I was recently contacted by Helena Britt who very kindly shared with me a copy of a section of her mother’s memoirs.
Her grandfather, Dr Robert Mitchell, was the first Chief Medical Officer at Coolgardie Hospital and the first Superintendent of Wooroloo Sanitorium, he was in this post until his retirement in 1941. Helena’s mother and her elder sisters were born in Coolgardie and they moved to Wooroloo when she was 4, in 1915 when Wooroloo Sanitorium opened. The family lived in “the Big House” at the Sanatorium and the children went to the local primary school and then on to boarding School in Perth.
Helena’s mother (Margaret) Bettie Mitchell died in 1983 but, though her memoirs were not completed she had written about her life in Wooroloo, and provided some memories of Coolgardie. Helena has allowed me to share this with you.
Memories of Coolgardie (1905 -1915) &
Wooroloo (1915 – 1930s)
Excerpts from Memories of Bettie Mitchell, youngest daughter of
Dr Robert (Bob) Mitchell, first Superintendent of Wooroloo Sanatorium, 1915-1941.
(written in 1982-83) ed: Helena Britt (2002)
Contact: helena.britt@outlook.com
Chapter 1: My Younger Years
The first hospital in Coolgardie was very primitive by present standards. It was merely a tent in the bush beyond the existing railway bridge. The typhoid epidemic that claimed so many lives taxed the little bush hospital far beyond its capacity and imagination. The only comforts for those stricken with fever were shade and sympathy. The only nurse was an old man and when the first support nurses arrived in 1894 they found, according to contemporary records, the dustiest looking objects imaginable, covered with sand and indescribable dirt. Tents, tents and more tents everywhere. One man had been in bed for a week and still had his boots on. Five to seven people died every day, their coffins being roughly nailed-up packing cases. These were carried out to the cemetery in a spring cart and many were buried unnamed.
It was the typhoid epidemic which was responsible for my mother, Ellen Mary Handfield Pizey, settling in Coolgardie. She was from Adelaide, staying with the Conigraves in Kalgoorlie, recovering from the loss of her fiancé who had died of a ruptured appendix. She went to stay with Dr Ellis Elphlick’s family for a holiday from Kalgoorlie. The typhoid epidemic had reached such proportions that Dr Elphick asked his wife to go to the hospital to assist the nursing staff; so my mother offered her services too.
Coolgardie Hospital and Staff 1893 – Photo SLWA
My father, Robert McFarlane Mitchell, reached Perth on the SS Britannia (as a ship’s doctor) from Scotland late in 1905. He called at the Public Health Department to see if there was any work offering. Dr Webster, who was in charge of the General Hospital in Coolgardie, wanted to be relieved of his duties so my father took his place. The first real hospital had been erected by public subscription in 1895. My father reported that when he reached Coolgardie the walls of the ward were of white washed double hessian and the floors of packed mud but it was not long before wood floors were installed.
Robert Mitchell married Ellen Pizey in 1906 in Coolgardie. Their first child, Robert McFarlane Mitchell died aged 1 hr and was buried in the Coolgardie Cemetery on 17 Oct 1907. Headstone reads “Dr Mitchells Child”. Then came Helen Mary (known as Molly) on 13the January 1909, followed by Joan Christine on 29th December of that year. Margaret Bettie (me) was born on 22nd March 1911. Their son Robert Carruthers Mitchell was born in 1916 in Wooroloo.
Ellen Mary Handfield PIZEY 1873 – 1962
Many of the machine miners, working underground in mines with quartz reefs, developed silicosis (or miner’s complaint) due to quartz dust settling on the lungs during dry boring. The men affected probably numbered hundreds and the need for a sanatorium became evident. The Coolgardie chest section of the general hospital became the Coolgardie Sanatorium and remained so until May 11th 1915. At that time the entire staff and patients under the medical officer in charge Dr Robert Mitchell (numbering about 100 in all), were transferred by special train to Wooroloo in the Darling Ranges, east of Perth. It was thought that the dry bracing goldfields atmosphere was better for the patients than the cold damp conditions of the Darling Ranges but the change was made just the same.
Dr. Robert Mcfarlane Mitchell 1878 – 1953
It is reported that the patients were loud in their praise of the treatment they received while in Coolgardie and the Railway Department did everything possible for the comfort of the patients in the process of transfer. There was a large crowd of Coolgardie citizens at the railway station to wish the patients farewell. I was just four when we left the goldfields in May 1915, but I have a few lasting memories of Coolgardie to this day. There was an Indian draper called Valq Boodah, in Bayley Street, who my mother often visited. Even today the smell of new calico fills me with nostalgia. We were allowed to go behind the shop to Valq’s shade house which was cool and damp in that hot dry climate. I can still see the little cactus flower pink and delicate hanging like a tassel from the plant. It is not surprising that I still want that cactus in my home today, its fascination having lingered down the years.
Wooroloo Sanitorium – Photo SLWA
Behind the shade house was a paddock where Valq kept his camel team. It used to bring his imported wares from Perth to Coolgardie or transport water from the salt lakes after it had been boiled and desalinated. These proud creatures, heads held high, eyelids drooped against the glare of the sun, always appeared very haughty and so they might well have been as they were so necessary for transport in those early days of the goldfields—they provided a life-line. There were herds of goats to help augment the milk supply; Afghans with teams of camels for transport (before the Perth to Coolgardie Railway was completed); dust storms and willy-willies that brought clouds of dust to cover furniture and floors if windows were not closed in time; King Billie the aborigine who was king of the tribe in this area; his wife Daisy who was a frequent visitor to the house bringing with them our little playmate, Jimmy, their son.
Our arrival at Wooroloo in the Darling Ranges on a cold wet windy night still sends a chill through me. We drove the two miles from Wooroloo Station to the sanatorium in a sulky drawn by a horse known as Ginger who had difficulty in crossing the creek. The plunging of the horses and cracking of the whip in the dark made an eerie welcome reception to Wooroloo, in contrast to later years of freedom and happiness never to be surpassed. We slept in an open air sleep-out on the top of the house, which was open halfway down on each side and across the entire front. This introduction to our sleeping accommodation on this eerie, windy, wet night proved to be full of drama for us. The wind caught the door of the sleep out and slammed it with such force that the glass broke and a small piece entered my mother’s eye. We were glad to crawl into our beds with their horse hair mattresses and pillows and pull the bed clothes up over our ears to shut out the sound of the howling wind and beating rain.
Such was our introduction to Wooroloo. However the morning brought a fairyland to our eyes as we stood at the railing of our open air sleep-out and gazed at blue hills beyond; raindrops plastering diamonds on the leaves and in the cobwebs, in the crisp morning air. So began our era of carefree youth unadulterated by the outside world.
The night nurses’ quarters were near our house and garden and as these nurses were free in the daytime we were constant visitors to the garden near their quarters. They took us for walks and picnics in the bush and generally made life very entertaining. I used to sing for them:
“When father papered the parlour” or “I was reading in the paper of such a funny land, in the land where the women wear the trousers.” or “Masculine women and feminine men”
The war had broken out in 1914 so many wartime songs came into vogue. Our nurse girl taught us:
“Poor old Kaiser’s dead
He died for the want of bread
They put him in a coffin
And he fell through the bottom
And this is what he said:
‘Oh! the moon shines bright on his porter
For she’s a snorter and so’s her daughter
And they washed their faces in soapy water
And so they oughta to keep ‘em clean.’ ”
My father was a Scotsman who was brought up “on the bible and porridge” but he had also experienced great luxury and brought his training and high ideals of Scottish discipline and home upbringing to Australia. We were brought up in the British tradition. Our family consisted of three girls (Molly, Joan and I) and later a boy (Robert, known as Bob). For the first eight years of life we saw little of our parents.
Molly and Joan Mitchell
We had our own quarters and a day nursery and bathroom. A devoted nurse girl looked after us and our parents visited us in the nursery for a short time. At meal times and tea, they heard our prayers, talked about the day and read a chapter of a book such as “The Palace Beautiful” in the evenings. Or we would be taken to the billiard room where my mother would play the piano while we skipped and danced around the billiard table to the tunes of Ben Hur’s March and Rendezvous.
Their dining room was a sanctuary to which we were not admitted. I can remember standing on the threshold knocking at the door to ask permission to do something or ask a question. I was dazzled by the gleaming white tablecloth, the shining silver, the centrepiece of flowers and my mother looking very elegant, dressed simply for dinner. Then after dinner my mother often practised the violin in the billiard room, while we children snuggled down on our horsehair mattresses and pillows in our sleep-out ivory tower “upstairs” and listened to the eerie sound in the still of the night.
After the war started it was not long before the “chest cases” were sent to the Wooroloo sanatorium to occupy the back row of wards. This was a very colourful period of our lives and for the sanatorium. The soldiers spoilt us thoroughly, making toys for fetes, running sports for the children of the district and of course there were the everlasting visiting concerts which we were allowed to attend. One such soldier, Mr. Potter, was a colourful character, who used to drive us to school. He, too, taught us a song they used to sing with the pioneers in the army:
“Here come the pioneers, here come the pioneers,
Don’t you see them laughing as they go.
They’re going out to kill.
They’re after Kaiser Bill.
Heaven help the enemy.”
That’s what we sang as we jogged along in our sulky to school. He taught us how to plait Guildford grass or horse hair from the horses tail into watch chains. The most coveted chain was made with the hair from a grey horse and it was presented to me, much to the jealousy of the other children. We played games with cotton reels tied to string which we hung out the back of the sulky and shouted with delight as our cotton reel bounced on a stone and shot into the air. Mr. Potter taught us how to notch the ring edge of the cotton reels so they looked like tank wheels.
My eldest sister (Molly) had a Lord Kitchener doll who was taken to the soldiers periodically to have his puttees (a wound piece of cloth between the top of the boot and mid-calf) wound properly. Lord Kitchener is still as perfect today (Lord Kitchener has now been donated to a museum in Western Australia).
Joan, Molly and Bettie with patient at Wooroloo
My sister also decapitated her beautiful French doll with a boomerang. The soldiers gave it a military funeral because it died by a weapon of war. They made little wooden guns for each of us, put the decapitated doll in a flower box, made a cross for the grave and we all lined up beside the grave for the funeral service. Putting flowers on the grave entertained us for days afterwards.
The Big House–our home at Wooroloo
My father believed in rigid physical exercise and we three little girls were lined up to do our club swinging drill with orders shouted at us by Sergeant Baste. I can remember standing on a concrete slab in the backyard with bare feet, obeying the military commands–frozen toes on those cold frosty mornings.
It was not in the days when everyone had a motor car, so our transport was by sulky. The stables were tended by an English groom who used to bring the horse and sulky to the house where mother or father ‘took over’. My father also thought we should learn to ride properly in the true English style, so the groom brought a pony to our house on a lead (as he rode beside us) and we would each have a turn at riding training. I was always a bit scared and used to hang onto the pummel of the saddle–a sad habit I never really overcame.
Our local school was two miles away at the Wooroloo village. It consisted of two rooms. One housed the kindergarten, first and second classes and the other housed the third, fourth, fifth and sixth classes. Each room had one teacher to cope with their grades. We were driven to school by either my mother, the groom, a stable hand or a patient from the soldiers’ quarters. The other children of the area walked. Sometimes it embarrassed me that we should ride and the other children walk and we often received a jibe from them.
While we lived in luxury compared with other children, I sometimes envied them. The father of my own little friend was a sleeper cutter. She lived in a little white-washed cottage made of double hessian, with packed soil for the floor. The furniture was scrubbed white. Some walls were made of stacked kerosene tins filled with soil and these made a solid protection against the weather. The surrounding garden added colour to a house which could have come out of a story book. All the houses weren’t like this, but this was my favourite as my little friend lived there. We were inseparable friends, but when we all left the little primary school to move on to High School I lost her forever.
Our life at Wooroloo was ‘out of this world’ and apart from home discipline (which we accepted without question) and our school work (which did not demand much of us), we were free to live with nature, entertained by those whose job it was to work with nature. The sanatorium grounds and gardens were designed to be tended by the patients to provide them with gentle exercise. A trained landscape gardener supervised the work with a second gardener to help him. How they managed, I do not know, for the landscaping around our residence was park like and very artistic.
There was a gravel tennis court with steps leading up to a thatched observation “house” (hut). Rustic woodwork provided a semblance of windows and ivy wove its way up the walls and through the woodwork.
Rustic arch to tennis courts Terraced Garden – Wooroloo
The little observation house was made of ‘pudding stone’, well named because of its appearance of a fruit pudding. The stone itself was a conglomerate of gravel or laterite of different shades. Included in the tennis court area was a croquet lawn surrounded by rustic archways over which single, and double mauve wisteria climbed. White wisteria alternated with the mauve, and magenta bougainvillea filled the corners. At the end of the croquet lawn extending from the tennis court lookout was a wall of pudding stone where antirrhinums (snap dragons) grew in crevices between the stone. The lower pudding stone wall beneath the rustic archways was covered with mesembryanthemum, pig face (or by the modern name Carpobrotis) with small pink flowers which were a mass of colour in the spring. This magnificent display was an attraction for travellers passing through to Northam and York and a great pleasure for staff and patients on their walks.
The rest of the gardens were planted with shrubs. An avenue of black wattles led to the side of the house. A silver wattle tree showered its blooms in the spring outside my bedroom window. A grove of wattle trees filled the area between what we called the soldiers’ quarters, and the rest of the sanatorium. Our gardener became our companion and friend and without him our lives would have been quite lonely. After tea each night he would come to the nursery to play cards (grab, old maid, and such games) or hide and seek in the garden, which was so large we had to limit the area where we could hide. During the day he would take us out in the dray to collect soil for the garden. We were allowed to run along the shafts of the dray and ride on the back of the draft horse. Then, when he filled the dray with soil, he would bury us up to our necks and finally tip us out with the soil, a wild, dangerous practice of which we had no fear. Our parents had no apprehension as they had implicit trust in our playmate and friend and their go-between.
At Christmas time, like all hospitals, the wards were decorated with streamers, Chinese lanterns and saplings of gum trees and palm fronds with round bells of cotton wool sprinkled in the foliage. The same procedure was performed (as that with the soil) when we went in the dray to collect the greenery. We were buried in the cool saplings on a hot summer day, finally being tipped out with them. Christmas was a ritual. On Christmas Eve we walked around the hospital to admire the decorations. Goodwill prevailed, with patients and staff alike calling a “Happy Christmas” to us. A choir of staff walked from ward to ward singing Christmas carols. Coloured lights were hung across the front of the wards and the whole atmosphere was gay and festive.
About a quarter of a mile from the sanatorium ward was a leprosarium which consisted of two cottages, one for a patient and one for the nurse attendant. The leper never left the leprosarium and saw no one but the doctor, matron and nurse attendant. On Christmas Eve we were taken to this lonely isolated leprosarium to sing Christmas carols and part songs which we did very harmoniously. It was all very eerie singing in the dusk and I often wonder how much our little concert cheered the patients, who in those days had no hope of recovery.
The Leprosarium – Wooroloo
The isolation of the leprosarium must have been a great trial to the early patients. There was no radio or television for entertainment so the nurse and patient had to be very self-sufficient. The soldiers sent one patient a book on semaphore so she could teach herself signalling with flags. Then she was able to stand at the edge of the bush surrounding her domain and carry on a conversation with the returned boys with the little flags sticking out of the wards. We walked home in the dark rather silently. The impact of the isolation, the lepers, the bush and the bright coloured lights of the Christmas decorations of the wards, silhouetted against the darkness of the night, left a lasting memory of loneliness.
Dr Robert Mitchell and dog
Our own house accentuated the loneliness of the isolation, as we each hung our sack on the end of our bed and filed up the beautiful polished jarrah stairway to the sleep-out singing “Jingle Bells” as we went. The impression of the isolation remained with us as we stood at the railing of the sleep-out gazing towards the isolation block we had just left, listening to the sounds of the night– the purring of the electricity engines, crickets singing their Xmas carols and occasionally the dismal cry of the mopoke or a distant whistle of a night train, and the coughing of the patients.
Christmas day was much like that of any other happy household–the opening of presents and the singing of carols as we went about our duties. A luxurious Christmas dinner of the traditional turkey and plum pudding was served at about 3 pm after father had put in an appearance at the Christmas dinners of domestic staff, orderlies, nursing staff and patients. We three girls were dressed for dinner in our best white voile or pique dresses to add to the festivity of the occasion.
Religious training: Apart from our own home training we did not attend church every Sunday. Once a month a clergyman would drive to the sanatorium in a sulky to give a service. This was a distance of about 15 miles and his diocese extended to include all the small settlements on the way. As we grew older and learned to play the piano we were destined to play the organ for church. I can remember peddling the harmonium while my sister played, but my eldest sister Molly assures me she did not need anyone to pedal for her. Apart from these monthly church services, our gardener Frank Mitchell, commonly known as Mitchie, held Sunday School for the local children every Sunday. I used to enjoy Sunday School because Mitchie always planned a little outing afterwards. He often took us on a hike to a local orchard to collect fruit in season. Lovely large juicy oranges or apples of which we were allowed to eat as many as we liked. I never listened in Sunday School and learnt very little scripture but I loved singing hymns like
“All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all”.
At the end of each year Mitchie gave us an exam on the scripture lessons he had taught us. I never knew anything, and must have failed miserably, while my little friend from the white washed hessian cottage usually came top or near the top. I remember feeling guilty and ashamed when I was awarded a prize but everyone got one so I needn’t have felt so guilty.
Mitchie continued to supply entertainment for us. He arranged riding parties to the lakes on the York Road where we were treated to strawberries and cream. Every available horse was used, some ponies, some half draft horses, some a bit wild and my horse Bess who I could hardly kick along, but it was fun. He also arranged mouse hunts for us in the stables when he’d pull the sacks of chaff and oats away and we would dive to catch an escaping mouse. If we caught one we were then ordered to give it a run for its life with the cat after it. It usually got away. This was really a most gruesome sport but it was great fun. They were not so lucky with our dog, which sat under the stable floor at a hole and caught the mice as they leapt through.
Lake on York Road
The huge poultry farm which supplied the sanatorium was also a great source of entertainment. We collected and washed the eggs, learnt how to pluck and draw fowls ready for table. We learned to name all the parts of the anatomy and make balloons out of the crop. Turkey crops were much sought after. Incubation of the eggs was an education in itself, and Mitchie taught us how to hold the incubating eggs up to a bright candle light to see the developing embryo within. We learned when one had stopped developing and had to be discarded and we watched with anticipation and delight through the glass front of the incubator as the eggs started to hatch and our weeks of vigilance were over.
The sanatorium was surrounded by bush for at least a two mile radius. The area was sparsely settled. In large areas there was only bush. It was easy for staff members and the stronger patients (who often went bushwalking) to get lost. On these occasions search parties were organised to look for them and the boiler house whistle which usually blew to announce the times of day for work periods was then set to blow with intermittent long blasts every few minutes. It was hoped the lost person would be able to follow the direction of the sound. It was a very eerie atmosphere, especially when night closed in and the whistle continued to blow. Everyone waited with bated breath hoping that each blow would be the last. Finally, when the last lost person eventually stumbled in to a homestead or was found, the whistle blew “cock a doodle doo” and everyone sighed with relief.
Our own nurse girl Mary, whom we brought with us from the goldfields, was lost on one occasion and it was well into nightfall before she stumbled to the door of a homestead and fainted. Her disappearance had been very dramatic for us. She was our main security in the nursery and while she’d been ‘gone’ we had felt bereft. Our nurse girls gave us plenty of love and attention and our nurse girl Kathleen Merony has always remained in our hearts as one of the family. Another nurse girl, Anna, fascinated us by showing us her treasures in her trinket box, such as her mother’s false teeth, the like of which we had never seen before; and a brooch with “Mother” in fine gold wire scrolled across a mother of pearl backing which we thought very beautiful.
The Mitchell girls (from left) Bettie, Mollie, Joan – Primary School
They carried out their duties meticulously but I can’t remember them playing games with us like Mitchie. We had a wild playground and didn’t demand entertainment like the children of today. The trees were our friends. We climbed them incessantly without fear, made cubby houses in them, having our own individual domains in the one tree. We slid down branches as a means of descent or swung from branch to branch. We cooked ghastly concoctions of sugar flour, dripping and pigeon eggs, which we ate with relish. Our cooking utensils were tins of various sorts. My mother with her usual ingenuity kept the propagation of the pigeons down by suggesting we use four pigeon eggs instead of one hens egg. There was an old burnt out jarrah tree near the tennis court look out, which had a lovely hollow at the ground which made a very good kitchen.
The branches had burnt off leaving gnarled knobs on the tree trunk which made wonderful steps for climbing. Of course, there was nothing much to hold onto except by our toes and fingers and I must admit I always felt a bit nervous climbing that tree but no one else seemed to be, so I had to be brave. Our great joy was to find a tree, slender and pliable which would sway in the wind, so that on a windy day we would climb as high as we could and shout with delight as we were swung hither and thither.
We hung light celluloid cupy dolls on the end of climbing trailers and had competitions as to how high our doll could be blown by the wind. Such was our simple entertainment. We cut paper dolls out of the fashion magazines from Boans, Foy and Gibsons, and Bon Marche. We dressed them in the clothes illustrated and soon learned that if the doll faced to the left, it was no good cutting out a dress which turned to the right. Hats and shoes were also added to the wardrobes and the judgment needed for such clothing trained us in accuracy and perhaps gave us some clothes sense for later life.
The little school at Wooroloo provided a very happy education from infants to sixth class. My first teacher, Miss Lechemanan, provided excitement by getting married. My second teacher Miss Jones was very pretty with a rosy complexion and smiling brown eyes. She taught us sewing and used to call me ‘Queen of the Buttonholes’ because I was so meticulous in my work. Years later when we were both married with families, she told me she had kept a sampler of my buttonholes for her teaching demonstration!
The road on the way to School
After Miss Jones came Miss Parnell who wore fancy garter, which intrigued us all. She wasn’t exactly pretty but the fancy garters made up for that. I think she wore an armlet too which is a bracelet worn above the elbow. She was a real fascination for us. Our headmaster, Mr. Coburn, taught 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th class in another room. His discipline was excellent and his class work was staggered. One class might have reading, another composition, another arithmetic and another drawing. He was very artistic and encouraged poetry, art and singing, and produced excellent results with limited equipment. He had crayons for art and only a tuning fork for singing. He taught us gardening and how to bud roses. He even built a tennis court with the help of 4th, 5th and 6th form children and their parents.
He was so capable that I cannot imagine why he stayed all his teaching life in that little sleepy hollow called Wooroloo. On present day standards he would not have been content to do so, but he probably liked it and he watched with interest the future of all his pupils until he died at the age of 90 odd. He knew our strengths and our weaknesses and I regret he is not here today to tell me if I have turned out as he expected. There were budding romances in our little co-educational school. My first love was Colin Mason whom I can see clearly today if I close my eyes – a fair boy with a round face and very blue eyes. I was only six at the time when I complained to the teacher that Colin kissed me with a toasty mouth. Apparently it wasn’t the kiss I objected to, but the toasty mouth.
But Colin died when he was very young, probably soon after the toasty mouth episode and my father couldn’t save him. I think he died of a brain haemorrhage sustained by a blow on the head by a cricket ball. I know I was devastated and resentful against my father who couldn’t save him. I didn’t fall in love with anyone else at that school until I reached fifth class and Geoffrey Litch loomed big and strong. I carried a torch for him until I left the school, but I don’t think he knew. If he didn’t come to school for a day for any reason, my day was dull. My sisters had their various boys they admired in the course of school-life, normal girl and boy friendships, but Colin’s death left me devastated and apart from a few thrills on much older men, my heart stayed true to Colin.
Apart from Mitchie and our nurse girls we did have other playmates at the sanatorium. There was Edna and Erna Lovely, the children of the Secretary and Dispenser of the sanatorium. They were great fun and I spent a lot of time at their home as Erna became my great friend, my tennis opponent and riding partner. I must admit she was much more adept at climbing trees, riding and playing tennis than I was but we were inseparable in most activities. Erna was very fleet of foot and very game. We would wait on top of the hill behind our house for the milk cart carrying the milk from the dairy farm to the hospital. We would lie on the ground putting our ear to the ground to see if we could hear the cart coming. When it arrived on the crest of the hill we’d cling on the back. The driver would urge the horse down the hill with our feet almost not touching the ground. As this happened every day it created quite a distraction in our entertainment. When I went to boarding school I lost touch with her too. So, as with my little friend Janet of the white hessian walled cottage, with its gay geranium borders, Erna also disappeared out of my life forever.
My Young brother Bob
When I was nearly five my young brother (Bob) arrived. My eldest sister (Molly) had been sent to boarding school at the age of seven during my mother’s pregnancy. It was not unusual to send children to boarding school at this age in England so my father followed this tradition. My sister was very homesick so her stay in boarding school only lasted the year. When my mother went to hospital to have the baby, we three little girls aged 7, 6 and nearly 5 were sent to stay with our Godparents who were in charge of the Swan Boys Orphanage. We were put on the train to Perth in charge of
the guard, a two hour journey of thirty-six miles in a slow puffing billy. The excitement of this journey stayed with us for many years and our stay at the orphanage was very happy.
The arrival of my young brother did not excite me in the least. Up to this time I had been the youngest in the family and as such had a lot of attention from everyone, quite apart from the fact that I probably demanded it. So when we were taken by train from the Middle Swan to Perth to see the baby, who was supposed to fill me with such pride, I was quite uninspired by the journey. I was train sick and vomited on arrival and I didn’t think the little red crinkled baby was so marvellous after all. But the stay at the orphanage was fun. To this day I can see the huge oak tree which shed its acorns so generously. I played for hours with the little acorn caps, imagining them as caps of elves left behind when the elves had finished their dancing in the moonlight.
A lasting memory is the singing of grace before and after meals by the boys of the orphanage, for which I waited to hear with enjoyment. Singing and music always had a very profound effect upon me, so it was not surprising that I was asked to sing “When Father Papered the Parlour” for visitors to the orphanage. For this I was awarded blocks of candied honey and the attention I received was very gratifying in the wake of everyone’s excitement over the new baby “boy”after three little girls!!
The time came at last for our return home. While I didn’t want to go particularly, I soon learnt all good things come to an end. We returned home with our nurse girl Kathleen Melony whose mother worked at the orphanage, and my mother arrived at a later date with the new baby. What a reception she received. The whistle blew its “cock-a-doodle-doo” as the sulky drove into the grounds of the sanatorium and the staff and patients lined up along the roads and cheered. In preparation my father had taught us to sing “The King of the House is Baby”:
“Dear little baby, baby
The Kingdom is home
Sweet home, sweet home
Beams with sunshine and joy
His mother and dad are subjects
To pleasure in life are clinging
The King of the house is baby
God Save the King”
So we were lined up to render this sentimental song as the entourage entered the house, for my father must have felt great pride in the arrival of his son. His first child had been a son which they lost at birth on the goldfields. My new brother did not seem to disrupt my life very much except that he stole some attention from me, but probably not much. I was a performer at heart and must have seen to it that I did not lose any ground. There was always music in our house. This is hardly surprising as Lucy Pizey, Ellen’s mother and the children’s grandmother had spent some time singing with a Musical Company in Adelaide before her marriage. We all sang. My mother had a very beautiful lyric soprano, my father a pleasant tenor; my mother and father both played the violin and the piano a little. We always knew when father was a bit home sick, for he quietly retired to the billiard room and played and sang “Scottish” songs (remember this when you read of Sundays at Appian Way with the bagpipes in the yard nearby). My mother practiced the violin meticulously every day with great self discipline. We didn’t realise how proficient she was and felt slightly embarrassed by the dismal wail of the unaccompanied violin when our friends were about. No-one else’s mother played the violin and if they played the piano at all it was real dance band style which, of course, we preferred to her classical bent.
My father still returned to the goldfields every month to examine miners for Miners Phthisis or Silicosis which was so prevalent in the early days. We didn’t really know what he did, how he went about it or whether he went down a mine to do his examinations, so it was not surprising that we thought the following song very suitable to sing as he prepared to leave our house on one of these occasions:
“Don’t go down in the mine, Dad.
Dreams very often come true.
Daddy you know it would break my heart
If anything happened to you.
So go and tell my dreams to your mates
For as sure as the stars that shine
Something is going to happen today.
Dear Daddy, don’t go down the mine.”
We three little girls stood on the front steps singing sorrowfully, tunefully and lustily much to the amazement of my father who couldn’t stand maudlin sentiment at any time, so he roared with embarrassment and sent us inside. We were quite hurt, but didn’t attempt such drama again. Our nurse girl must have taught us and drilled us for such a performance.
Molly, Joan and Bettie
When I was ten and my sisters eleven and twelve, grandmother came to stay with us from Adelaide. This was our maternal grandmother. My paternal grandmother was in Scotland. Grandmother was dressed in black from “head to toe”. A small black rather flat hat was perched on top of her head tilted forward over the eyes. A long sleeved black blouse with a lacy collar and whale bone stiffened neckband gave her a rather austere appearance. The long black skirt to the ankles gathered into a waistband, accentuated her tall slim stately appearance and ramrod straight back. It was not surprising that she looked old to us so that when she sat down we would rush to supply a footstool and knee rug until she cried out to my mother, “Nell call these children off or I’ll catch the next train back to Adelaide.”
Grandmother came to stay
Our freedom horrified her and she exclaimed: “Nell! these children are barbarians. They are too old now to spend so much time with Mitchie. They shouldn’t spend so much time in the trees. If they continue to go barefooted like this their feet will become so broad they’ll never fit into dainty shoes. They should be more disciplined and start to ‘LEARN’ something. They’re beginning to grow up and developing. They should be in bodices or stays. Their appetites are like plough boys’. Their skin will be very coarse.” My father looked on and smiled benignly. He sanctioned the freedom. The bare feet made our feet strong, our large appetites supplied healthy food for growth – but he got on well with my grandmother. There was fine rapport between them.
The weekends became rather regimented with our learning activities, and certain domestic “chores” which Grandmother introduced as a measure of discipline despite having domestic help. But on Sunday afternoons we were let off the hook from Sunday School and had outings with Mitchie to the local orchards to select large juicy oranges or other fruit in season. Grandmother and Mitchie had great rapport and I suspect worked hand-in-glove with our training. We still went barefooted, climbed trees and overate, but the bodice stays were quite a different question.
The seamstress from the hospital was engaged to make us little bodices with pleated cups in front to house our budding forms. I didn’t object to this so much because I had already been embarrassed by the boys at school, pushing two pencils up the front of their jerseys and sticking them out in front with saucy grins to display their observations.
So life with grandmother took on a more regimented disciplined path. My mother had someone to play her accompaniments with when she practiced the violin. The mournful wail of the unaccompanied violin became a pleasant sound, as Mother was quite a good violinist and Grandma an excellent pianist. Grandmother was definitely with us until we went to boarding school, a new phase of life had begun.
The Mitchells (from left): Bettie, Joan, Mollie, Bob, with their parents behind.
Moya Sharp
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