The mysterious Caterina Cordelia

 

As an historian with a particular interest in sugar and migration history I find myself immersed in predominately primary and secondary sources written by men. Fleshing out the lives of women from the few women’s memoirs and the men’s insubstantial recordings of women’s lives on the north Queensland frontier is no easy task. 

The invisibility of women in the history of the Herbert is typified by the mysterious Caterina Cordelia and begins with the land upon which she walked. White men named the geomorphological features they observed, in complete ignorance of the names already given those features by the Indigenous landowners. The features were given names according to physical attributes, for example Valley of Lagoons, Stoney Creek or Waterfall Creek, or named after prominent male identities. Hence the Herbert (named Bagirr by the Warrgamay) was named after colonial secretary and later Queensland’s first premier, Robert G Herbert while Stone River was named after the aforementioned Henry Stone, Ingham after the failed planter William Bairstow Ingham, Halifax after George Montagu Dunk, Earl of Halifax Secretary of State in England from 1763 to 1765, and so on.  Disproportionately few to the European male appellations were Indigenous names. Examples though, are Jourama Falls (singing or murmuring waters), or Toobanna (plenty of big rushes near water).[i] The same was for European female place names. The latter include: Francis Creek named after Mrs Francis Allingham of Waterview Station, Helen’s Hill and Mount Helen named after a daughter of William Ewan of Waterview (its Indigenous name of Mandabin or Mandalin was ignored) and Mount Cordelia, Mount Catherina, Cordelia Creek and Catherina/Catterina Creek named after the enigmatic Caterina Cordelia — the spelling of whose christian name is disputed, while it is not known whether Cordelia was her surname or a second christian name.[ii]

Cordelia Vale homestead 1883 along the Lower Herbert River. The old McKenzie house from the Gairloch.
Source: Flickr Hinchinbrook

According to local lore an Italian woman, Caterina Cordelia, arrived on the Herbert as the housekeeper for a Maurice O’Connell.[iii] The honour of the first plantings of sugar in the Herbert River Valley is awarded to licenced surveyor, Maurice Geoffrey O’Connell, his brother John Geoffrey O’Connell and William McDowall (McDowell).[iv] By 1869 the O’Connell’s had abandoned their venture and forfeited their lands. McDowall, who actually come to the Herbert looking for pastoral land, left in1870 to pursue a pastoralist’s life. That Caterina should be with the party in 1868 was a remarkable example of fearlessness and sense of adventure. At the time, on the lower Herbert, there were no public facilities as the European population numbered little more than 12 people, while clearly the party had not considered what they would do with any crop they produced for there was no mill to crush their cane, nor did they have the resources to build one of their own. The blunt reality was that their enterprise had no possibility of expanding and their cane had no market.[v] And why or how Maurice inveigled Caterina to accompany him will forever remain a mystery. Housekeeper could be a euphemism for a more intimate relationship and some infatuation on the part of O’Connell is indicated by several landscape features being named after her. What happened to the O’Connells and McDowall can be tracked through newspaper reports and documents, but Caterina Cordelia remains an enigma

SOURCES:

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[i] Family history of the district: Landmarks, streets, parks or buildings named after local ancestors, Herbert River Express, Ingham, n.d., p.20.

[ii] Queensland place names search, https://www.dnrm.qld.gov.au/qld/environment/land/place-names/search#/search=Catherina%20Creek&types=0&place=Catherina_Creek6521; and Map. Parish of Cordelia, County of Cardwell, Survey Office, Department of Public Lands, Brisbane, October 1922.Variously spelt also Caterina, and Catterina.

[iii] Alec S Kemp, The Kemp Report, Second instalment of History of the Herbert River: The dawn of sugar, unpublished text, n.d., p. 5.

[iv] Queensland Government, Queensland Government Gazette vol. X, 1 January to 31 December 1869, p. 361; Douglas R. Barrie, Minding My Business: The History of Bemerside and the Lower Herbert River District of North Queensland Australia, Douglas R. Barrie, Ingham, 2003; and Bianka Vidonja Balanzategui, The Herbert River Story, Hinchinbrook Shire Council, Ingham, 2011.

[v]  ‘Cardwell and the Vale of Herbert’, Queenslander, 23 September 1871, p. 10.