In Sydney Archibald worked in an engineering business, ‘Roger McVey and Company, Shipsmith’, at Mace’s Wharf in Sussex St, Sydney. In 1847 the partnership became ‘Rodgers and Buller, Engineers’, in Gas St, then later ‘A Rodger, Engineer and Shipsmith’, Gas Lane, off Kent St North.
Hannah died at Balmain, in Sydney, in March 1849 and Archibald Junior died soon after, in June 1849. Shortly after their deaths Archibald sailed back to England on the ‘Sarah’, returning on the same ship to Sydney on 10th December 1849. With him came his younger brother William, William’s wife, Isabella, and their son. Also on board the ship were Colin McLaren and his wife, Helen. Colin died of cholera on the voyage.
Three months later Archibald Rodgers and Helen McLaren were married in Sydney. Their first child, Margaret, only lived for two weeks. Their next child, also named Helen, was my grandfather’s mother.
In 1854 they moved to Newcastle and Archibald founded an engineering works, ‘Iron and Brass Foundry and General Iron Works’, at Honeysuckle Point, in lower Church St. This is now King St and the site of Newcastle City Hall and Civic Centre. In Newcastle they had three daughters, listed as born at the Foundry; Helen, Agnes and Anne. Archibald died of tetanus in 1870, after his hand was crushed in an accident at the Foundry, as told in the Newcastle Herald extract in Chapter 9.”
I know nothing further of his life in Balmain. Of the real Hannah I have discovered a photo of a pretty lady with dark hair, not the lady of the fair hair and complexion I imagined, though in other respects the similarity to my imagination is strong. This picture conveys to me a self-possessed woman, who, in a mere 32 years of life, had 6 children, crossed the world and established a new life for herself and her family. Her own mother is also named Alison, so my idea of Hannah’s first daughter being named for her mother is right.
Of this daughter, Alison, when writing this novel, I knew nothing of her life, except that she was the oldest daughter. Since then I have discovered that she died in Newcastle on the 24th of April 1871, only a few months after her father’s death.
So it is like sliding doors, a real Alison, the great aunt I never knew who experienced the real grief and pain of losing her mother, brother, sister and father in her short life, and who never returned from Newcastle. Then there is my imaginary Alison – the mind shadow of what may have been if she lived on. I hope the soul of the real Alison is pleased with my mind’s creation. From this unknown child’s pain comes the essence of the kind, wise, fun-loving soul who is a central character of my book.
As with Alison, so too with Maria; a person of my imagination; living only in my book. Yet I can see her so clearly, waiting and hoping for her beloved Jimmy to return to her at the old Balmain house. For me she is also the Maria of Joe Dolan’s song.
‘Who’s going to tell Maria he won’t return,
Who’s going to tell Maria that love can burn’
But she waits still, her hope undimmed; and, as the story teller, I can give her the gift of joy regained.
Our move to Balmain and the purchase of a timber cottage in the locality of Smith Street is true in general if not in all specifics. The basic layout of the house and the pleasure it gave us is as described, as is the wonderful sense of welcome and community we discovered on coming to Balmain.
The discovery of a mass card of a little girl who had lived and died around the same time as Sophie, and which had been hidden in the chimney of our house in Balmain is true, though we did not discover it. I do not know what happened to her, though I have since found out her name was Jessie Holmes. A copy of the photo and the minimal information we know of her is in Appendix 2.
The general locality of Balmain in relation to Sydney City and the streets referred to in Sydney and Balmain are real streets. The Exchange and West End Hotels and the Town Hall are real buildings. I do not know the names of the builders of the Town Hall, though it’s year of construction and the name of the architect are correct. The names and locations of churches and schools cited in Balmain are generally correct.
The first people of this part of Sydney at the time of colonisation were the Gadigal clan of the Eora Nation. They were massively decimated by early diseases, particularly small pox but also other diseases brought by the Europeans. The most famous of these were Bennelong and Barangaroo, who lived on an island in the harbour they called Memel, which has been renamed Goat Island. It sits in close proximity to East Balmain and Ballast Point where parts of this story are set. The Gadigal people lived extensively on the seafood bounty of the harbour using bark canoes called nawi and twine and fish hooks called bara. It is likely they ate local fish such as the wulamay or snapper. Other words that have survived include, gunyah for shelter, ganing for cave and duwal for a short two barbed spear suited to catch fish. I use some of these words in the part of my book that tells of Ruthie and her grandfather, Jimmy.
The character, Ruthie, of the Gadigal, is a person of my imagination, with no real basis, nor has the totem she ascribes to her father of the echidna. However this animal was an important animal in broader aboriginal totems and stories as well as a favoured food item, and is depicted in rock engravings within the Sydney region so it is likely to have been a significant animal for Eora clans While the Gadigal clan was massively depleted due to diseases and taking of lands some remnants of the clan are believed to have survived and combined with other clans, living at the margins of European society around Sydney over the mid-1800s until they gradually moved to locations such as La Perouse and Redfern. Hence a remnant of Gadigal peoples living in Blackwattle Bay around the Glebe foreshore, where there would have been an abundance of shellfish is the shallow seas and swamps with freshwater is a reasonable supposition, as is the idea of interactions and bartering with the European community. In addition non aboriginal names were often given to such people by the white people with whom they interacted, as these names were easier for them to say and remember than the aboriginal names.
Ballast Point and Balmain East are real localities on the Balmain Peninsula, though their development bears little resemblance in time or type to that described in the book. Specifically Ballast Point was already substantially cleared and changed before the time cited in this book and fuel tanks were not built until the 1930s. The Navy had no role in their use.
I have no knowledge of a cemetery in East Balmain, though a later cemetery was built in Leichhardt. However it is likely that there was an early cemetery somewhere in locality of East Balmain where Hannah and Archibald Junior were buried in 1849. One day I will try to find out about them, and where they lived and died.
Balmain became a strongly working class area in the early 1900s with a very large number of dock workers living there.
Bubonic plague did occur in Sydney in 1900 with many deaths. I do not know if any plague deaths occurred in Balmain. Similarly, other epidemics of disease occurred in the early history of Sydney.
The Australian Federation Ceremony occurred in 1901, including a march from Hyde Park, which went along Park St, with a crowd of approximately 500,000 onlookers. Sir Henry Parkes lived in Balmain for several years at Hampton Villa and was a leading figure in the movement for the Australian Federation, although he died before it occurred. Edmund Barton was extensively involved in drafting the constitution for the Australian Federation.
A Balmain football team played at Birchgrove Oval in the late 1800s and early 1900s and became an inaugural team in the Rugby League competition established in 1908. It still wears the black and gold tiger colour and retains the Tigers Name, though now as part of the Wests Tigers. I am proud to say I am one of its many later day supporters and still go to watch it play, though now at Leichardt rather than Birchgrove Oval.
Balmain was and remains a village outside of time, centred around its people and the sense of community they create. It is also a repository of many hidden treasures, the beautiful old timber and sandstone houses, undiscovered cobbled lanes twisting between houses and plunging down to the sea, jacarandas in purp
le flower in spring, glimpsed vistas of hills and harbour, and the boats which quietly float across these views. At night, seen across the water all of Sydney city comes sparkling to life, light filled high rise towers and the dark towering masses of Anzac and Sydney Harbour Bridges.
Along with many thousands of others we watch fireworks on Sydney Harbour Bridge, as viewed from East Balmain and seen on televisions around the world, each New Year’s Eve.
The blue bird of my story is the beautiful fairy wren, once common and now seen just occasionally, on the headlands and in the forest fringes at the edges of Balmain. Now people are planting new bushland places for it to live. Perhaps again one day it will be often seen by Balmain’s children.
Appendix 2 : Jessie Grace Holmes – Unknown Girl
When I wrote this book, the ‘girl in the photo frame’ was but a recollection of a photo I had been shown when we bought the house. It was passed on to us by the previous owners who found it in the chimney. We had then put it away for safe keeping and in telling this story I had only a vague memory of its details – being a dark haired eight year old girl who died around 100 years ago. As my memory was unclear and I did not know where we had put the actual photo I used my imagination to create this imaginary person who I named Sophie.
We have now found that real photo. It is a thing much damaged, most likely scorched from many years of chimney heat. However some details still remain visible. I have transcribed these below along with a copy of this photo, broken, with parts missing and other parts illegible.
So now I have her real name, Jessie Grace Holmes, and her age and date of death. Perhaps this Jessie deserves to be brought to life in her own story, something based on whatever real information I can uncover 100 years on. It is a task for another day, but I hope in time to be able to tell the story of the real Jessie Grace Holmes, perhaps to even discover some descendants of this girl and her family who once lived in this Old Balmain House, with their own memories.
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Though Lost to Sight Forever Dear
In Loving Memory of
Jessie Grace Holmes
Who departed this life Mar1 1916
Dearest Jessie, thou hast left us
Thou dost dwell with angels now
And a wreath of glory priceless
Sparkles on thy shining brow
In thy pure and joyous childhood
Christ called, “Child come here to Me”
Wait a little, dearest Jessie
And we soon shall follow thee
Abide with Me
Memorial Card Company 112 King St Sydney Copyright
This book is dedicated to the many people who have lived in and loved the place we call Balmain, over countless millennia
About the Author
Graham Wilson lives in Sydney Australia. He has completed and published nine separate books, and also a range of combined novel box sets.
They comprise two series,
1. The Old Balmain House Series – three novels
2 The Crocodile Spirit Dreaming Series – five novels
along with a family memoir, Children of Arnhem's Kaleidoscope
The Old Balmain House Series starts with this novel, Little Lost Girl, which was previously titled, The Old Balmain House. Its setting is an old weatherboard cottage, in Sydney, where the author lived for seven years. Here a photo was discovered of a small girl who lived and died about 100 years ago. The book imagines the story of her life and family, based in the real Balmain, an early inner Sydney suburb, with its locations and historical events providing part of the story background. The second novel in this series, Lizzie's Tale, builds on the Balmain house setting, It is the story of a working class teenage girl who lives in this same house in the 1950s and 1960s, It tells of how, when pregnant, she is determined not to surrender her baby for adoption and of her struggle to survive in this unforgiving society. The third novel in this series, Devil's Choice, follows the next generation of the family in Lizzie's Tale. Lizzie's daughter is faced with the awful choice of whether to seek the help of one of her mother's rapists' in trying to save the life of her own daughter who is inflicted with an incurable disease.
The Crocodile Spirit Dreaming Series is based in Outback Australia. The first novel Just Visiting tells the story of an English backpacker, Susan, who visits the Northern Territory and becomes captivated and in great danger from a man who loves crocodiles. The second book in the series, Creature of an Ancient Dreaming, (previously The Diary), follows the consequences of the first book based around the discovery of this man's remains and his diary and Susan, being placed on trial for murder. The third book, The Empty Place, is about Susan's struggle to retain her sanity in jail while her family and friends desperately try to find out what really happened on that fateful day before it is too late. In Lost Girls Susan vanishes and it tells the story of the search for her and four other lost girls whose passports were found in the possession of the man she killed. The final book in the series, Sunlit Shadow Dance is the story of a girl who appears in a remote aboriginal community in North Queensland, without any memory except for a name. It tells how she rebuilds her life from an empty shell and how, as fragments of the past return, with them come dark shadows that threaten to overwhelm her.
The book, Children of Arnhem's Kaleidoscope, is the story of the author's own life in the Northern Territory. It tells of his childhood in an aboriginal community in remote Arnhem Land, in Australia's Northern Territory, one of its last frontiers. It tells of the people, danger and beauty of this place, and of its transformation over the last half century with the coming of aboriginal rights and the discovery or uranium. It also tells of his surviving an attack by a large crocodile and of his work over two decades in the outback of the NT.
Books are published as ebooks by Smashwords, Amazon, Kobo, Ibooks and other major ebook publishers. Some books are available in print through Amazon Create Space.
Graham is in the early stages of planning a memoir about his family's connections with Ireland called Memories Only Remain and also is compiling information for a book about the early NT cattle industry, its people and its stories.
Graham writes for the creative pleasure it brings him. He is particularly gratified each time an unknown person chooses to download and read something he has written and write a review - good or bad, as this gives him an insight into what readers enjoy and helps him make ongoing improvements to his writing.
In his non writing life Graham is a veterinarian who works in wildlife conservation and for rural landholders. He lived a large part of his life in the Northern Territory and his books reflect this experience.
Little Lost Girl Page 19