Four miles tramping through the afternoon brought them to Dubbo. Crowds greeted the Coo-ees and a massed band played them through the main street to the town hall where the mayor and 2000 citizens lauded them. After being issued with overcoats at their camp, the marchers returned to the town hall for the formalities.
The mayor was considerately brief in his speech of welcome, but none the less cordial. After a light repast of tea and cakes, the ‘Coo-ees’ marched to the drill hall for a wash, and later to the Protestant Hall to a big ‘meat tea,’ of steak and eggs, bread and butter and jam; a pleasant change of menu after banquets and poultry and such delicacies.
Another four men joined here: ‘Thus the snowball army grows as it rolls onward,’ wrote the journalist accompanying them.
And so they did. Through Wongarbon where twelve men joined. They got another six in Geurie; 31 in Wellington; one each in Stuart Town and Euchareena; four in Molong; five in Parkes; nineteen in Orange; two in Millthorpe; eleven in Blayney; seventeen in Bathurst; one each in Glanmire and Yetholme; three in Wallerawang; nineteen in Lithgow; two in Blackheath; eleven in Katoomba; one in Leura; ten in Lawson; five in Springwood; four in Penrith; 27 in Parramatta and 22 in Ashfield. Cheered through the streets of country towns and suburbs, the Coo-ees reached the end of their long trek with 263 volunteers to enlist in their ranks.
After more than a month of marching and partying the Coo-ees paraded through the city to the Domain. Here they were supposed to rest but the crowds cheered and prominent men made yet more speeches followed by an official reception at Martin Place. ‘Capt. Hitchens, the leader of the band, was accorded a most gratifying reception, and the men were overwhelmed with congratulations and good wishes.’
Then suddenly it was all over. The 263 Coo-ees who had enlisted were taken by train to Liverpool Camp where they learned how to fight. They already knew well how to march.
Their example inspired another nine recruitment marches. Some headed for Sydney, including the Waratahs from Nowra and the Kangaroos from Wagga Wagga. Others marched to their nearest recruitment centres. The Wallabies trekked from Narrabri to Newcastle; the Dungarees from Warwick to Brisbane; the Men from Snowy River from Delegate to Goulburn; the Kurrajongs from Inverell to Narrabri; the Kookaburras from Tooraweenah to Bathurst; the North Coast Boomerangs from Grafton to Maitland and the Central West Boomerangs from Parkes to Bathurst. In total nearly two thousand men joined the snowball recruitment marches of World War I, many never to return.
MAY GIBBS TAKES THE TRANS
After years of surveying, planning, squabbling and labour the Trans-Australian Railway was finally completed and open for business in 1917. World War I was at its height and there was much grim news for Australians to digest. Although it was now possible to travel from the east coast to the west coast in only a few days, and in comfort, the magnitude of the accomplishment was muted in the grief and shock of the past three years of war.
A few months before the fighting in Europe and the Middle East ended, a woman destined for great achievements in writing and illustrating for children took the long ride across the country. Her name was Cecilia May Gibbs, creator of the Gumnut Babies and the Banksia Men.
May Gibbs was then only on the cusp of the great fame she would achieve. At 41 years of age she had already published children’s books in England and Australia, as well as occasionally drawing cartoons for the suffragette cause. But she had not yet enjoyed the spectacular success her Snugglepot and Cuddlepie series would bring after its publication in 1918.
That year May Gibbs, ‘an appalling sailor’, gratefully boarded the Trans, as the great railway was already known, to visit family in Perth. On her return to Sydney she described the journey to a journalist, while ‘Seated in her gay little studio, before her drawing board, where she is busily at work on her latest creation—the Wattle Babies . . .’
The overland trip did have some drawbacks: ‘changing in and out of trains on a journey which lasts four days and five nights isn’t all joy’, Gibbs complained of the constant need to deal with different railway line gauges and other operational problems. Furthermore, the leg from Perth to Kalgoorlie was made in carriages with no locks on the cabin doors ‘and it is rather embarrassing, to say the least of it, when a conductor dashes in with your towels at an awkward moment’.
Gibbs noted that the early train from Perth was known as ‘the drunks’ train’ because it was the only service with a bar. This might have been the best one to catch as from Kalgoorlie there was almost five hundred kilometres of dead straight track across the Nullarbor; ‘not a single curve marring its virtuous path’, wrote the journalist. Gibbs thought it was ‘just like a huge ploughed field with stubble represented by the salt bush, and it is so dried up that the novelty of it is its only charm’.
The food was ‘quite decent’, Gibbs thought, but the wayside stops were ‘not up to much . . . You would have laughed to see some of the quaint little settlements here and there across the desert. Of course, the train was the one event of the day, and the whole township turned up dressed in their best to gaze at us.’
Together with other passengers, Gibbs got out at one stop to take a stroll. But the driver forgot to blow the whistle and the train began pulling out. ‘I never ran as fast in my life, and I nearly got left behind. The crowd just laughed, and the last we saw of them was entering their little hessian-covered huts, to await the next arrival.’ A favourite railway prank, perhaps?
At another settlement along the line Gibbs was startled when a tall Aboriginal man suddenly popped his head into her compartment. He ‘explained that he had just wandered in from the bush to have a squizz’.
The scenery between Port Augusta and Adelaide consisted of fields covered with creamy-looking grass, with hills in the background. Everybody rose at 4 a.m. to view the sunrise, and the sight was evidently an impressive one. ‘From Port Augusta to Tarcoola the eye sees nothing but red-soil plains and undulating country . . . it filters in and covers everything with a fine film of dust.’
Gibbs was forthcoming with the fare and costs of her journey: ‘The whole trip (single fare) costs £14 odd—a berth being 10/ extra. It is wise to buy 13/6 worth of food tickets for the transcontinental train, and £4 should be allowed for tips and incidentals.’ In today’s value, Gibbs’s ticket cost over $1000 and her tips and incidentals up to $400.
‘Oh yes, altogether I enjoyed it, and had a beautifully restful time,’ the author concluded.
The following year, Gibbs returned to Perth where she later married. At that time she was described as fairly tall and dark-haired with an artistic face and a refined voice. Photographs of her suggest a slightly impish personality. She continued publishing children’s stories and her lovable bush babies and not-so-lovable Banksia Men became established as iconic characters of Australian children’s literature and nightmares.
As with so many others, her finances were destroyed by the Depression of the 1930s. Her husband died in 1939 and she lived on at Nutcote, her distinctive home in Neutral Bay, famous but alone apart from her dogs. She published further books for children, though none had the success of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie or her cartoon strip, Bib and Bub, all still in print. Her achievements were recognised with the award of a Member of the British Empire and she died in 1969. Her legacy of art and writing is preserved in books and in Nutcote itself, now a museum of her work owned by the North Sydney Council and open to visitors.
A GLIMPSE INTO ETERNITY
Andrew Thomas retired from a 22-year career with the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 2014. He was the first Australian-born astronaut to journey into space.
Growing up in Adelaide, Andrew was fascinated with space. He finished university with a PhD in mechanical engineering, never thinking that he might one day travel beyond the earth. But after taking American citizenship and years of preparation and training with NASA, he boarded the space shuttle Endeavour for its eleventh mission in 1996. He carried with him a
piece of wood from Captain James Cook’s famous HMS Endeavour.
During the voyage, the crew launched two satellites and carried out technical tests and scientific experiments. When the shuttle passed over Adelaide, the city turned on its lights to wink a welcome to its intrepid son as he glided far above them, taking ‘a glimpse into eternity’ as he later described the experience.
At least one South Australian back on Earth got to share in the moment. On 21 May, Mrs Frances Durdin of Port Elliot waited in the garden with her radio tuned for news of the shuttle. She was hoping for maybe just a glimpse of the orbiting spacecraft through the thick clouds hanging over the region. Just before 6 p.m.:
‘I looked straight above my head where there was a clear patch of sky and saw the lights of the shuttle quite clearly as it travelled about halfway across the sky before disappearing into cloud to the north west,’ she said. ‘I was very thrilled to see it—I didn’t expect to though because of the overcast conditions. I rang Dr Thomas’s father in Hackham to tell him I’d seen the space shuttle and had prayed for his son and the mission. He had not been able to see the shuttle despite going to the beach and he was pleased that I had rung.’
Through more than 240 hours Endeavour orbited the earth 160 times at a height of 283 kilometres. By the time the shuttle touched down the flight had logged around six and a half million kilometres.
Andrew Thomas made further trips into space and each time took with him a memento of previous great Australian journeys, including a slide rule from Douglas Mawson’s Antarctic expedition and the pilot wing insignia of Ross Smith, pilot of the first plane to fly from London to Australia within 30 days. On his 2001 trip he carried a fragment of the propeller of Charles Kingsford Smith’s plane Southern Cross. In 1928 Kingsford Smith used this three-engined Fokker on the famous flight he made with Charles Ulm in the longest nonstop ocean flight made at that time.
In 1998, Thomas lived aboard the Russian Mir space station and in 2001 flew with the eighth shuttle mission. His last space journey was in 2005. Although retired from space travel, he has continued his involvement with space and promotes the possibilities of Australia as a base for space tourism.
Although Andrew Thomas was Australia’s first trained astronaut into space, he was not the first Australian to get there. Oceanographer Paul D. Scully-Power flew a shuttle mission as a scientist ten years earlier. These two Australians were travellers at the beginning of humanity’s most recent journey—to the stars.
CHAPTER NOTES AND SOURCES
1. ARRIVING
THE FIRST JOURNEY
Estimates of the length of Aboriginal occupation of Australia are controversial. Dates and ranges are continually revised, challenged and debated by researchers. This estimate is based on the most recent evidence and analysis. For a clear discussion of the complexities involved see
FIRST ENCOUNTERS
Geoff Wharton, ‘The Pennefather River: Place of Australian national heritage’, in Royal Geographical Society of Queensland Inc., ‘Gulf of Carpentaria Scientific Study Report’, p. 35. See also James Henderson, Sent Forth a Dove: Discovery of the Duyfken, UWA Publishing, Nedlands, 1998.
A BOY TRANSPORTED
Home Office Convict Transportation Registers, ‘Other Fleets and Ships 1791–1868’. Some sources say Tomlinson was aged just seven years. It is possible that Tomlinson was older than ten—perhaps thirteen—and that his age was lowered to elicit sympathy. He received none.
See
ALL HIS JOIFUL CREW
Marnie Bassett, The Hentys: An Australian colonial tapestry, Oxford University Press, London, 1954.
ABOUT 600,000 ACRES, MORE OR LESS
John Batman’s journal was published in The Age, 28 October 1882, Melbourne, p. 1S.
GYPSY JOURNEYS
‘The women stick to the old dress’: The Argus, 26 May 1866, p. 4; from the Orange Guardian; ‘The Greek people of Melbourne’: Advocate, 15 October 1898, Melbourne, p. 16; James Jupp (ed.), The Australian People, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2001, pp. 63–4.
TO AUSTRALIA BY SUBMARINE
‘it is divided into eight compartments’: Thomas Michael Jones, Watchdogs of the Deep: Life in a submarine during the Great War, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1935, pp. 7–8; Michael D. White, Australian Submarines: A history, AGPS, Canberra, 1992; Mercury, 19 January 1921, Hobart, p. 4; Mercury, 24 January 1921, Hobart, p. 4.
2. SURVIVING
WITHIN A FEW HOURS OF ETERNITY
‘None can read the above account’: The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 28 June 1803, p. 4; David Levell, Tour to Hell: Convict Australia’s great escape myths, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 2007; Anne-Maree Whitaker, Unfinished Revolution: United Irishmen in New South Wales, 1800–1810, Crossing Press, 1994.
UP, UP AND AWAY!
‘I hailed the crowd in Hyde Park’: The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser, 22 January 1859, Maitland, p. 3.
AFTER BURKE AND WILLS
Ian D. Clark and Fred Cahir (eds), The Aboriginal Story of Burke and Wills: Lost narratives, CSIRO Publishing, Canberra, 2013; Welch’s journal is held by the State Library of New South Wales and his field book by the State Library of Victoria. In 2002 the National Library of Australia included some of Edwin Welch’s collections in an exhibition titled ‘From Melbourne to Myth’, curated by historian Tim Bonyhady.
A DANGEROUS VISIT
‘The dress of his Royal Highness was removed’: The Sydney Morning Herald, 13 March 1868, Sydney, p. 5.
HARRY STOCKDALE’S LONG RIDE
‘came suddenly upon a camp of natives’: Harry Stockdale’s journal of exploration in the far north-west of Australia, 1884–85, document no. A 1580, State Library of New South Wales,
ACROSS THE ICE
Mawson’s account is in his Home of the Blizzard, first published in 1915 and reprinted in many editions since. There is an excellent recreation of his hut at the Mawson’s Huts Replica Museum in Hobart, including archival material and artefacts. In 2015–16 archaeologists conducted excavations at Mawson’s surprisingly well-preserved hut at Cape Denison, Commonwealth Bay, in Antarctica.
LIFEBOAT NO. 7
‘Soon Britannia’s forward hold filled’: Ian McIntosh’s account at
DUNERA BOYS
Ken Inglis, ‘From Berlin to the Bush’, The Monthly, August 2010; a 1985 TV mini-series popularised the collective name ‘Dunera Boys’. The 75th anniversary of the event was celebrated with a number of commemorative activities in 2015.
3. DANGEROUS JOURNEYS
VOYAGE TO FREEDOM
‘The Natives came down’: Tim Causer (ed.), Memorandoms of James Martin, The Bentham Project, University College London Library Special Collections, London, 2014.
NED KELLY’S POOR DRIVING
‘I did not bail up at first’: The Argus, 12 December 1878, Melbourne, pp. 4, 5.
THE CAMELEER FACTOR
‘we travelled to Ngoaaddapa’: J.G. Hill (comp.) The Calvert Scientific Exploring Expedition, George Philip & Son, London and Liverpool, 1905; ‘Anyone who has read the plain’: News, 25 May 1933, Adelaide, p. 8.
WHEELS ACROSS THE WILDERNESS
‘I have been a wanderer’: Australian Town and Country Journal, 20 December 1906; ‘Oh . . . I fancy the trip’: The West Australian, 10 January 1907, p. 8; ‘I have made my second attempt’: The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 March 1907, Sydney, p. 12; ‘as one of the most important’: The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 May 1907, Sydney, p. 3. Though he had changed bicycles and was now riding a Davies Franklin fitted with gears.
MRS BELL’S OLDSMOBILE
‘Hundreds of stark naked natives’: Mirror, 24 Ap
ril 1926, Perth, p. 7; ‘It speaks highly for Mrs Bell’s’: News, 2 March 1926, Adelaide, p. 9; ‘Smartly clad in riding breeches’: The West Australian, 8 April 1926, Perth, p. 10; Georgine Clarsen, Eat My Dust: Early women motorists, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2011.
THE SECRET ORDER OF THE DOUBLE SUNRISE
‘It is an enormous flight non-stop’: The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 August 1944, Sydney, p. 4; It is said that the Double Sunrise Cats: ABC News, 22 May 2015,
THE REAL GREAT ESCAPE
Some sources say 54 men escaped; ‘While we all hoped for the future’: Paul Brickhill, The Great Escape, Faber & Faber, London, 1950; Paul Royle, interview, 2 December 2003, Imperial War Museum, London, catalogue no. 26605,
A JENOLAN JOURNEY
‘Of all the gambles’: The Sun-Herald, 10 October 1954, Sydney, p. 31.
MANHUNT
The Citation (the newsletter of the Northern Territory Police Historical Society), vol. 3, no. 13, September 1998, pp. 7–8; Rosa Ellen, ‘Incredible Feat of Tracking . . .’, ABC News, 23 October 2015,
4. MYSTERIOUS JOURNEYS
LEICHHARDT’S RIFLE
‘Some time around 1900’: This is commonly referred to as ‘Leichhardt’s rifle’, though it may have been a pistol. The National Museum of Australia usually refers to the object on which the plate was reportedly found as a ‘firearm’; ‘There was also a story’: Glenville Pike, ‘Where Did Leichhardt Wander? A Theory of His Probable Route and Fate’, paper presented to the Historical Society of Queensland, 25 August 1949,
Great Australian Journeys Page 25