by Haynes, Jim
The day before the fight, an old lady living alone in a cottage outside Echuca was asked by two ‘well dressed and courteous young men’ who were camped close to her house, if they might have a billy of boiling water to brew their tea, as they didn’t want to light a fire in the dry bush. They had come to see the fight.
After the fight was over, one of the men shook Foley’s hand and congratulated him, telling him that he himself had won the unofficial boxing championship of northern Victoria a few years before, in a fight against Isaiah ‘Wild’ Wright. It was Ned Kelly.
Kelly and Joe Byrne had ridden over to see the fight just six weeks after holding up the town of Jerilderie, 170 kilometres away.
Back in Sydney, a benefit concert and subscription fund were organised for Foley who became a publican, gave boxing lessons and trained many prominent boxers at early stages of their careers.
Foley died of heart disease in 1917, and is buried at Waverley cemetery—in the Catholic section.
JH
FOLEY AND THE GREEN
ANONYMOUS
Now Paddy dear and did you hear the news that’s going ’round,
That Sandy Ross has lost the fight at George’s River ground?
No more his crowing will be heard, no more his colour seen,
I think he’s had enough this time of Foley and the green.
The green the colour of the brave we raise high in the air,
And to our enemies we show the colour that we wear.
The orange flag has been pulled down, the battle fought out keen,
And Sandy Ross has lost the fight at George’s River green.
The orange ties they mustered strong upon that Tuesday morn,
As Sandy he came up to scratch with head and beard all shorn.
His orange scarf around his waist was plainly to be seen,
As Foley stepped into the ring wearing Ireland’s green.
‘Sinn Fein, Sinn Fein!’ he cried aloud to all his friends close by,
‘I’ve come to fight for Ireland’s cause and for that cause I’ll die.
And to deny her colours, I ne’er would be so mean,
So in this ring I’ll die or win for dear old Ireland’s green.
‘Here’s to Him, lads, here’s to Him, boys,’ then Sandy Ross did say,
‘I’ve come to fight for Old King Bill upon this glorious day.
The orange scarf around me waist will soon come into bud,
’Twill be dyed red upon this ground by this poor Fenian’s blood!’
They both shook hands, you’d really think no feeling lay between
The colours bright that made this fight, the orange and the green.
For three long hours that fight did last till seconds came between,
And threw the sponge high in the air in favour of the green.
MEI QUONG TART
Mandarin of the Fifth Degree with a Scottish Accent
He spoke with a Scottish accent, wore a kilt and recited Robbie Burns’ poetry. He was a devout Anglican married to an English woman. He was a Mason, a member of Royal Commissions, a friend of the Governor and known for his charity work. He was also Chinese, a tea and silk merchant, a Fourth Rank Mandarin of the Blue Button, Chinese consul and interpreter for Chinese prisoners in Sydney courts.
Mei Quong Tart was born in Canton Province, China, in 1850. The son of Quong Tart, a dealer in ornamental wares, he arrived in New South Wales aged nine with an uncle who took a shipload of coolies for the Braidwood goldfields. He lived in Scotsman Thomas Forsyth’s store at Bell’s Creek and learned English with a heavy Scottish accent and was later ‘adopted’ by wealthy Robert Percy Simpson and his wife Alice. They converted him to Christianity and helped him to acquire shares in gold claims. He was wealthy at eighteen.
After the Simpsons moved to Sydney, Quong built a cottage at Bell’s Creek and was prominent in the sporting, cultural and religious affairs of Braidwood and Araluen. Friendly with both Chinese and Europeans, he organised a series of popular Chinese horse races. He was naturalised on 11 July 1871, joined a lodge of Oddfellows and was appointed to the board of the public school at Bell’s Creek in 1877. In 1885, he became a Freemason.
Quong visited his family in China in 1881 and on his return opened a tea and silk store in Sydney, followed by a tea shop which was intended to provide customers with samples of China tea, but proved so successful that it became tea house and restaurant and Quong began a chain of these establishments.
Quong campaigned to have opium imports banned and in 1883 was part of an investigation into the Chinese camps in southern New South Wales. The report revealed widespread opium addiction. Quong presented a petition to the colonial secretary, seeking the banning of opium imports. In Victoria, he tried to win support for his anti-opium crusade in Melbourne and Ballarat.
In 1886, Quong married a young Englishwoman, Margaret Scarlett. In 1887, he revived the anti-opium campaign with a second petition to parliament and published a pamphlet, A Plea for the Abolition of the Importation of Opium. With much anti-Chinese sentiment at that time, he spent much time defending his countrymen and acting as an interpreter. He was part of the New South Wales Royal Commission on Gambling and Bribery from 1891 to 1892.
Quong acted as consul for the imperial Chinese government. The Emperor made him an honorary Mandarin of the Fifth Degree in 1887 for his services to the overseas Chinese community and European–Chinese relations. On his third visit to China in 1894, he was advanced to the Fourth Degree—appointed Mandarin of the Blue Button and honoured by the Dragon Throne with the Peacock Feather.
Quong gave to many charities, and often provided dinners, gifts and entertainment to the Benevolent Society Home at Liverpool and the newsboys of Ashfield, Summer Hill, Croydon and Burwood. From 1885 to 1888 he provided a series of free feasts for the inmates of destitute asylums.
In 1889, Quong opened a classy restaurant in King Street and, in 1898, another in the new Queen Victoria Markets, which became the place to be seen in Sydney. In 1890, he opened a bazaar at Jesmond near Newcastle. His employees benefited from his enlightened policies, including time off for shopping and sick leave with pay.
Quong also supported the suffragettes who met in his tea rooms. He was in constant demand as a speaker at charitable and social functions; his Scottish songs and recitations mingled with quaint wit guaranteed full attendances.
In August 1902, he was savagely assaulted by an intruder in his office in the Queen Victoria Markets. After a partial recovery, he died from pleurisy at his home in Ashfield, in July 1903, and was buried at Rookwood.
JH
BREAKER MORANT
‘Shoot Straight, You Bastards . . .’
Breaker Morant claimed that he was born in Devon and was the illegitimate son of Admiral Morant, sent to Australia in disgrace as a ‘remittance man’ to be kept out of the way of the family after some sexual scandal. Both The Northern Miner and The Bulletin newspapers, however, identified him as Edwin Henry Murrant who had arrived at Townsville in Queensland on the SS Waroonga in 1883.
Murrant was the son of Edwin and Catherine Murrant, master and matron of the Union Workhouse at Bridgewater in Somerset and it seems that Edwin died in August 1864, four months before the birth of his son. His wife Catherine continued her employment as matron until her retirement in 1882.
When Catherine died in 1899, Harry Morant was in Adelaide. He had joined the South Australian Mounted Rifles as Harry Harbord Morant and was about to leave for South Africa, to fight the Boers.
Records show that an Edwin Henry Murrant, son of Edwin Murrant and his wife Catherine, née O’Reilly, married Daisy May O’Dwyer on 13 March 1884, at Charters Towers. Daisy May O’Dwyer would later become known as the famous anthropologist and champion of the Aborigines, Daisy Bates.
The two separated within months after Morant was arrested on a charge of stealing pigs and a saddle. He was acquitted and went to work further west at Winton. Later he began overlanding cattle south, throu
gh the channel country.
Daisy moved south and was employed as a governess at Berry, New South Wales. In February 1885, at Nowra, she married cattleman Jack Bates. When he went off droving, she travelled to Sydney where, on 10 June 1885, she was married again, to Ernest Baglehole.
Morant developed a legendary and romantic reputation as a hard-drinking horse breaker, bush poet and ladies’ man. A fearless and expert horseman, he was one of the few horsemen who managed to ride the notorious buckjumper, Dargin’s Grey, and once jumped his horse Cavalier over a 1.8-metre fence to win a bet.
Morant contributed bush ballads to The Bulletin and used the pen-name ‘the Breaker’. When the South African War broke out in 1899 he enlisted in Adelaide in the 2nd Contingent, South Australian Mounted Rifles, as Harry Harbord Morant.
His skill as a horseman, and his education and manners, led to him becoming dispatch rider for General French. At the end of his one-year enlistment, he went to England and met Captain Percy Hunt, who had also served in South Africa. The two returned to South Africa in March 1901 and joined the Bush Veldt Carbineers, formed at Pietersburg to counter Boer guerillas. Morant was commissioned as lieutenant. Morant’s war record shows him to be a brave and excellent soldier, but there were weak leaders and confused rules of war as the Boer War became more and more a guerrilla war.
Hunt was mortally wounded while on patrol on 4 August 1901. Some mutilation was done to the body, and clothing taken. Morant, now in command, became bent on vengeance. He led a patrol after the Boers and caught up with them late in the evening.
The order to attack was given too soon and all but one got away. Morant alleged that the wounded prisoner was wearing some of Hunt’s clothing and shot him. Then eight Boers, supposedly coming to surrender, were met by a patrol led by Morant and Lieutenant Handcock and Morant had them shot. There was a court-martial and, on 27 February 1902, a firing squad of Cameron Highlanders executed Morant and Handcock.
Many British troops did what Morant did without being court-martialled for it. Banjo Paterson was appalled at the acts of brutality carried out by British troops against Boer civilians. Morant was a victim of British attempts to get the Boers to negotiate. Kitchener needed to appease the Boers and executing two ‘war criminals’ was one way to do it.
Kitchener even left headquarters so he couldn’t receive the telegram asking for clemency that was sent by all members of the court-martial!
Morant himself wrote, the evening before he died—
It really ain’t the place nor time
To reel off rhyming diction—
But yet we’ll write a final rhyme
Whilst waiting cru-ci-fi-xion!
But we bequeath a parting tip
For sound advice of such men,
Who come across in transport ship
To polish off the Dutchmen!
If you encounter any Boers
You really must not loot ’em!
And if you wish to leave these shores,
For pity’s sake, don’t shoot ’em!!
And if you’d earn a DSO,
Why every British sinner
Should know the proper way to go is:
‘Ask the Boer to dinner!’
His last words to the firing squad were, ‘Shoot straight you bastards, don’t make a mess of it.’
JH
A MEMORY OF BREAKER MORANT
A.B. (BANJO) PATERSON
The Breaker was one of the most colourful of all the larger-than-life characters from our past. Banjo Paterson knew Morant well and, being a solicitor, helped him with some legal matters from time to time. Here is one of Banjo’s memories of The Breaker.
Amateur racing, for some reason or other, has always had some sort of encouragement from the Rosehill proprietary, and that club is the only metropolitan institution that caters for the ‘lily-whites’. Their annual race at Rosehill is a sort of ‘Custer’s last stand’.
They used to also run an amateur steeplechase, and one of these was to some extent memorable, for among the riders was Harry Morant, whose tempestuous career was ended by a firing squad in the South African war.
Plucky to the point of recklessness, he suffered from a theatrical complex which made him pretend to be badly hurt when there was, really, not much up with him.
Morant was breaking in horses and mustering wild cattle somewhere up in the west, and he had been accustomed to ride after hounds in England.
Arriving in Sydney at the time of the amateur steeplechase, he set out to look for a mount.
Mr Pottie, of the veterinary family, had a mare that could both gallop and jump, but she was such an unmanageable brute that none of the local amateurs (and I was one of them) cared to take the mount.
Morant jumped at the chance, but as soon as they started the mare cleared out with him and fell into a drain, rolling her rider out as flat as a flounder.
He was carried in, supposed to be unconscious, and I was taken up to hear his last wishes.
The doctors could get nothing out of him, but after listening to his wanderings for a while I said, very loudly and clearly, ‘What’ll you have Morant?’ and he said, equally clearly,
‘Brandy and soda.’
BILLY HUGHES
The Little Digger
When Billy Hughes died in 1952, he had been a Member of Parliament for fifty-eight years! There are many stories of his humour and quick thinking. He was expelled from both the Labor Party and the conservative United Australia Party.
Born in London to Welsh parents in 1862, Hughes worked as a teacher in damp, stuffy classrooms before migrating to Australia in 1884. He was a small man and suffered from a chest weakness. He thought the sunshine would be good for his health.
He roamed the Queensland bush, worked on coastal boats and drifted to Sydney where he worked as an oven-maker, married his landlady’s daughter and, in 1890, moved to Balmain where he opened a small mixed shop, took on odd jobs and mended umbrellas.
Hughes made his political début as a street-corner speaker for the Balmain Single Tax League and then, in 1892, he joined the Socialist League. He then joined the Labor Party, became a successful union leader, was elected to the New South Wales parliament in 1894 and wrote a column in the Daily Telegraph. He went into the federal parliament after Federation in 1901 and became Prime Minister in 1915.
Hughes’ passionate support for conscription during World War I led to him being expelled from the Labor Party and earned him the undying respect of the AIF and the nickname The Little Digger.
Hughes formed a new party which merged with the conservative anti-Labor opposition and he was re-elected Prime Minister in 1917. He served as Attorney General and Deputy Coalition Leader in World War II until being expelled from the United Australia Party for joining the Labor-led War Advisory Council after Labor returned to government. He remained in parliament as an independent until his death in 1952.
As Prime Minister at the end of World War I, Hughes was our representative at the peace talks in Versailles. One day, soon after arriving in France, he was flying with an Australian pilot when the plane was forced down with engine trouble in the grounds of a military hospital. The pilot was worried as things were still unstable and the place was guarded and he had no permission to land there.
‘Leave it to me,’ said the man they called The Little Digger and, as the pilot tinkered with the engine, he strode purposefully towards the advancing and well-armed French soldiers.
‘Ahh, you are expecting me, I see,’ he beamed. ‘Bonjour, I am the Prime Minister of Australia and I am here to inspect the facility!’
Hughes proceeded to inspect the hospital and the staff lined up to meet him while the puzzled military authorities looked at one another and wondered why they had not been told about the visit. When the engine was fixed, Hughes made a farewell speech and hopped back in the plane and the pilot took off.
Many years later, Hughes’ secretary told of a conversation one morning at breakfast at Versailles. Hughes
hated US President Woodrow Wilson, who wanted to make peace among nations by forming the League of Nations and was trying to stop the victorious nations from punishing the defeated nations by taking their territories. Hughes wanted the German possessions in New Guinea for Australia—and he eventually got them.
Wilson’s Democratic Party had lost its majority in Congress in a mid-term election and the President had left the peace talks to rush back to the USA on the warship Ulysses S. Grant.
Hughes was reading the paper when his secretary arrived at the table and asked, ‘What’s the news, Prime Minster?’
‘Terrible news,’ replied Hughes, ‘the Ulysses S. Grant is lost at sea with all hands.’
‘That is terrible news!’ replied his secretary.
Putting down the newspaper, Hughes said, ‘And here’s even worse news—it’s not true!’
JH
PERCY GRAINGER
The Oddest Oddball of Them All
Percy Grainger took eccentricity to new heights. He was a genius of the highest order—and a mass of contradictions. He was a racist obsessed with Nordic purity but, as Dean of Music at New York University, he took up the cause of black musicians like Duke Ellington and invited them to lecture at the university.
He was a vegetarian who hated vegetables. He lived on nuts and wheat. He was a sadomasochist who flagellated himself and took photos and made notes on the bruises and scars, yet he composed the sweetest sugary melody, ‘English Country Garden’, which was a mega hit before World War II.
He donated two years’ earnings to Melbourne University to establish a museum—about himself.
He designed his own clothes and also designed a bra for his Danish girlfriend—but he never ironed his clothes and was arrested mistakenly as a vagrant in New York when he was Dean of Music at New York University. He never drove a car but would run or cycle to each concert. On a South African tour he once ran 100 kilometres to his next concert.