Lyn Beard “Courtesy of Mandurah Family History Society Newsletter, October 2020″.
Hyland’s Circus
Photo given to Shyama Peebles, a friend of Mrs Hyland.
I wonder how many researchers can actually say they have found an ancestor who ran away to join the circus. Well, I am not one with such adventurous folk in my family but in the course of my research for Outback Grave Markers I have come across a whole family who performed all over Australia and New Zealand, settling for a time in Sandstone.
Photo given to Shyama Peebles, a friend of Mrs Hyland.
Buried in the lonely cemetery at Nungarra or Black Range near Sandstone is little Leslie Roberts who died of croup at the age of eight in 1906 – probably not uncommon in those days, but what caught my attention was his father’s occupation as circus proprietor. Surely not many circuses visited Sandstone at that time. His father, Thomas John Roberts who was also known as Darcy Hyland or the Professor, ran the family circus. After his mother and sister were burnt to death in their cabin in New South Wales, Thomas went droving with his father. But he ran away from his harsh treatment and found work with a kind family on a station. There he learnt to tame wild horses. Eventually, he had forty trained horses and a travelling circus paid him handsomely for their use. However, he soon decided he could make that money for himself.
By then he had married Elizabeth Ah Pan, the daughter of a Chinese publican on the goldfields near Charters Towers in Queensland and an Irish mother. Their first child, Agnes, was born in Charters Towers in 1878, then Thomas (1882) and Rose Elizabeth (1884) were born in New Zealand. The next five were born around NSW and Victoria – May (1886), Joseph (1888, died at only 2 months), Gertrude (1889), Darcy (1891) and Mable Maud (1893). Alice Evelyn (1895) and Leslie (1897) were born in Queensland, Stanley (1901) in Victoria and the last one, Percival Pius Zealand (1904) was born in New Zealand. A total of 12 offspring – a veritable circus troupe.
Photo given to Shyama Peebles, a friend of Mrs Hyland.
By 1885, Thomas was performing horse and wild bull taming shows in the Hawkesbury area and even in Pitt Street in Sydney. As soon as some of his children were old enough to perform, he expanded the show to include them as trick riders, acrobats, trapeze artists, wire walkers, clowns and musicians in the band. Eventually, all the children were involved in the life of the circus. And even his wife Elizabeth performed as a juggler.
Photo given to Shyama Peebles, a friend of Mrs Hyland.
The family was afflicted by a genetic disease which caused sight loss and eventually six of the children became blind. Several of the boys were blind at the time they performed in the circus, jumping onto the bare backs of horses. They often wore a blindfold because the audience did not believe they could perform such feats if they were actually blind. Thomas Junior even competed in cycling races while they lived in Sandstone. Agnes became one of the most renowned horsewomen in Australia and travelled to London in 1911 as part of a riding and shooting show called Wild Australia which performed at Crystal Palace for the coronation of King George V.
Photo given to Shyama Peebles, a friend of Mrs Hyland.
May died at the age of only 13 after she was concussed in an acrobatic accident in Dandenong, Victoria. In Bega, NSW, in 1902, Thomas was fined five shillings for allowing a child of five to perform for profit – that would have been the unfortunate young Leslie. After travelling for more than twenty years, the family settled in Sandstone around 1905. They had a mining lease at Maninga Marley, and a licensed premises, café and shop in Sandstone. They raced some of their circus horses in country race meets and Maud became one of the first female jockeys in Australia.
They moved to Broome to run a hotel in conjunction with their circus. In late 1911, Thomas took two of his horses to Fitzroy Crossing for the races but somehow lost his way on the return journey and failed to reach Broome. His remains were not found until 1914 on Streeters Plains some 40 miles east of Broome. There was some speculation that he had met with foul play but it was most likely that he had died of thirst.
The family split up and there were only a couple of attempts to reform the circus after that – a tour of WA was interrupted by World War I, and later some of the troupe performed in Darwin. Agnes had married and lived in Yarloop and later ran a store near Cue, Gertrude married and lived on stations in the Kimberley, Evelyn married in Wyndham to Bob Coverley who became the first Labor member for the Kimberley and a State Government Minister during a political career from 1924 to 1953, when he died. Evelyn became blind but continued living on her own, working tirelessly collecting money for charities by tin-rattling on the streets of Perth (many people will remember her.) She died in 2000 at the age of 104.
Woman training circus ponies inside a tent and (barely visible in the upper centre) a wire walker : Hyland’s Circus during the 1907 Albany Week celebrations Courtesy of State Library of WA
What a fascinating family I have stumbled into! They are not mine but I kind of wish they were. As I delved deeper, I discovered that we do have a connection. Between 1924 and 2000, Evelyn, her husband and children, her mother, a brother and a sister all lived at the family home at 11 Alfonso Street, North Perth, just across the road from the North Perth Monastery. My husband’s great-grandmother, Ellen Beard, and his great-aunt, Bessie Barry, lived next door at number 9. Apparently, Evelyn was asked if she was going to evacuate to the country in the dark days of World War 2, but she refused. The lady next door, who would have been our Great-Aunt Bessie, was asked if she was evacuating but she said, “If Evelyn is not going, I’m not going either.”
Lyn Beard (Mandurah FHS Member No. 911) parkybe@gmail.com
Moya Sharp
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