The Norris Family on the Goldfields
by Chris Clark
The journey from the east coast of Australia to the booming goldfields of Western Australia was a path taken by many from the 1890s. For most hopefuls the trip was one-way, signifying a migration that was irreversible, but for others, it was only a matter of time before disappointment (and failure to find the riches which had formerly seemed promised) meant there was a drift back towards the Pacific shore of the continent. That appears to have been the story of at least one of two brothers named Norris who made the journey both ways during the first decades of the 20th century; it may have been true of the other brother also, but confirmation is presently lacking.
Charles Christopher and Alfred James Norris were the two eldest children of Robert Norris and his wife Mary Anne nee Yeomans, of Hartley, New South Wales. These days Hartley is little more than a heritage village about 12 kilometers south of Lithgow, located below the western escarpment of the Blue Mountains a two hours drive from Sydney, and a convenient stop-off point on the way to the Jenolan Caves and Oberon. When the parents married at Hartley in 1872,[1] the town was an important administrative centre and a staging post for traffic heading towards the goldfields around Bathurst and Orange. During the late nineteenth century, it was also home to a mining industry involved in extracting oil from shale.
It is unknown whether mining held any attraction for Robert Norris personally, as for several generations his family had been farmers around Windsor on the Hawkesbury River. His Irish rebel grandfather Richard Norris, who arrived aged 21 on the convict transport “Minerva” in 1800 after his death sentence was commuted to transportation for life, was recorded as a farmer at Green Hills in the General Muster conducted in 1806. In fact, he had been able to obtain a ticket of leave to begin farming a little more than a year after his arrival—such was the colony’s need for settlers with farming skills. This also enabled him to take an English woman, Mary Lillian Williams, as his wife, soon after she arrived on the ship “Nile” in December 1801 with a seven-year conviction for stealing. Nominally she was his ‘housekeeper’ until Reverend Samuel Marsden formalised their union during a visit to Windsor in 1806, by which time the couple already had two children in a family that 20 years later would number 14 (11 boys, three girls). Robert Norris’ steady progress toward relative prosperity and respectability came to an abrupt halt in May 1838, when he was brought before the Sydney Supreme Court on the somewhat unlikely charge of having stolen a neighbor’s pig. Despite his plea of ‘not guilty’ he was sentenced to death, later commuted to ‘life’ on Norfolk Island, where he died some five years later.[2]
Number 5 in the Norris brood was a son named Christopher, born at Cornwallis (situated 2-3 kms north of Windsor) on 8 December 1811. In 1834, at Windsor, he married Mary Jane Sympton (Simpson or Shrimpton) née Crabb, who had been born at Parramatta in 1814. Over the next 15 years, they would have eight children (five boys and three girls), before Mary died on 18 August 1854. Although Christopher Norris remarried a year later,[3] his second wife, Mary Jane Gibbons née Douglass, died at Richmond (west of Windsor) in 1856, aged 50. Christopher lived on for another 40 years, dying on 18 May 1898 at Orange.[4]
Robert Norris was the sixth child of Christopher and Mary Norris. Born at Windsor on 18 September 1843, he married—as previously noted—in 1872, aged about 30. His bride was Mary Anne Yeomans, the 32-year-old daughter of Thomas Yeomans and his wife Isabella O’Hara, who was born at Newington in western Sydney (in what is now part of Parramatta). Following the birth of their first two sons, in 1873 and 1874 respectively, the couple would have another five children—four daughters and one son—over the first ten years of their marriage, although twin daughters born in 1876 did not survive more than 12 months. All were born at Hartley, except Eva Emerline who was born at Lithgow in 1879.
As the eldest son, Charles Christopher (“Charley” as he seems to have been called) was married at age 24 to Margaret Loveday Madigan in 1897.[5] The couple had two daughters born in New South Wales—Stella G. at Lithgow in 1898,[6] and Mona M. at South Broken Hill in 1900[7]—before they evidently decided to make the crossing to Western Australia. By the time their third child arrived on 18 October 1902, a son they named Patrick Stanislaus Norris,[8] the family was living at Boulder City, in the eastern goldfields of Western Australia. In 1905 another daughter (Kathleen Emelda Eva) was added to the family, at Kalgoorlie.[9] On 29 July 1906, however, Margaret Norris died at Kookynie,[10] another mining town nearly 200 kms north of Kalgoorlie. The sudden difficulties of having to look after four children under eight, including a year-old infant, left Charley Norris in the public debt of those ladies who assisted him so well during his late sad bereavement.[11]
Kookynie Press 1 August 1906, page 4
The family had apparently been living at Kookynie for nearly two years when Charley Norris lost his wife. A photograph in a Kalgoorlie newspaper in October 1904 features one of the Norris daughters (most likely the eldest, Stella) who, with another local girl, had presented flowers to the Governor of Western Australia, Admiral Sir Frederick Bedford, and his wife, during a visit to Kookynie.[12]
The Misses Norris and Wright – The little girls who presented Governor and Lady Bedford with a bouquet of flowers on their recent visit to Kookynie.
As goldfields historian Moya Sharp has observed, from lots of newspaper articles it seems Charles was a Councillor at Kookynie so it would be possible his daughter would be selected to present flowers to the Governor.’[13] At the time the town was undergoing significant growth on the back of a local gold rush, causing its population to jump from 1,500 in 1905 to over 3,500 two years later, and was able to boast a public swimming pool, eleven hotels, a brewery and four trains from Kalgoorlie a day.
Charley Norris’s interactions with Kookynie residents was not always glowing and edifying. On the opposite end of the scale was a court appearance he was required to make in May 1905, as a result of a physical altercation that occurred at Kookynie between himself with two others, and a man named William Hegarty. Found guilty of unlawful assault, Hegarty’s three assailants were each fined and made liable for costs, or in default faced imprisonment. What was notable about this incident is that one of Charley Norris’s co-accused was James Norris—almost certainly his younger brother—which is the first indication that another member of the Norris clan from Hartley had made the crossing to Western Australia[14]
While Charles Norris clearly remained on the WA goldfields for several more years—being last heard of in 1912 at Beria, a short distance north of Laverton and 125 kms east of Leonora—nothing further has been discovered about the movements of his brother. Within a few years of his last sighting, Charles evidently took his children back east. He died at Echuca, Victoria, on 13 September 1924,[15] which is interesting in itself since other members of the Norris family died at Mildura, another town on the Murray River marking the border between NSW and Victoria, but roughly 380 kms (a four-hour drive) north-west from Echuca. Among these family members were both Charles’ parents—Mary in 1921,[16] Robert on 13 September 1924[17]—his brother George Amos (died in 1918 aged 38),[18] and his youngest sister Lily May (Mrs Howard) who died in February 1961, aged 79.[19]
Coincidentally, the year before his father died, Charles Norris’s son, Patrick Stanislaus, had joined the Royal Australian Air Force. In addition to completing a four-year apprenticeship in structural engineering, and a six-month apprenticeship as a carpenter, he had also worked as a labourer before enlisting at Point Cook (the sole RAAF base 14 kms south-west of Melbourne) as an Aircraftman at No 1 Flying Training School on 4 April 1923.[20] In July 1925 he transferred to No 3 Squadron at the new air base which the RAAF opened at Richmond, New South Wales—which was historically the home place of the Norris family in Australia, close by Windsor town and the Hawkesbury River.
A metal rigger by trade, Leading Aircraftman Norris married 24-year-old stenographer Constance Irving at the Cathedral Church of St Andrews, Sydney, on 1 March 1930.[21] Promoted Corporal on 1 April 1931, he became drum-major of the Richmond station band on its formation next year and in March 1935 was given acting rank as Flight Sergeant while filling that role. He was father to two children, a daughter Valerie Florence (born 1/10/32) and a son Warren Irving (born 10 July 1940).
NSW Governor, Air Vice-Marshal Sir Philip Game, speaks with Corporal Patrick Norris, drum-major of the Richmond RAAF Band, at a garden party on the grounds of Government House, Sydney, November 1934. (Hood Collection, State Library of NSW, FL1388452)
Substantively promoted Flight Sergeant on 1 April 1939, a year after the Second World War began Norris was posted to No 2 Aircraft Depot at Richmond, and in March 1941 joined No 4 Squadron at Canberra. Three months later he was appointed to the Commissioned Warrant Officers Branch of the Citizen Air Force. By the end of 1944, he was an acting Wing Commander. Norris relinquished his acting rank in February 1946 but was confirmed as substantive Squadron Leader in the Technical Branch of the Permanent Air Force shortly after he had been sent to Indonesia as United Nations observer in June 1948.
Returning to Richmond in February 1949, he was promoted to Wing Commander on 1 March 1950. He served in the headquarters of Home Command in Sydney from August until October 1954, when his RAAF appointment was terminated on reaching the age for retirement. Having parted company with his first wife (who died in 1990),[22] he married a widow Joyce Garland in 1980, at age 78, and died at Concord Repatriation Hospital, Sydney, on 2 August 1982.[23]
With his birthplace at Boulder, WA, and significant portions of his subsequent RAAF career spent around his ancestral home on the Hawkesbury, it was Patrick Stanislaus who most clearly defined the Norris clan’s east-west-east coast family orbit.
References:
[1] NSW Births Deaths & Marriages (BDM) marriage reg. no. 2356/1872.
[2] https://www.familytreecircles.com/richard-norris-1776-1843-29844.html.
[3] NSW BDM marriage reg. no. V1855477 101/1855.
[4] NSW BDM death reg. no. 6574/1898.
[5] NSW BDM marriage reg. no. 2139/1897.
[6] NSW BDM birth reg. no. 31759/1898.
[7] NSW BDM birth reg. no. 20602/1900.
[8] WA BDM birth reg. no.1708/1902.
[9] WA BDM birth reg. no. 1768/1905.
[10] WA BDM death reg. no. 28/1906.
[11] Kookynie Press, 1 August 1906, p. 4.
[12] Western Argus (Kalgoorlie), 11 October 1904, p. 24.
[13] Moya Sharp to author, 30 June 2022.
[14] Kalgoorlie Miner, 12 May 1905, p. 4.
[15] Vic BDM death reg. no. 9522/1924.
[16] Vic BDM death reg. no. 11300/1921.
[17] Vic BDM death reg. no. 11334/1924.
[18] Vic BDM death reg. no. 2552/1918.
[19] Vic BDM death reg. no. 2135/1961.
[20] National Archives of Australia: A12372, R/6414/H – Patrick Stanislaus Norris, digital pp. 111-12, 116.
[21] NSW BDM marriage reg. no. 657/1930.
[22] NSW BDM death reg. no. 3143/1990.
[23] NSW BDM death reg. no. 18848/1982.
Moya Sharp
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