The Horsekeeper's Daughter

by Jane Gulliford Lowes

  Undeterred by the hardships, the floods, the droughts, and the cycle of boom and bust which plagued Queensland in the 1890s and early 1900s, Sarah and William Campbell accomplished what so many others had failed to achieve, and made a success of the farm.

  The Campbells were never wealthy – perhaps never even comfortably off – but they never went hungry and were able to make a decent enough living from selling their farm produce on the mountain and in Upper Coomera. William also ran a haulage business with his horse and cart, carrying goods, fruit and vegetables from friends and neighbours to be sold up in North Tamborine village on the mountain, and down to Siganto’s wharf at Upper Coomera, bringing in much-needed supplies which arrived from Brisbane and further afield on the return journey. The milk and cream from the Campbells’ cows was sold daily to the big Brisbane dairies. Amongst Edie’s photographs there is a picture of the old-fashioned metal cream churns being sent across the Coomera River by means of a rope and pulley system when the river was in flood, which seems to have been a regular occurrence. The tiny cemetery at Upper Coomera is filled with the bones of those who drowned in the numerous perilous floods that plagued this riverside community.

  The Coomera River was the lifeblood of this small corner of Queensland, with goods, people, mail and livestock ferried into Siganto’s wharf from Brisbane and the Queensland ports on a daily basis. Indeed, it is likely that William and Sarah initially arrived in the area by steamboat, with all of their possessions bundled up into trunks and tea chests, perhaps staying in Upper Coomera for a few days to purchase transport and provisions before making the short journey along the river banks to Guanaba and the lower reaches of Tamborine to inspect their land for the first time.

  The work of a farmer’s wife was never done, but still Sarah somehow found time to keep up with her correspondence. She continued to write regularly to her mother, sisters, cousins, nephews and nieces in England, handing her letters to William for him to drop off at the little post office in Upper Coomera when he was making his deliveries in the cart, or sending them up the mountain to Mrs Geissman who ran a post office from the St Bernard’s Hotel.

  Towards the end of May 1900 Sarah received a letter from her brother-in-law James Hudson, informing her of the death of her younger sister Ann at the age of thirty-four, just a few weeks before. Ann left behind James and six children, the youngest of whom was barely a year old. Sarah’s widowed mother Margaret and her youngest sister Fanny had of course gone to live with Ann and James not long after their marriage in 1886, in their cottage at Grindon Mill in Sunderland. By the time of Ann’s death, Fanny had gone into service; the Hudson children were brought up by their Granny Margaret. The Hudson family were hit by a further tragedy just five years later, when Ann and James’ son, Thomas, (named after his grandfather, the horsekeeper Thomas Marshall) died at the age of fourteen. Sarah was not alone in her grief for her lost son James; several of the Marshall sisters knew the pain of the loss of a child. Margaret lost a daughter, Isabella, aged five in 1903; Fanny’s first daughter died shortly after birth, a year or so before Edie was born in 1906.

  It is unlikely that Sarah left the farm and ventured up to the small but growing settlement on the mountain top very often. A visit to the top of Tamborine necessitated a trek up a treacherous and incredibly steep mountain track, first through eucalyptus forest and scrub and then through the rainforest. It is more probable that on the rare occasion she went out and about, she visited neighbours and acquaintances elsewhere in the Guanaba district and Upper Coomera (the Campbells always gave their address as Guanaba or Coomera, rather than Tamborine). Perhaps occasional trips were made to the small seaside town at Southport around seventeen miles distant, which had a wider range of facilities than Upper Coomera, including a doctor, a library, a small selection of shops, hotels, guesthouses and a delightful beach, and in later years a theatre, a pier and amusements. Southport today is the central business district of the City of Gold Coast, which simply did not exist until the late 1950s. In 1900, it was already a fashionable seaside resort, where steamers from Brisbane would discharge visitors keen to enjoy the sea air, the swimming pools and a spot of fishing.

  Bill Campbell had an idyllic childhood growing up on the farm. There he learned, when a very small boy, how to feed the hens and gather eggs, which snakes were harmless and which would bite, how to gather fruit from the orchard, how to milk a cow and churn butter, and later how to ride, how to look after the horses and livestock, how to groom the horses and clean the tack, how to plough and plant seeds and harvest the crops, the basics of animal husbandry, and how to fell timber. William taught him the names and uses and idiosyncrasies of all the different types of trees on the property. By his mid-teens, Bill was already an expert timber cutter, with the physique to match. For her part, Sarah ensured that Bill learned his manners and his alphabet; when he was old enough, Bill made the hour-long journey by foot or on horseback to the little school at Maudsland. The photograph of the group of schoolchildren in their Sunday best which had so fascinated me as a child was in fact the Bignells and children from the other neighbouring farms at the Maudsland school, taken in May 1912. Bill soon grew into a strong and handsome, yet gentle young man, the sort of chap who would cause groups of young girls to giggle and blush and nudge each other as he drove past at the reins of his father’s wagon. There was no doubt – Bill Campbell was a bit of a charmer.

  In May 1910, just a few months after his eighteenth birthday, Bill began to notice a change in his mother. Sarah seemed to grow tired more quickly, and the heat appeared to bother her more than usual, despite the approach of cooler weather and what passed for winter in those parts. William and Bill grew increasingly worried as Sarah became quiet and withdrawn, but fearing “women’s troubles”, they did not question her too closely. Sarah struggled on with her daily chores and made no complaint, but with the arrival of spring, it was evident to all that she was losing weight. Around Christmas 1910, Sarah began to complain of pain in her lower back and kidneys, and her swollen eyes watered constantly. As 1910 became 1911, Sarah noticed a swelling in her neck which slowly grew and spread so that she could barely move her chin up and down or turn her head. Listless and in pain, Sarah reluctantly took to her bed.

  At the end of April 1911, as Australia and the rest of the British Empire prepared to celebrate the Coronation of King George V and Queen Mary, stricken with worry, William and Bill transported Sarah by horse and cart to the little cottage hospital by the sea at Southport. Upon arrival, she was delivered into the care of the family physician Dr. Brady, who had visited Sarah at the farm a few months previously.

  Her body and face were swollen; suffering from goitre due to hyperthyroidism, she was in agony from the resultant chronic kidney infection. Nothing more could be done for her.

  Sarah died on Friday 19th May 1911.

  She was forty-seven.

  14

  Topsy

  Sarah was buried the very next day in the tiny cemetery at Upper Coomera. William paid for an expensive plot, and a headstone and white-painted iron railings were added a short time afterwards. For how long did he continue to visit? For how long did he continue to place flowers on the grave? Flowers soon fade and become brown and brittle, before turning to dust, dissolved in the rain or blown away by the winds. Perhaps he preferred not to visit at all, and kept alive the memory of how Sarah used to be – the headstrong, independent County Durham lass he fell in love with in a busy Brisbane street.

  Certainly, by the time that Edie and her mother received the photograph of the grave, perhaps a few years later, it was shabby, overgrown and uncared for. William would have passed the little cemetery almost every day as he made his deliveries on the wagon and collected goods from Siganto’s wharf. Maybe he paused for a few moments at the graveside now and then.

  “Hello Sarah, old girl.”

  I wondered about Margaret Marshall’s reaction when she received the lette
r from William in the summer of 1911, at the height of the Coronation celebrations in Seaham, informing her that another of her daughters was dead. Did she weep for her? Perhaps Margaret had done her grieving for Sarah all those years before as she waved goodbye to her at Durham station. Amongst Edie’s possessions in her little attaché case is a tiny Coronation locket in a delicate brass casing, bearing the portrait of King George V on one side, and his wife Queen Mary on the other, which belonged to Edie’s mother Fanny. Perhaps Robert Threadkell had purchased this as a gift for his young wife; it is likely that this locket hung around Fanny’s neck whilst she read William’s letter and news of her sister’s death. Fanny had been just four years old when Sarah had left for Queensland; all she really knew and remembered of her older sister was gleaned from her letters and photographs and her mother’s memories.

  In many ways Sarah’s death should have brought my story to an end; in others, it is just the beginning, for it marks the beginning of the regular correspondence between Bill and his family in Seaham. Without Bill and Edie, and their letters and photographs spanning almost twenty five years, there would be no story to tell. Perhaps it was Bill’s way of keeping his mother’s memory alive, exchanging letters and pictures with those who had known and loved her.

  I thought about William and Bill, struggling on in the little cottage at the foot of the mountain, having to cook and clean for themselves and take on the extra burden of all the chores, on top of trying to make a living out of the farm and the delivery business. For young Bill, however, it was not a case of all work and no play. On one of the nearby farms lived the Bignell family; their eldest daughter, Topsy Bignell, had caught Bill’s eye. Perhaps they had grown up together, roaming the fields and forests, exploring the gullies and streams, travelling to school in Maudsland on horseback. Topsy was one of eleven children, a confident, lively, outgoing young lady, with a pretty rounded face and big doe eyes, who loved to be the centre of attention, and who was by all accounts, something of a drama queen. The gentle and unassuming Bill was smitten. On 24th September 1912, just sixteen months after Sarah’s death, Bill Campbell married Topsy at St Peter’s Church in Southport. Bill was twenty, Topsy was two months short of her seventeenth birthday, and already four months pregnant.

  The Bignells were an interesting clan. There are still Bignells in and around Tamborine and Coomera today, and all over New South Wales and Queensland. One of Topsy’s great-great-grandfathers was Samuel Kingston, an Irishman from Cork, who was convicted of forgery and transported to Australia “for the term of his natural life”. He arrived in the penal colony of Sydney on the Hooghly on 22nd April 1825, having endured a dreadful voyage aboard the convict ship of some one hundred and seven days. Amazingly, records of Samuel’s arrival in the colony remain – he is described as: “5 feet and 5 and a 1/4 inches, pale complexion, hazel eyes, grey hair with a scar on top of his forehead.” Samuel was not a young man – he was already in his fifties when he arrived.

  After serving seven years of their sentence, some convicts were allowed to make an application for permission for their families to join them. Some applied only to discover that their wives or husbands had disowned them and perhaps even remarried. Many unfortunate souls, particularly those who were illiterate, had no means of communicating with their families back in Britain and never heard from them again. At one time, convict ancestry was considered shameful – the histories of so many families were concealed or just not discussed, or “swept under the carpet”. Today, having a convict ancestor is a badge of honour, and those poor desperate felons who were transported are known as “Australian Royalty”.

  Samuel Kingston’s application was successful, and on 14th June 1832, his wife Ann, daughters Amelia, Nancy and Lydia, and son Samuel arrived in Sydney Harbour on the Southworth. Ann was considerably younger than her husband, and the pair went on to have more children. Samuel Kingston died at Allyn River, New South Wales, in 1852, at the grand old age of eighty five.

  His daughter Amelia Kingston married James Bignell, a farmer originally from Hampshire, just months after arriving in Australia, in October 1832, and the family settled at the Bignell family farm at Bandon Grove, Dungog, in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales. The Bignells were renowned for their huge families – there were literally hundreds of them – James and Amelia had fifteen children, fourteen of whom survived to old age. My research was significantly hampered by the fact that each of these fourteen children themselves went on to have twelve, thirteen, fourteen or even fifteen children, all of whom had very similar names.

  James and Amelia’s children included Samuel Stanley Bignell (born 1838). Around 1872, with a growing family to feed, Samuel decided to seek his fortunes elsewhere, and made his way up through New South Wales, into Southern Queensland, and to the Coomera and Tamborine Mountain, where he purchased a farm on the banks of the Coomera River. Six of his twelve children were born in Upper Coomera.

  His fourth child, Alfred Thomas Bignell born in 1860, was a character. He became very active in the growing communities on Tamborine Mountain and down in Upper Coomera, after following his father north to manage one of John Siganto’s dairies. In his younger days in New South Wales, Alf had been a very talented cricketer. In the 1880s, before he was married, Alf had played for Northern Districts in Newcastle and was said to have played against an England touring side, captained by James Lilywhite, top scoring with sixty six. A report in the local newspaper described Alf as:

  “A magnificent batsman, fast medium accurate bowler and a superb fieldsman… How easy for him to land the ball over the treetops outside the Oval.”

  He was later invited to represent Australia against England but tragically his family were able to afford neither his keep nor his fare to Melbourne or Sydney or Adelaide, and his opportunity was lost forever.

  In the archives at Southport library, there are numerous photographs of him and his very large family. He married Amy Alice Gray in 1894, and the couple produced twelve children, of whom Topsy (actually named Amelia May) was the eldest. Ivy, Mary, Rebecca, Ada, Kathleen, Samuel, Alfred, George, Amy, Pearl and Janet followed over the course of the next twenty two years. The photograph of the schoolchildren in their Sunday best taken on 23rd May 1912, which had so captured my imagination as child, shows Ivy, Mary, Ada, Kathleen and Sam, each one marked with an ink cross above their heads, by Topsy.

  Alf Bignell was a formidable character – one can only imagine how nervous young Bill Campbell was when he had to explain to Alf that he’d got his eldest daughter pregnant, and sought his permission to marry her. It seems Alf and Bill actually got on quite well – Bill had probably known Alf all his life, and he was welcomed into the large Bignell family. As is so often the way with these things, they all simply made the best of it. There is a photograph at the Tamborine Mountain Museum showing Bill and Alf together at the Upper Coomera Rifle Club in 1922; others show them attending various committee meetings together.

  After their marriage in September 1912, Topsy moved into the Campbell farmstead on what was by then known locally as Campbell Mountain, to look after Bill and his father. In February 1913, Bill took his heavily pregnant young wife down the mountain to Nurse Bourke’s Home in Souter Street, Southport. On 24th February 1913, Topsy gave birth to William John Campbell, named after his father and grandfather, and known as Willie. She was just seventeen, and her own parents, Alf and Alice, would go on to have three more children, Amy, Pearl and Janet. Another baby soon followed for Bill and Topsy – by the time she was nineteen Topsy was already a mother of two. Elsie Jean (known as Jean) was born on 25th August 1914, just after war had been declared in Europe.

  Amongst the photographs in Edie’s box are two photographs of Bill and Topsy and their two eldest children. The first shows the young couple on the porch of their cottage, now extended to accommodate their growing family. Bill, moustachioed and in his best clothes, is holding Willie in his arms, whilst Topsy is sitting next to him,
her hair pinned up, baby Jean on her lap. Bill looks older than his years; Topsy still looks like a child. In the second photograph, the couple are sitting on the family’s cart, pulled by two blinkered horses, Bill in shirtsleeves and a hat, reins in hand. Topsy is wearing her best white hat, baby Jean wrapped in a shawl on her knee, Willie is wriggling around between his parents. You can almost hear Bill muttering “Sit STILL for the man with the camera Willie!”. But Willie didn’t sit still and all that can be seen is his hat. I have grown to love these two photographs, as I have grown to love the people in them.

  By the time of Jean’s birth, Mount Tamborine was no longer an isolated community of a few hardy pioneer farmers and timber cutters. The Beaudesert Times that year opined:

  “Tamborine Mountain is a different place from what it was a few years ago. About five years ago there were only 5 families at the northern end of Tamborine Mountain. Now there are enough people here to start a dancing club and a tennis club. A picnic was arranged for the opening day Saturday 11th October. There was a good attendance, no less than 48 people being present.”

  When Britain declared war on Germany on 4th August 1914, Australia, as a dominion of the British Empire, was automatically at war too. Across the Empire, from Seaham Harbour to Nova Scotia, from the Scottish Highlands to the Southern Alps of New Zealand, young men from every village and town waved goodbye to parents, sweethearts and children and sailed to the far side of the world to fight for the motherland, a country most had never set foot in and were unlikely to ever see, in a war that was not of their making. “All over by Christmas”, they said. As in Britain, news of the declaration of war was initially greeted with enthusiasm and young men across the nation rushed to enlist.