Chapter 2 - Investigation
We settled into our new house. I googled the door name plate ‘Casa Ardwyn’. Casa was Spanish for house or home; Ardwyn was the Welsh word for ‘house on a hill’. It seemed a good name for our house, a home built on the crest of a hill, with glimpsed views to a distant harbour and city. Perhaps its builder had Welsh and Spanish heritage.
There was much work to be done to make this house liveable; repainting of walls and floors, new cupboards, a rebuilt kitchen and bathroom. So, over coming months we painted and cleaned, we did the simple repairs and transformed the garden. When our friends and our children’s friends visited, all commented about how pretty it looked and what a good feel it had. We agreed. It was our house; it felt good, we loved it and it gave the good back.
We had our vision splendid of extending our small cottage out around the garden, but first we needed to work, save, and pay down our purchase mortgage. Then, in time, this dream may happen. A year passed.
One day I was in the Mitchell Library in Sydney City doing other work. The discovery of the perfume bottle and girl’s photo popped into my mind. I told the librarian our family had just bought an old house in Balmain, at No 76 Smith St. I was interested in trying to find out its history and particularly about the people who lived there around the turn of the last century.
She thought for a second and said, “You will probably have to go to a few places. We have some early records here and there is also material with the Balmain Historical Association, the National Library and the various registries like the Land Titles office and the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages.
“Perhaps you should start in our archives and see what you can turn up for Balmain around the time the house was built and also for the period in the early 1900s. You could look at old newspapers from that time and see what stories come up; they might explain some of what was happening then. Things such as whether there were any major new buildings or local events, and any other things which happened, like new schools being opened, major accidents or epidemics which affected the local population.”
So I started with the Sydney Morning Herald Archives as they were most convenient. I picked the year 1908 and started on the January papers. There were lots of stories about important people coming and going, the crowding and disease in Sydney docks and the early politics of Federation. I came across a series of stories about the bad blood between the teams in the rugby competition, with an announcement to set up a new code called ‘Rugby League’, the first game was to include a Balmain team and be played at Birchgrove Oval.
In early September, 1908, I found something interesting. It was about the disappearance, two days earlier, of a boy and girl from Balmain. The report was dated September 5th, making the disappearance date September 3rd. The girl’s first name was Sophie. Both children had been at school and had left together, about an hour after lunch when school finished for the day. That was the last time they were seen. On the previous day a widespread search was done with the police and over 100 members of the community, but no trace had been found.
The paper told of two lines of speculation; that the two children, who were close friends, had run away together and the possibility of foul play, kidnapping or other similar things.
It told too that a large sailing boat had been moored just off East Balmain on the day of the disappearance and had set sail in the mid afternoon. Was it possible that the two had stowed away on this?
Several boat loads of disreputable sailors had been visiting Balmain on that day, going to the local taverns. About half had sailed the next day. Could one of these sailors have something to do with the disappearance? The day after several sailors from the drinking party in Balmain that day were located and questioned both by the police and the newspapers. All denied knowledge of these children, though it was obvious that some had been very intoxicated and remembered little.
Over the next week a few additional small articles emerged. The parents were adamant their children would not run away, but the whole of Balmain had been thoroughly searched over the week, without trace, and there was nothing to suggest foul play. Both children were very independent and each had been in trouble that morning. So the considered opinion was moving towards an absconding explanation.
But really it was a mystery. Inquiries would be made at the ports of destination of boats that left the harbour on the day of the disappearance and on the next day, to see if anything had been seen of the children on these departed ships.
With this the story faded away. Three months later, in early December. I found a notice in the paper of a joint prayer meeting, involving St Augustine’s Catholic Church and St Andrews Presbyterian Church in Balmain, encouraging parishioners to attend church to say special prayers of intercession for the safe return of Mathew McNeil and Sophie Williams, of Smith St Balmain.
Now I was now almost certain that the girl in our picture was Sophie Williams and that she, along with her friend, Mathew McNeil, had gone missing and not been found after three months. But here the trail vanished. I was left with a faded photo and a delicate blue green glass bottle, along with two names, as parts of a mystery.
The Old Balmain House Page 5