The Horsekeeper's Daughter

by Jane Gulliford Lowes

  “If anything can show the need of a shearers’ association, it is the treatment of men at this station…. They are not regarded as men at all but as machines.”55

  In May 1890, the shearers of Jondarayan had had enough, and went out on strike. This was not particularly unusual in itself – strikes were nothing new in the era of organised labour – but what was different about the Jondaryan Incident, as it became known, was that the impact was felt far and wide throughout Queensland. The 1890 sheep shearers’ strike was a battle of wills between the unions and the station owners. Emboldened by the growth in strength and numbers, and possibly wanting to pick a fight, the Shearers’ Association insisted that the owners should employ only unionised labour at Jondaryan; naturally the owners resisted, arguing that they had the right to employ whomsoever they wished. Much like the managers of Seaham Colliery had done ten years before during the strike which followed the 1880 explosion, the owners tried to bring in blackleg labour to ensure that production levels were maintained. The parties’ respective positions appeared entrenched but the shearers soon gained the upper hand when the strike spread. Carriers refused to take non-union wool to the railway stations for transport to the ports; what little wool did reach the dockside warehouses stayed there, as the dockers refused to load wool which had been produced by non-union labour. The station owners found themselves between a rock and a hard place, and had no option but to meet the demands of the Shearers’ Association.

  Although the shearers had won a famous victory in 1890, their success was not to be repeated when they attempted to pull off the same feat the following year. By this time the station owners had become much more organised and had set up their own trade organisations to counter the power of the trade unions. The worsening economic conditions, combined with several successive years of severe flooding which had a devastating effect on many stations, meant that increasing numbers of shearers were unwilling to risk their jobs by becoming involved in industrial action. The power of the shearers’ unions began to diminish as their membership fell, but the workers of Queensland began to take on the fight in a different arena. New legislation allowed for the payment of a salary to members of parliament, which in turn paved the way for “working men” to give up their jobs and stand for election. The first Labour MP was elected to the Queensland parliament in 1893, and the fortunes of the labour movement and the party it spawned would wax and wane for decades.

  The Jondaryan Incident had perhaps tarnished the reputation of that station forever. By the mid-1890s, the population of the station had declined to fifty-five permanent employees, with perhaps as few as thirty or forty itinerant workers and shearers arriving for the shearing season. Over the coming years, various parts of the station were sold off to farmers and selectors. What is left endures as a tourist attraction these days – you can still visit Jondaryan, learn about its history and even get married in the wool shed which William Campbell knew so well.

  But what became of William and Sarah and little Bill?

  13

  At the Foot of the Mountain

  Infuriatingly, the Campbells disappeared from public and documentary record for the next eight years. From the date of Bill’s birth in February 1892 at East Prairie, I could find no trace of William or Sarah. There were no further births recorded, nor were there any deaths. I could not determine whether they remained at Jondaryan or whether they moved on to a different station, or perhaps even returned to Brisbane. There are no entries in trade directories, nor was there any mention of William in the electoral registers, which were compiled roughly every ten years or so, which suggests that he was not a property owner and therefore not qualified to vote when the 1893 register was compiled. The trail had gone cold.

  However, from re-reading Bill’s letters to his Seaham cousin Edie, I knew that the family must have settled at Tamborine Mountain in the late 1890s or early 1900s. There is no explanation in the letters as to why the family chose that particular spot, or what drew them there. Perhaps William had been working nearby; perhaps they already had friends and connections there. Maybe the land, covered in rainforest, was yet to be cleared and therefore cheap.

  Within distant sight of the city lights and the high rises of the Gold Coast and Surfer’s Paradise, Mt. Tamborine is a popular tourist destination, part of the chain of mountains and ranges that make up the so-called “Scenic Rim” area. Its beauty and climate (Tamborine is around five degrees cooler than the coastal plains) were attracting visitors even at the turn of the twentieth century, and the area became a favourite of weekend trippers from Brisbane, and of VIPs, artists and writers, who came to experience the rainforest and the stunning coastal vistas. Though the Mountain was still very sparsely populated, boarding houses began to spring up to service the visitors, as at that time it was impossible to travel to Brisbane and back in a day. One of the most notable of these boarding houses was Capo di Monte, an elegant two-storied villa in the colonial style; another was St Bernard’s, which enjoys an enviable position on a mountain shelf at the head of the Guanaba Gorge, looking down towards the Pacific, surrounded by palm trees and echoing to the screeches of the cockatoos overhead. The St Bernard’s Hotel still looks after guests today.

  The mountain is still surrounded by rolling hills and downland, fertile farmland, nature reserves and national parks. The plateau is peppered with discreetly expensive homes, trendy cafes and upmarket restaurants, art galleries, vineyards and boutique accommodation for the discerning visitor. There are rainforest walks and picturesque picnic spots, glittering glow-worm caves and sparkling waterfalls, botanic gardens and exclusive day spas, cheesemakers and fudge makers, microbreweries and even a distillery.

  In the course of my correspondence with Campbells’ descendants in Queensland, I was contacted by Iain Hollindale, who very kindly sent me a copy of his wonderful book, Life and Cricket on the Coomera,56 which sets out the history of the game in the region from the time of the earliest settlers in the late nineteenth century. The book contains some wonderful photographs of life in and around Tamborine and Coomera in the early twentieth century. Intriguingly, at the front of the book, there is a map from 1900 showing the position of the seven cricket pitches used by the Coomera Cricket Club (now firmly settled at Hope Island) over the decades. The map also shows in detail the names of all the landowners in the area, with each individual plot clearly marked. In the bottom left hand corner, almost at the edge of the page, in the district of Guanaba, at the very foot of the eastern slopes of Tamborine Mountain, is an almost rectangular plot, criss-crossed with creeks. Bordered to the north by land owned by the Binsteads, to the west by the Wilsons, and to the south by the Stuarts, it is clearly marked “W J Campbell”. The Hollindale family still own land adjoining what was the Campbell farm; one of the elderly aunts, now in her nineties, can still recall the Campbells.

  I spent hours poring over current day maps and plans and satellite images, and was eventually able to locate the site of William and Sarah’s farm, not too far from where the perfectly-manicured greens and fairways of Mt. Tamborine Golf Club lie now, and accessed via a steep and winding narrow road from the St Bernard’s area of the mountain, at the bottom of a narrow-wooded lane now known as Sherlock Court. The plot of land where the farm was situated has barely changed in a hundred years – perhaps there are a few more houses in the surrounding area (the eighty acres of the Campbell farm having been divided up into smaller plots), tarmacked roads, the golf club, the odd pylon and telegraph post, and in the distance the thriving little village which snakes along the mountain top. The silhouette of the mountain itself, its slopes cloaked in dense rainforest to the north, and eucalyptus forest to the east, would still be recognisable to William and Sarah and Bill today.

  In Edie’s box of photographs, there is a picture of Bill Campbell taken in the early 1920s. In the photograph Bill, in white cotton trousers, shirtsleeves rolled up, is lifting a crop of potatoes with the help of one of his h
orses. In the background, beyond a rough wooden shack with a two-tone corrugated roof and the forest, the unmistakeable shape of Tamborine Mountain sweeps gently downwards.

  Mount Tamborine is still an idyllic spot, a leafy paradise teeming with life. When the Campbells arrived there at the end of the nineteenth century, the western slopes of the mountain were still cloaked in shimmering forests of eucalyptus; on the eastern slopes, gum trees – silver gums, bloodwoods and grey barks – jostled for position with cedars and beech. Lazy carpet pythons made their homes in the hollows of rotting logs, whilst the forest echoed to the sound of birdsong. Wild turkeys, cink lizards and wallabies scuttled around in the undergrowth; further east in the Guanaba area, koalas munched quietly in the canopy above them.

  Despite its close proximity to Brisbane – just under fifty miles or so – Mount Tamborine was not settled until around 1875. Timber cutting had begun in 1862, but without any great success. The lack of any access roads meant that many of the logs lay rotting where they had been felled, until a means was devised to send the logs down the mountain using the streams and waterfalls. A water-powered sawmill was eventually constructed by the Curtis family. Curtis Falls were named for them and are a popular tourist attraction today. Their descendants still live on the mountain.

  Although much of the land on and around the mountain was selected (divided up into plots to be leased from the Queensland government, and after a fixed period of occupation and evidence that the land had been “improved”, ownership was transferred to the selector) early attempts to establish a community floundered, not least due to the difficulty of access, there being no roads, the density of the rainforest and the maze of creeks and gullies. In the late nineteenth century, Tamborine was still a very isolated spot. As a result, land there was cheaper than near the already established settlements or where clearing of the rainforest for agriculture and grazing had already taken place. Maybe that’s why the Campbells chose to settle there. It’s also possible that they ended up at Tamborine as there was simply no other land left in the area – all the decent flat open farmland surrounding the mountain had already been taken up by selectors decades before William and Sarah reached the area.

  Beautiful as it was, Tamborine was no Garden of Eden, and far from the earthly paradise it is today. Life on and around the mountain for the Campbells and the other early settlers was brutal. Many of the early selectors gave up at the first attempt, the density of the forest proving too great an obstacle to their ambitions; others managed to establish small farms only to see their crops and orchards wither and fail, after year upon year of drought or flood; others still could grow barely enough to feed their families. Only very small areas could be cleared at a time – although the soil was fertile enough, these shady rainforest clearings were difficult to farm as the sunlight barely penetrated the dense tree canopy which towered above them.57

  Clearing the land to create farmland or pasture was probably the most difficult, the most back-breaking and the first task the selectors encountered. The ancient rainforest had to be felled, by hand, using saws and axes, tree by tree, the undergrowth hacked away to expose the bare earth, and the remaining stumps burned away. Smoke from the burning-off would have been visible for miles around – care had to be taken not to cause bush fires in hot weather and times of drought. It could take days, even weeks, to clear a patch of just a few square yards. Once the soil had been exposed, any large rocks and stones had to be painstakingly removed, and the earth broken up with picks or ploughs, if selectors had access to one.

  Whilst the land was being cleared, the family would have had no income. Perhaps William laboured for neighbours on adjoining farms in return for help with the logging, clearing and burning. Some would-be farmers would spend a few weeks clearing their land then return to work in the city for a while, or go off shearing for a few months to earn extra money. Like the other families who arrived to farm on the mountain, Sarah, William and their child slept out under canvas for weeks on end, their couple of horses tethered nearby. They endured extremes of weather from torrential, unremitting downpours and violent thunderstorms, when it was impossible to keep themselves and their belongings dry, to searing heat with temperatures occasionally hitting the high thirties, until enough trees had been felled and a suitable spot chosen upon which to construct a slab hut from cut timber.

  Much of the land on the edge of the Campbell plot was too steep to be cleared, or to be of any use for farming, and remains covered in forest to this day. In the damp weather the mosquitoes were unrelenting, and there was an ever-present threat from venomous snakes and spiders. Heat stroke was very common and not infrequently fatal. As well as the physical hardships, Sarah would have had to cope with a crushing sense of loneliness. In the early days, she hardly saw another soul, apart from William and Bill, for days, sometimes weeks at a time. Female company was very hard to come by.

  For the family home, William chose a raised, level spot, where the steep mountainside gives way to gentle hills and then begins to flatten out towards the Coomera River, overlooking the creek. After months of “camping out” the family moved into the two-roomed slab cottage, with its wooden planked walls, wooden shutters for windows, and shingle roof which overhung the little building, providing a shaded porch area outside, which ran the length of the cottage.

  At one end, there was a chimney recess and a basic fireplace constructed from stones formed into a square, upon which Sarah would have prepared all of the family meals. Over the years, the cottage would eventually be extended to accommodate Bill’s family. There was no plumbing, no water, no drainage and no heating, the only light coming from candles or oil lamps. A crude earth closet in a small wooden shed round the back of the property provided the only toilet facilities. The cottage was dark but cool, and with the addition of a kitchen table, several chairs, a bedstead, shelves, a handful of photographs of family back in England, and a few knick-knacks, soon began to feel homelier. Nonetheless, it was a far cry from the solid County Durham terraced miners’ cottages where Sarah had been brought up.

  Once a sufficiently large area of land had been cleared, the task of planting began. Grass seed had to be sown to create pasture for grazing for cows and sheep; other areas were ploughed by horses and planted with crops such as wheat, potatoes, pumpkins and other vegetables. On sunny slopes, rows of fruit trees were dug in to create orchards of apples, oranges, lemons and plums. Of course, it would be several years before the orchards were mature and producing fruit in sufficient quantities to take to market. Some farmers experimented with sugar cane and arrowroot, and for a few decades there was a thriving sugar cane industry along the Coomera River. Other farmers on Tamborine switched to flower cultivation, and for years supplied Brisbane with fresh cut flowers transported in wooden boxes.

  The construction of an assortment of sheds and stables soon followed, with a small “dairy” for the milking of the cows William had purchased from a farmer in Upper Coomera. A team of horses was brought in to assist with the ploughing and timber hauling, as well as being the family’s only means of transport.

  A million miles from the coal dust and the bitter industrial disputes of Seaham and Rainton and Page Bank; a million miles from the hustle and bustle of Brisbane; a million miles from Ghinghinda and the graveyard at Taroom where the tiny body of James Campbell was laid to rest; a million miles from the sheep shearers and their strikes at Jondaryan – Sarah Campbell had finally found “home”.

  The more I learned about Sarah’s life on the farm, the more one particular question began to plague me. After all the tragedy and hardship she had experienced in her life, was she finally happy there? The life of a farmer’s wife was incredibly hard. As well as helping out with the farm work, the milking, skimming off the cream, making butter by hand in a butter churn, and feeding the animals, Sarah would have had to attend to all the usual household duties – cooking, baking, cleaning, laundry and looking after Bill, reading to him and
perhaps teaching him his alphabet and counting, at least until he was old enough to travel to school in Maudsland with the other farmers’ children. Sarah’s years at the Village Farmhouse in Seaton would have stood her in good stead – at least she knew how to milk cows and look after a dairy herd.

  In reality, Sarah’s life was little changed from when she was a maid-of-all-work, although there was one significant difference. Now she was answerable to no one but her husband. For the first time in her life, she was her own mistress, jointly responsible for eighty acres of pasture and woodland, a herd of dairy cows, a handful of horses and pigs, numerous hens, several wagons and carts, as well as crops of potatoes, wheat and vegetables, an orchard of fruit trees, and not to mention a small boy. The electoral roll of 1903 records that both Sarah and William were now landowners and therefore eligible to vote – an opportunity which would not be available to Sarah’s sisters back in England for another fifteen years.

  Was she happy with her lot? Did she reflect daily that her decision to leave England behind had been the right one? Or did she stand at the door of her cottage every morning, gazing out at the little creek in front of the house, listening to the screech of parrots and cockatoos, and the song of lyrebirds and lorakeets, yearning for County Durham and the stiff North Sea breeze that rustles through the tree tops in Seaton? Did she long for the company of the friends and neighbours she had left behind in the village, the Bolands, Hodgsons, Armbristers and Thompsons? Did she miss chatting to the girls who worked behind the bar in the Dun Cow, and the farm labourers and miners who frequented that establishment? Perhaps she recalled with fondness her weekly trips into Seaham Colliery or down to the shops in Church Street and Adelaide Row in Seaham Harbour, gossiping with the other servant girls on errands for their mistresses as she stocked up on provisions and ran messages for Mrs Boland. Did Sarah still experience the pangs of homesickness and an ache for the sisters and mother she knew she would never see again? Perhaps she was content and had no regrets, confident that despite all she had endured, her life choices had been the correct ones.