by Judy Powell
Almost as soon as Cambitoglou assumed control of the department, he closed the Nicholson Museum for renovations. Although it was not before time, all efforts went into the refit and not surprisingly work on the Cypriot pottery stalled. There were no staff to work on it apart from Derek Howlett who, for much of the time, was away sick. He and Cambitoglou clashed and their fight was bitter and personal. Intemperate letters were exchanged. Eve offered to help and asked that the pottery be sent to her at The Mount.
In March 1963, a year after Jim’s death, thirty-one small cardboard boxes and an additional wooden box arrived at The Mount from the Nicholson.32 More material remained in Sydney but Alexander told Eve that Derek would not be available to work on it. Eve was appalled to learn that unqualified people were handling the material33 and, increasingly frustrated by delays, complained to Cambitoglou.34 If no one in Sydney was available to work on the material, she said, she could deal with it herself at Mount Pleasant.
Cambitoglou asked Eve to return Schaeffer’s Vounous material, which he understood was at The Mount35 and the coins that belonged to the Nicholson.36 In the middle of the year, Derek was sacked.37 Eve’s status was clarified when she was refused a parking certificate at the university38 and then barred entry to the Nicholson’s technical areas.39
Who owned the excavated material? Although Melbourne University had sponsored the excavations, they contributed little money. Sydney University covered some costs—Jim, Robert Merrillees and Betty Cameron were all on salary at Karmi. Cambitoglou was reluctant to cede control of the excavated material, although he had little interest in it. Eve argued that the question of ‘ownership’ was irrelevant. ‘It is really only guardianship,’ she said, ‘until the material can be handed over to the real owners: those institutions which contributed to the excavation’.40 She continued to urge Sydney University to send the material to her so that she could meet her obligations to Cyprus. Recently appointed as Director of Antiquities, Vassos Karageorghis had demanded a written report on their excavations only days before Jim’s death.41
Confidential memos and private meetings consumed university time in 1964 and 1965. Whispered gossip ran wild in the department. Eve grew angry and impatient. She offered to come to Sydney to help with the packing but was rebuffed. In February 1965 Cambitoglou wrote to the Vice-Chancellor; they were yet to obtain eighty packing cases and needed to check the contents against various object lists. This might take some time, he thought, and added:
Unless packing is properly supervised, lists checked and properly receipted, the University may find itself in legal difficulty. I hope you will agree with me that we could not allow outside packers into the store rooms of the Nicholson Museum.’42
What happened next led to even more trouble.
On 16 March 1965 Eve acknowledged receipt of forty-three boxes of material from Vasilia and Ayia Paraskevi. At last she could begin the mending and drawing work that was essential for a final written report. Her letter to Cambitoglou was annotated with a note to Sir Stephen Roberts, the Vice-Chancellor:
Sorry to trouble you, and litter your desk with more b … (Jim would have had a word for it!), but it seems that you are considered the ‘correct channel’ for correspondence, so I had best keep you informed.43
Michael Quinnell was an archaeology student at Sydney University. He had learned something of object conservation from Derek Howlett, and was now involved in packing material to send to Eve Stewart. He recalls there were twenty Early Cypriot tomb groups packed in large wooden crates and stored at the Golden Grove. They were moved to a room under the Nicholson, where the tomb groups were laid out and checked against typed lists. He remembers that most of the pots were complete. Some had been repaired but most were in one piece, although many had hairline fractures—they were ‘springing’. The globular bodies of the jugs were particularly fragile. Michael was present when Alexander Cambitoglou decided to employ Grace Brothers, a Sydney furniture removal company, to pack the material. They wrapped the pots as they would fine china or glassware, and crammed them into tea chests. Before they began, Michael warned them not to pick up any of the jugs by the handle. Of course one of the workmen did and was left holding a handle and spout, the body of the pot shattering on the floor. This, Michael remembers, was the only pot broken at the museum. All the rest broke in transit.44
Four days later Eve wrote to Cambitoglou. ‘Never again will I rely on your word’, she told Cambitoglou. ‘Who was the cretin who packed them? No “packed” is not the right word, it looked as if everything had been deliberately bundled into the tea chests in a manner calculated to do most damage.’45 Not only were objects broken, but four cases were missing, together with Jim’s plans and field notes, which she had sent to Sydney for a memorial exhibition for Jim in 1962. Eve wrote repeated and furious letters. In August 1965, over three years after Jim’s death and nearly four since the Karmi excavations, the acting head of department Richard Green told the Vice-Chancellor: ‘I would be grateful therefore if you would let her know that the Department will not be available for her or Mr Howlett’s inspection, as everything has been done already that can be done.’46 Eve’s exile from Sydney University was complete.
Four months later, after a letter from Eve’s solicitor, the four missing cases were miraculously found. Eve archly referred Cambitoglou to Luke XI:9–10: ‘So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.’47 At least she retained a sense of humour.
Eve threatened to sue the university for damage done to archaeological material and the loss of Jim’s field plans and site notebooks. The Melbourne Cyprus Expedition met to discuss the matter. Sir George Paton, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, queried whether Eve had any legal right to either objects or notes, given that the expedition had been nominally Melbourne University’s. A letter to Dr Nicolaou, Acting Director of the Department of Antiquities in Cyprus, elicited a response they hoped not to hear. The holder of the excavation licence was Professor J.R. Stewart, not the institution. The Director, Professor Stewart, was responsible for the distribution of finds to contributors.
The Melbourne Cyprus Expedition committee convened. Professor Hunt, from Melbourne, wrote confidentially to Cambitoglou suggesting the meeting should ‘state clearly who is the authority for the distribution of the material when repaired … If Mrs Stewart’s threats of legal action mean that she thinks she owns the stuff, then she will want to distribute herself’. He suggested they argue that Sydney had made the greatest contribution, as they had paid the salaries of university staff. ‘Please leave my name entirely out of this. It is my personal advice to you’, he added.48 At the meeting on 29 March, Professors Paton, Crawford, Hunt, Jackson and Cambitoglou were present, along with John Carter from Melbourne University and Eve. The committee agreed to sponsor Derek Howlett to work with Eve on the archaeological material until the middle of 1966 and to contribute £2000 to a last excavation on Cyprus to be led by Eve Stewart.49
In August 1966, a confidential memo from the Vice-Chancellor of Melbourne University to the Acting Vice-Chancellor of Sydney University noted that:
At the luncheon meeting today Sir George Paton told me that the Melbourne-Cyprus-Expedition had granted travelling expenses from the Melbourne Cyprus Expedition funds to Mrs Stewart on the strict understanding that no legal action would be brought against either the University of Sydney or the University of Melbourne in the future. He also told me that Mrs Stewart had signed a document to this effect and that she had been granted the requisite travelling funds.50
As far as both universities were concerned, this was the end of the matter.
As co-excavator Eve hoped to complete excavation work at Karmi. She and Derek and Sonja Howlett left for Cyprus late in 1966 but first they would tour England with the film she had made of the Karmi excavations. Eve had persuaded herself t
hat the film would be warmly welcomed but she was hopelessly out of touch. Although she wrote seeking support, and visited thirty-three schools in three months, the money raised was paltry. In any case, TV was awash with a much more popular show ‘Animal, Vegetable, Mineral’, on which Sir Mortimer Wheeler and Glyn Daniel—well-known, highly respected archaeologists—appeared regularly. The group sailed for England in late 1966, en route to Cyprus.
Tom Dray’s estate in Cyprus and Egypt continued to pose problems which were exacerbated by distance. Eve’s lawyer in Cyprus explained the seemingly intractable day-to-day problems. Of the various ‘plateau dwellers’ who rented houses on Tjiklos, he thought that ‘jealousy and meddlesome activities’ was the most apt description of their lifestyles. Petty rivalries came to a head over olives, each family suspecting the other of harvesting olives from trees they did not own.
The Cave Ladies were a unique problem. ‘However charming they may be in many ways’, Eve’s agent reported, they actively discouraged tenants from renting houses on Tjiklos. One potential renter was told fiercely that the area was a bird sanctuary and no dogs were allowed and the lawyer felt that if all potential tenants had to be persona grata with the Cave Ladies, Eve would never earn any rent at all. So fractious were relations between the various inhabitants of Tjiklos that the lawyer declared himself happy to resign and let the Cave Ladies take over!51
The political situation on Cyprus also deteriorated during the 1960s. Distrust between Greek and Turkish Cypriots festered as groups agitated either for union with Greece (enosis) or Turkish partition (taksim). One of the Cave Ladies, Betty Hunter-Cowan, explained.
I don’t know what sort of reports on the position here are getting out to you, but it is fairly dicy [sic] in the island, with only the British troops—bless their khaki socks—stopping the EOKA thugs from massacring the Turks. We are keeping Tjiklos blatantly British and neutral and are now in No-Man’s land between the Turks, who occupied the Pass on Boxing Day, and the EOKA boys in Kyrenia.52
In March 1964, United Nations paratroopers had occupied Tjiklos and were installed in the main house. Although this sounded ominous, Eve’s lawyer pointed out that it was better than having Tjiklos ‘smashed up in fighting between Greek and Turk’. There was little likelihood of finding tenants for the houses, ‘unless, of course, we have an influx of U.N. Officials’.53 As Tjiklos was in the UN danger zone, rents had halved.54
The Cyprus visit was a disaster. Eve had applied to Vassos Karageorghis for a permit to excavate at Palealona,55 explaining that she wanted to complete the excavations, open two extra tombs to the east of Tomb 9 and take soil samples for pollen analysis. She planned to hire Tryphon and six local workmen. Nothing seems to have come through and without any institutional support it was unlikely she would obtain a permit.56 The group stayed at Tjiklos for a couple of months. Eve’s diary records petty squabbles with Derek and Sonja, and her general disillusion, but little else. She was desolate that she had sunk to clearing looted tombs with volunteers: ‘what a lowering of J’s high principles.’57 At least she was able to show her film at Karmi, although Tryphon was unable to attend. She obtained export permits for sherds and pots and flew from Nicosia airport on 26 May 1967.58
Eve returned to Wentworth Falls and a new house. Peter Stewart had turned twenty-one and assumed ownership of Mount Pleasant. Derek and Sonja moved into Lymdale, which had been Jim’s mother’s house. No one who knew Eve was entirely sure how they had managed to pay for the house, but it was widely believed that she bankrolled the family.
For decades Jim Stewart had believed there was a need for an international research facility on Cyprus and when Eve had inherited Tjiklos in 1961 this seemed to offer a solution.
Now Eve revived the idea and wrote to friends and colleagues seeking support. Confidentially she told Megaw of her plans.59 A planning committee included Basil Hennessy, now working in Armidale at the University of New England. Basil discussed the idea with Vassos when in Cyprus in 1972; a brochure was prepared and the Australian Women’s Weekly ran an article.60 Eve fussed over the formalities of meetings and constitutions and wrote duplicate letters seeking support to everyone she could think of. She worried over names and abbreviations—SARI, NEAF, SPADE. She expected the proposed foundation would play multiple roles: it would pay for the publication of Jim’s work; it would provide a centre on Cyprus for visiting scholars; and it would support student research. She saw Derek and Sonja Howlett as being permanent staff for the centre on Cyprus, although not everyone agreed with this proposition.
From Cyprus, Judith Stylianou advised Eve to obtain official support. In the middle of 1974, Basil—now back at Sydney University—reported on a meeting with the Australian Government in Canberra.
The upshot of it all was that I should be called before the Committee early in July to put our case and, hopefully, the Special Ministry of State will then contact the Department of External Affairs to ask them to make enquiries of the Government of Cyprus. They point out that this would not mean an immediate financial commitment but that if they were prepared to go this far that we could rest assured that we will also get financial assistance when the climate was right.61
Less than a month later on 15 July 1974, right-wing members of the Cyprus National Guard, supported by the military Junta in Athens, deposed Archbishop Makarios in a military coup, claiming that Markarios was a Communist and hostile to enosis. On 20 July 1974 the Turkish Army invaded from the north and bombed Kyrenia. British residents of northern Cyprus were evacuated by ship. They were advised to meet at a nominated site and those who were unable to make the rendezvous were told to proceed to any of the open beaches along the northern coast, taking sheets and blankets with which to spell out ‘UK’ on the sand.62 When a final ceasefire was negotiated, the Turks held forty per cent of the island. This 1974 ceasefire line—today a messy line of rusting barbed wire and drums of cement—came to be known as the Green Line. The only country to recognise the Turkish state of Northern Cyprus is Turkey.
Few people at the time believed partition would last. Politically naive, Eve wrote to the Turkish consulate in Australia in February 1975 to investigate their possible support for a research centre at Tjiklos, now under Turkish military occupation. Gossip spread in the small archaeological community and Hector Catling, by now Director of the British School at Athens, wrote to Eve pointing out that, even if the rumour of her gifting Tjiklos to the Turks was untrue, ‘the rumour, as long as it goes unchecked, can only do a great deal of harm to your position vis-à-vis the Government of Cyprus and the Department of Antiquities, and, I fear, to the generality of Australian archaeologists in Cyprus and Greece’.63 Basil explained to Eve that United Nations international law forbade archaeological work in military occupied areas. A reply from the Turkish authorities is annotated in Eve’s handwriting, ‘No further action taken’.64
By 1976 Eve had accepted defeat. Lymdale had been sold, Derek and Sonja returned to England, and she realised that, for the moment, Tjiklos was lost. A year later, towards the end of winter, she planted an apricot tree in the front yard of her house on Armstrong Street. Like the mulberries, this would make good jam, she thought, as she grabbed a shovel from the back landing. She took two objects whose meaning only she understood—Jim’s ‘Pengy’ and her own ‘heirless puppy’—and pushed them into the damp soil at the base of the hole. Like a foundation deposit, she thought, amulets to protect against harm. Neatly she recorded the event in her daily diary.65
Chapter 12
Wentworth Falls, 1990
Dower House was a grand name for the six-roomed weatherboard cottage at the edge of the Blue Mountains. The name itself contributed to the sense of worlds juxtaposed and misaligned.
Inside the cottage a miscellany of clutter struggled for space: round-backed cedar dining chairs, a pine kitchen table, antique maps of Cyprus on horizontal weatherboard walls alongside china plates bearing scenes of Australian wildlife. In the sitting room, embroidered cushions and
curtains shared space with ancient pottery and faded postcards of Kyrenia. Sketches of donkeys and koalas took pride of place along the mantelpiece. Three grey filing cabinets lined one wall, together with metal catalogue files, wooden boxes of photographic slides and a wooden cabinet with shallow drawers. An exquisite walnut veneer secretariat and a plain cedar bookcase were shoved together and cardboard boxes of books, files and loose sheets of paper spilled onto the fraying Persian carpet. Books, their spines soft from constant use, lay on every surface. A heavy sea trunk squatted beside the back door; another beside the laundry tub stood on green linoleum, its feet inlaid with ivory and lacy wooden fretwork. An Early Bronze Age pot in the bathroom sat oddly beside the tortoiseshell hairbrush in its special bag. Over everything, a patina of dust. In each object a story, a layer in the woman’s life. The stratigraphy of any life is complex. Only careful excavation can expose those stories, but it is a limited sort of truth.
Few people knew this woman. Most residents of Wentworth Falls, if they thought at all about the old lady who lived alone on Armstrong Street, imagined a genteel background, though her battered parka and trousers, baggy at the knees, had seen better days. Her English accent was proper, almost prim, and her answers to questions precise. She seldom lost her temper but didn’t suffer fools. Although the interior of her house seemed chaotic, she knew precisely where everything was and could tell each object’s story. Visiting tradesmen thought her kind but eccentric and although she never locked her door, few people crossed her threshold.