Henry Wickham, adventurer, Knight, smuggler, tobacco planter and father of the rubber industry.

Bill Bryson, writer of many entertaining non-fiction works including Down Under and A Short History of Nearly Everything dedicates several pages in his 2013 book One Summer: America 1927 to an eventful story of 70 000 smuggled rubber seeds and a young English adventurer in Brazil.

While the Herbert River Valley in the late 1870s was on the frontiers of exploration and settlement, it was just that, the unknown potential, that attracted men and women from all of the world, both moneyed and those of meagre means. While some came and persevered, the vast majority, came, ventured and went on to disappear into the ether or go on to make their mark somewhere else in the world. One such was a Henry Alexander Wickham, that very same adventurer who had ventured to Brazil in 1871.

When he died in 1928 at the fine old age of 82, and by then Sir Henry Wickham, he was variously described as ‘father of the rubber industry of the British Empire’ or a “living [Sir Walter] Raleigh” or a “smuggler” who was responsible for the industry that “has changed the habit of civilisation and put 35,000,000 automobiles and 40,000,000 bicycles on the roads of the world.”

So what was he doing in the Herbert River Valley? Bill Bryson recounts that after Wickham had sold his 70 000 rubber seeds to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew for a good amount “With the money thus made, Wickham went to Queensland, in Australia, to start a tobacco plantation.” While he is described in the Herbert River Story as American, American he was not. He was English, though he spent much of his adult life in the colonies. A short obituary gives these details: Sir Henry Wickham was born in 1846. He was explorer and pioneer planter for half a century in the equatorial belt, Central America, Orinoco, Amazon Valley, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. He was sometime Commissioner for the Introduction of Para Indian rubber for the Governor of India, and also inspector of Forests and Commissioner of Crown Lands.”

The thing about popping up in the colonies is that you can be anything and anybody you want to be and so Henry Wickham, arriving in the Valley in circa 1877 after his failed plantation venture in the far north of Brazil (as described by Bill Bryson) convinces a Mr. J.E. Hammick that he is a tobacco expert from the Americas and they embark on growing tobacco together at Hammick’s property of Coolamantong. Meanwhile Henry Wickham has bought his own property called Maragen. Douglas R. Barrie in Minding by Business: The History of Bemerside and the Lower Herbert River District of Queensland Australia recounts the difficulties Wickham and Hammick faced growing tobacco in the Valley. As Barrie recounts it wasn’t that they couldn’t produce a good grade of leaf, it was that they couldn’t cure it quick enough to meet the large local demand, so the product they had to market was in the end  inferior and did not meet the discerning standard of the local market!!

Wickham also tries some coffee growing. Coffee, tobacco, sugar, cotton, these were plantation crops that were looked to as potentially securing the settlement and economic viability of the north. He seems quick to blow his own trumpet for already in October 1877 the Acclimatisation Society notes a letter they had received from Henry Wickham detailing that he was having success with coffee growing. The Society records that “…it appeared that plants of the Liberian coffee, which that gentleman had himself imported from Kew, were thriving vigorously on the Lower Herbert, and that there could be no question of the climate being suited to this very promising addition to the exotic plants of commercial in the colony. Whether it would become a staple product was of course quite uncertain; but the fact of the plant being found in dry, hot situations, near the sea level, afforded great encouragement for believing that it would freely yield its fruit in Queensland.”

However it would seem that nothing of his plantation ventures in the Valley inspires Wickham with optimism to continue here, despite his initial flurry of hopefulness, and so by 1882 he ceases tobacco and coffee growing and leaves the district soon after. However much of the 569 acres of land he ownes was not disposed of until much later. Some of it became the Mount Maragen Town Selections. While a town as envisaged never developed, Bemerside eventually became that township with the Seymour Hotel built on one of the larger of the town blocks.

Sir Henry Wickam, drawn by Tom Cottorell
for the Advertiser in 1928.

When he left the Herbert River Valley after his failed tobacco growing attempt Bill Bryson writes that  “Then he went to Central America, to British Honduras, to grow bananas. That venture failed, too. Nothing if not resilient, Wickham recrossed the Pacific to British New Guinea (now Papua New Guinea), took out a twenty-five-year lease on land in the Conflict Island, and set about collecting sponges, cultivating oysters and producing copra from coconuts. At last he achieved modest success, but the isolation was more that his wife could bear. She decamped to Bermuda and never saw him again.”

Sources:

 “Sir Henry Wickham Dead,” News, September 28, 1928, 15.

Barr-Linney, J. “Adventurers of the Century: Sir Henry Wickham, A Living Raleigh,” The Advertiser, May 5, 1928, 23. Illustrator Tom Cottorell

“Smuggler Founded Great Industry. Sir Henry Wickham and the Rubber Seed,” The Southern Mail, February 4, 1936, 3.

“Death of Pioneer Planter,” The Telegraph, September 29, 1928, 8.

“Queensland Acclimatisation Society,”  The Queenslander, October 13 1877, 22.

Barrie, Douglas R. in Minding by Business: The History of Bemerside and the Lower Herbert River District of Queensland Australia. Ingham: Douglas R. Barrier, 2003.

Bryson, Bill. One Summer: America 1927. London: Transworld Publishers, 2013.

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

The Tree of Cockaigne

Chloe Salmon reaches the top of the greasy pole and clutches her
prize of cash. Photograph by Sarah Scragg, State Library of
Queensland: Australian Italian Festival

Picture attribution: Landscape with greasy pole. Majolica Cloister
of Santa Chiara, Naples, (1739-42). Architect Domenico Antonio
Vaccaro, painters, Guiseppe and Donato Massa.

We repeat community and family traditions, but often we don't know where or how they originated. The greasy pole, which features at each Australian Italian Festival is such a tradition.  Everybody enjoys the spectacle and amusement but does anybody know the origins of this challenge? It  began in a time when the poor and the rich ate very, very different foods. The competition, which requires strategy and stamina, traditionally, has as its reward, foods of some value, like prosciutto e formaggio! Winners of the greasy climb were rewarded with food that was usually unavailable to them.

Peter Robb in a work called Street Fight in Naples: A City’s Unseen History has this to say about the history of the greasy pole. “All over Europe the Tree of Cockaigne was part of the carnival festivities that preceded the austerities of Lent. It was basically a greasy pole with a couple of sausages tied to the top and whoever reached them first won the sausages. In Naples the Land of the Cockaigne was always more elaborate, Naples having more poor people than anywhere else in Europe. The rewards were greater and so was the violence of the contest. The Land of the Cockaigne involved painted scenery and an ersatz forest  of trees, a complex construction usually described as the Cockaigne machine, bearing cheeses, hams, sausages and other delights in their upper branches. The mass assault on the food was a brawl that always ended in shed blood, broken and bones and quite often deaths. It was an entertaining and reassuring sight for those who were not themselves hungry, and choreographed for laughs.”

The Land of Cockaigne comes from Dutch literature and refers to Luilekkerland which is the land of the lazy and the gluttonous. In popular stories this land was described as a “mythical place where there is no need to work, and where food and drink are so abundant that we only need to open our mouths to take in what we desire.”  The Land of Cockaigne is the subject of many famous artists’ paintings.

Next time you watch and laugh as keen competitors slip and slide down and hopefully up the pole spare a thought to the hungry of Naples for whom long ago, the prize meant more than life and for whom the risk of scaling the pole could be injury or death.

Sources: Robb, Peter. Street Fight in Naples: A City’s Unseen History.London:  Bloomsbury, 2010.

“Heilbrunn Time Line of  Art History,” The Met,  http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/26.72.44/.

From small things, big things grow....

While sugar has been the longest lasting, most profitable crop grown here there has been much experimentation since the first European settlement in the Valley in finding alternative or supplementary crops. Tobacco achieved some commercial success over a number of attempts and physical evidence in the form of drying sheds dotted around the district, and a tobacco press still preserved at the Tyto precinct give mute testament to that industry.  Rice was another, and today the Biasi, Accornero and Russo families are venturing on a 21^st century experiment with production of that crop. However it is not the first time that rice was grown in this district.   

Rice was possibly introduced to Australia by Chinese gold prospectors coming to Australia for the Gold Rushes. In the 1860s rice was being grown by the Chinese in North Queensland to supply the northern gold fields. However it is the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Scheme that makes large scale rice production possible. By 1928 Australia was growing enough rice to supply its own domestic consumption needs and had in that year even produced an excess of 3 000 tonnes that could be exported. Rice was grown in paddies and depended on a ready supply of water. In order to encourage a domestic industry, the Federal Government, in 1927, imposed a duty on imported rice, but also came to an agreement that rice would not be grown outside Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area (MIA).  

In 1930 it was reported in the Northern Miner in relation to the Herbert River Valley that “Some interest is being shown, no doubt on account of the restriction of the extension of the acres of sugar cane lands, in the introduction of new crops into the district. Mention has been made in previous letters of the growing of pawpaws at Abergowrie. For some time past both tobacco and rice have been grown on a small scale on Frank Fraser Ltd’s land at Blackrock, and last week several excellent examples of rice were on view at Messrs Hardv and Venable’s office Ingham, grown by Mr. Mackie at Blackrock. The tobacco grown is reported to be looking splendid, and a fine crop is expected from it.”

Nevertheless a commercial venture of rice was understood to be hampered by legislation as this Townsville Bulletin report of July, 1946 testifies: “At the last meeting of the Bowen Chamber of Commerce it was stated that in response to representations from the local chamber, the following additional chambers have expressed themselves as favourable to the action taken by Bowen regarding the removal of restrictions on rice growing in Queensland — Ingham, Warwick, Gympie Traders' Association and Ipswich. The Brisbane Chamber advised that thev are still in communication with the Department of Agriculture on the subject.” In September of that year in response to a question by Mr. Theodore (Herbert) of the Secretary for Agriculture and Stock, the reply was given that rice seed had been obtained from overseas and indicated that rice growing in Queensland conditions would be trialled. On further enquiries by the Townsville Chamber of Commerce in 1950, the Federal Department of Commerce and Agriculture stated that there were no Federal restrictions on rice growing and that in fact “Agricultural production is a State function, and there is no restriction on rice production. At the same time, growers would be well advised to consult the State Department of Agriculture before going in for cultivation on a large scale. At present, rice is grown commercially in Australia only in the Murrumbidgee irrigation area. There, the competing demands of fruit and other crops for the limited quantities of water available make it necessary to control the area put under rice. This, however, is not with the' intention of restricting rice areas, but to make the best use of the water."

In 1967, centred on the flood plain soils of the Burdekin delta, a small rice industry began. A long grain, high quality rice was produced for which there was a ready market.  At the same time what has been described as a “tiny lower Herbert, rice industry” also took off.  Hampering this fledgling industry was availability of a suitable water supply.  An alternative way of growing rice which presaged the way that the Biasi, Accornero and Russo families are now growing rice in the Herbert River Valley was shown possible by a Mrs. A.E. Maddern of Yuruga in 1950: “An Interesting experiment with rice seed, carried out by Mrs. A. E. Maddern, of Yuruga seven months ago, has proved successful. Of six grains of rice planted, three germinated and matured. Known as Dry Land rice, the seed was grown under ordinary district conditions, with very little cultivation, just being watered casually. A sample brought to town showed a well matured plant, the rice thickly clustered on the stems showing excellent development, a rough estimate being about 6000 grains of rice to the one rice seed. The seed was received from a sister of Mrs. Maddern's at Redland Bay, Brisbane, who also experimented at the same time but the seed failed to respond to growth.”

Traditional paddy field. Image sourced from: Ingham, Richard. "Gene breakthrough could boost rice yields by 20 per cent." PhysOrg, August 22, 2012. Accessed August 4, 2106.http://phys.org/news/2012-08-gene-breakthrough-boost-rice-yields.html.  

Rice grown "dry land" method. Image sourced from: https://twitter.com/canegrowers/status/575443544359374848
  

Sources:
“Detailed Historic Timeline of the Australian Rice Industry,”  Sun Rice, accessed August 4, 2016,

https://www.sunrice.com.au/media/6662/detailed_history_of_the_australian_rice_industry.pdf

Courtenay, P.P. “Agriculture in North Queensland.” Geographical Research 16 (1978): 29-42. Accessed August 4, 2016. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8470.1978.tb00313.x.

Queensland Parliamentary Debates [Hansard] Legislative Assembly.  September 3, 1946. Accessed August 4, 2016. https://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/documents/hansard/1946/1946_09_03.pdf.

“Ingham Notes.” Northern Miner,  June 7, 1930, 2.

“Rice growing.” Townsville Daily Bulletin, July 6, 1946, 1.

“Ingham area.” Townsville Daily Bulletin, March 10, 1950, 5.

“Rice Sowing In North Queensland not Commonwealth. Controlled. Babinda Chamber of Commerce.” Cairns Post, November 4 1950, 1.

Shire Hall sagas

The recent work carried out to the façade of our Shire Hall gave a dated building a much needed facelift and brought it into the 21^st century. The Shire Hall is a pivotal building in any small community for it is usually the hub of civic administration. As Janice Wegner writes in her thesis ‘Hinchinbrook: The Hinchinbrook Shire Council, 1879-1979’: “At the heart of the business section is the Shire Hall; from here the Hinchinbrook Shire Council controls an extensive system of roads and community amenities, and regulates public health, safety, town planning, building, and many other of the multitude of functions given to local government.”

Furthermore it is the setting for some of the most significant events in people’s lives including debutant balls, wedding feasts, naturalization ceremonies, community revitalization workshops, industrial meetings, concerts, eisteddfods and so much more. Perhaps we shouldn’t get too fond of this particular building because it seems to be all too woefully common that beautiful buildings of our past have been deemed to be too old-fashioned or unfunctional and demolished. Even if they are still standing too many of them go unappreciated for the distinctive style of their architecture or their role in our history.

Where our Shire Hall now stands isn’t the original site. The first Divisional Board Hall was erected near Palm Creek and adjacent to the present Royal Hotel. The Board took advantage of government loans to borrow £600 to erect a Hall in 1883 and a further £500 in 1886 to enlarge it and add offices. Described as a "plain, unpretentious weatherboard structure, neither lined nor ceiled, of no architectural beauty" it was no more than a cottage, but it nonetheless sufficed for all Divisional Board (Shire Council after 1903) purposes, as well as doubling as a dance hall, and picture theatre leased by the Lyric Picture Co. with piano accompaniment played on a rented piano until the Council bought a piano in 1913. When the Board spent £277 furnishing the Hall it created much the same furore as occurred when a recent Council acquired a new Council meeting table. Then it was chairs "which are very massive and leather covered” which upset the rate payers!

The first Shire Hall was also a predecessor to our library with its reading room. Public meetings were held there as well as the agricultural section of the annual Show. It also provided shelter in flood and cyclone times. The building served as an occasional Mass centre after 1885 when Father James Cassar began visiting the Valley regularly. However he did not appreciate having to say Mass on a stage used by dancers and begged the community to build a church. He is on record as having said that “he would no more offer the Holy Sacrifice on the stage dedicated to the feet of the ballet dancer”! Rentals of the Shire Hall were a steady source of income until challenged by the building of other halls such as the Masonic Hall in 1901.

On the morning of Tuesday March 7, 1916 the first Shire Hall was destroyed by fire and with it, all books and records which were not kept in the safe which was too small, but on the Shire Clerk’s desk, though the contents of the safe and the piano were saved. Lost also were all the music, music stands and an instrument belonging to the Town Band, that were all stored in the hall. The fire was observed to have started in the office of the Shire Clerk. The story goes that an errant cigarette of the Shire Clerk was responsible. Russel Charles McWilliam, the Shire Clerk at the time, admitted to a Magisterial Inquiry held several weeks after the fire, to flicking his matches and throwing his butts on the ground and not checking if they were out. He also admitted that there was a bin near his desk which was full of paper and that there was paper on the floor. There was a suggestion, though the former Shire Chairman, Frank Cassady, thought it unlikely, that McWilliam had deliberately started the fire to destroy evidence of wrong doing. He had control or all cash and monies and was supposed to present a balance sheet at the General Meeting to be held that day. He had previously failed to present a balance sheet in February. Figures of revenue and expenditure presented previously to Ralph Godshall Johnson, Chairman of the Finance Committee,  by McWilliam, did not, according to Johnson tally, and McWilliam kept putting off presenting a balance sheet, saying that he was too busy to complete it. Whatever the truth of the situation was, the day the hall burnt day, was meant to be McWilliam’s last day as Shire Clerk anyway as he had enlisted. By the time of the inquiry Ralph G. Johnson, was the Shire Clerk (1916-1918).

Building a new Shire Hall did not proceed immediately given that the country was at war and Council was divided on whether to apply for a £7 000 government loan. There was also contention as to how the building should look, with some wanting a substantial brick building. Council meetings were held meanwhile, in the Court House. By November a tender from Messrs Hanson and Sons had been accepted and by December 1919, a government loan had been secured. As continues to happen today, when the Council decides to implement change, there was a petition of protest when the Council proposed a change of location for the future Shire Hall. Despite the protest the hall reserve was then changed from next to Palm Creek to its present site on the corner of Townsville Road and Lannercost Street: 25 Lannercost Street. Progress of building the new two storey building, constructed of local bricks and fronted with a stately façade, was held up by wet season rain. By June 1920 it was beginning to progress well. The use of returned soldier labour was a condition of the Government loan required for its construction.  The former Hall reserve was then auctioned for perpetual lease as two blocks.

By March 1921 the building was almost finished and equipped and leases arranged to various businesses including a dentist. The main lessee of the Hall was again a picture company, this time the Ingham Picture Company. The lessee installed an electricity generator. The Council bought back some of the Hall electricity supply to power twelve electric street lights.  Not unexpectedly, fireproof storage was installed for the Council records and fire extinguishers were at the ready. The Council did not use all the land acquired and there was a consequent altercation between the Council and the Lands Department, the latter refusing to allow the Council to lease the land, stating that the land was to be used only for the original intention: for Shire Hall purposes.

Despite being described “as the best in the north” in 1921, already in 1934 there were hopes to construct a new Shire Hall. Plans drawn up in 1937 featured two stories, an upstairs theatre and returned soldiers recreation room, and several shops and offices but finances were not available. The Ingham Picture Company, in return for being granted a virtual monopoly on picture theatre activity in the town of Ingham, undertook to carry out improvements to the theatre, and that, with extensions to the Hall and the enclosure of a verandah area, had to suffice.

Before the construction of an official Anzac Memorial in Lannercost Street in 1959 the Honour Roll was housed in the Shire Hall and Anzac Day ceremonies were conducted outside that building. Up until the disastrous 1927 flood when it became patently clear that a better warning system was needed, a red pennant was flown on a flagpole outside the Shire Hall to warn of an impending cyclone.

By the 1950s the Shire Hall was becoming increasingly inadequate for all the uses being demanded of it and so construction on a new Hall began in 1961. The work was carried out by J.E. Allen and Co. for £73,000. Again there was community outcry from some quarters over the "waste" of money on a new Hall rather than expanding the old. Nevertheless, in retrospect it was realized to have been a wise move. The present Shire Hall was officially opened on December 15, 1963, well in time for a sitting there, of State Cabinet in June of 1964. The facilities of the new Hall included air-conditioning, offices, shops and a hall capable of seating 650 people. It also included a theatre complete with a very practical soundproof crying room equipped with a picture window through which mothers could still watch the movie while nursing and comforting their fretful children.

By 1979, in the year of the 100 anniversary of Divisional Board (Hinchinbrook Shire Council) there was again talk of a new larger Shire Hall and Civic Centre that would more adequately meet the needs of a growing town and district, and not the least, relieve the ever growing pressure on office space for the Council's staff. However all that has transpired in the intervening years was that spaces were reconfigured with the store spaces disappearing. In 1987 the Shire Hall was refurbished and the one remaining picture theatre remaining in Ingham relocated to the refurbished J.L. Kelly Memorial Hall, the former library. There have been further interior refurbishments undertaken in 2014 and exterior refurbishments as recently as 2106. A mosaic which pictures iconic aspects of Ingham and district now adorns the Lannercost Street frontage.

Sources:

Vidonja Balanzategui, Bianka. Portrait of a Parish: A History of Saint Patrick’s Church and Parish Ingham 1864-1996. Ingham: St. Patrick’s Parish, 1998.

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

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

“Ingham Shire Hall Burned.” The Brisbane Courier, March 8, 1916.

“Herbert River Notes.” Cairns Post, March 15, 1916.

“Shire Hall Fire.” Cairns Post, March 23, 1916.

“Herbert River Notes.” The Northern Herald, April 7, 1916.

“Herbert River Notes.” Cairns Post, October 11, 1916.

“Herbert River Notes.” Townsville Daily Bulletin, September 1, 1921.

 

Lannercost Street Ingham 1912. Divisional Board Hall on left. Hinchinbrook Shire Library photograph collection.

Ingham Town Hall 1920. Hinchinbrook Shire Library photograph collection

Ingham Shire Hall during 1977 flood. Note the shop fronts. Hinchinbrook Shire Library photograph collection.

"Ingham Hall," Daily Standard, March 7, 1916.

"Herbert River Notes," The Northern Miner, March 5, 1921.

  

Father Thomas Gard MBE

As a community we bask in the reflected glory of those members of our community who have taken heroic and courageous action on some distant battlefield and been recognized and rewarded for that action. One such is Keith Payne W.O. and there are probably few, young or old, who have not heard of him as the recipient of the VC AM. Another less known however is Thomas Gard, the son of Mr. and Mrs Thomas Gard of Victoria Estate.  The family had been long time stalwarts of the St Patrick Parish and it was much to their great pride when their Thomas Jnr. was the first local boy to be ordained a Catholic Priest. Such was the excitement and importance of the occasion to the Herbert River district that a special rail motor ran from Ingham to Townsville on the day of the ordination, December 3 1933, to permit friends and relatives to attend the ceremony held at the Sacred Heart Cathedral.

Less than ten years later, with World War 2 raging, he was released by the Diocese to serve as a military chaplain with the 2/4 3^rd Australian Infantry Battalion. During the siege of Tobruk, on August 3 1941, he rescued Australian casualties under heavy shell fire, even venturing fearlessly into enemy German lines.  The way that he achieved the rescue makes a remarkable and dramatic story. An eyewitness recorded that “The enemy recognised his feat of bravery, held their fire, enabled and assisted him to gather in the wounded. They gave him a cigarette, let him have a rest and guarded him safely back to the British lines, where he arrived with his truck filled with wounded.” While another recorded that Father Gard offered a German officer a cigarette while convincing him to allow the removal of Australian dead and injured. However he did not achieve this rescue without the equal bravery of others: Father Tom Gard stood on the running board of the truck driven by Private Keith Pope, while Sergeant Wally Tuit stood on the bonnet of the truck with Red Cross flag flying. Following that episode, he went on to Syria to the Battle of El Alamein, and then served in New Guinea in 1943 to 1944. By 1945 he was back in Ingham to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of his parents, which, as could be expected, given the Gards’ involvement in their parish, was attended by not only Bishop Ryan of Townsville but every priest of Halifax and Ingham parishes. In the same year Father Thomas Gard was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of his “gallantry under fire”.

At his funeral held on July 26 1993 he was recalled as “A man’s man of no nonsense, loved sport to the point of being almost a fanatic, feared no man including the Bishop, he was loved by the whole community.  Another of our colourful and outstanding priests…” Even more recently a reminiscence recalled him as “a particularly delightful man with a wonderful understanding of mankind’s follies and faults. Loved a beer and was there every year at the RSL’s ANZAC Day dinner.”

Sources:

Vidonja Balanzategui, Bianka. Portrait of a Parish: A History of Saint Patrick’s Church and Parish Ingham 1864-1996. Ingham: St. Patrick’s Parish, 1998.

Frazer, Ian. “Bravery under fire.” Townsville Bulletin: Everyday History. Celebrating 150 years since the naming of Townsville. Volume 4, 2016.

The Pub. “Reflection: ANZAC Day 2013: 554 thoughts on Reflection: ANZAC Day 2013.” Comment by Scorpio6to2. April 25, 2013. Accessed July 13 2016.

https://pbxmastragics.com/2013/04/24/reflection-anzac-day-2013/comment-page-7/

 

September 3 1941, The Northern Miner

"New Year Honours," January 1 1945, The Canberra Times

January 2 1945, The Courier-Mail

Side Show Alley

As the Show comes to town with its side show alley, still within the recall of memory – as late as the 1980s – are the tents lining Side Show Alley where human oddities could be viewed: the half man/half woman; dwarfs, the bearded woman and such like. This so called pleasure in the ‘freak show ’, now so repugnant, was a remnant of the European appetite for spectacle, fed in such venues as the side show alley of fairgrounds, circuses, exhibitions and museums and in earlier times sated by the performances by Aboriginal Australians and other indigenous performers. A particularly tragic episode in the story of the displacement of the Indigenous inhabitants of the Herbert River Valley which played itself out in the 1880s occurred within the context of America’s and Europe’s appetite for the spectacle. Indigenous Australians, displaced by frontier conflict, vulnerable to spurious offers of employment, were plucked from their homelands and toured and displayed as “savages”, the “lowest order of human kingdom.” Their physical appearance and performances contrasted satisfyingly with the onlookers’ perceptions of themselves as superior, morally, physically, intellectually and technologically.  Only as recently as 2004, was the very real, though totally ignored, “odyssey of sorrow” of the Aboriginal Australians’ experience finally acknowledged and recounted. Robert A. Cunningham, showman recruiter for the circus impresario Phineas T. Barnum toured a group of nine Aborigines taken from the Palm Islands and the Herbert River Valley in the 1883 circus season in America as part of Barnum’s Ethnological Congress of Strange Savage Tribes. Within a year, the first of the group, Tambo, died. That fact that he died on “a bitter winter’s day” is a revealing pointer to the emotional trauma, physical discomforts and privations these people endured. After Tambo’s death Cunningham moved the group on rapidly, reaching England in April 1884. He left behind the body of Tambo which was embalmed and displayed at various locations well into the twentieth century. Cunningham then toured the group independently, through Europe but by November 1885 only three of the original group had survived, the others all perishing as a result of the “brutal disregard for the welfare of these touring troupes of indigenous people.” It is salutary to note that this number included a family group with young child. It was observed at the time that his greatest pleasure, like any small child’s, was riding on his father’s shoulders.  This disregard for their welfare had at its core the idea that they were “expendable”. Cunningham then returned to North Queensland in 1892 to inveigle another group of Aboriginal people (six men, two of whom were accompanied by their wives) ostensibly to appear in the Columbian Fair in Chicago in 1893.

The majority of this last group was Nywaigi and mystifyingly, a number appear to have come from Mungalla Station owned by James Cassady. Mungalla is at the heartland of Nywaigi territory. After his purchase of the property in 1882, three important camps of Nywaigi people remained and continued to pursue their hunter-gatherer lifestyle. They found a measure of safety on his properties and for this reason he was pejoratively described by a former officer of the Native Mounted Police, as a “black protector, for his own interests, and to the detriment of his neighbours’ property”. His neighbour, incidentally, at Mungalla, was Sub-Inspector Johnstone and his Native Mounted Police camp of Molonga. The mystery lies in how the Nywaigi people on Mungalla came to be in that 1892 touring group. It remains unclear, though the haste of their departure on a steamer bound for San Francisco indicates that it might have been achieved in Cassady’s absence or during a gathering at one of the Townsville fringe camps. That Cassady was expecting their return to the property is clear in his letter to A.S. Cowley, local Member of Parliament in which he asked him to investigate why they had not been returned.

During their time in America they were exploited, underfed, ill clothed, underpaid if not unpaid, and at the end of a tour left to their own devices. These were people who spoke English fluently, one of their number being attributed with articulating the sentiment that “We are not savages, although we are natives of a wild country”. Yet show after show they had to listen to a showman spruiking up their “ugliness”, their “cannibalism” and their “inferiority”. Only two of this second group were to return to Australia and when they did so they were met by the Townsville police, henceforth having their freedom curtailed by the Aboriginals Protection Act of 1897 . The “odyssey of sorrow” of these people has only finally had some closure when Tambo’s mummified body which was found in the basement of a closed funeral home in Cleveland, Ohio in 1993, was repatriated to Australia for burial on Palm Island after a ceremony to release his spirit was conducted by Indigenous American Indians in Cleveland. 

Quotes sourced from Poignant, R. Professional Savages, Captive Lives and Western Spectacle, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2004 and as quoted in 

Vidonja Balanzategui, Bianka. The Herbert River Story, Hinchinbrook Shire Council, Ingham, 2011 from which, post has been lifted substantially from. 

1883 group source: http://www.mungallaaboriginaltours.com.au/gallery/event/historical

Mungalla homestead source: http://www.mungallaaboriginaltours.com.au/gallery/event/historical

Not all hell, fire and brimstone

Places of worship: one, two, three, four…..

One: The Divisional Board Hall where Father James Cassar (beginning in 1885) and other visiting priests said Mass. Father Cassar prompted the building of the first church because he objected to offering “the Holy Sacrifice on the stage dedicated to the feet of the ballet dancer.”

Lannercost Street Ingham 1912 with businesses pictured L-R: Ingham Shire Hall (1883-1916); Fraser's Cash Store; Bank of Sydney (sign on building: The Commercial Banking Company of Sydney Limited). Hinchinbrook Shire Library Collection.

Two: St Patrick’s Church in Abbott Street location, constructed in 1893. This Church was first constructed on 55 Morehead Street, moved to Abbott Street in circa. 1902 and then shifted to Seymour in 1923 to become St. Bartholomew’s Church (later St. Anthony’s Church of Bemerside).

St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church, Ingham, Queensland. Photograph dated ca. 1912 but may be earlier. State Library of Queensland Collection.

Three: St Patrick’s Church blessed on May 27, 1923. With an influx of new Italian immigrants in the 1950s Italian Masses were introduced. The Italian choirs of this time are still remembered for their beauty. Priests recall being busy doing extra work required for proxy marriages: Sposati con Procura. Photograph used in Portrait of a Parish by kind permission of Gotzone Zemaitis.

Four: St. Patrick’s Church, Ingham, blessed and opened March 12, 1961. Built in the shape of a cross, and dedicated as a memorial to those who had died for Australia in wars, it seated 450 people at capacity.  Its capacity coupled with improvements in roads, means of transport and the economic boom of the post war period meant that the small country churches began to fall into disuse and be dismantled.

Church life, at least Catholic Church life, isn’t all hell, fire and brimstone, ponderous ritual and self-righteous clerics. The delight of writing a parish history was hearing the stories, particularly the stories about and told by the Sisters, Brothers and Priests who, for the most part gave their lives selflessly, energetically and with good humour!

It is difficult, in the first place, not to be impressed by the vision and character of the priests, who ranged from a decorated war hero, to survivor of a concentration camp to a future home grown Bishop. Recollections of contemporaries consistently remark on their charm, grace, kindness and ready sense of humour while not either glossing over their foibles and sometimes pedantic ways. Parish Priests, to a man, were movers and shakers and BUILDERS taking the church to the people with the little bush church buildings and educational facilities spread throughout the district. Their prodigious energy, and that of their assistant clerics jumps out from any recollections of them. Father Ferlazzo described his own job role as one of a “three tonne truck trying to carry a ten tonne load!” Dean Grogan was described as “a great worker – he was always on the trot- and those who tried to keep up with him had to be on the trot too, while those who kept ahead of him had to be on the trot to keep out of his way!” Father Mambrini was recalled for his “racy” style and his “zeal”. Others were described as “unremitting’ in their “acts of kindness and zeal”. While advancing their own Parish they were committed to the wider community and it was not only Reverend Dr Kelly who would be described as having “endeared himself to all other denominations as well as his own”.

Some of my favourite stories however, were those involving the Italian language. The population of Ingham and district is largely of Italian origins. The church hierarchy soon came to appreciate that it would be an advantage if they sent priests to Ingham who could speak Italian.  Parishioners were grateful for the efforts individual priests made to learn the language. Reverend Associate Professor Ormond Rush, when assistant priest in Ingham for example, had gone to Florence to study the Italian language. When he was farewelled from the district in 1983 he was praised and thanked “for making the effort to learn so that he can be a better priest for the Italian speakers in the district.”

However, the attempts of priests to speak Italian, and Italian parishioners English, sometimes caused confusion and funny situations on either side. Father O’Meara was sent to Rome in 1925 to learn Italian to prepare him for his work in North Queensland. He recalled that “when he had preached in Bemerside an Italian parishioner had told him he did not know what language he had been speaking!”

Another, Father Michael Mullins, a local boy of Irish origins, who was ordained in Rome in 1942 spoke fluent Italian which gave rise to a story Father himself delighted in: “…a domestic who worked in my home in Brisbane told me her grandson was baptised in Ingham by the ‘little fat Italian priest’. When she showed us a photo- sure enough it was “Father Mick” himself!

Father Severino Mambrini OFM who was sent to the district by the Apostolic Delegate to make a report on the Italian immigrants in 1923 ended up staying 10 years.  It was he who suggested that the Parish should be served by English or Irish priests who spoke fluent Italian. His determination to effect change often got him into trouble with Church hierarchy and there is no doubt he was quite a character as this story attests. “…he is remembered for visiting just on dinnertime, eating up all the fish and leaving the potatoes for the family to eat; or if meat was on the menu rather than fish, even though it was Friday, it was not unknown for him to make a ‘sign of the cross’ over it saying: “I bless you the fish” and then to sit down heartily and partake of the’ fish’!”

Another story figuring Father Mullins and the Italian language involved one of the little country churches that were once dotted the district. This story happened at the Church of Saint Theresa, Toobanna. He recounted: “There are very few of the galvanised iron churches now in the Parish of Ingham They were built to bring Mass to the people in the country at a time of bad roads, limited transport etc. Most of them were unlined, with no ceilings, and they were certainly hot boxes!!One Sunday morning I was saying Mass in one of these churches at Toobanna. It was blisteringly hot; the morning sun was scorching, heating up the walls. I opened a small wooden louvre beside the Altar, hoping for some relief. None came! But shortly afterwards a gentle breeze sprang up. How welcome but it blew out the candles. So be it! A very little boy in the congregation came up to the Altar and whispered to me:

“Mama dice: le candele sono morte” (In English – My mother says the candles are dead”).

I sent him back to tell his mother that Father said:

“It is better to have two dead candles than one dead Priest”. She enjoyed it!’

As for Italian members of the congregation and their growing mastery of the English language there is this priceless story recalled by Father O’Dwyer: “One venerable man I often think about was Mr. Venturato who lived down in Coolbie area. He used to drive his big truck to Bambaroo church with about 12 of his family on the back. He was in his 70s. He always became M.C. and altar boy at Mass. He used to move the book from Epistle side to Gospel side then turn to the people and with a wave of his hand say “Up” and all would stand. One Sunday he got tangled up in the Confiteor, and in trying to catch up he beat his breast, with one Mea Culpa running into the next and finished with an extra touch, as [sic] – “E tutto Buggerup”. He was a grand person. I went to his house once for Mass and then to lunch. One end of the table was set aside for the “Prete” with one of the biggest dishes of spaghetti, I had ever been faced with.”

Source: Vidonja Balanzategui, Bianka. Portrait of a Parish: A History of Saint Patrick’s Church and Parish Ingham 1864-1996. Ingham: St. Patrick’s Parish, 1998.  Portrait of a Parish can now be read online at http://onesearch.slq.qld.gov.au/SLQ:SLQ_PCI_EBSCO:slq_alma21131607220002061

One of the many little churches erected around the district: Church of Our Lady of Pompeii, Lannercost, built in 1933. This was the first of the small churches to be built.  These churches could not have been built without the financial support of the Italian immigrants. Mrs Borello donated the land for this church. Photograph used in Portrait of a Parish with the kind permission of Mario Cristaudo.