for the first time were arraigned before him. After interrogation the able-bodied were made to walk the plank at the end of a fork and plunged into the swimming pool.
Every one was delighted at sailing into Colombo’s beautiful harbour and very ready to go ashore. We anchored, and were taken ashore in a convoy of launches. As my mother and I set off to see the town a local man attached himself to us and informed us that he would be our guide. My mother told him firmly that we didn’t need a guide but that deterred him not one bit. He stuck like a burr, full of pleasant and informative chat. We shook him off, however, when we went into a large department store where he was not permitted to go. When we had done shopping my mother asked if there was a back door. There was. We used it and were congratulating ourselves on the success of our ruse, when he bobbed up again, equally pleased at having caught us out. This time he advised us that his brother was nearby with his modern motor car and they would take us for a drive in the country. My mother was delivering the ‘not a chance old son’ address when another woman from the boat happened along with her eight year old boy. The two women, seeing some safety in numbers, discussed the matter, did some haggling about the price, were assured we would be back at the wharf at the appointed hour, and agreed to go off with our guide and his brother.
Thinking back 60 odd years, I believe ‘my brother’s modern motor car’ was about a 1928 Chev. Not to worry, the six of us squeezed in and off we went. Along the way, on a quiet country road, we pulled up beside two turbaned men squatting beside a circular lidded basket. One of them had a sort of flute or recorder consisting of two pipes going into a gourd and out the other side, with a row of finger holes. On this he commenced to play while his friend fetched the basket a bit of a kick. Off came the lid and out slithered one large cobra. There was a bit more than a metre of him. All of us took two steps back except the small boy who was enchanted with the snake. The cobra swayed about in front of the flautist for a moment or two in a classic snake-charmer display but then moved quickly to the boy. While his mother damn near died it coiled itself about one leg and disappeared up his shorts. With the flautist’s mate doing his best to assure the mother all would end well, we watched the snake coil itself around the boy’s body under his shirt. He was told to hold out his arms to the side, and the snake emerged from an arm hole, moved along his arm and dropped to the ground. It was picked up, put back into the basket and the lid replaced. I think the whole thing took not more than two or three minutes. The relief in the party was immense, except for the boy, who had been delighted with it all.
In due course, after a lovely afternoon - I hope Sri Lanka today is as beautiful as Ceylon was then - we arrived back at the wharf in good time to catch a launch back to the boat.
From Colombo we moved on to Aden, to Suez and, through the Canal, to Port Said. Aden was hot, dry and with none of the charm of Colombo. We went ashore for the sake of it, tramped about a bit but liked it not. The Orion had developed some sort of mechanical glitch and we sat baking in Aden’s harbour for a couple of days while it was fixed.
At Suez we could not go ashore. There was an outbreak of cholera. Nor could the ‘shore’ come out to us for all the traders who rowed out to us and would do business with the passengers by way of a rope with a bag tied to it were chased away for fear of infection. However, when we got to Port Said the harbour traders came out to meet the Orion in droves.
First there were the men with carved wooden animals, ebony boxes with porcupine quill infill and sliding lids, and all sorts of things for sale. “Oi, Oi” they called up from their little rowing boats, with their wares all set out on the seats. Looking down from the deck of the boat, about 10 metres or more above him, I called out to one of them “what’s that?” pointing to what looked like a leather cosh. A cosh? Well, you might know it as a black-jack, but then again you might not. Villains, in comic strips such as Mandrake the Magician, or the Phantom, used them to belt their victims on the head, knocking them unconscious. I had never seen one in the flesh so to say, and was very interested indeed. “You see for yourself” he called back, and threw me a rope. I hauled it in, and up came a woven bag which was in the middle of the rope, the other end remaining with the trader. In the bag was the object of my interest and it was in fact a cosh, made up of a heavy iron bolt with a little padding around it and covered by leather plait with a thong to go round your wrist while you swung the cosh to stun some thief or murderer. It was fabulous - a thing of beauty and a joy for ever!
“How much?” I called down.
“To you young sir, two shilling.”
“Offer him sixpence” said an elderly passenger beside me who was watching with interest.
“Can you do that?”
“Of course you can. You wouldn’t give him what he asks first up.”
“Sixpence” I shrilled down to the trader.
“You would rob an old man? My daughter and my grandchildren, they have no food.”
“One shilling” I cried.
“No you goat” hissed the Interested Bystander. “Not so fast.”
“Oh! Ninepence” I called out, but too late.
“One shilling it is then. Put your money in the bag and pay out the rope to me.
So the deal was done, and education was proceeding apace. I have the cosh yet, still waiting for some burglar to stick his head in through my window.
Then there was the Gilli Gilli man. He too arrived in a small rowing boat. A tall, lean, erect man, in a long white robe with full loose sleeves, he wore a bright red fez with a long black tassel which flicked from side to side as he moved his head. He attracted a lot of attention as he fetched up alongside our boat and dropped anchor. A crowd of passengers gathered, looking down at him. The small fry thought him particularly interesting and squeezed between legs to get to the rails for a better view.
Seemingly unaware of his audience, he opened a black box, the contents of which were obscured from us as he leaned over it, no matter how much we craned our necks. After a while he took from his box three more bright red fezes and set them solemnly in a row on the seat of his boat. Shutting his box he stood, looked fixedly at the three hats for a moment, and then looked up at us with a wide smile.
“Good morning ladies and gentlemen” he called and bowed low. “Good morning” we called back.
He lifted his face to us again, spread his arms wide and looked hard at his left hand. “Gilli, gilli, gilli” he called and a day-old chick appeared in his right hand.
“Now where shall I put that chicken?” he wondered aloud, and he put it under one of the three hats.
“Gilli, gilli” and another chicken appeared magically in his hand. It too went under a hat, followed shortly by a third and then a fourth chicken which he put under the fez on his head. The audience looking down at him was impressed and wanting more, particularly the fascinated small fry. For some reason there were matters in his black box which required his attention again, and once more we were unable to see what he was doing. After a while he shut the box and stood up again.
“Now where did I put those chickens?” he asked himself aloud.
“Under your hats” the kids screeched, exasperated that he should have forgotten so soon.
“Which hat?”
“All of them.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
“Yes you did.”
“This hat?” pointing to one of the three on the seat.
“Yes” they shrilled, close to losing all patience with him.
“Oh very well then, let me look. Gilli, gilli, gilli”, and he lifted the hat. No chicken. The small fry were aghast.
“There’s one under the next hat” they called hopefully. But there wasn’t, nor under the last of the three hats on the seat.
“Thank you ladies and gentlemen” he called up with a smile and doffed his fez with a flourish as he bowed low before us. And, of course, there was no chicken under that hat either. The crowd threw a good shower of coins down into his boat, some bouncing out into the harbour.
“Some for me, some for the fish” he called with a smile. Then he rowed away.
Finally, there were the small boys who would dive for coins. About nine to twelve years of age, they swam slowly out from the shore which was not less than 400 metres away, using a scissor kick with an overarm action, heads out of the water. There were about ten of them. “Oi, Oi” they called up, and a passenger would throw a coin high in the air. If it was a silver coin all the kids would swim hard and dive for it. The successful one would put it in his mouth for safe keeping. If it was a copper coin only the smaller boys went after it.
If a passenger threw a coin a bit too far away, so that even a hard swim failed to get to it before it sank from sight, there would be a few sharp words which nobody understood but which conveyed their message very clearly. They hung around for perhaps 20 minutes and then, either because their mouths were full or they had tired, they swam away home.
The Suez Canal had been interesting, though my friends and I thought it fairly pale by comparison with the Gilli Gilli man. The Orion had seemed almost too big for the canal in places, and small boats rowing in the opposite direction would be surfed backwards on our bow wave. We were close enough to shore to clearly see the people working on the farms.
Had we travelled between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean via the old route that was used in the days before the Suez Canal was opened, I have no doubt our attention would have been captured much more firmly. In those days, pre 1869, passengers en route from Australia to England were unloaded at Suez. From there they travelled by horse-drawn vehicle, across the desert, 100 kilometres to Cairo. From there, it was 200 kilometres down the Nile by small boat to Atfeh, and then by another small boat towed along a canal about a further 100 kilometres to Alexandria. At Alexandria, they boarded another ship to London. In all, the trip overland from Suez to Alexandria took a bit more than three days - today, long enough to fly Sydney to London and back.
The Mediterranean, when we did reach it via the Canal, was indeed blue as had been promised. This was well received, after the complete absence of any red to be seen in the Red Sea. There were no further ports of call after Port Said. That brought some grumbles from people who would like to have seen Malta or Napoli or Gibraltar, or people who wanted to suggest their intimate knowledge of such places. Others, for whom the journey was starting to drag a little, were happy enough to press on. Then there were some who weren’t at all sure whether they wanted to go on or back. There were, I would think, not less than a dozen people who were travelling to England so as to marry the person they had met and fallen in love with during the war or a little before it. A lot of hearts would not have been broken had the days of overnight air travel to London been available in 1947. But a month and more aboard the Orion, wining and dining, dancing and partying, standing at the side of the deck looking down at the reflection of the moon in the sea with someone else close alongside - well, how much can human flesh bear? We had at least six of these young people who now realised that when we berthed at Tilbury Dock, London, they would have to cope with an eager upturned face among the waiting crowd. What, I wonder, do you say on such an occasion?
The Med. was beautiful but uneventful. We passed Gibraltar, took a right and crossed the Bay of Biscay to the Channel. The Bay put on one of its usual turns and my poor mum again repaired to her cabin with a bucket to hand.
We did ultimately berth at Tilbury. Just how long we had been at sea I can’t say, but I do know that the return voyage in January/February 1948, again on the Orion and following exactly the same route, took precisely 32 days. I suppose our voyage to London took pretty much the same time, though the delay in Aden may have taken the voyage to the full five weeks.
Before I was married I regarded that six month period as the best in my life, and the voyage to England as the best of all. The return trip, with the boat having been provisioned in an England still under unbelievably tight food rationing, was a much more spartan affair - anyway, it was a bit old hat for a seasoned salt like myself.
What do I recall most fondly of all? Perhaps the albatross. For days, may be a week, he followed us across the Indian Ocean, holding a position about 50 metres astern the boat. With rarely a flap of his wings, he just slip-streamed from side to side in a wide arc, dipping down very close to the sea in the middle. He would be there when you went to bed, and still there next morning. I used to check him out before breakfast. Only when they threw some stuff overboard from the galley would he come down to eat, and then catch us up again. I leaned on the stern rail and watched him for hours on end.
Last year, when I was fishing a few kilometres off Broulee on the New South Wales south coast one of the albatrosses which occasionally skim about the area set down about 50 metres away from me. They don’t often do that. I flung a pilchard high in the air and, to my great surprise, he flapped and trod across the water to settle about two metres from my boat. They certainly don’t do that often. He was a Yellow Nosed albatross in perfect condition. As he ate his way ravenously through the rest of my bait I said to him “Mate, have we met somewhere before?”
2. THE SS ORION
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| Boardroom style model of The Orion. 42 x 122 x 29cm |
The Orion was built by Vickers-Armstrong for the Orient Line and launched at Barrow in England in December 1934. She was the largest ship in the Orient Line at the time with an overall length of 665 feet, a beam of 82 feet, weighed 23,696 tons and was capable of 21 knots. She had one funnel, one mast, was painted corn-cob yellow and had been designed principally for the immigration flow from Britain to Australia and the return trade. In many ways she was the latest, the greatest and a very good looking ship. Certainly there were bigger and grander ships with other maritime companies, but the Orient people were very proud of her.
From the outset the ship had an affinity with the antipodes. The architect in charge of interior design was a New Zealander, Brian O’Rourke. The flooring he used in showpiece areas such as the lounge in first class was a mixture of jarrah and Australian myrtle. Finally, although the ship entered the water at Barrow on the west coast of England the launch was triggered from Brisbane on the east coast of Australia. There the Duke of Gloucester delivered an appropriate speech which was broadcast to many parts of the world. He then pressed the button which, by a link-up of hard wire and radio waves, released the champagne bottle which smashed against the ship’s bow, and she slid quietly down the slipway into the Irish sea. That, particularly in 1934, must have been quite a moment for all concerned.
The ship was bedded-in by the Orient people with a couple of local cruises to start with, first to Norway and then in the Mediterranean. It was on the Med. cruise that she was involved in her first drama. The Cunard liner Doric was in thick fog when she collided with a French boat the Formigny and was seriously holed. Her SOS was picked up by the Orion and by a P&O ship, Viceroy of India. Viceroy took 250, and the Orion took on board about 450 of the passengers from Doric. After two days she put them ashore at Tilbury Dock – the Orion’s home port.
The first voyage to Australia was in September 1935. She continued on that run until 1939, though alternating it with cruise work in between.
With the commencement of war in 1939 the Orion was commandeered for service as a troop ship. This was a daunting prospect. In the first World War ten Orient Line ships had been taken over as troop carriers. Three of those, Omrah, Otway and Orama were torpedoed and sunk. One, the Otranto, was lost in a convoy collision, and the Orsova was damaged by torpedo.
Orion had been built to carry 486 First and 700 Tourist Class passengers. Re-configured as a troop ship she commonly carried 5,000 and at times squeezed 7,000 on board. Her first voyage was with British troops to Egypt. She then sailed for Wellington where New Zealand troops boarded. From there she rendezvoused at Sydney to take on board Australian troops and set off for Egypt in a convoy which included her sister ship Orcades. Later in the war Orcades, the second of the three ships bearing that name, was sailing from Cape Town to England when she was hit by two torpedoes. She turned back for Cape Town but, later in the day, was hit by a third torpedo whereat all passengers were ordered to the boats. The Captain and a skeleton crew continued on but after three more hits they dived into the sea as the ship sank beneath them. Most were rescued but 48 were lost. Eight Orient Line ships were used as troop carriers in World War II. In addition to the Orcades, the Orama (2nd) and the Oronsay (1st) were sunk.
For the remainder of the war Orion’s journey took her to North Africa, the Near- and Far-East, South Africa, India, Australia and the United States. Her most remarkable voyage commenced from England in August 1941. In September she was in convoy in the Atlantic carrying about 5,000 troops from Britain bound for Port Taufiq, Egypt, via the Cape of Good Hope. Off Sierra Leone the convoy was sailing in zig zag pattern and had just reached an ‘alter course’ time. Orion changed to the port tack. At the time she had the battleship HMS Revenge on her port bow and noticed she was late in changing course. It was suddenly realised Revenge was not going to change course (it was later found her steering had failed) and was on course to ram the Orion. The officer in charge of Orion ordered her ‘hard a starboard, full astern’. But for that, Revenge would have cut Orion in two. As it was, Orion hit Revenge at reduced speed but still mounted up on her. Orion was ordered ‘slow ahead’ and remained up on Revenge until the damage to her bow was assessed.
There was immense damage to the bow but the collision bulkhead had held. Orion then went astern and slid off Revenge. The convoy continued on to Cape Town, where Orion’s bow was temporarily filled with concrete, and then proceeded around the Cape and up to Port Taufiq, an Egyptian port near the city of Suez, to deliver the troops. Her cargo of troops off-loaded, Orion embarked prisoners-of-war and took them to Karachi. Thence she proceeded to Bombay and Colombo picking up troops required to defend Singapore. At the major port of Singapore substantial repairs were effected to her bow. The work was barely complete when Japanese forces converged on Singapore. Orion took on women and children and then, unescorted, evacuated them to Australia. From Sydney they set out for home, skirting the Antarctic pack ice so as to avoid Japanese submarines, and sailed up the coast of South America to Panama. Having gone through the canal they moved to Bermuda. There, they picked up two aged destroyers as escorts and headed for home again. Not far out of Bermuda the three ships ran into a hurricane. One of the destroyers was sunk; the other was forced back. Orion was continuing on her way, again unescorted, when she was diverted to Halifax in order to pick up Canadian troops which she took to Glasgow, arriving there on 11 March 1942. The epic voyage had commenced on 6 August 1941.
At the end of the war, having travelled over 380,000 miles and carried 175,000 people, a rather weary Orion returned in 1946 to the shipyard at Barrow where she had been built in 1934. It took most of a year to refit her for her original purpose as a passenger liner. Her capacity was enlarged and thereafter she could accommodate 550 First and 700 Tourist passengers with a crew of about 470. She returned to the London/Sydney run in 1947 and continued until 1963. Estimates of how many tens of thousands of passengers she carried during her nearly thirty years are not readily available. Those who did sail in the Orion seem to have retained particularly fond memories many years later. Memories of a most comfortable ship; a remarkably professional crew who were so committed to passenger enjoyment; a marvellous cuisine; exotic ports of call; affairs of the heart - all in all, four to five weeks of endless indulgence coupled with the unique romance of living at sea and, in many instances, seeing some unusual parts of the world for the first time. On 15 April 1963, Orion, the grand old dame, left Australia for the last time. She was flying an 85 foot paying-off pennant.
The end, of course, comes to us all but somehow the end of a great ship is particularly touching. On her return to England, Orion was sold and for a few months was used as a floating hotel at Hamburg. It was a bit like a former notable public figure being reduced to the role of a sideshow exhibit. In September 1963 she was sold to Boel et Fils, ship-breakers of Antwerp.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Evans, Huw and Tyrer, Chris. http://www.pnc.com.au/~byceme/orion/anecdote.htm
Fitchett, T.K. The Great Ocean Liners.
Glazebrook, Harry. Mulliss, Steve. and Ors. http://www.angelfire.com/on3/rmsorion/ history.htm
Isherwood, J.H. and Stewart,C. Ships of the Orient Line
McCart, Neil. 20th Century Ships of the P&O Line
3. HILDA ZANADVOROFF
THE RHINE
If people are a function of the environment in which they grow and develop, and they are, then Hilda Zanadvoroff’s parents were most fortunate to do their growing up in a wonderfully stimulating environment. Her father was raised on the left bank of the upper Rhine River and, a little further down stream, her mother’s childhood was spent on the right bank.
The Rhine, some say, is the backbone of Europe. Some of its waters rise in the Italian Alps but most of it comes down from Switzerland. It touches on Austria and Lichtenstein and, where it leaves Switzerland at Basel, forms the border between the French region of Alsace and Germany. As it flows along that border it is flanked on the west by the Vosges mountains and on the east by the Black Forest. Continuing on through Germany and the Netherlands it contains the largest river port in the world, Duisburg, and where it empties out through a number of distributaries into the North Sea it picks up Rotterdam, the largest sea port in the world. The Rhine moves more than 2,000 cubic meters of water per second, a matter of fact not easily swallowed by a drought-stricken Australian.
The nerve endings of the Rhine extend far to the east, south and west. Using its tributary the Maine, and the Rhine-Danube canal, it joins the Danube and reaches the Black Sea. Commercial barges and passenger boats regularly follow the route from Rotterdam to the Black Sea. To the west and south the Rhine is linked to the Rhone by way of the Rhine-Rhone canal and the Saone river. The Saone rises in Alsace and, after endless meanderings, joins the Rhone at Lyon. Along the way the Saone has connecting canals to the Loire and the Seine. One may have breakfast in Basel and dinner in Paris, but not on the same day.
Leave a leisurely month in between. These links to the rivers flowing south and west in France are not sufficiently robust to permit much more than pleasure barges. However, there have been serious plans from time to time to create a substantial connection between the Rhine and the Rhone by way of the Lake at Geneva, leading on to the western Mediterranean. The Rhine’s grip on Europe would then be complete.
The river’s great commercial value is complemented by its beauty and history, and hordes of tourists delight in it each year as they travel along it by boat, or by rail along its banks. Yet, as one looks up at all its daunting castles and forts perched strategically on cliff tops and islands, those of us not born with Continental savvy are left to ponder its long history of conflict.
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| l’Hôtel de Ville, Molsheim. Photo courtesy Alsace Passion, link here. |
Molsheim
That part of the Rhine with direct relevance to the life and times of Hilda’s parents is the stretch where it borders Alsace and divides France from Germany. It has not always performed that function. The spoils of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 included Alsace which became part of Germany and remained so until the French reclaimed it in 1918 at the end of the Great War.
Alsace is the smallest, and some would say, one of the most delightful regions of France. Much of it is composed of small, charming villages held together by the threads of the Vosges mountain range, the river, gastronomy and its wonderful wines. The white wines are outstanding, and it is the only region in France where the wine labels display the grape type as prominently as the name of the region - a feature appreciated by wandering Australians. Alsace is old, old, old. Walking the cobblestone streets of Riquewihr for an instance, the cottages have a plaque above the door showing the date they were built - some of them in the 15th century.
Another village, near the regional capital, Strasbourg, is Molsheim where Hilda’s father Alphonse Lutz was born in 1877. Thus, although his family had been French for many generations, he was born in Germany. Leaving school, he set out to become a professional gardener and on completion of his apprenticeship moved to France to live in Nancy where many refugees from Alsace had gone after the annexation. However, work was hard to find and he moved back to Alsace, to Strasbourg.
In Strasbourg, Alphonse Lutz came across the Salvation Army and decided to join it. He undertook officer training in Berlin and graduated as Lieutenant Lutz. After serving in several German towns, including the town of Karlsruhe, he was posted to India in 1907.
Karlsruhe
It is at Karlsruhe that the Rhine parts company with Alsace and continues north with Germany on both banks. Again, it is at Karlsruhe that Maria Krell, Hilda’s mother, was born in 1875.
The fallout from the Franco-Prussian War had been difficult not only for Alsace but for nearby towns in Germany. Maria’s father, Leopold Krell, opted for immigration to America. He set out alone hoping to bring his family when he became established. He and a number of other young German men embarked on two sailing ships. One of the ships foundered in the Atlantic. Whether or not Leopold was on board that one, he was not heard of again by his wife and family.
When Maria left school she became a seamstress. She, her mother and sister were all committed members of the Methodist church but, encouraged by a friend of the family, she too transferred her activities to the Salvation Army. In her work she moved about, living first in Zurich and then in Paris, but in 1896 she returned to Germany. In Berlin she attended officer training with the Salvation Army and in 1896, 21 years old, she graduated as Lieutenant Krell. For 11 years she was moved about from town to town, always living in the most humble and frugal of circumstances in the tough end of town where ‘good works’ were most in need. That was the way of the Army – maximum impact at minimum cost.
In 1904 Maria was sent to London to attend the International Congress of the Salvation Army. There she met representatives of the Army in India and was intrigued by the difficult work they undertook in that land. She was keen to go but it was not until she was 32, in 1907, the same year Alfonse Lutz was sent to India, that she too took up a posting. She looked forward to it immensely despite stories of tropical disease, droughts, floods, famine and animosity from some non-Christian Indians.
Maria Krell and Alphonse Lutz were to meet in India and to devote the rest of their lives to the work of the Salvation Army. That is not easy work.
The Salvation Army was founded in London in 1865 by William Booth. Its object was the salvation of souls, and its organization was along army lines. It had uniforms, soldiers and commissioned officers, and it even spoke in militaristic terms. If it decided to address a particular problem it ‘attacked’ the problem. If it decided to move into a particular area, then it ‘invaded’ the area. General Booth’s overriding injunction to his troops was “Go for their souls, and go for the worst”. There was no great shortage of suitable souls in Europe but India was irresistible to the Sallies.
India
The India to which the two Salvationists found themselves separately posted - they had never met - was a complex society.
In the 16th century European traders from Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands and France found themselves so busy in India that they each formed colonies. Chief amongst the British traders was a group of London financiers who formed themselves into The British East India Company. Such was their influence in London that in 1599 they were granted by Elizabeth I a Royal Charter which gave the Company advantages over other British traders in India.
In 1617 the Company entered into an agreement with the Mughal Emperor whereby he would be supplied with a range of interesting and unusual imports and in return the Company would be given trade advantages over other trading nations. Similar agreements were engineered with other Indian regions.
The British East India Company grew in strength, both financial and military, and the other European traders were pushed aside bit by bit. In 1757 Robert Clive led the Company’s military force and gained control of Bengal, an enormous financial prize. By the 19th Century the Company’s position of strength throughout most of India was such that Indian affairs were determined largely by shareholder meetings in London.
The situation continued until 1857 when the Company’s position was threatened by the Indian Mutiny and the Sepoy Rebellion. The revolts were repressed but their causes were not lost on the British Government which found the need to replace the Company’s control of India. The British Raj (Hindi for ‘Rule’) was established and the British East India Company was dissolved in 1858.
Britain had direct control over six provinces. For the rest - hundreds of other provinces - direct governance was exercised by the local Raja, Maharaja, Nawab or whatever other title. These were the local Princely Rulers with whom the East India Company had entered earlier into mutually advantageous agreements. To them, the Raj now offered protection in return for recognition of the overriding position of Britain. Queen Victoria acquired the additional title of ‘Empress of India’ and her immediate representative in India was the Governor-General or Viceroy. The operations of the Raj and of the Princely Rulers of the many provinces were marked by great pomp and ceremony. The Rulers were entitled to gun-salutes on high occasions. Always an odd number, they were accorded from 3 to 21 guns depending on their relative importance. The upkeep of the British administration and military forces, and of the courts presided over by the Princely Rulers all took a great deal of money. At the other end of the social scale the peasantry were not doing nearly so well.
During the 90 years of the Raj, from 1857 to 1947 when Indian Independence was gained, the people suffered repeated famines, constant pestilence, and native industries which had been swamped by imports suffered badly. The poor of India were poor indeed. Not surprisingly, one would think, crime was rife. Not only robbery but frequently robbery with violence. Some of this activity was held to be due not only to hard times but to the existence of tribes and groups to whom crime was a way of life. In some tribes it was said to be connected with religious beliefs, even genetically based, and its practitioners were said to follow their ‘trade’ not simply to keep body and soul together but for their enjoyment of robbery and murder. Doubtless there was some truth in these remarkable assertions but, equally beyond doubt, there were many people to whom the option of an honest living was not available. They turned either to begging, as tens of thousands did, or to crime.
Two groups or tribes which had been engaged in systematic robbery for many years were the Thugs or Thags (‘Thag’ being Hindustani for ‘deceiver’) and the Sansiah Tribe.
The Thags, for most of the year, lived unremarkable lives in villages as peasants. But for three or four months each year they formed groups and roamed the roads of the area in which they lived. Their usual method was to join forces with other travellers, ostensively so as to protect each other from marauders but, when they had gained the confidence of their fellow travellers they would ritually strangle and rob them. Fathers would train sons and they became expert in the arts of deception and strangulation. They were said to bribe landowners and authority in the areas where they lived for the rest of the year. Their activities were sanctioned by the Goddess Kali whose interests had a lot in common with their own. They existed generation after generation.
The Sansiah Tribe numbered about 4000 in Northern India. To quote from the annals of the British Indian Colonial Service - “There is no room to doubt that the Sansiahs as a tribe are addicted to the systematic commission of crime against property, frequently attended by violence and even murder. They all inter-marry and join in the commission of crime. They make no pretence of following any trade or industry. They are nomads.”
The problem of the Thags, the Sansiahs and other such criminal groups was sufficient to justify a separate department in the Colonial Service, but it made little headway. In 1871 then, the Criminal Tribes Act was enacted giving the Governor-General the power to proclaim any tribe or group as ‘criminal’. Such a proclamation, the Act provided, could not be challenged in court and it gave the Colonial administration enormous powers to control and direct the movements of people. The Sansiah Tribe was duly proclaimed to be a Criminal Tribe.
As a result, the Sansiah women were separated from the men and the children from the adults. The worst of the men were placed in a penal colony and the less ingrained were confined to purpose-built villages designed to be reformatory rather than penal. The reformatory villages ran for some years but with no great success. They were hard to manage and successful managers were rarely attracted to the task. It was in 1908 that the Government of the United Provinces hit upon the inspired idea of asking the Salvation Army if it would be interested in taking on the job of managing these villages. The Sallies grabbed it with both hands.
Muktifauj (Hindi for “The Salvation Army in India”)
It had been in 1882 that the Salvation Army decided to invade India. The decision gained good coverage in the Indian media but raised few eyebrows - they were rather accustomed to invasions of one sort or another from England. In September of that year six officers of the Army, three male and three female, set out by sea. One of the ladies took ill on the way and another accompanied her on her journey back home. The remaining four landed in Bombay.
General Booth had sent them off with the following instructions:
1 Attract their attention.
2 Gain their confidence.
3 Save their souls.
4 Train them up to live and fight for God and for the salvation of their fellows.
Following these instructions to the letter the four officers - a Major, a Captain and two Lieutenants - set out to march down the main street of Bombay, attracting as much attention as they could. They had a banner, a trumpet, a triangle, a tambourine and a passable tenor. A big crowd formed. A reporter enquired as to when the main invading force might be expected and Major Tucker informed him “This is it.”
With the second objective in mind - “Gain their confidence” - it was decided it would be appropriate to assume Indian names and attire. Major Tucker became Fakir Singh and dressed in a turban, sarong and sandals. Muktifauj had arrived! Despite a great deal of opposition, which succeeded in having the early invaders thrown in jail a few times, the Salvationists found themselves very much in the right place and their numbers increased rapidly.
When Captain Maria Krell arrived in 1907 she became “Arulmony” (Pearl of Grace). She wore a red blouse and a saffron sari. In Madras she undertook language training. She was then assigned to a Home for 50 girls aged four to eighteen situated at Ellore in Southern India, and shortly she took charge of the Home. She was very happy there and delighted in the girls, they were so keen to learn and were smart children.
Still, it was difficult, for the funding for the place was limited and they had floods accompanied by epidemics - cholera in particular. She lost only one child to the cholera, a small girl who expired on her lap. The food too she found difficult. It was hard to keep food in the humid climate and the drinking water was always chancy. The remedy was to treat everything with chilli, and her digestive system had great trouble with the hot food and water.
Meantime, Lieutenant Alphonse Lutz had arrived in Bombay. He was called Kalyan Singh (Brave Lion). He was posted to various towns but after a while found himself in Bangalore at a silk farm. A Mr Jamsetji Tata, a wealthy Parsee, had set up the farm. He had visited such a farm in Japan and then brought in a Japanese expert to help in establishing the industry in India. The venture was no more than middling successful and he invited the Salvation Army to see if they could improve its management. They accepted, made a go of it, and he then gave the farm to them. Alphonse was chosen to run the place and became most interested in it. There were a number of points at which silk worm culture touched upon his training as a gardener. Kalyan Singh also found himself very interested in Arulmony having met her in Ellore. She, however, was not so interested in him. Apart from the fact that the spark he lit within her glowed but feebly, she had 10 years seniority as an officer and she outranked him. If she married him, Army rules required that she could not hold a rank superior to her husband. Difficult! She sought divine guidance but none came. Doubly difficult!
Kalyan Singh, the Brave Lion, was not easily deterred. He fanned the feeble spark as best he could, presented himself frequently, and she finally saw that he loved her wholly and dearly. Snap!
They were married in Madras in 1911 and the plan was that they would return to the Tata Silk Farm, a prospect which delighted them both. They were almost too happy and life for Salvationists was not meant to be easy. Along the way on the road to the farm orders were countermanded. There was a sudden need for new management at one of the Sansiah criminal colonies, at Sansiah Ganj, set in the jungle near Bareilly. Another couple had originally been chosen for the post but, their enquiries revealing it to be a difficult job with many problems, they declined.
Sansiah Ganj
From Bareilly the criminal colony was six hours by a small local train and then three hours by hired pony and trap along a rough dirt road. There, in a clearing in the jungle, were four rows of mud huts housing 220 people, mostly men but with a few women included. There was a somewhat larger two-roomed mud hut with a grass roof for the manager, a police station, a lock-up and an office. However, when the Lutz’s arrived, there was no jailor and all the police had been withdrawn bar one who had been badly hurt in a brawl with some of the colonists and could not travel for a few days. There was a boys school but no teacher. The only help to hand was a scribe who had been ordered to stay for ten days so as to familiarise the Lutz’s with the complicated paperwork and with the local dialect which was new to them both.
The Provincial Government - they were in the province of Uttar Pradesh, well to the north of India - had provided the village with some cleared land for agriculture, and with seed, tools and animals for the cultivation of the land. The inhabitants were not allowed to leave the village without a pass and could be imprisoned if found without one. As an agricultural project it was a flop. The Sansiahs were normally nomadic and totally inexperienced and uninterested in farming the land.
Alphonse, as the manager, was responsible for the good order and discipline of the place, for instruction on keeping animals and cultivating the land, for issuing passes, and indeed for dealing with all and any problems, immediate or long-term, which might arise at any time of the day or night. Maria was responsible for family welfare, hygiene and nursing the sick. There were, however, no medical supplies but what they had in their own kit.
They moved into their hut but found themselves far from alone. There were bats, hordes of rats, swarms of mosquitoes, and occasionally snakes, scorpions and other creeping things came in under the door. In their first three weeks they killed 95 rats in the house.
The villagers wanted nothing to do with them. Their predecessor, a man appointed by the Provincial Government, had convinced them that Europeans in general and the Salvation Army in particular were a bad lot. Everybody disappeared when Alphonse went out and about for the first few weeks. The breakthrough came when a man with a damaged thumb came to Maria. She cleaned and bandaged the wound most carefully. Within the hour another man with a filthy and infected finger arrived for treatment and left well pleased. Before nightfall a woman arrived with a small boy whose belly had been ripped open by a bull. It was a bit out of Maria’s usual line of territory but she quietened him down with a biscuit, washed his tummy clean and bound it as best she could, and organised a group of men to get him off to the distant hospital. Within a fortnight the child was returned to his family in grinning good health. Maria’s reputation was made and, providentially, her treatments of the injured and sick continued to be successful. Alphonse’s shirts ended up with no sleeves or tails for bandages had to be found.
Alphonse’s involvement in the affairs of the colony began by him being the authority to whom complaints might be directed and quarrels referred. And, of course, he was the only person who could issue a pass enabling temporary absences from the village. He was besieged by such applications, all of them accompanied by plausible tales of sick relatives or whatever. In
fact, many pleas for a pass were solely to provide opportunity for theft. Sometimes travellers on the roads would be attacked but if the villagers could get an overnight pass they were expert at housebreaking. In the middle of the night, they would cut a hole in the mud wall of a house, one of the slimmer members of the team would be fed in through the hole, the house cleared of valuables in a few moments, and they would be off. On one such raid a householder, waking in time to see the back end of a young thief disappearing through the hole, grabbed his legs and held them apart to prevent his escape. When the rest of the household rushed outside they found only a headless body. The rest of the team had cut off his head and taken it away to preserve their identity.
Alphonse gradually made some headway in encouraging agriculture and also got a number of men engaged in weaving, but it was a hard life. Food was poor, water contaminated, and there was no means of keeping food cool. Any beast or game killed for the table had to be eaten on the same day. Danger was never far away. There were leopards, hyenas and wolves in the jungle and cobras were commonplace in the village. At night, fights would break out in the village and Alphonse would feel the need to go out and fix the problem. Maria, terrified they would lie in wait for him, would follow close behind with a lantern to prevent any attack from the rear. She said later that she felt, though was far from sure, that she would not be harmed.
They had been there a couple of years when Maria was struck down with typhoid. Two teams of four men carried her on a bed 16 kilometres to the nearest rail head. There, the bed was pushed into a goods wagon and she was taken off to hospital.
She was there six weeks, seriously ill and badly bothered wondering who was doing what to Alphonse. Yet it was a sort of turning point in the village. Many of the Sansiahs were genuinely concerned for her. One of the unofficial leaders in the village asked Alphonse to lead them in praying for her recovery and the whole place turned out when she was brought home.
Perhaps it was the encouragement of this newly supportive environment, who knows, but in 1912 along came their daughter, Hilda Shanti Lutz. This event too had its effect in changing life at the village. The new baby was greatly fussed over by the women of the village.
The Lutzs had not been actively proselytizing - they were a bit too busy on other fronts - but each Sunday they conducted a service for themselves and did it in public view. The villagers had come to like them greatly, even though Alphonse had to stand against a number of individuals nearly every day. But he was straight, he was firm but fair and he had shown repeatedly that he was a brave man. Gradually, people asked if they could join the Sunday service. Then they wanted uniforms and were prepared to pay for them. The village became known as a Salvation Army group and a village from which other people no longer need fear robbery or violence. The local Rajah was greatly impressed by this development, became friendly with Alphonse, and was prepared to lend an elephant whenever heavy clearing was done.
Things were going well indeed and a second baby, Paul, arrived on 2 August 1914. Unfortunately, that was the day news of the outbreak of World War I reached the district. Alphonse Lutz, a German alien - Alsace being part of Germany at the time - was arrested and led away through the streets. The event
was captured by a photographer and featured prominently next day in a newspaper, a copy of which was found by Maria in the hospital. She was devastated and unable to feed the baby. Alphonse was released for a while on the intervention of the Viceroy’s office and returned to his post. But it was not the same. Maria’s ability to feed the baby failed to recover properly, there was little to be had in terms of feeding supplements let alone clinical support at their remote post in the jungle, and the baby died.
Alphonse was again arrested and interned in a camp near Bombay. Maria hung on at Sansiah Ganj for a while but was too weak for the immense task and was shortly replaced. She and Hilda posed something of a problem for the British authorities - Maria was German but Hilda had been born a British citizen. In the end they were repatriated to Karlsruhe where they lived with old Mrs Krell until Alphonse rejoined them. It took until January 1920 before his Frenchness was established to the satisfaction of the post-war French Government which had reclaimed Alsace and was most averse to any remaining Germanic presence or influence. Alsace was not a comfortable place for the Lutzs - no word of German might be spoken in public places - and they moved to Switzerland.
CHINA
Hilda Lutz was eight years old when the family settled in Switzerland. She completed her primary and secondary education there and then obtained a Diploma in Child Care. She found work in Paris for a while and then accepted an invitation to go to London to visit. The invitation came from her godmother, an old lady, the daughter of the founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth. She enjoyed London and the English people and in 1935, aged 23, she took a job at the office of the British Ambassador in Peking. Her job was to look after the two children of the First Secretary and, in particular, to teach them French and German.
She set off for China in the Blue Funnel Line’s Hector, departing Liverpool on 13th April,1935. The Blue Funnel Line was the leading British shipping company trading to China. Based in Liverpool the company had a first-class reputation built upon the quality of its ships and crews. The crewmen were largely from England, Scotland and Wales but also included many Chinese sailors. The development of Liverpool’s Chinese community owed a lot to the activities of the Blue Funnel Line.
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| SS Hector (Blue Funnel Line) |
The company’s traditions and insistence of doing things right may be inferred from the cover and contents of the Hector’s dinner menu for Monday 6th May 1935, commemorating the Silver Jubilee of King George V and Queen Mary. The Hector proceeded via Marseille, the Suez, Ceylon and Singapore, arriving at Taku Bar in China 50 days after leaving Liverpool. In 1942 the Hector was bombed and sunk in Colombo Harbour.
Hilda loved Peking but unfortunately the British First Secretary for whom she was working took ill and was recalled to London. Hilda thought a bit, found that foreign parts were much to her liking, that China in particular was delightful, and decided to stay on. She found office work in Shanghai. She knew there were many British and Continental people there and thought it would suit her well.
If India, where Hilda’s parents found themselves in 1907, was a complex society, China in the 1930’s was even more so. There was a central government of sorts under General Chiang Kai-shek but it was actively opposed by the Chinese Communist Party, and much of the country was under the immediate control of warlords and brigands.
Externally, Japan had established footholds in several parts of the country and was looking for more. Russia lent support to the Chinese Communist Party and had interests of its own in the north west, and the influence and physical presence of Britain, France, Portugal and the United States was well established in the Treaty Ports. The Treaty Ports, there were 80 in China, were the result of lop-sided treaties between Western powers and China whereby certain ports were permanently open to traders from specified foreign countries. Nationals from those countries might live as long as they chose in International Settlements located in designated parts of the cities. There the foreign residents enjoyed the great benefits of Extraterritoriality - a concept whereby they were exempt from Chinese law. Britain was very much to the fore in these arrangements and had control of two of the most prominent Treaty Ports, Shanghai at the mouth of the Yangtze River and Canton (Guangzhou) on the Pearl River. Indeed, having also control of Hong Kong at the mouth of the Pearl River, Britain was in effective command of the river itself. If there were any doubts about any of these arrangements they were removed by the sight of the British, French and American gunboats at anchor in the two rivers.
China, which was reduced to the role of not much more than ‘chessboard’ in a game where everybody else owned and moved all the pieces, had received one concession for its part in the treaties - it was allowed to levy tariffs on foreign imports. Yet it was a concession which worked well for China. The tariffs were collected by the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, an organization run by experienced British bureaucrats at the request of the Chinese government. It was an efficient and responsible organization, probably the only one in the whole of a country where corruption was conventional. It had the clout of Britain behind it if foreign traders sought to evade the tax, and it also meticulously controlled wharf, harbour and navigational facilities.
It was in 1937 that Hilda Lutz arrived in Shanghai, entirely on her own. Unfortunately, it was later that year that Japan decided to move on Shanghai and Nanking in earnest.
Shanghai had been reasonably settled and comfortable for some years. The Chinese people occupied most of the city and the International Settlement, run by Britain and the U.S., was home to many natives of Europe and North America who arrived and settled as “Shanghailanders”. But in the 1930’s Japan had been increasingly pushing its interests in China. In 1931 they had bombed the Chinese section of the city. Thereafter there were a succession of ‘incidents’ involving clashes between Chinese and Japanese forces. In October 1937 then, at the Battle of Shanghai, the Japanese forces threw the under-armed Chinese army out of Shanghai and pursued it 300 kilometres up the Yangtze to Nanking. There, over a period of six weeks, the Japanese soldiers massacred the remaining Chinese soldiers and from 100,000 to 300,000 civilian men women and children. Estimates of the numbers vary. In Shanghai, if news of the “Rape of Nanking” needed confirmation the bodies floating down the Yangtze provided it. Shanghai was in chaos - photos from the North-China Daily Mail of 28 November 1937 bear witness. The Chinese section was razed to the ground, the International Settlement was overrun with Chinese refugees, and the international residents were starkly aware that the attention of Britain and the rest of Europe was fixed on Germany, not on far away places in China. The international community was equally aware that the distraction of Britain was not lost on the Japanese.
It was far from a comfortable place for a 25 year old girl on her own in the middle of all this. Hilda Lutz was more than pleased to meet up with John Zanadvoroff, a single man, twelve years her senior, who knew his way around Shanghai and was no stranger to fending for himself in difficult times and places. In John’s own words many years later, “in Shanghai up until October 1937, the great shadow of British influence was predominant and meant tolerance, stability, trade and honest administration”. What lay ahead was very different, most uncertain and quite uninviting. His first move was to get Hilda out of Shanghai to Hong Kong for three months till the smoke settled a bit. There she was in a refugee camp for some weeks and then found work with the British army. John, with his job to hold down, stayed on in Shanghai. There was still some commercial trading going on and The Chinese Maritime Customs Service, where he worked, continued to levy tariffs - even on the Japanese traders - remitting their collections to the Chinese Government in Chungking.
The Zanadvoroffs were a Russian family who had been well established in the Siberian city of Chita, a commercially and strategically significant place central to the junction of the Trans-Siberian Railway and the Chinese Far East Railway. The Trans- Siberian Railway linked Moscow to Vladivostok via Chita and covered over 9,000 kilometres. The Chinese Far East Railway linked Chita to the Chinese cities of Harbin and Beijing. The significance of those two immense railway systems to Russia, and indeed to Europe, was very considerable. Vladivostok was Russia’s door to the Pacific. It was a trading port and also the home port for Russia’s naval force in the Pacific. The railway provided a direct 9,289 kilometre link to Moscow. Moscow itself was linked directly to St Petersburg, and through there to Helsinki. To the west, the rail links from Moscow extended to Paris.
Chita was prosperous, very much a centre of the establishment, and in the second half of the 19th century it also became a refuge for intellectuals hunted out of western Russia. The Zanadvoroffs, a family of some standing, enjoyed the benefit of a grant of property from one of the tsars and John’s father was General Manager of the Bank of Russia in Chita.
Family tradition decreed that the eldest son should join the army or the navy. John was the eldest and in 1917, aged but 17, found himself in the Russian Army, a Lieutenant in the Horse Artillery. The timing was unfortunate for, with the Bolshevik assumption of power later that year, people with tsarist connections, let alone people from affluent and influential families were conspicuous and far from welcome. Chita itself, symbol of capitalism and wrong-headed intellectuals, was most uneasy.
The revolutionaries took over in Chita. John’s father was imprisoned, but each day he was marched at gunpoint to continue his work of running the local branch of the bank. His wife was turned out of their home and took refuge with a daughter whose husband had perished in the war. There were three small children, no income or other support, and old Mrs Zanadvoroff died of malnutrition. Her husband was taken out of his job, mentally deranged, and not heard of again.
John Zanadvoroff took up with that branch of the White Russian Army headed by Admiral Kolchak. Kolchak, though an excellent naval man, knew little of army matters and less of politics. His group failed to coalesce with other branches of the White Army and was isolated by the Reds. They took him prisoner and he was shot. The remnants of his army, including John, fell back further to the east continuing to resist for about four years until October 1922. Groups of anti-Soviet men clustered in China, particularly in Harbin and Shanghai.
In 1923 then, John Zanadvoroff found a job in Harbin working for the Chinese Maritime Customs Service at the Harbin Central Railway Station. He was there for some years and transferred to Shanghai in the 1930’s. There he rose to the oddly designated rank of Tidesurveyor - a supervisor of front line tax collectors.
Late in 1937 Hilda returned to Shanghai and John. Ostensively the Japanese position was that the International Settlement was not of interest to them and might do whatever it wished so long as it did not interfere with Japanese interests. But daily living was most uncomfortable and there were constant indications that the Japanese occupation of Shanghai was no temporary matter and the days of the international presence were numbered. Overriding it all was the plight of the Chinese people in the city - people with whom the international community had coexisted so comfortably. John and Hilda had decided to marry but the time and place were in no way right. They hung on till June 1939 by which time Shanghai was in total confusion. On 1 July they took passage on the Japanese liner Tatsuta Maru from Shanghai, via Kobe, Yokohama and Honolulu, arriving at Los Angeles on 22 July.
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| John on the Tatsuta Maru |
The effects of war, and the ways in which it distorts the behaviour of usually decent people, is sometimes starkly instanced in isolated communities such as the crew of a boat. Such was the case with the Tatisuta Maru. The ship went onto the Yokohama to San Francisco run in April 1930 and was as delightful a passenger ship as might be found on any of the seven seas. The accompanying picture of the tranquil representation of the Inland Sea of Japan, as shown on the cover of the luncheon menu for Wednesday 19 July 1939, and the lavish fare listed therein, bear ample testimony to that. But in 1941 she was converted for use as a troop ship and also carried prisoners of war. As such she was listed as a “Hellship” by the U.S. Navy. Hellships were unmarked Japanese vessels used to transport prisoners of war with the holds so packed with prisoners that they usually all perished if the boat was sunk. There is a memorial to the those who suffered in the Hellships at Subic Bay in the Phillipines. In January 1943 the Tatisuta Maru took on board 663 Canadian prisoners at Hong Kong for the six day trip to Japan. Already suffering from dysentery they were loaded into a hold with no toilets and there they stayed for the duration. Three weeks later the ship was sunk by the U.S. submarine Rasher.
John Zanadvoroff had family in the States and remained with them for some time waiting to see how things might turn out in Shanghai. He and Hilda had decided that Shanghai was not for her in the foreseeable future. Having met the family she embarked on the Georgic at New York and arrived at Le Havre a week later. She spent the war years in Switzerland looking after her parents.
In April 1940 John Zanadvoroff was approached by the Chinese Maritime Customs Service to return to China to take up a position at another Treaty Port, Amoy. Amoy too was under Japanese control and he returned with considerable misgivings. He spent a most uneasy eight months in Amoy, wondering what the next development might be until, in December 1941, Japan finally declared its hand by bombing Pearl Harbour. European nationals were immediately ordered out of Shanghai, Amoy and the other Treaty Ports. John Zanadvoroff, however, was a stateless person carrying only a Nansen passport. Nansen passports, so called for the great Norwegian explorer, statesman and humanitarian, Fridtjof Nansen, carried the backing of the League of Nations and could be obtained by refugees and other stateless persons but, if push came to shove, there was no home country to stand behind them. John was interned in a Japanese prison camp in Swatow on a starvation diet for four ‘long and bleak’ years to use his own words.
After the war he found work again with the CMCS but the organisation no longer had British guidance, became corrupt, was caught up in the civil war between Chiang Kai Shek and Mao Tse Tung, and was finally wound up after 100 years of sterling service. John was relocated to the Kowloon Customs Service in Hong Kong but, in 1948, decided on a new start in Australia. After a year or so he mentioned in one of his letters to Hilda that Australia wasn’t a bad sort of a spot and went so far as to suggest she might like it too.
In Switzerland, Maria Lutz had died in 1948. Active to the end in her good works her last word was “Hallelujah”. Alphonse was then in his seventies and alone but for Hilda. She mentioned John’s letter and dismissed it in the same breath - how could she leave her father, and what sort of a place was that Australia anyway? Alphonse suggested she should accept John’s judgment on the latter question and, if he was part of the problem, he would come too. In 1950 they set off by boat, embarking at Genoa. The Mediterranean was at its beautiful best and they were enjoying the shared project of reading about and discussing Australia and its prospects as their new home. In Port Said after they had enjoyed a lovely day ashore Alphonse Lutz, Kalyan Singh the Brave Lion, quietly died, asleep in his bunk.
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| The Georgic |
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| The Tatsuta Maru (curiously spelled "Tatuta" on the above Luncheon menu) |
BROULEE
Looking at the chapter headings in this tale there are those who would see ‘Broulee’ as a little incongruent in the company of ‘The Rhine’, ‘India’ and ‘China’. That is not a view that would have been shared by the few people living at Broulee in 1952 when the Zanadvoroffs found it and, in short order, they too would have been prepared to stand against such a nonsense. If Broulee lacked the history, economic development, social diversity and cultural depth of those other places - it did and still does - then it had other very good cards in its hand. It occupied a small secluded section of the exquisite coast of south eastern Australia, had a lovely climate and a bay full of fine fish, was quite unspoiled and, perhaps above all from a Zanadvoroff viewpoint, it was unbelievably devoid of any local, national or international threat. It was there to be experienced and enjoyed, to be quietly absorbed into one’s soul, and you might devote yourself entirely to that without any daily need to gird up your loins, to sharpen your shrewds, and to be alert at all times to those who would do you down. Broulee was as open, as innocent and inoffensive as a day-old duck.
There is archaeological evidence to establish Aboriginal activity along that part of the coast 20,000 years ago and there is no good reason to suppose it started only then. However, Britain’s establishment of a colony at Sydney occurred only a little over 200 years ago. Dear heaven those Brits got about didn’t they? It was in 1828 that the first white foot was set in the sands of Broulee beach. Broulee had a brief and tiny white presence in the 1840’s and was then left to a small Aboriginal community until the 1920’s when white Australia found it again. The small settlement, white and black, sputtered along for 50 years until it looked in any way like a place of permanence and substance
Hilda Lutz having arrived in Sydney in 1951, John Zanadvoroff, then 50 years of age, urged that they not dally too long before putting into effect their plan to marry which had been hatched twelve years earlier. His re-proposal was re-accepted. For nine years they worked as joint superintendents of Hopewood House, then a home for orphaned children, in Bowral. It was while they were there that they were offered the occasional use of a small shack built in Broulee by one of the 1920’s wave of re-discoverers of Broulee. They loved it and decided to settle there for the rest of their lives when they retired. They worked for three years running the Coal and Candle Creek Boatshed in Kuringai National Park, then for 15 months they looked after Legacy’s Cull House in Ashfield. In 1965 they retired to Broulee. There were at that time perhaps 30 houses in Broulee. They settled in with a full and enlightened understanding of the opportunity which had fallen at their feet - an understanding perhaps not shared by all that many of the people already there. Between them they spoke Russian, French, German, Hindi, Mandarin and English.
John was perhaps still a little selective in his chosen company but enjoyed the friendship of a number of local men, both white and black. He died in 1981. It was an event for which he had made a few simple plans. He built and inscribed his own heavy hardwood cross, leaving only the year of his death to be inscribed by another. The accompanying picture of his cross simply states his name both in English and Russian. He decided to be buried in Mogo.
Mogo is a close relative of Broulee. It is a small and unassuming village set back about five kilometres or so from the coast. In its day, it flared briefly as a goldmining town and, like many another place in the gold rush days, it then faded away. It was rediscovered by aboriginal people a hundred years later when it was a quiet and inexpensive place to live with a number of disused houses left over from the mining days. For the last 20 years or so it has been given over to the tourist trade. About a kilometre out of town travelling south, a dirt track on the left hand side of the road takes you into the small cemetery. It is silent, surrounded by the Australian bush, and John Zanadvoroff’s simple grave and cross are comfortably integrated with their surroundings. It is a long step from Chita, from his family and from China, but he seems comfortable there.
Not long after losing her husband Hilda moved from Broulee to neighbouring Moruya. It was a bit bigger, it had services, a hospital and a retirement village. For a number of years she devoted herself to two main projects - she travelled the world again and she set about establishing and developing the Moruya and District Historical Society. She travelled again to Hong Kong and China, and she followed the Old Silk Road leading to John’s home town of Chita. She went back to the US and saw a bit of Canada while she was at it. She returned to Europe and renewed her friendship with Switzerland. Of all the places she visited none pleased her so much as Molsheim where she stayed with an aunt in the old Lutz family home, at 5 Rue des Vosges, which had been built in 1564.
As Hilda moved into her 90’s and relocated to the retirement village she too made plans for her death. It had been taken for granted by her friends that she would be buried next to John at Mogo, but Mogo in her view, had become a bit too busy and noisy. Now it is true that the 30 or 40 houses and shops in the main street of Mogo do hum along a little with tourists in school summer holidays and weekends, but out at the cemetery you would be a remarkably light sleeper to find the odd distant sound in any way disturbing. Nevertheless, Hilda decided it was not for her and thought she would prefer the cemetery at Nerrigundah. At where? At Nerrigundah!
Nerrigundah is about 50 kilometres south and west of Mogo. It too was a gold mining town in its day. The gold gave out, they struggled on with wattle bark and timber getting for a while, but it is too remote and difficult. Today, there are only 12 families left in Nerrigundah and not many other people go there. Three cemeteries were established there in the 1800’s - the Presbyterian, where other Protestant variations were permitted, the Catholic and, across the Creek, the Chinese. There were a lot of Chinese gold miners in the town’s earlier days. However, in the twentieth century, one of the local men, seeing his time coming, was concerned that the established cemeteries, down in the valley where the town exists, didn’t have much of a view. He set up a new cemetery half way up the mountain where he said he would be able to see much better.
To get to that cemetery there is a turnoff from the highway at Bodalla. About ten kilometres further on there is a right where the road uses a single lane timber bridge to cross the Tuross River. Shortly after, the road is no longer sealed and it snakes up the mountain with some sharp drop-offs and no safety fencing. In places two vehicles meeting cannot pass, not that it is much of a problem for there are seldom any other vehicles to be met. On the other side of the mountain the cemetery is set back from the road about 100 metres and from the gate the graves are that far back again. Hilda’s is right at the very back under an ironbark tree. The cemetery is marked off from the virgin bush by a barely standing split-timber fence with five strands of slack wire. There is an old rusty farm gate which ceased to swing long ago. Occasional visitors simply step through the fence. Standing there, up against the bush with only a magpie to break the intense silence, you have the feeling that if you broke a leg it might be a month or two before anyone found you. As peaceful resting places go, it is the ultimate. The small white wooden cross, not at all built to last, simply states:
Hilda S Zanadvoroff
Died 4th August 2006
Aged 93 years.
Hilda’s funeral was a small private affair attended by a little group of long-standing friends. As one of her executors said “Shanti (as she had become to her friends in later years) does not want anything religious said. She no longer follows a formal religious path but believes we are all members of the Universe and all interrelated to the plants, animals and the like. Almost a Buddhist approach in a lovely way.” She wanted no fuss. I hope not to interfere with her wishes, but hers is a story which needed to be told, as some of her good friends agree. From Karlsruhe to Nerrigundah, with a few interesting stops along the way.
Acknowledgements.
• Hilda Zanadvoroff’s small book, Hallelujah, dealing with some aspects of the life of her parents in India.
• My taped interview with Mrs Hilda Shanti Zanadvoroff in January 2003.
• The notes of the short address given by John Zanadvoroff to Moss Vale Rotary in 1955 - “Chinese Shadows in the Land of Sleeping Dragons”, National Library of Australia, MS 6328.
• Hilda Zanadvoroff’s bags and boxes of photos and papers.
• The wonders of the Internet, particularly the Wikipedia sites.
4. KIPPERS
The wrapper on the tin of kipper fillets states that the kippers have been properly smoked, not just painted with yellow dye as is the case with much of the haddock and other “smoked” cod one buys today. It goes on to state there is nothing in the tin but kippers, water and salt - no preservative (other than the smoking process), no colouring, flavouring, thickeners, vegetable gum, food acid, emulsifier, antioxidant or other additives of any sort. And finally, the wrapper states that the contents are the produce of Ireland. Now I ask you, what greater assurance of absolute and unadulterated quality could a wrapper offer?
Kippers, as you know, are smoked herrings, and herrings and Ireland have a great affinity.When my mother was a girl, at the time of the First World War, she, her two sisters and three brothers, went for their holidays to Blackrock, a seaside village in Co. Louth on the east coast of Ireland. It was 25 miles from their home on a farm out of Castleblaney in County Monaghan, and they would set out in the trap flanked by a few outriders on bicycles.
The trap seated the mother and father up front with the three smallest children in a row at the back in amongst all the bags and bundles. The older children rode the bicycles. At times, if there weren’t enough bicycles, two would ride one. One child would set off on the bicycle and leave it in the ditch at the side of the road a few miles on. The other, having started on foot, would come upon the bike, ride on a mile or two past the first child and leave it in the ditch again. Thus, they both rode about half the way and walked the other half. Some years later, when I was eight, my mother and I used the same system going to and fro between Glossodia and North Richmond railway station with only one bike. That was in Australia at the time of the Second World War.
Anyway, they would arrive at Blackrock in dribs and drabs and when all had been accounted for they would sit down for their tea. That done, the father, despite the protestations from his wife that he should at least stay the night, would harness up the horse again and head for home. He was a horse dealer cum farmer but the horses were his real love and he delighted in being able to bring his horse home in good order at the end of a long hard day. He had been at the horses since he was a small boy. When he was about ten he was at the great Balli nasloe Horse Fair with his father who bought six barely broken horses. He put a bridle on one, halters on the others, legged the boy up bareback and told him to take the horses home while he attended to other business at the Fair. They tied the halters of three to the tails of the other three and the boy rode the centre horse of the leading three, holding the ropes from two halters in his hand. It was about twenty miles between there and home - say, thirty kilometres.
To return to the sea and the fish, the family rented a cottage each year along the front looking out to the cold, grey, moody Irish Sea. And each day they would swim in the sea, or so I am told. In 1947, when I was 14, I too set out to swim in the sea at Blackrock. It was a bit of a shock for someone who had spent a lot of time in the surf at Coogee and Cronulla - two of Sydney’s best beaches. At Blackrock you can’t swim at high tide. The water is too shallow and the stones on the bottom are too uneven. You wait until the tide recedes about half a mile to a point where the stones end and a bottom termed ‘sandy’ by the locals commences. It wasn’t what I called sand, and the water was a murky drop.
So, to “swim”, you leave your towel at the sea wall protecting the road from the sea and set off across the stones for the distant water. The air is as cold as a witch’s tit as you step from stone to stone and finally arrive at 18 inches of freezing water. With every nerve in your body telling you this is a bad decision you lower yourself into the water, swim hard for ten strokes, swim harder to come back, get out as quickly as possible and set off for your far distant towel. You have had your swim and if anybody has ever been for a second one I would be greatly surprised.
When my mother was a child there was a man who came along the front each afternoon pushing a handcart full of the herrings he had caught that morning. “Herrings”, he cried, “fresh herrings”, and out came the housewives to buy his fish at a penny each.
One of the tastiest fish in the sea, a fresh herring. But one of the boniest too, though it depends on the importance you place on a bone. To me, the array of ribs was endless and each one had to be found. My dad would lift out the spine and assure me that was the only bone in the fish. Thereafter, he started at the tail and munched through to the head with enormous relish. Adaptable fish, herrings. You may souse them in vinegar and have them cold - rollmops the Scandinavians call them. You may pickle them in brine and stack them in frail wooden casks for export. You may can them and that process, as with other fish, takes all the harm out of the bones. And, of course, you may salt and smoke them producing kippers, as common as porridge on the breakfast tables of Britain for the first half of the twentieth century.
The herring man with his handcart was still there at Blackrock when my mother took me there in 1947. She asked him if he remembered her and he said ‘of course he did, he’d never forget such a beautiful girl’. Well, what else would he say? You’ll not sell too many herrings if you can’t butter your customers.
It was in 1981 when my wife and I were driving around England that I heard of him next. We were in one of those dismal lay-byes on one of the M freeways where you can buy petrol, and coffee in a cardboard mug. There is nowhere to sit to drink it. You stand in a big bare room and perch your coffee on what ever you can find. We were doing that and making conversation with a young Irishman who was going around England on his motorbike. He was from Dundalk he said, which is not far from Blackrock. We spoke of those places and I mentioned the herring man.
“I knew him too” the man said, “but he is dead now”.
“He would be”, I said, “he would be a great age were he alive today”.
“Oh, it’s only last year he died and it wasn’t old age that took him. He was down at the water’s edge at low tide gathering whelks or whatever. He fell on the stones, broke his leg and couldn’t get up. The rising tide and the cold, cold water took him.”
Now that was sad news and we were due at Blackrock ourselves within a week. Still, there you are, that was the herring man. He made his living from the Irish Sea for not less than 65 years. He probably went much as he would have wished and I hope he is happy yet (likely there are herrings where he has gone).
But what of the herrings left for us? They say the fisheries in the north seas have been put under terrible pressure in recent years. The cod, for instance, are all but fished out. Perhaps the herring too is in danger of being caught by the tides of time. I haven’t opened my tin of Irish kippered herrings yet - there are some things you don’t rush. But I have been back to the shop to buy half a dozen more for I am sure I’ll enjoy them and, you never know, it might be the last of them.
I wouldn’t be standing there shuffling my feet if I were you.
5. THE CLYDE RIVER
This material was first published in 2001 as the book The Clyde River and Batemans Bay. It has been out of print for some years and is now reprinted here without any significant revision or update.
CONTENTS
The South Coast of New South Wales
The Clyde
Nelligen
Between the Bridges
The Bay
The Clyde River
THE SOUTH COAST OF NEW SOUTH WALES
Opinions vary on the question of where the south coast of New South Wales starts and stops. I tend to think it starts at about Ulladulla, probably because I’ve always liked boats and fishing, and Ulladulla has for long been one of the great professional and amateur fishing ports. It’s a very safe little harbour where the natural features have been complemented by well engineered breakwaters.
There was a fairly easy living to be made fishing there up until the 1950’s - a few of the blokes seemed to feel that noon was a reasonable time to knock off and head for the Marlin Hotel. However in the sixties the competition between the professional fishermen started to hot up. There were more boats, bigger boats, and they stopped out longer.
Thankfully the infection from this industrious professionalism didn’t spread to the amateurs. In the sixties, Bumper Aitkin and I spent a morning out there in his inboard diesel twenty-five footer and came home when we caught one nice snapper. His daughter cooked it in the backyard that night. She had it on a grill about 15 inches above a burnt down wood fire and basted it with a little jug of clarified butter. Seven of us made a memorable dinner of that fish.
To return to the question of where the south coast starts. The people at Wollongong would argue forcibly that they represent the pearly gates to the south, and would take you by the hand down through Gerringong, Berry, the mouth of the Shoalhaven and on to Jervis Bay and St. Georges Basin. At these sorts of spots they would point out to you the way prime grazing country sweeps down to meet the sea, creating some of the most wonderful landscapes artists ever tried to capture.
Then again, up at Cronulla, where Gunnamatta Bay leads on to the broad waters of Bundeena flowing out to sea, they too would stake a claim to being the start of the south coast.
The fact is, it really doesn’t matter where you stop when you head south along the coast from Sydney. Around every second bend you’ll say “Here’s a great spot, we’ll just have a look around the next curve and then we’ll come back.” But somehow you don’t. You end up thoroughly gob-smacked by the simple unspoilt beauty of one wonderful place after another. In and around Kiama, for just one instance, in a good spring the lush green kikuyu clad hills roll and fold to set up a succession of beautiful bays and coves. From the top of the big hills at the edge of the sea you can see the run of the swells and the lines of the currents, and the Pacific stretches out forever.
If you can stand and look at that on a good day and not feel the need to be out there in a boat, then I shouldn’t wonder if there isn’t something amiss with your system. You might need a good bowl of stewed rhubarb and apple or a physic of some sort.
Where does the south coast end? Well, certainly not short of Eden and Twofold Bay. Eden, despite the recent closure of its cannery is yet another great fishing port and still redolent with tales of the whaling fleet of days gone by. Even now, as you take your small boat out past Lookout Point the waters seem a bit more dark and mysterious than most and you wonder if a whale might surface in your path. Not a good thought!
If you have gone as far as Eden, you wouldn’t fail to go on to Boydtown, perhaps staying at the old Seahorse Inn, and if you’re that far down you’d be mad to miss Wonboyn Lake and Green Cape. The thing is, from there it’s only a spit to Malacoota, definitely one of the jewels of the NSW south coast, though a bloke once tried to tell me it’s in Victoria.
Up until 1956, when they put in the bridge at Batemans Bay, the Clyde River brought the southbound traffic on the Princes Highway to a grinding halt. Particularly at holiday times you could wait long enough to get to the head of the queue for the ferry. It was the second ferry for the people from Canberra. They had to wait for the one at Nelligen too. The bridge wasn’t built there until 1964.
So, to get to Batemans Bay in those days you had to suffer a bit and there was a feeling of having crossed the frontier. For a lot of people Batemans Bay was the place where it really started. You could return to civilization from Batemans Bay and all points south with extravagant tales that less venturesome travellers would be unable to contradict. If they thought the snapper and kingfish were good at Ulladulla, well they didn’t know any better, did they? They hadn’t seen the ones at Montague Island or Bermagui. Berma, where the photos of Zane Gray’s mammoth sharks and marlin decorated the walls of the ladies lounge upstairs at the pub.
What few of us realised at the time was that coastal shipping had established many of the towns long before the Princes Highway had much to say for itself. Broulee was a significant port by 1840. In the 1920’s the Moruya River was alive with ships ferrying the local granite up to Sydney to make the pylons for the Harbour Bridge, the Cenotaph in Martin Place, and the colonnades for the G.P.O.
Today it is all still as beautiful as ever. The fishing mightn’t be quite as lush as it was once, but four days out of five you will come back in at lunchtime with at least a dozen nice fish.
When we first started taking the kids down there in the sixties, we stopped at Tuross Heads in a house set right on the beach at the Coila Lake end. There was an old bloke by the name of Norm Hands who knew every stick and stone at Tuross. He took us in hand. It was new moon at the time, and each night we would go down to the lake with a hurricane or Tilley lamp and stake out our claim on the edge of the sand. A couple of hours work with a ten foot household prawning net and we would have a bucket of kingies each. It was Norm who showed us where the disused oyster lease was, and how to find the track into Bingie Bingie Point where we got good abalone in waist deep water.
He and I used to go out from the Moruya River in my first boat - a 14-foot marine ply runabout. Even then the mouth of the Moruya River wasn’t too friendly for small boats and it hasn’t improved much since. Of course we didn’t have such things as a sounder or a radio, and the redoubtable Merle Zeigler wasn’t at the other end of the radio as she is today, perched on South Head, available to all boat fisherfolk, and standing by as ‘Moruya Base’.
Sand flathead were our staple catch then, with a few bibs and bobs to make the box look interesting.
Today they tell me there are six school buses out of Tuross each morning, bound for Moruya. “Ah yes” you say, “things have gone to pot everywhere”. Not down the south coast they haven’t mate! They still catch good prawns in Coila. A lovely prawn, a Coila kingie. You know, that lake once had its own population of bream - the Coila bream - a conventional looking black bream except they had a thumb print on the side like a John Dory. They went up to three pound too, and ate particularly well. Old Norm used to cold smoke them if he had a few too many.
Small boats still use the Moruya River to get out to sea, clinging to the breakwater to keep out of trouble. There are still heaps of sweet sand flathead and some nice tigers. There are good reefs, some of them not far out, where you will find moeys and reds and all sorts of stuff. Only a mile or two out, if you see a knot of a dozen or so boats packed in tight you’ll know the kingfish are on, but best you have some live bait and some hefty gear too.
If you like estuary fishing and boating then the Clyde River is hard to beat. The other day I took a couple of the nippers and their parents (one of my sons and my favourite daughter-in-law) up the Clyde in my 16-footer. We went up as far as Nelligen which can take you an hour or two if you are poking along stopping here or there and having a good time. What a great river it is!
Have you ever walked along one of those deserted south coast beaches early in the morning? Bengelo Beach, for instance, between Broulee Island and Moruya, or the beach from Dalmeny up to Brou Lake for another. Away in the distance you might see one, perhaps two other people and wonder who the devil gave them permission to set foot on your beach. Take your time, little else will disturb you and your dog as you slosh along at the edge of the sea. The terns and gannets will be working out behind the breakers. There might be a white-bellied sea eagle soaring above, and perhaps a pair of red-capped dotterel busying themselves along the high-tide line. You won’t have been walking ten minutes before your place in the order of these things will be fully established and you and your soul will be totally at peace with the world.
Up around Sydney, let alone points north, heaven help us, they tell me it’s getting a bit tough for fishermen. I don’t think I’ll bother going up there, though there is the Boat Show sometime later this year.
Broulee is our spot, but let me tell you a bit more about the Clyde and Batemans Bay. They provide a sort of focal point for the south coast. Travellers from north, south and west all converge there, and then face east, looking out to sea.
THE CLYDE
“So this is a river” said the Mole.
“The River” corrected the Water Rat.
“And you live by the river?”
“By it and with it and on it and in it. It’s my world, and I don’t want any other.
What it hasn’t got is not worth having, and what it doesn’t know is not worth knowing.”
(Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows.)
In 1992 - and I should tell you this does have a few dates mixed through it - the Irish sailor, Miles Clark, set off from Coleraine on the north coast of Ireland in his dad’s 60 year old 34 foot wooden cutter, Wild Goose. 34 foot is what you might call a modest boat. He had asked his dad if he could borrow the boat, for say six months or so, but had warned that he might not be able to bring the old girl back in one piece. The daddy didn’t ask any questions - he figured he would be told if it was considered any of his business - but simply said “She doesn’t owe me anything, see you later.”
Miles headed north of Scotland, that’s a long way up you know, and kept north till he was above Iceland - that’s in the Artic Circle. Moving east across the Norwegian Sea - he’d be watching for ice by then - he continued across the Barents Sea till he dropped sail at Archangel on the White Sea. The port of Archangel is free of ice only from July to September. There he entered the north coast of Russia and started a 3000 mile journey by way of canals, locks, lakes, the Volga and the Don, to reach the Black Sea four months later. From there he exited through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, sailed the Med. and returned to Ireland. His father, who did know what was going on, was pleased to see him, and the boat. What a feat! What a fantastic notch to cut on your mast!
The immense satisfaction Miles Clark gained from this exercise of the skills of the sailorman, and the accompanying delights he took from the Russian countryside and peoples were, unfortunately, greatly discounted by the sad state of the two once mighty rivers, the Volga and the Don. Unchecked industrial wastes, detergents, algal blooms and siltation had all joined to kill great stretches and render much of the rest unspeakable. The filth that drains into the Caspian and Black Seas is supported by similar offerings from the Danube. Is there any hope for the world at all?
Here, in the land of Oz, we seem to be doing not a great deal better. The Nepean/Hawkesbury is in big trouble, and the outlook for the Murray and the Darling is gloomy indeed, as well you know.
All of which brings me, gasping for fresh clean water like some poor old murray cod in a drought, to the wonders of the crystal-clear Clyde River. Those of you who have peered down at the river from the bridges at Nelligen and Batemans Bay will likely concede that it is at least a nice river but some may jib at the suggestion that it is a wondrous thing. Well now, bear with me.
When English settlers first appeared on the river the people in possession around the area to become known as Nelligen, at least by some accounts, were the Dhurga people. Possibly they were much one and the same as the Bugelli-Manji people, in possession at Moruya, whose language is recorded as Djurga.
Lieutenant Robert Johnston, Australian born son of the officer who led the Rum Rebellion, seems to have been the first white man to explore the river, sailing or rowing up it for 25 miles in 1821. He described it as a “fine, clear, capacious river” and those good people who have followed him have done little to change that. His boat, the Snapper, returned in 1822 under the command of William Edwardson with an interesting party of three. Firstly, there was the ubiquitous Hamilton Hume. Then that rumbustious adventurer Alexander Berry, at whose disposal the Snapper had been placed.
Berry, a Scot in his forties at the time, had set off after school to do medicine. After completing a preliminary course of study he broke his father’s heart by opting to join the navy. The navy gave him a certificate as a surgeon’s mate but he changed aim again to become a merchant buying and selling trade goods around the world.
In 1809 he was loading a ship with spars in New Zealand when word came that another English ship nearby, the Boyd, had been attacked by natives. At considerable personal risk he set off to assist but found that the crew and passengers of the ship, bar a woman, a 15-year old boy and two younger children, had all been most brutally massacred and eaten. Depending on which account you read, from 40 to 70 people had been killed.
The boy, Thomas Davison, who Berry took with him, was the final member of the party exploring the Clyde in 1822.
Leaving the Snapper in the Bay, at the island which now bears its name, and taking the Snapper’s boat, they proceeded up the river an estimated 25 miles till they reached a “stony ford” which barred their further progress by water. Berry, in a paper he read to the Philosophical Society of Australia later that year, wrote “the river winds in a beautiful manner among the hills which slope gradually to the water’s edge. These hills are moderately wooded. The spotted gum is prevalent. The soil is rather barren and is covered with low ferns, prickly shrubs and a kind of dwarf palm called burrawang by the natives. As we advanced up the river, the alternative projecting points, on either side, consist of rich alluvial soil but are of small extent.” The burrawang, with its lovely rich red nut about the size and shape of a date but with five flat hard flanks, still grows profusely in the area. It interested Berry. He had the nut analysed by a chemist to find it was nutritious but toxic. On further inquiry he found the aboriginals knew this well but eliminated the toxin by maceration in running water. Berry, as we will discuss shortly, was not the only man attracted to the burrawang.
When the boat could go no further Berry, Hume and Davison set off on foot for a four-day tramp about. Not a venture to be undertaken lightly. There are only two prior landings in Batemans Bay recorded with any certainty - in 1808 and 1821 - and both of those ended in members of the landing party being speared to death. West of the river he found “the sides of the hills are too steep for the plough but the soil is admirably suited to the culture of the vine. We did not find a piece of good pasture, or what is called good forest land in the whole district.”
Whether or not he was correct in suggesting the land was suitable for “the vine” has not yet been put to any significant test that I know of, and hopefully the revelation in these pages will yet escape the ears of Penfolds and Hardys. For the rest, his analysis of the country was spot on and the lack of pollution in the river today is due largely to the lack of agriculture. That, plus the fact that the limited industry has been essentially clean.
Branching sideways again, like one of those creeks that feed the river where you may find all sorts of interesting things before returning to the main stream, Alexander Berry’s dalliance with the Clyde was brief. He was looking for good agricultural land and the country around the Clyde was not going to meet that need. Within the year he was seduced to the Shoalhaven where he took up a grant of 10,000 acres near the mouth of the river at the foot of Mount Coolangatta. Through subsequent purchases he expanded the property to 40,000 acres and built a magnificent home. The rump of the property and many of the buildings erected by him are there yet for you to see, and you may purchase good wine made from grapes grown on the property. It seems our man had a good eye for the grape.
However, it was not all wine and roses at Coolangatta as he called the property. Approaching the difficult mouth of the Shoalhaven in a ship on a rough day in May 1822, Berry lowered a boat and sent a party to check the way forward. The boat overturned in the surf and two men were lost. One of them was his friend, Thomas Davison, the bit of a boy he had rescued from the maoris, still in his twenties and never to be seen again.
It was Lieutenant Johnston on his first visit in 1821 who named the river Clyde - for reasons not stated in his report to Governor Macquarie but wholly in step with practices of the time of aligning colonial geographic features with British parallels. Seven years later a surveyor in the area had the good sense to ask the local aboriginals what they called the river. “Bhundoo” they cried. It’s a shame the name wasn’t reinstated, and unfortunate the surveyor didn’t continue to ask about for the names of places. He it was who named the two islands at the mouth of the river The Tollgate and the Tollhouse. Would you believe! Later, for a short time, the islands were called the McNiven islands.
Not far out to sea from the Tollgates as the islands are called today, where the water is still muddy when the river is in flood, if you look north you can spy that odd shaped mountain top Captain Cook called Pigeon House. A bit beyond Pigeon House mountain, about 120 kilometres upstream from where you are bobbing about in the ocean, is where the headwaters of the river rise.
Pondering on that one day in the year 2000, when the fish off Tollgates were offering little distraction, it seemed a good idea to retrace Alexander Berry’s journey up the river. He might have missed something.
So it was, some months later, that yours truly accompanied by one Garth Hay - staunch sailorman of Broulee, well suited to follow in the wake of Alexander Berry - found themselves up the creek so to say. There, at a spot 40 kilometres or 25 miles up the Clyde from Snapper Island we felt ourselves bumping on a stony bottom at a place where a promontory of stones comes across two-thirds of the river. We were at the “stony ford” which barred the progress of Berry’s boat.
At that spot, if things have changed since Berry’s day it was not apparent to us from the river. Not a roof, a fence, a road or a path, nor sheep nor cow. Nothing but native scrub and trees, the lovely river, and peace - peace you could carry in a bucket. There was, of course, nothing remarkable in taking a boat to where we were. It is easily and commonly done. Nonetheless there was a certain sense of occasion.
Others have done more interesting things on the river. In 1936, John Fairfax and two friends set out from Pigeon House to paddle two canoes to Batemans Bay. That, in the first two days of the five that it took them, required a fair bit of portage from waterhole to waterhole when they ran out of river. In his book, Run O’ Waters, so beautifully illustrated by Cedric Emanuel, he has this to say of the river:
“The Clyde is not a vigorous tumultuous stream such as one finds tumbling down from the tablelands. It flows very stealthily and steadily down through the valley it has quietly eaten away for itself amongst the foothills of the mountains. It does not pound over waterfalls and cascades like the Shoalhaven or the Snowy. Rather does it win its way by peaceful penetration. Occasionally, of course, when a cloud bursts over Pigeon House or the upper valley, the Clyde becomes a large dignified river and swings down to the sea in a broad-bosomed matronly manner.”
Having gone as far as we could in the river we went ashore. We were at about the junction with Drurys Creek and we hadn’t gone too far before we discovered a road. A single lane well used dirt road. The River Road it is called. It starts at Nelligen and crosses the Clyde a bit further up than where we were, at Shallow Crossing. A branch called the Sheep Track then heads east to join the Princes Highway at Termeil where the Murramarang Road takes you to Bawley Point and Brush Island. Alternatively, the River Road continues to keep touch with the Clyde for quite a bit and then goes through Brooman to Milton.
In 1843 there was a bridle track from Broulee to the north side of the Moruya River near where the town is today, thence via Buckenboura to Nelligen on the west side of the Clyde crossing the river between Currowan and Brooman, and proceeding to Brush Island. That, between Nelligen and Brush Island, is very much the path taken today by the River Road, the Sheep Track and the Murramarang Road.
You should drive the River Road some day. You might get the odd superficial scratch on your duco. It’s probably a bit better suited to 4-wheel drive, though plenty of two-wheelers use it. Keep away if it’s wet, mind the cowboys with big bull-bars, but otherwise it is a most interesting drive. You are following a track that has barely changed in 100 years. Give yourself plenty of time and stop to make a cup of tea while you contemplate the broad gleaming river with the spotted gums and burrawangs reflecting from its banks. It’s over 50 feet deep in parts along there.
In the 20 kilometres going up from Nelligen to Drurys Creek we saw not one person and no more than 10 houses. There are, however, a few dirt ramps and log jetties where timber was loaded in days gone by.
Coming back down the river we noted Cockwhy Creek flowing in on the east bank. There is a house at the junction. Some kilometres up the creek the NSW Topographic Map shows a couple of sheds and a pig-sty at the end of Joes Nose Road. Who was Joe? What was it with his hooter? Believe me, I’d tell you if I knew.
The 1901 Census of NSW shows that Cockwhy Creek at the time had five households and seventeen inhabitants. Civilization at Cockwhy Creek has waxed and waned.
A bit further down, still 10 kilometres shy of Nelligen, Currowan Creek comes in from the west. They say the water in the creek, which flows down from the Clyde Mountain range, is wonderfully good. If you were set on making great whisky, they say at Nelligen, Currowan Creek would be your spot. Damn! There, I’ve opened my mouth again. Next thing you know we’ll have Johnny Walker trampin’ about the place in his big black boots.
From the river today you will see no sign of human interference at Currowan, though Robin Shaw says I should have caught a glimpse of her roof if I had looked hard enough. Similarly, if you drive the river road you will find nothing but native bush at Currowan Creek.
Bailleries NSW Gazetteer of 1866 records that “Currowan is a township reserve on the Clyde River, about 6 miles north of Nelligen, and is inhabited by a few settlers who cultivate the rich scrub lands of the neighbourhood.” In its entry under “Nelligen” Bailleries records that “up the Clyde River, 6 miles distant, is a steam saw mill (Soulby’s), a screw bark pressing machine (Street’s) and a coach manufactury (Guy’s). There is a steamer twice a week to Sydney and a two-horse coach twice a week to Braidwood.” It seems, though one can’t be sure, that all of this was taking place at Currowan.
The 1901 Census lists 8 abodes and 65 souls at Currowan. What happened to all this enterprise and where did all the people go? I don’t know but, more to the point, I don’t know what happened to the very grand plans and hopes that were held for the Town of Currowan when its sub-division was approved and it was proclaimed a town on 20 March 1855. The plan of the town, as shown in the Parish map of 1967, appears opposite. You may count, should you wish to check my arithmetic, 14 named streets, and close to 140 blocks of land ranging in size from 1 rood to 38 acres. A rood, or a quarter of an acre, is the conventional size for a suburban building block.
 |
| The Town of Currowan, courtesy of Land and Property Information, Bathurst, NSW |
Lot 1 of Section 14, a holding of 3 acres (a touch over a hectare) is shown on the 1967 map as belonging to George Shaw. George was one of eleven children sired by Neil Shaw. George, in turn, had four, one of whom he called Bobbi but christened Robin. She lives on that block today in what was the manager’s residence for the Austral Starch Factory.
Nobody knows, well I don’t, nor does Robin Shaw or anyone else I’ve spoken to or read, who it was that envisaged it would be a successful commercial venture to produce starch from the burrawang nut and to do it at this particular spot. Looking at the isolation today, it would seem to have required lateral thinking bordering on dementia.
Never mind. The notion took root and in 1920 Neil Shaw, who lived on the banks of the Clyde River in Scotland, was recruited by the Austral company and dispatched to establish and manage the factory on the banks of Clyde River, NSW. It was set up on lot 1, section 14.
Historians differ on how long the venture persisted. Gibbney believes it was not beyond 1922: Reynolds suggests it held up until some time in the 1930’s. Similarly, there is a range of views on the reasons for its demise. Some of the tales are dark and pick up factors such as mismanagement, drunkenness and sabotage. Robin Shaw’s theory is simple. She points out that the regeneration of the burrawang is a chancy and slow process, and suggests they merely ran out of an adequate supply.
Quite apart from the fate of the starch factory one wonders why the Town itself never came to be. Most likely it failed because Nelligen succeeded in meeting the commercial communication needs of the day, and there was call for just one such maritime link between Sydney Cove and the southern tablelands of the State.
For the next 10 kilometres downstream from Currowan we saw nothing of note save the river itself. It twists and turns but continues to run deep and clear. There are a few cattle to be seen along the way, no cultivation, great stands of tall gums, and the odd house. The few people living along the river bank must count themselves so fortunate in their splendid isolation.
The depth of the river varies quickly from 5 to 50 feet at various places. In 1982 Paul Ballard and colleagues, geographers from Duntroon Military College, retraced Berry’s journey and sought to replicate the soundings of the bottom taken in 1822. Above Nelligen bridge they found little or no change. However, below the bridge, the river bed had risen by up to 5 metres in places.
After a while, and in sight of the bridge at Nelligen, a creek runs off to the left. On the map of 1822 bearing his name, Edwardson records it as “Twist Water”. Gold was discovered there in 1862, and various historians and commentators refer to it as having been called Kiamalla, Kimalla, Kymenallows, Kynemallow and Cymallow. The maps today show it as Cyne Mallows but the local people mostly called it Kimalla. You may call it what you like, but should you be poking about on its banks mind how you go. Some of the old mine shafts are still there, quite deep, unmarked and well hidden by the scrub.
Some of the shafts around these parts were sizeable holes. In about 1895, John Heighway, a mining engineer, did a survey of the Cosmopolitan Mine at Brembamalla via Nelligen. There were three shafts of depths ranging from 65 to 104 feet. While I am at it, in case you should ever be struck down in your wanderings on the banks of the Clyde you may thank me for passing on John’s remedy for “Fever and the Ague” as recorded in his diary:
“12 grains of quinine dissolved drop by drop in a little sulphuric acid and 2 fluid ounces of water. Then add six drops of laudanum. Take this dose 20 hours before you expect the attack.”
Just before the bridge, on the south bank of Nelligen Creek where it joins the river, is what they call today Nelligen Park. Not long since it was called Neate Park after a lady by the name of Adelaide Neate. Adelaide Neate! Now there’s a name to make you sit up straight and mind your manners. We will talk some more of her shortly.
Coming under the bridge, as we continued our journey, there on the right, looking a little neglected but still wholly beautiful and dearly loved, was Nelligen itself (that, should you wish to know, is a hard “g”).
We hitched up at the wharf only to be advised by the hooter of the incoming ferry Merinda that this was not the place for us to be. So we shifted, moored again, and ran like hell to beat the people from the ferry to Benny’s store. There we took on supplies - two plates of oysters and a couple of Benny’s big burgers. This is the sort of stuff explorers have to settle for, and give thanks.
NELLIGEN
Who knows where the name came from?
The need for the place arose in the 1850’s when Braidwood and its satellites such as Majors Creek, Araluen and Mongarlowe were up to their ears in the explosion of people and commerce surrounding the discovery of gold.
The movement of goods, people and information between Braidwood and Sydney was chancy and oh so slow. Depending on the weather, bullock trains might take three weeks or three months. Horse drawn carriage or dray was usually quicker but limited in capacity and expensive. Down the mountain lay the very navigable Clyde and thence a 24 hour run by steamship to Sydney. There was, as I understand the historian Reynolds, some competition between Currowan and Nelligen as to which would receive Braidwood’s blessing, and Nelligen won out.
So, in the 1850’s, the town was laid out and the road from Braidwood was opened. And a tough road it was too. There is a number of old photos showing the grim results of teams of horses and bullocks going over the side of the Clyde Mountain road.
Nelligen boomed! Over the next 20 years there arose four pubs, two stores, a blacksmith, a bakery, a police station, a court house, schools, churches and a post office. Above all was the terminal building of the Illawarra Steam Navigation Company. If today you were to set up your picnic in that nice little park between the general store and the wharf you would be smack in the middle of the 126 x 45 feet ISNC’s jetty and store (Oh, very well then, 38 x 14 metres). Twice a week the steamers plied between Nelligen and Sydney, stopping at the far less consequential village of Batemans Bay on the way. The size of some of the paddle steamers, and later screw steamers, is astonishing. The Kembla, a paddle steamer in use on the Clyde from 1861, was 183 feet long. The S.S Moruya was 150 feet and 530 tons . The S.S. Allowrie was 180 feet. It ran aground on a mudflat in the river on one occasion and had to await the high tide to float it off. The last steamer to call at the Port of Nelligen was in 1952 - 99 years after the first.
If growth was to be the main objective then Nelligen bumped into a major hurdle in the 1870’s - the gold fields centreing on Braidwood started to run down. However, there were other industries to take up some of the slack.
Timber, for instance. Today there is only one timber mill left in the area and that’s the one on the left of the highway as it climbs out of Batemans Bay heading south. There were, in days gone, not less than nine mills up and down the river each employing about ten to twenty workers. The old photographs show them standing in solemn groups before immense circular saws - solid men, black and white, all hats, vests and pipes.
Wattle bark had its following too - for tanning leather - but these days the law no longer permits it.
In the early 1900’s much of the wool from around Braidwood came down the Clyde Mountain road to be shipped from Nelligen. The alternative was to cart it to Tarago whence it would go by rail to Sydney. I am told it was dearer that way.
The most enduring commercial activity at Nelligen has been one of the pubs, the Steampacket, and that brings us back to the subject of Mrs Adelaide Neate.
If you were to go poking about in the graveyard at Nelligen - a prospect which might not have immediate appeal as light entertainment for a sunny afternoon, but let me tell you it’s a lovely spot - then you would find yourself impressed by one of the great matriarchal lines of Nelligen. In 1845, Hannah Lovell gave birth to a daughter, Mary Ann. The mother lived on till 1899 when she died at 103. Mary Ann saw out only 69 years but, my word, was busy in the interim. By the time she was 19 she had married James Sproxton and given birth to the first of six Sproxtons. The Sproxtons left their mark on Nelligen.
I don’t know what happened to James Sproxton but, as I read the tombstones, Mary Ann then went off to wed James Schofield. The issue from that union consisted of John and, when Mary Ann was 44, Adelaide.
Adelaide became Mrs Adelaide Neate when she married James Neate. That, I’m informed by two of today’s keepers of local records and antiquities - Mrs Betty Heycox and Mrs Elaine Ison (and those are both big names in the history of Nelligen) - was in 1913.
After the war the Neate’s or, as some records have it, “Mrs Adelaide Neate and her husband” bought the Steampacket Hotel which, at the time, stood on the corner where the general store is located today. When it burned down in 1924 they re-established it a few doors down in the building still known and signposted as the “Old Steampacket”. She stayed there till 1967 when she transferred the licence to the building which still operates as the Steampacket on the Kings Highway.
Particularly in its former location, it was a busy pub, and it wasn’t the only one Adelaide Neate owned. She had hotels at Greenwell Point, Araluen, Rockhampton and Windsor NSW, where her husband is buried.
Everyone in Nelligen seems to have known her. She was a wheeler/dealer they say, who acquitted a lot of property. She was a tough lady they say, but charitable and well respected. She gave to the town the extensive area at the junction of the creek and the river now known as Nelligen Park, and many hope to see the day when it is once more known as Neate Park.
Adelaide Neate, in this area where huge families were so common, had no children. Sources I decline to name speculate it was perhaps because she didn’t have time to get pregnant.
As the gold and the timber and the flow of goods from Braidwood all wound down, and the shipping became unprofitable, the Steampacket continued on. The fact that it, the old one, was opposite the ferry ramps, did it no harm at all. In the 1950’s and 60’s, on a holiday weekend, traffic on the Braidwood side would commonly wait four hours to get on the Nelligen ferry. The fellas would opt to walk up ahead in order to see what the problem was, and leave wives to edge the car up as the queue moved forward. Hours later, the kids would be dispatched to see where their father was and, in any event, to fetch back a ration of tea and scones from the shop. The shop too, I might mention, was owned by the pub.
Part, if not most, of the problem lay in the fact that the ferryman would wait on the east or Batemans Bay side “for a load” - something which took a while on Friday evening for all the traffic was headed the other way. Still, rules are rules, and one must accept that that was the cause of the ferryman’s dilatoriness.
As they will tell you down at Benny’s store the snip which cut the ribbon when they opened the grand new bridge in 1964 was a terminal cut for the old Steampacket. Thus, it had to move again and, as you know, set up business again on the highway, though business is well short of the brisk trade done in days of yore. Is there any truth in the rumour, do you know, that there are plans to convert the bridge into a drawbridge - like the one at Batemans Bay - so as to let the tall ships pass by?
Of all the institutions which have faded from Nelligen’s scene the one which most takes my imagination is the Nelligen Philharmonic Society, recorded in Bailey’s “Behind Broulee”. It was there in the 1870’s. When it started, when it stopped and what it did in the interim, I know not.
On our epic journey down the river, as we came under the bridge, we cut the motor and cupped a hand to an ear to see might we yet catch from the hills the last echoes of the final strains of some long gone string quartet. But some bloke rumbled his truck over the bridge. Ah well, there you are then!
It would seem a worthy project, do you not think, if the Canberra Philharmonic or the South Coast Music Society ,or some such, were to propose the re-establishment of the Nelligen Phil. on an occasional basis. Friday nights at the start of summertime long weekends would be good.
I should think there would be good local support and, logistically, Nelligen stands ready and able with The Mechanics Institute which has a stage, good wooden benches and some plastic seats. If some patrons were to bring their own folding chairs there would be seating for about 100 souls.
Actually, I provided a wee concert myself on my last visit to Nelligen.
I was ferreting about again in the graveyard. It is set on the side of a hill in amongst tall eucalypts and is in two parts. In the first part you come to there is a prevalence of McCauleys, Egans and Fitzgeralds - all names well sprinkled throughout Nelligen’s history. In the second part, separated by a 50 metre belt of tall trees, there are more names equally well embedded in local history but the Irish names are not so noticeable. “In death are we yet divided!”
I was chiefly on the track of Adelaide Neate and sorely perplexed by the tombstone engraved:
In Loving Memory of
Adelaide Neate
Loving wife of James Wilkins
Daughter of James and Mary Schofield
Died 10 April 1983
Aged 94 years
So, how did Miss Schofield marry James Wilkins but obtain the name Neate? I might have died wondering but for the revelation in Reynold’s book that the man she married was James Wilken Neate.
Anyway, I was having a wonderful time. Bruce Sproxton, who died in 1974, was in luck. His nice little wooden cross had come to bits but I happened to have a tube of glue in the back of the wagon. As Ausonius puts it “Death comes even to the monumental stones and the names inscribed thereon.”
I was driving out of the place when I noticed one grave on its own on the other side of the road. There is a lady there, Teresa Langworthy, buried in 1903 at the age of 58, with only one sentiment endorsed on the headstone - “Waiting”. I looked and I wondered. Why was Teresa in such a lonely spot and for what was she waiting? To be reunited with some unmentioned partner? For the last trump? As I stood looking, the CD in the car which had been playing away quietly was just reaching a track where the great Scots tenor, Kenneth McKellar, sings, as only he can, the beautiful song “Angels Guard Thee”. It seemed not wholly inappropriate to the occasion.
So I opened all the doors and the tailgate, and turned the volume up flat chat. The music streamed out over all the graves, soared up through the treetops, and seemed to me to be well received by the audience. I kept an eye on Teresa’s spot when Kenneth got to the line “wake not yet from they repose”.
He might indeed have directed the words to Nelligen itself. There it sits so peacefully in the south coast sun, running down from the knoll to the banks of the river, enjoying its retirement immensely. In 1915, Comyns in his “Tourist Guide to the South Coast of NSW” wrote “Nelligen is the outlet by sea for an immense area of country including the large and prosperous districts of Braidwood, Araluen, Queanbeyan, Bungendore, Captains Flat, Majors Creek, Tarago, Currowan, Brooman and Runnymede”. The recently founded Canberra, you might note, didn’t even rate in that galaxy of stars.
After such a pivotal role in the development of the southern parts of the state, Nelligen has been deserted even by the highway and left to fend for itself.
All up and down the coast the faces of small towns are being tarted up and titivated by tourism boards and enthusiastic councils. But Nelligen remains untouched and unimpressed by such progress. Not even the modern marvels of reticulated water and sewerage have imposed themselves upon it.
If I lived there I would hope not to see it change. But you sense it may just be resting after its great exertions and sooner or later some bright spark will again see it as the right place to do heroic things.
BETWEEN THE BRIDGES
Leaving the jetty at Nelligen you see the Clyde Princess moored on the other side of the river, and a riverside resort.
There hasn’t been much development in that part of Nelligen occupying the left or east bank, mainly because the deeper water required by the steamers was on the west side, and the commercial trade was coming from and going to the west anyway. By the way, the “left” and “right” banks of a river are so determined when you are facing downstream - odd, when you think that navigation markers are the other way round.
The Clyde Princess and the resort belong to the Dunbars who came down from Sydney in 1972. Their first cruise ferry was the Eucumbene II, a 44-foot timber boat which was built in Sydney before the second War and stationed at Townsville during that war. At one stage it was used to evacuate troops from New Guinea. After the war it was acquired by the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Authority who used it to run important visitors around Lake Eucumbene. The Queen was on it in 1954.
When the SMHEA was winding down in the early 70’s the boat came down to the coast. The Dunbars acquired it in 1979 and ran it as a tourist ferry until 1983 when it went off to work on the Shoalhaven. An adventuresome sort of a boat, wasn’t she? Sort of puts you in mind of Alexander Berry. The Clyde Princess, a 16 metre ferro-cement boat of 40 tons was built by the Dunbars in 1981, is also used as a ferry boat, and has her place in any chronicle of the Clyde.
From Autumn to Spring, when the jelly blubbers aren’t about, there is a bit of professional gill-netting for fish in this part of the river, but the fishermen are not local. Arthur Tie man, who was very much accepted as a local, came up from Paynesville in 1929, settled in Nelligen, and netted the river till 1978. He sold the fish locally for twopence halfpenny a pound or two bob a kero bucket full. If you are having trouble picking the bones out of that lot, ask your granny. She’ll love it.
Things are quiet as the river continues on its way to the sea till you get to the junction with the Buckenboura River coming in on the right bank. There is a roughish dirt road crossing the Buckenboura a couple of kilometres upstream, the Runnyford Road, which runs from near Mogo to Nelligen. Likely, it too is based on the bridle track of 1848. It’s not a road to use if you are in a hurry, it has some steep drop-offs, and you might have to back up if you meet somebody, but it’s a lovely road.
There are old old families associated with the Buckenboura River and Runnyford Road. I am sure there are more than I know of but let me mention the Austins, Egans and Ryans.
Not far up the Buckenboura is Ryans Island. Mrs Ena Ryan, who lives in Moruya today, was born an Egan in 1918. The Egans, dairy farmers, lived in Egans Road, as it is still shown on the map today, running off Runnyford Road. In 1946 she married into the Ryan family which meant she had to move down the road at least two or three miles. The Ryans had their dairy herd and a cheese factory near where the bridge crosses the Buckenboura today. They made cheese there from 1882 to 1958. Doesn’t it break your heart to think of all the cheese factories which have gone phut over the years from the Clyde to Eden. There would be a dozen and more I should think, and such marvellous cheese.
The Ryans used to punt their cheese down to Wray’s Wharf, just downstream from the junction of the two rivers. We’ll come to the Wrays when I get this sorted out a bit. At the wharf it was picked up by the ISNC’s steamers and taken to Sydney.
A spot that gets mentioned in the history books is Austins Crossing but there is some vagueness as to where that is. The Austins were contract workers who would have a go at anything from oysters to cows to cheese to sleeper cutting and then a few. Austins Crossing, Mrs Ryan tells me, was about 300 yards downstream from the bridge across the Buckenboura. You could only cross it at low tide.
Mrs Ryan, when I ‘phoned her unannounced, suffered my questions for half an hour or more - questions which dragged her through old times. At the end I asked if she was from a big family. “Three boys and two girls” she said “and do you know, we buried the last of my brothers yesterday. It was a hard day”.
The government map of the area shows Humbug Gully on the Runnyford Road two or three kilometres short of the Princes Highway. I had to ask her about that. “Oh it’s a terrible gully” she said “the drainage is bad and we’ve all been bogged there many a time. It’s a proper humbug!”
To return to the Clyde, just downstream from where the Buckenboura joins is a most interesting old homestead and the remains of a wharf. The wharf is called Mays Wharf and before that it was Wrays Wharf.
Timothy Wray was a Donnegal man. In 1891 he married a girl in Sydney where he worked as a diver. By a diver, I mean one of those blokes in an overall canvas suit, lead weighted boots, and a steel helmet with a window at the front. As a matter of fact, Timothy’s diving suit is now in the Huskisson Maritime Museum.
He came to Batemans Bay in about 1900 and set up as an oyster man, using his skills and his suit as a diver. You might well wonder how he went about oystering in a diving suit, and I’ll tell you shortly, but for now I want to talk about that fine house.
Timothy bought 80 acres at the junction of the rivers, leased another 1000, but did little with the land. It is, I believe I may say without offence to anyone, difficult land to do much with. Shortly after he arrived he set about building the house, and bricklayers were brought down from Sydney. The bricks were made on site from local clay. It’s a full brick house and very strongly constructed. Rather than wire ties between the inner and outer walls, and every few courses they laid the bricks transversely to bind the two walls together. There are three bedrooms, lounge and living-room, each with a fireplace joined to one of the four chimneys. There was a verandah all round and a bathroom at one end of the verandah. The toilet, which was way down the back, was not lacking in character and was a two-holer. Have you ever seen one of those? They are what you might call a pally institution. Well, Timothy had ten children, so I imagine there was an impatient queue at times.
The heart and soul of the house was the kitchen. It was big, and you didn’t just cook there. You served the meal at a table which coped readily with twelve.
One of Timothy’s ten was Eric. He married a girl by the name of Middleton who taught at a school which had been built behind the house, and whose father was the teacher at the school at Nelligen. The Eric Wrays, in turn, had eight children.
The Eric Wrays died intestate. That left a problem which could only be solved by the sale of the property. I think there may have been an intermediate owner for a while but it was bought in about 1965 by William May, more commonly known as Pat.
On his assessment of the land Pat May called the place Poverty Farm - which name still appears on the government map and on the gate. His sons, Alan and Dennis, who run the property today say that on the basis of their experience they have no good reason to change the name of the farm.
Meantime, the name of Wray has continued unabated. One of Eric’s eight was Timothy too. He continued in the line of oyster men though using techniques a little more updated than his grandfather. His widow, Mrs Gwen Wray, lives today in Wray Street, Batemans Bay, and rejoices in the fact that her sons have cut the succession of oyster men. Its a wet, cold, hard life she says.
I don’t know enough about it to argue, but I do know this. If there is a finer oyster than a Clyde River oyster I have yet to find it, and I have been looking hard for a long time.
You doubt me? Well try some at Benny’s shop. He’ll open them while you wait. Or pop into that shop in North Street, Batemans Bay run by the Paschalidis family who are getting into their third generation as oyster people. Try a dozen of their ‘plate’ or A grade oysters - big, fat, sleek fellas they are - typical Clyde River oysters. If you’re young and good looking you might get 13 to the dozen. I get 14 sometimes.
What makes a Clyde River oyster one of the finest in this world? Well, for a start, it is a type of oyster called a Sydney Rock Oyster and greatly to be preferred, in my view, to the Pacific Oyster which, although legally farmed at Port Stephens, is vigilantly tracked down and weeded out of other NSW oyster areas.
Perhaps the most important factor in the quality of Clyde River oysters relates to the quality of the river itself - there are, as you know if you’ve been paying attention, no significant sources of pollution. That cannot be said of a number of other rivers where the Sydney Rock Oysters are farmed.
There are more than 50 people on the river making their living out of the oysters. Annual production amounts to about 800,000 dozen which, in Australia, is exceeded only by Wallis Lake, Hawkesbury River and Brisbane Waters. The main markets are Sydney and Brisbane, though some go to Canberra, Adelaide and Perth. What about Melbourne? Well, up until 1978 Melbourne was a good market for the Clyde but in that year there were two bad health scares concerning oysters from further up the coast and the reputation of the Sydney Rock Oyster was mud for at least six to twelve months. The industry practically closed during that time. Melbourne took its business elsewhere - to Tassie and New Zealand, where they farm Pacifics - and has never come back to the Clyde.
Another of the dynasties of Clyde River oyster farming is that of the Ralstons who have been on the river since the later 1800’s. Glen Ralson came down from Wallis Lake at that time and set up on the Clyde working part time on the oysters and part time in timber mills. He had two sons in the early 1900’s - David and Chris - and they too not only became oyster men but produced a third generation, the cousins Graham and Mark who are both oystering today. That nice house on the right bank a bit above Nelligen is home for Graham and his wife Myee who are more than a bit confident that the fourth generation is well assured. There are five sons and one daughter. All of them, according to their mother, started puddling around oyster leases when they were about two.
Today, most if not all of the oyster men are gathered on Budd Island or Latta’s Point, just a bit upstream of Batemans Bay bridge on the right bank. It’s a hive of industry there. There are boats and jetties , endless stacks of stakes and trays, and sheds housing purification tanks and grading machines. The latest machine has just been imported from France.
It takes about three years to turn out a good oyster. The process starts when they spawn in February to April. The spat, or fertilized ova, waft about in the tide looking for something to attach themselves to. There are good spots in the river where the oyster men know the eddies and runs will take the spat, and there they set up their frames of sticks. The ‘sticks’ look much like tomato stakes which have been tarred or dipped in a concrete slurry. The spat adhere to them.
By about November well placed sticks have acquired enough small oysters. The sticks are lifted, moved upstream beyond the reach of more spat which would clutter up the sticks, and laid out singly, oysters up, so as to escape the scavenging bream. There they grow for the next 18 to 24 months till they achieve size. They are then knocked off the sticks into trays and held in the water until graded by weight and put through the purification process.
Some growers grade them six ways but three is more common - ‘plate’ oysters are the biggest and best; ‘bistro’ are smaller; and ‘bottle’ oysters are least of all. Purification is achieved by subjecting them to ultra-violet light in a tank for 36 hours. This deals with any bacterial infection but not a virus. For that reason, the oysters are not harvested after heavy rain until anything that may have been washed down from upstream has been well flushed out of the river.
In earlier days the oyster men set out slabs of sandstone for the oysters to adhere to. Prior to that the oysters - drift oysters they were called - were gathered from the bottom of the river by the use of long tongs or by divers such as Timothy Wray.
Old-time oyster men, such as Kevin Connell and Colin Evans, will tell you about the way the tongs were used to gather drift oysters off the bottom of the river. They were about ten to twelve feet long with wooden handles and some had a net behind the pincer device so that you didn’t have to bring up the oysters one by one.
They were busy blokes. I’m told the four Wray boys in the second generation were loading 100 bags a week on to the steamer at Wray’s Wharf with about 90 dozen to the bag, though that does sound a lot.
Leaving Latta’s Point and proceeding on down the river with the Batemans Bay bridge well in sight, I was searching for a last word on oysters. If you are eating first-class oysters then if you need more than a squeeze of lemon and some buttered brown bread you’re in danger of gilding the lily. However, if you can’t resist the temptation to try something fancy once in a while let me mention one treatment I like. Well, I don’t just like it, it’s bloody marvellous.
Chop up some celery nice and fine and fry it lightlyin butter. Slip a dozen or two freshly opened oysters into that with a little pepper and give it no more than a gentle two minutes. Add a wineglass of good reisling, and there you go. Tip it over a mound of steamed rice and have the rest of the bottle of reisling to hand. See if you’re not a bit frisky the day after a plate of that.
THE BAY
When the cruise boats, Merinda and Clyde Princess are running, which is most days, they raise the vertical-lift section of the Batemans Bay bridge* at least three or four times a day - once when the boats go up the river at their separate times, and then when they come back, though at low tide the Merinda can squeeze under the bridge. At those times, all traffic going up and down the Princes Highway - the coastal link between Sydney and Melbourne - comes to a complete stop to await the boats’ pleasure. There are those amongst the good people of Batemans Bay who see it as wholly appropriate that the travellers from Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra should have time to reflect on their relative importance while such local business is attended to.
[*That bridge has since been replaced by a new bridge, which opened to two lanes of traffic in March 2021, with shared pedestrian and cycle path opening the same month. The project was completed in March 2022 and is multi-lane. TM]
The bridge has been there since 1956. Prior to that there was a mechanical ferry and before that a ferry that was winched across by hand. The Lattas, of Lattas Point, Alex and Maude, had it then. The ramps the ferry used are still there beside the bridge and are now used to launch and retrieve trailer boats.
Today, the travel by road to Batemans Bay from each of the three above-mentioned capitals is an easy matter. Twas not always thus. Bailleries NSW Gazetteer of 1866, in detailing Batemans Bay’s links with the rest of the world, advised that there was a spring cart to Moruya twice a week, mail by horseback twice a week, and passage to Sydney by the steamers Hunter and Kembla also twice a week.
In 1915, Comyns’ Tourist Guide held out the attractions of the Bay to “the hundreds of Sydney residents who are the happy possessors of motor cars and who have the wherewithal to take long distance trips through the State”. For those with out a car, the firm of Balmain Bros., Bega, advertised that they provided a road link between the rail terminals at Nowra and Cooma, travelling by way of Batemens Bay.
A hundred metres or so down from the bridge there are three jetties. The Clyde Princess, a couple of long-liners and various other boats use the first two. The third is where the Merinda is moored, where Merv Innes and his sons tether their two trawlers, Seaberu and the Robin Elizabeth, and where they have their fish shop.
It is an historic spot along this stretch. It was around here that the Illawarra Steam Navigation Company picked up and set down as their steamers plied between Nelligen and Sydney. The man in charge at one time was Vincent Ison, grandfather of Norm Ladmore who, today, at 84, is one of the best sources of living history in the Bay.
Presently, there is a move to have the jetty and adjuncts proclaimed a national heritage and other moves to have the fish shop make way for further foreshore development. In the meantime, while all of that is being decided, the Innes family continues to do business there as it has done for 40 years. Indeed, the family goes back well beyond that.
At one time there were at least six deep-sea trawlers operating out of the Bay. As happened all up and down the coast, or indeed at fishing ports in many parts of the world, the impact of professional fishing started to get out of hand in the 1960’s and 70’s when boats became bigger, fish locating and catching gear became more sophisticated, and fishing boats started to form fleets which would stop out for days or weeks on end. The industry had to be regulated in order to preserve the fisheries.
Today, the quotas are tight, the range of fees and regulations is extensive, and the numbers of professional deep sea fishermen are way down. Is the industry under or over regulated? Well, if you listen to the professionals, and the amateurs, and to the environmentalists, you will find no shortage of strong views but no unassailable midpoint where you may take a stand. I don’t really have a view, but it does seem significant that in the Bay only the Innes family survives and even they could not do so if their trawlers were not supported by the fish shop and the Merinda.
The Innes’s two boats do most of their trawling out beyond the continental shelf, which is about 27 kilometres out, at a depth of about 500 metres. There they catch ling, blue grenadier, mirror dory, ocean perch and other fish. From November to May, using finer mesh nets, they can get royal red prawns. At times they do some long-lining for blue fin tuna.
Sometimes they come in closer, though always working north/south so as to maintain a constant depth. In about 45 to 120 metres they get nannygai or red fish, john dory, tiger flathead, morwong and snapper. Closer in still, there are sand flathead. The catch is iced as soon as it is boated.
Turning to the township of Batemans Bay, I was first there in the 1940’s. It seemed to me it changed very little over the next 40 years. However, in the last ten years or so the town centre has moved very determinedly up market. It is difficult to do that and at the same time retain the essential character of a place. In my view, they have managed it at the Bay.
You may take advantage of the variety and value of a huge supermarket but then walk directly across the road to where they were loading and unloading busy ships 150 years ago and, in a much more limited way, are still doing today. Further down the road there are, I’m told, some trendy clothing shops and, I’ll vouch for it, some great eateries and coffee shops. But there, on the other side of the road, is the old pub looking much the same as ever.
Orient Street, the main street, through some adroit traffic engineering, has a mally feel to it but isn’t closed to vehicular traffic. If you can attract and retain crowds of people milling about looking relaxed and comfortable, and in amongst them see the local business people on the go, then you have a good coastal town.
One of the developments of the last ten years has been the Mara Mia Walkway running along the side of the river parallel to Orient Street. It has jetties running off it with big tables and bench seats where groups of people can set up with their seafood and lark away for hours with the river running beneath their feet. It’s bright and sunny, there are lovely coffee shops with wonderful views, and the pelicans, silver gulls and cormorants all play leading roles.
None of this happened by accident and it has all been very professionally planned and successfully accomplished.
Not far downstream from the Mara Mia walkway, built on a small low promontory, there is an imposing group of two-storied light blue units - probably the only residential development set on the right bank of the river between the bridge and Observation Point. It’s on Bay Road, about opposite Rafters Restaurant. This is the site where, in 1901, John Perry took over Francis Guy’s sawmill and set up a factory to make wheel spokes. According to Comyns, in 1915, it did “an enormous business - orders for spokes coming from all parts of the world”. According to the “Brief History of Batemans Bay” published by the Clyde River and Batemans Bay Historical Society, by 1953 Perry’s factory was producing 80 different turned wooden products and employing 65 people. Most of the timber used was Australian hardwood, particularly including the spotted gum.
The business remained strong for many years. However, Perrys had another factory in Melbourne and, in 1986, rationalisation of their activities required them to cease business at the Bay. The factory continued for a while under Taylors but, I believe, not for very long.
Beyond Perrys old spot the river runs hard on an ebb-tide, caught between the sandbar coming across from Surfside on the north, and the stone training wall on the southside built to contain the river and to enable the big marina. When you get past that I think you are in what is called the estuary of a big river, its mouth.
There was a day in this part of the Bay, when about 30 professional prawning boats earned their living here. Today there are no more than six. Merv Douglas, who has been at it for more than 30 years, and his son Mark, work the Josephine D, one of the few remaining boats. They trawl in about 10 metres of water along the front of Long Beach at about three knots. A typical “shot” takes about an hour.
The net, which is 40mm mesh, is set in the water like a funnel. Otter boards hold the front out about 12 metres from side to side, a lead line keeps the bottom of the mouth on the bottom of the sea, and a cork line holds the top up. At the back is the “cod” or closed end of the net.
New moon is the best time of the month (for us amateurs with household nets it is the only time) but the full moon can be good too, and they get them in varying quantities throughout the month from about September to May. There are only two types of prawns at the Bay - school prawns and, mainly in January and February, king prawns.
The long-standing criticism of professional prawners everywhere is that their by-catch of fry perish in the process. Young flathead and whiting have been the main casualties in the Bay. Today, as a result of research by the Fisheries and CSIRO people, there are signs of improvement. Now, at the cod end of the net, there is an escape panel on top where the mesh is 60mm. It is only about half a square metre in size but the theory is that the sprat fish swim up and out while the prawns sit on the bottom of the net. Merv, on his observations, says it works well though not perfectly.
As you continue out through the broadening waters of the bay you pass Snapper Island which some people think signifies the type of fish caught there. However, you know better, don’t you?
At the outer limits of the bay, say Acheron Ledge to Yellow Rock on the north arm, and Lilli Pilli beach on the south, you come to the last of the fisher folk - the lobster men. Like the rest of the industry there were lots of them once, but now only four of them in the bay. Richard Manson is one of them - at it for thirty years, and the third generation of professional fishermen who have tried everything from meshing the river, beach hauling, prawns, abalone and shark meshing.
In accordance with his quota, he sets 50 to 100 pots depending on the seasonal supply of the lobsters or crays, and the seasonal demand at the Sydney markets. He asked me to guess when the demand would be greatest. I suggested if it wasn’t Christmas/New Year it would be Mother’s Day. It’s Father’s Day. If you are talking to any of my kids you might mention this fascinating fact of life.
You will see Richard’s marker buoys in about 12 metres of water off the rocks. In case it should cross your mind to lift one of his pots - just to see what’s in there and then put it back, of course - there is something I should say to you. He’s a big bugger and he’s up there on top of that hill looking out his front window with his 10x50 binoculars. His wife is there too, taking notes.
When time and tide have taken you and your boat beyond lobster territory you will find yourself once more out past the Tollgate Islands. There you may pause and look back up the broad bay to the river and beyond, and reflect. Don’t allow yourself to become introspective to a degree where opportunities are lost - for goodness sake wet a line and catch your dinner while you gather your thoughts.
Batemans Bay is fortunate. All over the State there are worthy towns - pillars of the past if you like, or the sorts of towns which built the nation - where the support of primary and secondary industry has collapsed and nothing has arisen to replace the foundations of a continuing existence. Up the Clyde and in the bay the past is fading quickly - even those tough nuts, the oyster men, are unsure of their future. It is a wonderful past, full of colour, character and the honest endeavours of good people who took full advantage of every slim opportunity which ever came their way.
But for the Bay, unlike many rural towns, as the guard changes there are new opportunities to replace the old.
There are three such opportunities - tourism, the population rises from 12,000 to 40,000 over Christmas; the attractions of the place as a retirement spot for Australia’s ageing population; and its suitability for that steadfast and extensive band of amateur fishing and boating people.
The management of the transition will be tricky. Those people who have contributed so much in the past still have much to offer - these are world class fish, lobsters, prawns and oysters we have been talking about - and must be sustained. The pleasures of modern facilities, such as those to be found along the Mara Mia walkway, must be laid in place carefully and sensitively.
But, perhaps most difficult of all, these things must be managed so that the irreplaceable breath-taking natural beauty and wonder of the river and bay are retained.
Have you ever been for a swim at one of those famed Mediterranean beaches along the French or Italian Rivieras, where you need a pair of sandals so as to stumble across the stones which form the so-called beach, and where when you plunge in you find you cannot see through the grey turgid waters?
Few in this world are so fortunate as those who frequent the south coast of New South Wales.
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| The banks of The Clyde |
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| Heide Weber's painting of Perry's Mill in 1987. Courtesy of the artist and of The Clyde River and Batemans Bay Historical Society. |
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Andrews, Graeme - South Coast Steamers.
Australian Dictionary of Biography - Alexander Berry.
Australian Encyclopaedia - The Clyde River.
Ballard, Paul - W L Edwardson in H M Cutter “Snapper”, 1983.
Bailleries NSW Gazetteer, 1866.
Bayley, William - Behind Broulee.
Berry, Alexander - Reminiscences of Alexander Berry.
- The Geology of part of the coast of NSW, 1822
- Supplement to the account of the destruction of the Boyd (Manuscript 91, NLA.)
Clyde River and Batemans Bay Historical Society - Burial Listings.
Comyns, T W - Tourist Guide to the South Coast, 1915.
Constable & Co. - Adventures of British Seamen in the Southern Ocean, 1827.
Cox, Philip - South Coast of NSW, 1978.
Encyclopaedia of New Zealand - The Boyd.
Fairfax, John - Run O’Waters
Gibbney, H J - Eurobodalla.
Historical Records of Australia.
Historical Records of NSW.
Johnson, Frank - Where Highways Meet, 1980.
Johnston, Lt. Robert - Report to Governor Macquarie on Exploration of the Clyde, 10/12/1821.
Moore’s Australian Almanac - 1939.
Radburn, Alan - Interview with, Oral History Section, NLA.
Reynolds, G T & M L - A Brief History of Batemans Bay 1988.
Reynolds, G T - The History of the Port of Nelligen.
Robinson, Jack - Interview with, Oral History Section, NLA.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I spoke to a lot of people, mainly in and around Batemans Bay and Nelligen, in the process of putting this article together. They were all so helpful and I thank them most sincerely. I do hope I haven’t omitted anyone in compiling this list of people and organizations.
Ballard, Paul - Canberra.
Batemans Bay Visitors Centre
Carriage, Neil
Churchill, Doug - Sydney.
Clyde River and Batemans Bay Historical Society
Connell, Kevin
Douglas, Merv
Dunbar, Jeff
Ettles, Jim
Evans, Colin
Fisher, Tommy
Fraser, Ian - Broulee
Heycox, Betty
Housiaux, Ben
Innes, Merv
Ison, Elaine
Ladmore, Norm
Manson, Richard
Marsden, Janet - Conybeare, Morrison - Sydney.
May, Alan
May, Dennis
NSW Fisheries
Oyster Farmers’ Association of NSW
Paxton, Alan
Ralston, Graham
Ralston, Myee
Reader, Brian
Ryan, Ena - Moruya
Shaw, Robin
Townley, Eddie
Westman, Charlie
Wray, Gwen
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| Back cover |
Originally published in paperback form as THE RIVERS AND THE SEA (with a touch of Broulee), by Stuart Magee, 2009.
121 pages
Copyright, all rights reserved
ISBN 978-0-9751016-2-9
National Library of Australia catalogue entry - click here.
Print of the SS Orion at Sydney (at top of this story) by Roger H. Middlebrook. The original can be purchased at Hansen Fine Art, here.
NB: The author, Stuart Magee (May 18, 1933 - February 24, 2022), was the father of Tony Magee, site administrator.
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