The Heather to the Hawkesbury

by Sheila Hunter

  “Tell me about the family in Sydney now, Granda. What about the MacKenzie's?” Jane snuggled down in one of the other big leather chairs that were in this part of the living room. “They were your mother’s relatives, weren’t they?”

  “Yes, Uncle Fergus was Mother’s brother. He stopped in Sydney and worked for Mr. Trent. His children married into the Trent family and I cannot remember now who married which one. Your Granny would know, wouldn’t you, dear?”

  “Well, yes, I do, but they would only be names to you Janey. I will show it to you on the family tree” said Cattie.

  “Have you written it all down, Granny? Do show me sometimes, please.”

  “I must admit, not me but your great grandmother did it, so I have most of it, dear. Granda’s mother was a great one for writing things down and her diaries are here somewhere, along with the family tree that she faithfully kept when a new baby was born. Where do you keep them, Duncan? Are they with yours?”

  “Yes, my dear, they are. They are safely kept there in my cedar chest. Would you like to look at them, Jane? Perhaps, if you are interested I may give them to you to look after when I am gone” said Duncan.

  “I hope that won’t be for a long time, Granda, but yes I would love to read them. Did your mother always keep a diary?”

  “No, not at first. After we moved here she kept a tally of all that went on here and all of the family’s doings including the daily quantities of milk, cheeses and eventually fruit. She even kept records of how many boxes of each sort were picked and how much they sold for. I imagine that your grand children would regard them as bits of Australian history. Perhaps they should be carefully kept for such a time. Can you imagine what your grandchildren, sixty years from now in 1980, would think of it all?”

  “If I ever have any, Granda,” laughed Jane.

  “Well, I shall get the diaries out for you tomorrow. They will take quite a lot of reading, so be prepared to start a marathon.”

  “I will look forward to that. Anyway, back to Uncle Fergus,”

  “Well, my Uncle Fergus was very ill when we left Skye, we didn’t think he’d survive the trip, but by the time we were half way his health had improved so much that when we met Mr Trent he was quite well. He became quite a businessman and ended up with the stores you now see in Sydney. Big department stores, as you know. He certainly had a knack for selling things. Mr. Trent’s son, Hugh, was never really interested in the business and so Uncle Fergus and his son, Hamish, bought him out of the business when Mr. Trent died. From there on they spread like mushrooms and had branches everywhere. There always seemed to have enough boys in the family to carry on in the same way. My branch of the family is the only one that runs short of boys and we started late, didn’t we, Cattie?”

  “Yes, dear, but I think we go in for quality, not quantity. What do you think, Janey?” laughed Cattie.

  Jane laughed, “I hope Colin marries Linda and has lots of boys for you, and quite quickly, too, so you can enjoy them. Incidentally, Granny, if they do get married soon, do you think I could move upstairs with you and Granda and let Colin and Linda have the downstairs?”

  “By all means, dear. That is what we would expect to happen. This will always be your home. It is already in our wills, isn’t it, Duncan?”

  “Yes, my dear, there will be room for you in this nest and one day it will be yours. Probably not too far in the future.”

  “Well, I don’t want you to go for quite a while yet, Granda,” said Jane, adding wistfully, “but maybe I will spend my old age in that chair, too, looking at Great Grandmother’s picture.”

  Chapter 27 - Epilogue 2

  Eighty seven year old Jane Macdonald now sat in the very old leather chair looking through the pictures. What a difference. The dust from the quarry on the next property was drifting over the old orchard in clouds. On days of wind like this you could almost feel the grit on the trees. No tree could withstand such an onslaught. No wonder Colin had lost interest and she could not blame his boys for giving up on it. Colin was an old man now and had moved up to the Avoca Beach on the Central Coast of New South Wales to get away from the devastation that the old woman looked out at now.

  “Are you awake, Aunty?”

  “Yes, Sally, I’m awake. I have just been sitting here looking at it all.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t, Aunty. You cannot do anything about it, so please just shut it out. We still have this wonderful house to live in and we must be thankful about that.”

  “Yes, and I am thankful that you and Bill are happy here with me.”

  “Don’t worry, Aunty, when Daddy moved away I was only too pleased for us to come back to the old house. I had a very happy childhood here and I love it so. Bill and Chris do, too. It is handy for Bill to go to his practice in Penrith and now that Chris is at Hawkesbury College, it is close for him too.”

  “Just fancy your Chris following the old tradition of agriculture. I thought he would be a doctor like his father.”

  “Well, he isn’t and we are both very glad about it. You never know, if they stop crushing gravel right on our doorstep, he may be able to use the farm again. It would be good to see. It would please you, wouldn’t it Aunty?”

  “I was just sitting here wondering what will become of it all, Sally. It has been in the family for so long that I couldn’t imagine it not being a farm.”

  “It must really hurt you, Aunty, to see it so.”

  “Yes, it does, but I daresay I will not live long enough for that to be a trouble to anyone.”

  “Tell me about the family in the old days, Aunty. As a matter of fact, Bill and I were talking about it at breakfast. I think I would like to write it all down while I can. You have some old diaries, haven’t you, that your great grandmother or someone else wrote? Would you let me have them for a while so I could do that?” said Sally.

  “Sal, that is such a good idea, I had always meant to write about them myself. I can fill you in on lots of things, too. You’d better do it before I die. It will give me something to do. You are right about the diaries. My great Grandmother Mary started them and then my Grandfather Duncan carried on and I carried on after he died. They are rather wonderful bits of Australian history. It is really ‘Nerrigundah’s’ history, as Great Grandmother started them when they came here, but she told quite a lot of their leaving Scotland and the voyage out here, her unhappy their first years here until they bought ‘Nerrigundah’. I love reading them and I would be happy for you to read them too and use the information in them for a story. Would you really do it, dear?”

  “Yes, Aunty, I would like to do that.”

  “Well, no time like the present. Let us go and get them now. Bring the tray-mobile, Sally. We will need it as there are a lot of them.”

  “Goodness, I thought there would be only one or two.”

  “No, there are lots of them. Come on.”

  Sally helped her old Aunt to get out of the old deep leather chair that had sat in front of the window for generations. Jane stood still for a moment until her legs straightened, took her niece’s arm and they went into the front bedroom of the house to a lovely old cedar chest of drawers.

  “Bring that chair over here, dear, where I can sit down. I find it hard to open these big drawers now and so I leave the bottom drawer open a little. I can get the diaries out by leaving it open that much. Open it up.”

  “Aunty! There are a lot. I had no idea. What a feast of information” gasped Sally.

  “I think I am a bit cold here, Sally, so put them on the tray-mobile and let’s take them into the front room near the fire. I can’t believe it’s been about 70 years since I first read these. Granda was still writing his. It was just after my parents died of the ‘flu and he was still recovering. We were trying to keep his mind of things.”

  Sally soon had them piled up on the trolley and they went back to her aunt’s favourite chair.

  “The blue ones are Great Grandmother Mary Macdonald’s diaries, Sally, and all the ot
hers are Granda’s. Great Grandmother Mary, was a neat, orderly person, I take it, and liked her diaries to be the same and so there is quite a set of them. They are in very good order really, aren’t they? Granda started writing his in any old book, then later, as he grew up, he bought the same kind of book and so made another set.”

  “What lovely writing Mary had! I see that the first is the story of their coming here, as you said, Aunty. Gee the ink has faded” Sally said.

  Jane then leaned over and picked up one of her grandfather’s red books. She leafed through one, put it down, picked up another and put it down, picked up a third and leaned back, leafing through the pages and sighing a little.

  “What is wrong, Aunty ?”

  “Nothing, dear, I just found the place where he writes about my Father and Mother dying. I hate reading this bit. He was very sick just after this happened and he didn’t write for quite a time. I remember him sitting here, just like I am at this moment, on a day during his convalescence and telling me about these diaries. It was the first time I took any notice of them. I always knew he kept a diary and I suppose I knew about Mary’s too, but it wasn’t until that day when he was so weak from the ‘flu that took mummy and daddy, that we talked about the diaries at length. He had been very ill. We nearly lost him, and he was so stunned by my parents’ death, that I think Granny and I just wanted to keep him amused and so I asked him about the family history. It certainly started something, because I have been interested in it ever since. I am so pleased that you are too, Sally.” Jane sat reading for a bit.

  “Well, it was something that Chris said this morning that started me thinking about it. Aunty, I am sure that the young ones of today do not understand what the old people put into this country to make it the pleasant place it is to live in. That is why I thought I would put it together so that people like Chris, would read it and know.”

  “It is a good thought, dear. I wonder though, whether the young are interested in what happened so long ago. They are always going at such a pace that they don’t seem to have time for the past, anyway?”

  “Well, dear, I suppose you cannot live in the past. Daddy always tells me that every generation thinks that the greatest change came in their lifetime, but I cannot help feeling that most has come in this last generation. Since the Second World War. You must feel that. What was it like after the First World War, Aunty?”

  “There was much change then, Sally. My parents died just after that war and, of course, that meant a great change for me, for all of us. Then Stephen was killed in that first war and I never found anyone else I wanted to marry. It was that war that started the real machinery age, I think. When I was a little girl we went everywhere either on horseback or in a horse-drawn vehicle of some kind. After the war we were all car mad and horses became rather a thing of the past. It hit the Fraser family hard and that is when they sold ‘Riverdell’ and the family was dispersed. Come to think of it. I don’t think I know the whereabouts of one of the Frasers.

  “I still write to Jenny Fraser, Aunty. We were very close at school and we keep in touch. She lives in Adelaide now her daughter and has just had her first grandchild. I keep in contact by phone.”

  “Grandmothers seem to be getting younger every year. Well, after that war everything began to speed up, but there was still value in life. I think life has lost some of its glow. No, don’t look at me like that. I don’t only mean that life has lost its glory for me, but for the younger people. Life isn’t as simple as it was. People make their lives so complicated. My Grandfather just wouldn’t have imagined that anything could disturb life on ‘Nerrigundah’. One tilled the soil, working very hard, one saw the results of one’s effort, with God’s help, and you kept doing this until your children took over from you. It’s not the same anymore.”

  “No, I can see that. Of course, the younger ones cannot see that they should follow in father’s footsteps just because he did a certain thing, that is furtherest from their minds. I daresay values are just different.”

  The old lady turned and looked at her niece. “Sally, what will become of ‘Nerrigundah’? What will happen to it?”

  “Aunty, I don’t know. I cannot say, but you realise, as I do, that it will never be the same again. Why don’t you think up some wonderful scheme for it, in case Chris doesn’t come back to it, or the gravel dust gets worse and we can not use it for agriculture.”

  “I don’t suppose your brothers will ever want it. I was so pleased when Uncle Malcolm’s grandsons, Dick and John did Agriculture at Hawkesbury College. I thought that it would be a continuing of the tradition of Macdonalds again, but look where they are sitting at city desks, being, what do you call them? Rural scientists!”

  “Yes, dear. You cannot expect them to come back here. Their wives are city girls anyway.”

  Both women fell to musing again and looking through the diaries.

  “What a tragedy it all is,” the old lady thought. “But is it? What right have I to want to tell these young people how to live their lives. Maybe, life is changing, but look at the age Australia is. So ancient that one couldn’t take it in. What terrible upheavals have happened in it’s long history. I suppose when white men came here, the Aboriginal people thought that life was finished too. It was for some, but the country goes on and on. Well now the story will been written for our future generations! What was it Granda used to say? ‘God is in his Heaven and all’s right with the world’. I’m sure he was right!” Jane lay back in the big leather chair and slept.

  Hawkesbury Family that hires Murdoch Macdonald

  Forrest Family

  William Forrest m Alison Forrest

  William Jr Catriona (Cattie) Grant

  12 10 8

  (Willie) m Duncan Macdonald

  Andrew (Andy)

  m Elizabeth (Betty)

  Colin Macdonald Jane

  m Linda Turner never married

  William (Bill) Sally Chris

  doctor prologue writer and farmer

  carer for her Aunt Jane

  Sally m Phil White

  ( see ‘Reef Holiday’ pub 2016)

  Other Families in the Story

  Hawkesbury Family

  Charles Parry m Isabelle Parry

  Sophia Laura Charles Jr Diana

  10 8 6 4

  Laura married Malcolm Macdonald and had 7 Children

  Sydney Businessman - hires Fergus.

  John Trent m Emma Trent

  Hugh Grace Philip

  6 4 born later

  Hugh married Susannah MacKenzie

  Grace married Hamish MacKenzie

  Sheila Hunter Bio.

  1924 - 2002

  Sheila Hunter was passionate about her family and loved to research their history. This story is gleaned from a mix of both her husbands and her own Scottish families and their settlement and contribution to our country. Her Father was the grandson of Scottish immigrants and he was both born and brought up on the Victorian goldfields as was her mother. Sheila’s husbands family were also from Scotland (McLeans) and came out as described in the book, only they were of the illiterate class (speaking only Gaelic) from the Isle of Mull. Life was hard for them and they were helped to learn and settle in the new colony by John Dunmore Lang and his wife. They were taught to cut trees, farm, milk cows, make cheese and they learnt with gusto turning these skills into what later became Norco Dairy Co-Op in Northern New South Wales.

  Sheila was born in New Zealand to Australian parents, Murdoch and Mabel McDonald (or Macdonald as they were known before they went to NZ) moved back to Melbourne Australia with her family when Sheila was only 4 yrs old. She was a nurse by training, but an adventurer in her life! A wife and mother she was a great story teller, often making up very long stories for both her children and grandchildren. They would listen enwrapped within the stories of her telling. Often these whiled away many hours of travel in the car while travelling Australia.

  In 1999 Sheila was awarded one of 20 Federal Recipients of
the Year of the Senior Citizen Awards. She was an amazing woman! Life was tough - growing up during WW2 in a single parent family (her dad had left them to back to the two children from his first marriage who were still in New Zealand). They lived on the docks in Melbourne in a family Service Station. She went to school during the day and worked in the Service Station after school, weekends and at nights. She won a full ‘Cello scholarship about this time, but it was during the war and on arriving home one day found that her mother had sold her ‘Cello to help pay the household bills! Yes life was hard! On leaving school she enrolled in Nursing only to be the butt of jokes from her family, but she not only succeeded but excelled at this caring role, ending up as acting Matron of “Roma” Private Hospital in East Gosford NSW.