A Story of a Girl – Kate Cooper

FREMANTLE – Kate Cooper sailed from England to Fremantle in 1894 as one of the girls who came to Australia on what were coined “The Bride Ships”. These women, chosen for their good reputation, were desperately needed to balance the acute disparity of the sexes in Western Australia.

Gulf of Siam passenger list – Kate is listed ninth from the top.

On the 6^th of October 1894 they docked at Fremantle Western Australia. Previous experiences reported that “The ships which brought these women during the 1890s were met at the wharf by crowds of men anxious to employ, or to propose marriage”. The ‘Brides’ had been warned by Ellen Joyce to uphold their excellent reputations and conduct themselves irreproachably.

Port of Fremantle around the time that the Kate Cooper arrived.

Little of Kate is known during her time in Fremantle and her connection with the father of her first child. On the 28^th of November 1896, Kate married Tom Uriah Grandell at the Anglican church in Fremantle, identifying his parents William Grandell, a farmer, and Ellen Austin. We also know that in 1896 Kate gave birth to a son, Thomas Uriah Grandell Cooper. Tragically, this little boy only lived eight weeks.

Marriage certificate of Kate Cooper and Tom Grandell in 1896 – two years after she arrived in Fremantle.

Tom had come to Western Australia from Devon in Jamaica, and his baptism records state that he was black. His parents were ex-slaves who upon their freedom, had taken on the names of their masters. A mixed-race marriage in Australia in 1896 was considered highly controversial and would have branded the newlyweds as social outcasts.

Very little is known of what happened to Tom once they had lost their son, but by 1898 we know that Kate had left Fremantle for the Goldfields.

Kate’s affinity for minority groups outside the boundaries of typical societal expectations was about to broaden in a way that she couldn’t have predicted.

COOLGARDIE – By June 1899 Kate Cooper was living in Coolgardie and had converted from her birth religion. She married an Indian man named Dardoola Bux in a Mohammedan ceremony – with their first child born nine months after the wedding.

Dardoola has variants of his name in the records – many of which were anglicised spellings and pronunciations. He was known as Cadir, Carter, Charlie, and Dardoola and it is very hard to locate information on him – he didn’t even know his true age, stating “about 42” on my grandmother’s birth certificate, and coming from Allahabad in India.

We have family tales that say he lost his mother, father, and sister and was raised by his grandparents in a village well out of town. There is a tiger’s claw that was apparently from a tiger he killed there. He hated camels and said they “are brothers to the snake”. We don’t believe he came out as part of a team working with them, listing his many occupations as a marine dealer (bottle-o), butcher, wood cutter, and selling lollies and vegetables from a cart.

The claw of a tiger rumoured to have been killed in India by Dardoola.

Kate is rumoured to have met Dardoola when she bought lollies from him whilst working as a servant. Family recollections by her son say Kate was very pretty, short and with curly hair. They lived on the eastern edge of Coolgardie on Londonderry Road, and then in a house on Lady Loch Road, Rose Hill Lease. They were involved with the other Indians, known collectively as ‘Afghans’, and a minority community was forged on the outskirts of a booming Goldfield town.

Kate and Dardoola had eight children – their anglicised names are in brackets:
Mohammed (Buxie) b 1899 Coolgardie
Zeneph (Jani/Jane) b 1900 Coolgardie
Amir (Tom) b 1902 Coolgardie
Marone (Marion) b 1905 Coolgardie
un-named daughter (stillborn) b 1907 Coolgardie
Zora (Zara/Dora) b 1909 (Karen’s grandmother) Coolgardie
Rheam/Karlim b 1910 (died at seven months) Kalgoorlie
Lila b 1912 Kalgoorlie

Dardoola was not shy in defending his beliefs, with himself, Kate, and their children attending the courts on several occasions. In 1901 Dardoola was in Coolgardie court twice. Once for a claim for work done and monies paid with another Indian, Massa Singh, and another for using obscene language. His children recall his short temper. One time, Kate had been paid for doing some ironing and he threw the coins away in disgust –

people’s treatment of him mattered more than money.

They lived a quieter life for a while after these court interactions, with their next appearance in the papers in 1908, where Dardoola takes a Bonnievale butcher to court. Dardoola, or Charley as the locals knew him, butchered sheep in keeping with the religious beliefs of his community – and did so normally without trouble. However, this time a line was crossed involving the blood of animals. They considered the blood impure and adhered to strict butchering practices. Dardoola went to the butchers with his sons Mohammed (Buxie) and Tom. Arthur Wrench was alleged to have picked up little 9-year-old Mohammed, who was wearing a hat and tipped him over the blood hole, whereupon his hat was stained. The child could no longer wear the defiled hat, and a new one was demanded by the boy’s father. The defendant paid the court’s fine – but the story details racism that the family was subjected to – and probably tired of.

Later that year, we see their house and belongings listed for sale in the local paper.

In 1909 they are back in court – this time with Kate as a witness in the proceedings. This case centred around two goat kids that Dardoola was looking after for a friend whilst they were in the hospital. They had gone missing, and there was an altercation when he approached the white person who allegedly took the goats. These events may have led to the family moving to Kalgoorlie where the last two children were born – however, their lives were about to change irreversibly with the next move.

KALGOORLIE – The family left Coolgardie – moving to 317 Hay Street Kalgoorlie, where their second last child was born. The little baby lived only seven months. Kate was nursing him knowing he wasn’t going to make it. The last child, a girl, is born and this is where the lives of all the family are completely turned upside down.

Lila was three months old when her mother, allegedly suffering from postnatal depression, tried to kill herself by cutting her throat. Kate ended up in Kalgoorlie Hospital and was later transferred to Claremont Hospital. Medical records show that she was 1500 mm (4 foot 11 inches) tall, and 47 kgs.

Kalgoorlie Miner 9 July 1912, page 4

Kate was just 34 years of age, with blue eyes, and brown hair – her husband said that she had not been the same since the last birth. The case book reports her as being delusional, thinking her food was poisoned, and imagining people, including her deceased mother, talking to her and being outside her ward – with someone wanting to kill her.

She was depressed, suicidal, and needing to be tube fed.

Tragically Kate passed away less than three months after being admitted to Claremont Assylum, leaving a father and six little children, aged 6 months to 13 years old, to care for.

A final story that relates Kate’s approach to those on the outskirts of society is evident through another family recollection. The story goes that missionaries would come to town to take aboriginal children from their mothers. People would bring the little ones to Kate’s house, whereupon she would hide them. The missionaries, seeing that Kate was English, would leave her alone thereby keeping the indigenous mothers and their children together. This earned Kate the respect of the other outliers of society in the outback Goldfields.

LEONORA – Dardoola took his grieving children to Lawlers, before relocating the family to Leonora where they lived in the Indian camps down Rajah Road. Dora (my grandmother), and her little sister Lila, are both in this photo of the Leonora school children in 1916. The girls were only allowed into the school because they had an English mother and were considered ‘half-castes’.

Leonora School 1916 – Lila Bux third row from the bottom, third from the left and Dora Bux, fourth row from the bottom, third from the right.

Life for Dardoola and his six children would not be the same with the passing of Kate. The older girls helped with their siblings whilst he grew veggies and collected bottles to bring in an income whilst the younger kids went to school. He also carted wood. Little Lila would walk up and down on her father’s painful calves to relieve them. There is a stream that runs down near the railway, and this provides water for the family and their vegetables. An Italian farmer cut into this watercourse further up river and this compromised the precious commodity that fed through to the Indian camps.

Life was hard without a mother for the children, and it was about to get harder for them.

Nineteen year old Buxie overheard his sister Marion telling her father that when the family had lived in Lawlers, Abdul Nazur Mahomet, a 65-year-old Indian, had “outraged” (raped) her – she was 11 at the time.  The father told her “I will fix him for it”, but Buxie stepped in saying “Leave it to me!”.

Buxie went to the Mosque on the outskirts of Leonora to pray before walking for two days to Lawlers where Abdul lived, and shot him in the head killing him. He headed back towards home, staying out of town for a while – looking back at the town with Mount Leonora in the distance before returning. He told his boss Hadji Fakhruddin, who he worked for on the camel teams, what he had done.

Had he channelled the anger of being humiliated and dipped in bullocks’ blood as a little boy, the pain of losing his mother and his young sister being raped, to kill Abdul – or had his recollection of events been wiped from his memory as he had stated to the police? Was it true that he wandered mindlessly in the bush for nearly a week before returning to his senses – that his head was all wrong with “head swimmings”, as diagnosed by a doctor?

Grave of the murdered Abdul at Lawlers Cemetery – Plaque by outbackgraves.org

The police questioned Buxie at the time; however, he denied the murder as advised by his anxious father. It was only after Dardoola passed away that Buxie walked into Carnarvon police station in 1934 and handed himself in. He said that the murder had always played on his mind, and he wanted to report it. There was a trial, and he was found not guilty. Ultimately, they didn’t think he could have crossed the amount of land in time to commit the shooting. His family secretly maintained that Buxie had shot Abdul – with a story handed down that the Aboriginals had shown him feather soled sandals, he called them ‘kurdaitcha shoes’, that disguised his tracks and taught him how to cover long distances quickly.

An article about the murder – Sunday Times 4 March 1934

Tragically, the older sister Jane had also been sent to Claremont Asylum after shooting at her father, sister and brother with a revolver. Jane lived out her days in Claremont, dying at 70yrs. My grandmother would visit her eldest sister Jane once a week.

These were heartbreaking turns for the entire family – and ones that Kate could not have predicted in her short 34 years. Kate was adventurous and committed to stretching outside of societal norms at a time when mixed-race marriages were frowned upon. She experienced racism and oppression and tried to stand up to discrimination whenever possible. Who would have thought a little English woman would end up living on the outskirts of the Goldfields with an Indian husband and six children?

Buxie stayed on the camel teams going out to Carnarvon. He travelled with his boss Hadji to Mecca and unfortunately passed away on the journey. Tommie Bux stayed in the outback, working in Wiluna at the hospital for 20 years, whilst his sisters went to Perth where they married and had families of their own. Marion accompanied her husband and children to India, never to return, and Lila headed south with her family. Dora, later known as Doreen, married a Northam-born Australian, who went on to raise their children in Victoria Park.