"He gave all that man could give - His joys,his hopes, his priceless youth -"

Ingham may have been a small town in a peaceful valley, just a brief stopping point on the road between major centres, north and south, yet it too did not escape the scourge of war. No sooner had one generation of children time to grow up in peace and sunshine after World War 1 than Australia was, once again, at war. Such a child born in peace and destined for a brutal death at Bougainville was Hubert Henry Swarbrick, son of Hubert and Catherine (Fanny) Swarbrick. He was one of 45 young men who were never to return to the Herbert River Valley from the battlefields of World War 2.

Each ANZAC day families across Australia recall their fallen. These were young people whose lives were still ahead of them, whose hopes and dreams were tragically stolen from them.  They are remembered because families were left behind to mourn and stories and photographs have been passed down the generations.

The primary store keepers of memories are often mothers, and those who mourn most keenly are undoubtedly mothers. Catherine sent two sons to battle, one, Hubert died two months before war’s end, beheaded, as family legend has it, by a Japanese soldier. Another son, returned safely from the war, but died all too prematurely from war related injuries.

A treasured family photograph of her shows her wearing her Mothers’ and Widows’ Badge and Female Relative Badge. The first was issued to mothers’ and widows’ of those killed in action, or of those who died of wounds or from other causes while on service, or as a result of service. The Female Relative Badge was issued to the wife and/or mother (or nearest female relative) of those on active service overseas. Stars displayed on a bar suspended below the Female Relative badge represent the number of relatives involved in the war effort. These were not issued automatically and the potential recipient had to fill out the appropriate form at the post office and have it witnessed by a post office employee. Luckily because Catherine was listed as Hubert’s next of kin she received her badges easily, however if she had not been listed as next of kin the process could have been very difficult and she may not have bothered to apply for the badges.

By 1951 the sense of loss had not abated and as she was now 70 years old and not up to battling bureaucracy she asked her son-in-law, himself a survivor of the Changi Japanese war camp, to write to the War Office for the medals, awarded to Hubert. They were issued to her a month later.

Each ANZAC Day Hubert Henry Swarbrick’s photograph is displayed in at least one descendant’s home and his sacrifice is recalled with gratitude. Recalled also is the sacrifice of his mother, and her ceaseless longing for her beloved son whose broad cheery smile would never light her days again.

Hubert Henry Swarbrick, September 1944 aged 21 years

Catherine Fanny Swarbrick, mother of Hubert Henry Swarbrick, wearing Mothers' and Widows' Badge

Mothers' and Widows' Badge (Image from Australian War Memorial   https://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/badges/mothers_widows/)

Correspondence accompanying badge sent to Catherine F. Swarbrick

Sources:

Sheahan, Dan, "Fate and Gods Decide," Songs from the Canefields, A poem dedicated to Signaller Howard Harvey, son of Mr. and Mrs. F. Harvey, formerly of Ingham who died in a a Japanese prisoner of war camp.

Vidonja Balanzategui, Bianka, Herbert River Story, Ingham: Hinchinbrook Shire Council, 2011

“Mothers’ and Widows’ Badge,” Australian War Memorial,  https://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/badges/mothers_widows/

“Female Relative Badge,” Australian War Memorial, https://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/badges/female_relative/

A lucky escape! Surveying for a town.

The route linking the new European settlements along the northern tropical coast mirrored the one initially taken by the European explorers as they made their way trying to find the most traversable land route.  Following the explorers would be teamsters and hopeful settlers.  It should be observed however, that the Indigenous people before them had established well-worn tracks too and the stock routes forged by the Europeans often aligned with those.  Those original bush tracks, now well-travelled stock routes took on the appearance of recognizable if primitive roads. Settlements grew out of watering stops and around the bush pubs that were erected at regular intervals.  

Ingham began life as a camping ground on the coastal stock route. As that Camping Reserve took on the appearance of a township it was surveyed  in 1878 and individual blocks for a proper township were pegged out on either side of the already surveyed road which led on to the pastoral selections. The width of the road was not decreased in the survey because it would still have to carry heavy dray traffic and herds of cattle to those pastoral selections further up river. As the nature of future development was uncertain the main street of the Town Reserve, now known as Lannercost and Herbert Streets, ended up staying as wide as the former stock route.

Early observers thought the location of the newly surveyed township an unwise and nonsensical choice. A visiting press correspondent wrote in 1882 that  “It seems unacceptable that this town should have been placed so far from the river, which is the principal means of communication with the outer world, but so it is and to this fact may perhaps be attributed the slowness of its growth..”  The visiting Reverend Gilbert White, minister to the Anglican Parish, wrote in 1885 that Ingham was no more than “A few offices, two hotels and a few private houses on either side of the road, or as they call it, a street. Close by runs a creek about 40 feet broad and 20 feet deep called Palm Creek from some fine palms which grow on it. In the wet season, if a flood comes, the creek will flood the whole country in a few hours.”

The road, or street, as the Reverend described it was no more than a wide track gouged deeply by dray and wagon wheels. Clouds of choking dust rose in dry weather as the drays and wagons passed through, while in the wet season the road became a quagmire of cloying mud and it was not uncommon for loaded wagons to bog to the axles. Much swearing and shouting, whip cracking and braying of frightened and straining animals would fill the air.

It is salutary to note that even if it had seemed strange at the time that the Town Reserve was not located right on the Herbert River which was then the primary means of moving people and goods it turns out that it was rather fortunate. The land that had originally been surveyed for a town selection was close to the river and when the river bank gave way one flood those original town blocks were washed into the river! 

That was not the only lucky escape for the new township! It was only by the skin of its teeth that it wasn’t forever known as Sligo rather than Ingham. But that’s another story!

Sources:

Vidonja Balanzategui, Bianka. Thirty-three miles to Rollingstone: A Short history of Rollingstone and Balgal. Thuringowa: City of Thuringowa, 2003.

Vidonja Balanzategui, Bianka. Herbert River Story. Ingham: Hinchinbrook Shire Council, 2011.

Bullock team, Frank Fraser Merchant Store,  Lannercost Street 1915. Image: Hinchinbrook Shire Library Local History Collection

H. Lynch with his mule team leaving Frank Fraser Merchant Store, Herbert Street. Image: Hinchinbrook Shire Library Local History Collection

Ingham 1918: note railway track and unpaved road. Image: Hinchinbrook Shire Library Local History Collection 

Lannercost Street 1971. Photograph taken from top of Canegrowers Building. Image: Hinchinbrook Shire Library Local History Collection

WOMEN IN UNEXPECTED PLACES: HARRIETT BRIMS AND THE BRITANNIA STUDIO, INGHAM

Leading the expansion into the tropical north were young single men with adventurous spirits who were willing to risk money, spirit and health. However at the forefront of the frontier march there were always a few intrepid women, some even widows with children sheltering in the folds of their skirts. Despite being few in number they were there and often in the most unexpected places.

Archival material relating to the history of the Herbert River Valley is, not unexpectedly, predominantly written from the pioneering man’s perspective for at first the new European community was dominated by males. The prevailing belief was that white people could not physically work in the tropics and the effects of the climate on white women and children would be even more detrimental to their health.  Fortunately there are photographs that tell a different story, and they were taken by a woman who earned her living at the forefront of frontier tropical north Queensland.

The woman is pioneering photographer HARRIETT BRIMS who regrettably has received no local recognition. Fortunately she has been recognized nationally.  D. Byrne writes in a work entitled Heritage, The National Women’s Art Book: 500 works by 500 Australian Women Artists from Colonial Times to 1955 that Harriett Brims “occupies a unique place in the history of the profession largely because of the environment in which she worked and the manner in which she carried out her activities.”

Harriett Pettifore Brims (1864-1939) was married to Donald Brims and had five children when in about 1894, the family moved to Ingham. There, near the mouth of the Seymour River, Donald constructed a homestead with an adjoining sawmill and wharf. In the township of Ingham Harriett Brims established herself professionally as a photographer. Pugh’s Trade Directories of 1902 lists her as proprietor of the ‘Britannia Studios’. In 1903 they moved north to Mareeba.

Far from being the stereotyped woman photographer of the era, never venturing from the safety of the studio, she rather did much of her work outside travelling between isolated farm houses, townships and settlements. She would live in a rough tent if necessary and would be assisted by Indigenous Aboriginal helpers.

Her glass plate negatives have survived. She used dry-plate cameras manufactured by her husband. They were made from local woods, while the shutters were made from the opium tins thrown away by the Chinese plantations workers. Her subject matter ranged from the standard studio photographs to landscapes including views of Wallaman Falls, to South Sea Islander (Kanaka) workers in their traditional dress, to views of the mills, including Gairloch and Macknade to more personal ones as the one of her husband building the steamboat ‘Emilie.’

Her photographs reveal a growing Ingham town and district, a family happy and enjoying life and “the physical grandeur of the North at a time when the region was searching for its political and social identity.”

Sources: Byrne, D. Heritage, The National Women’s Art Book: 500 works by 500 Australian Women Artists from Colonial Times to 1955 edited by Joan Kerr. 117-118, 320. Roseville East: Craftsman House, 1995 and

Descriptive information and to see a selection of her photographs:State Library of Queensland website http://hdl.handle.net/10462/eadarc/7397

On location in the bush. (State Library of Queensland)

Self portrait (State Library of Queensland)

Britannia Studio, Ingham (State Library of Queensland)

Boating on the Seymour River (State Library of Queensland)

From mining field to cane field, the great migration of houses

Dotted around the Herbert River district are a few houses that are architectural gems. As each year passes another one or two disappear. They are architectural gems because they are constructed in what has come to be recognized as a typically north Queensland style, a style whose suitability to the humid, tropical conditions in which we live is now no longer appreciated, except by a few. However, what is a noteworthy and consistent feature of houses in the Herbert River district is that many of them are the result of earlier removal and reconstruction over relatively short distances, for example: Gairloch to Cordelia as in the case of Brooklands or down a flooded river from Abergowrie to Cordelia as in the case of the former Oakleigh.

The most remarkable of these removal and reconstruction feats are the houses, of which there are several, that were transported over the great distance from Charters Towers. While the mining fields boomed, substantial houses were built, but as the fields dried up and the population moved on, houses too migrated from the mining towns to the coast. This was particularly prevalent in the 1920s when most of the examples in the Herbert River district arrived. Disassembled and brought in sections on bullock train, tram line, horse line and portable line on cane trucks they were there reassembled. Where they may have been formerly sited on low stilts, in the Herbert River district, because of the threat of flood they were often reassembled on high stilts. Key examples, still lived in, are Evandale, the former Rowe home, on Stone River Road, and the Russo farm house at Hawkins Creek which was originally a presbytery in Charters Towers.

Surrounded by picturesque and well kept gardens, and cane fields, these houses could sometimes maintain three or four families, and be vibrant with visitors and guests who might come for a few days and stay on indefinitely!

On Saturday March 26, the Russo family of Hawkins Creek celebrated the centenary of their sugar farm. This celebration was a tribute to the tenacity and vision of an immigrant Italian family which has withstood one hundred years of the highs and lows and battles with nature that is sugar farming. Determined to keep the farm a viable entity has seen the farm reinvent itself in recent times with the planting of a rice crop that will be alternated with the sugar assignment. The story of this remarkable immigrant Italian family and its achievement of over 100 years of sugar farming in the Herbert River district is one that it would be hoped the family will record in detail, in time, for the family to treasure and for a wider audience to enjoy. The celebrations, held on the farm, were back dropped by their farm house and its story is as fascinating as the lives of the families that have lived in it.

Source: Kerry Russo and family, Hawkins Creek

Tea party at Evandale, 1914

Evandale House with Rowe family, 1920

Source: Hinchinbrook Shire Library

 

Daisy Kelly, first woman candidate, Hinchinbrook Shire Council

With the election of three women to the Hinchinbrook Shire Council in March 2016: Maria Bosworth,  Kate Milton and Mary Brown, with the later also voted by fellow councillors as deputy mayor, we are reminded of the first woman to break the ground for these successful candidates. Daisy Kelly, a grazier from Mt. Fox, was the first woman candidate for Hinchinbrook in the elections of 1946. While she failed to be elected in that year, she was 3 years later, in 1949, and served on Council until 1955.

Janice Wegner describes her as a “redoubtable” woman and that she had to be. She drew her example from her grandmother who ran a dairy at Sandy Creek, Charters Towers, and raised Daisy. Even while attending the state school there Daisy was required to help with the morning milk run. She married at 14 years of age, meeting her husband at Greenvale where she had moved earlier with her parents. Her father worked for the cattleman H. J. Atkinson who owned the Greenvale cattle station and an interest in Wollogorang. Her husband took up a block at Greenvale.  

By her early 20s Daisy and her family had relocated to Mt Fox where she did stock work and butchered cattle to provide meat to the Kangaroo Hill miners. Rare visits to Ewan and Ingham were for supplies and leisure. Once her three children were grown she moved to Ingham where she not only became a councillor but was involved in the CWA and organizing services for pensioners.

Daisy Kelly’s time on council was during the years of post war optimism and growth. Those years saw an influx of new immigrants, the emergence of a range of businesses, public utilities and clubs providing services that today are taken for granted. Roads were paved, services such as electricity and telephone reached outlying farmhouses and life became easier and safer. The progress of the first decade after the war culminated with the opening of the Abergowrie lands to sugar growing. The election of a woman in this period also reflected a growing interest by Council in social welfare. Nevertheless it took another 24 years before women were again elected to the Council. They were Shirley May Kuchler and Adene Pamela Markwell in 1979 and despite the number of woman who make up the population they have been, until 2016, consistently  unequally represented on Council.

Sources:

Vidonja Balanzategui, Bianka. The Herbert River Story (Ingham:Hinchinbrook Shire Council, 2011)

Wegner, Janice. “Hinchinbrook: The Hinchinbrook Shire Council, 1879-1979” (Masters diss., James Cook University of North Queensland, 1984).

Shire Hall built 1919, pictured here circa 1931. Photograph Source: State Library of Queensland