GOD WILLED IT

GOD WILLED IT

Tony Bailey

© Copyright, Tony Bailey, 2014

All rights reserved.  Without limitation to the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by whatever means without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

First Published 2015

Cover Design by Stephen Bryett

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Creator:          Bailey, Tony, author.

Title:              God willed it / Tony Bailey.

ISBN:             9780992594015 (paperback)

ISBN:  978-0-9925940-2-2 (e-Book)

Subjects:        Men—Australia—Biography.

Country life—Australia—20th century—Biography.

World War, 1914-1918—Veterans—Australia.

World War, 1939-1945—Veterans—Australia.

Dewey Number:     920.710994

Publisher: Ann-Maree McDonald  email:mcdonaldannmaree@gmail.com

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For Mary-Jane and Pop

˷

"My grandfather was an orphan,

A warrior, a digger, a gambler,

A larrikin, a womanizer, &

A two pot screamer...

I adored him!

Tony Bailey, 2013

Thank you

I wish to thank Ann-Maree McDonald (my squeeze), Tony Koch, Stephen Bryett and Lynn Santer (the ghost from the Coast) for all of the great assistance and various contributions each of them have made in assisting me to tell the story of my grandfather Harold Albert Macnish.

I also wish to thank Bill and Kate Studley and the Newcomen family for permitting me to include the photo of Hubert Newcomen whose sacrifices to rescue wounded Anzacs at Gallipoli were exemplary and are deserving of the highest recognition notwithstanding the passing of some 100 years.

Contents

TO AUSTRALIA AND BE DAMNED

THE HUMAN BEAST

INMATES OF THE ORPHANAGE

THE DAY I BECAME ME

ALIAS JESSIE BROWN

DON’T STIR THE POSSUM

WAITING FOR JIM

LAYIN' 'EM LOW

GOTT-MIT-UNS

JIM, JIMMY, JIMMO!

KAG – KILLS ALL GERMS

WHERE THE AUSTRALIANS REST

REFLECTIONS

DINGOES PISSING ON MY SWAG

A CURE FOR A SORROW

IN THE WIND

EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY

THE END OF EDEN

THE BEGINNING OF HAPPY EVER AFTER

PREFACE

I sincerely hope that all who read GOD WILLED IT do not feel that they have wasted their time.  Deservedly or not, I do not feel that I have wasted mine.

I woke up one day and decided that I wanted to write a book about my grandfather.  I think that I had always wanted to do so, but the universe had not aligned until that time, three years ago.  Was it just about my grandfather?  It started out that way but the evidence from the research and the subtext of the story was just relentless in what it was delivering up.

In my own life I was searching for answers to questions for which there were no answers- an endless whirlpool of challenges without the slightest prospect of an acceptable outcome.  Lives were at stake.  People that I loved might die.  I wanted to save them but I couldn’t.  Worst of all, those who could have at least lightened the burden chose to add a seemingly endless amount of weight and innumerable obstacles to torture and torment me in my battles.  I was scraping the bottom of the barrel.  There was nothing left.  The growing rage within me was becoming harder and harder to control.

It was against this background that I suddenly felt that the time had come.  I have no idea why the compulsion arrived when it did, but a compulsion it was and I started the journey.

Perhaps part of my motivation was something hidden in my memories.  Good memories sustain us all at times and they are a powerful tool.  Sometimes small and seemingly insignificant events are dredged from some long forgotten places in the memory and they come like marauding hordes to rescue the mind, not to plunder it.

I think my grandfather came to help me with a battle that I could not possibly win.  When I started to write about what I knew of this remarkable man, I soon realized that I only knew the sanitized facts and that my own knowledge was only a bare shell of what lay beneath the surface just waiting to be found.  As I researched the historical records, I soon discovered that a raft of new questions cascaded before me like a torrent of water released from a swollen dam.  At least I could get answers for these questions so I went to search for them.  I believe I found all of the answers.

As my search unfolded I discovered the undeniable truths of what had happened to my grandfather as a boy and as a young man.  I already knew him as an old man but I needed to peel back the layers of the cake.  I wanted to know and understand the ingredients which fashioned him as a man.

As the search yielded up more and more of the truth, I found that the book was becoming a memoir from the grave for my great grandmother Mary Jane Macnish, my grandfather Harold Macnish, my grandmother Annie Macnish and for Vivienne and Jim.  To me, at least, it was a voice for them all to speak to the truth about the terrible injustices that were inflicted upon them by those who could have helped if they had been other than revolting examples of humanity housed safely within revolting institutions of power.  When my research was finally completed, I had a clear and historically accurate picture of all of the ingredients for all of the people I have written about, but particularly my grandfather.

I must say that I was amazed and inspired by my grandfather’s refusal to let long endured cruelty rip God and decency from his heart. It must have challenged him on many occasions but he just wouldn’t ever give in. Perhaps that is why he came to help me. Not even death could stop my grandfather from doing what was in his nature to do.

So, for me, memories are the key to the mystery. Memories are the bridge to the unknown and the triggers for events beyond our understanding. Rightly or wrongly, it is what I choose to believe because there is no doubt in my mind that forces other than myself were in control of the entire creative and literary process for this book. God Willed It strives in its simplicity, its reality and its authenticity to send a variety of messages to those with the will and capacity to receive them.

I believe that is what the dead have entrusted me to do. I sincerely hope I have accomplished that for them. Humanity really needs to start listening to the messages. The overarching message for me has been Keep fighting and never give up- no matter what.

God Willed It is set throughout a period in parts more than 100 years ago. It would be a mistake to think that it is just a story of yesteryear or days gone by. It should resonate with those who read it, just as powerfully today as it was then. Humanity has not changed at all. The same mistakes are being made. Sooner or later humanity will run out of wriggle room and that as they say will be that. I hope you get my drift. Humanity has a simple decision to make, breed out the greed or die.

CHAPTER ONE

TO AUSTRALIA AND BE DAMNED

How much free will and how much destiny? Could my life ever have followed a different path? How did I manage to live for ninety-three years in a time when life expectancy was in the fifties when my story is filled with betrayal, abandonment, torture, brutality, reprisal, blood, fear and so much death?  Yet my story is also about survival, spirituality, forbidden love and salvation.  It is a story about a mother and her son, two brothers and a sister and finally about a husband and wife.  Above all things, and largely to my sorrow, it is a true story.

My story begins with my mother.  In 1890, aged twenty-one, my mother, a Colleen from Galway in Ireland, decided to leave her homeland.  Her name was Mary Jane Holton.  My grandmother, also called Mary, and my grandfather John made their living as wine and spirit merchants in Galway. From a very early age my mother despaired at the poverty and isolation of her homeland.  Despite the fact that she was a strikingly attractive young lassie with long dark hair and huge sparkling blue eyes, prospects for the future were bleak.  Her delicate stature gave nothing away about her enormous strength of character and determination. My memory of her is being petite and nimble like a sparrow.  I came to understand that as a young lass she made the decision that Galway was not the place to raise a family.  In those dark days Galway was a place of ruin and decay.  The economy was in depression and most of the industry had long since closed down or collapsed.  It was the same throughout all of Ireland.  Men wandered the streets with no work and little to do.  Children loitered in the muddy streets begging for food.  Many wore no shoes on their feet and it was not unusual to see people wearing clothes that were tattered and old.  The climate was mostly bitter and cold.  Sickness abounded.

Weekly trips to the markets revealed the true state of despair.  Strolls along the docks and harbor of Galway saw many of the fishing boats stuck at port.  Horse drawn trams moved routinely around the town with few or no passengers to ferry.  Horse drawn carriages carted grain and other goods from here to there.  The workhouses were full to overflowing with the starving and the destitute.  Their numbers grew steadily month by month, year by year.  Young girls made regular trips to market with their pannier-draped donkeys so that they might try to sell their barley and corn.  Crops were traded for fish and poultry as those with resilience persevered in order to survive.  Like the people, buildings were in decay.  There was no money for repairs and maintenance.  The business of survival had become a constant struggle, living on a knife's edge never knowing what tomorrow would bring.  Even the most elderly of women would sit daily at their spindles in the market places hoping to sell their crafts in order to buy something to eat.  Their craggy faces and empty gazes spoke to Mary Jane with a melancholy lament in their lilt, as though they were weeping the tears of having been beaten down by life.  They were all just waiting to die.  The sight of these poor women, the damned of the damned, spoke to Mary Jane in a way that deeply troubled her soul.  Well she knew of the fate of those whose desperate poverty and homelessness forced them to seek refuge in the workhouses to die in their misery and lamentation for their birth.  She had the certain knowledge of the damned of the workhouse at Shanakyle in the Parish of Kilrush in County Clare only 50 miles from her home in Galway.  It was knowledge she had grown up with.  Her knowledge of this brutality had buried itself deep within her, for not long before her birth, some four thousand people over a mere two year period had been carted in death to a common famine pit at Shanakyle. Her wretched kinfolk had been worked and starved until death and then dumped in a mass coffinless grave, pile upon pile.  Many of the dead were only children.  These outrages and others like them, nearer her home in Galway filled her spirit with a strong sense of fear and foreboding.  She was haunted by the memories.  It was more than the pity that any decent human being has for the helpless and frail, tossed together in death like so much garbage-a landfill of blood flesh and bone.  Mary Jane dreamed of a better life than that.  Her fear of the future drove her to find an escape.

In their boredom, the young men of Galway made sport of pretty young women to pass the time.  Offers of undying love and fidelity were commonplace, the empty banter accompanied by endless proposals of marriage to secure a lustful encounter in the local countryside.  It was plain to Mary Jane that these likely lads of Galway had no more prospects of feeding themselves than the wretched elderly women with vacant gazes or the starving peasant folk forced into work houses by their poverty and abandonment. These were not men to start a family with even had their protestations of undying love and fidelity been genuine.  In a place she kept secreted in the privacy of her own thoughts for many months, Mary Jane decided that Galway and its people had become worn out.  Centuries of habitation had left it putrid.  It had taken on the rankness of an abandoned house left closed and starved of fresh air for years.  All the sweetness and vitality had been sucked out of it.  It had been that way for as long as Mary Jane could remember and she well knew that many of the people of Galway had long since left to find a better life. 

Mary Jane lamented the prospect of a wasted life in such a place.  She had no wish to end her days toiling at a spindle and watching her children die of starvation and sickness.  She allowed herself to dream.  As she pondered her future life she realized that if she stayed in Galway she would surely fester and die with it.  As she stood on the docks gazing at the still waters of Galway harbor her decision was gradually cemented.  She was going to leave, leave forever and go far, far away, as far away as the tides could carry her. Of course she understood that leaving Galway would mean leaving her mother and father with slim or no prospect of ever seeing them again.  There was nothing easy about the decision she had made but she feared staying in Galway more than she feared the uncertainty of the leap of faith she was about to take.

In that moment she knew she must seek out a new life.  There had been much talk around town of lives re-ignited by Irish folk in Australia.  The rumors, fantastic tales of great opportunities abounding in the distant and exotic land of Australia, were tantalizing and enticing.  Every word she overheard sounded fresh and exciting.  Gradually Mary Jane discovered her thoughts had become consumed with fantasies of her pending adventure to the other side of the world.  As time passed she did not know why but she felt no fear and this increasing sense of boldness for the adventure which awaited banished any sense of doubt.  She had been raised in the Catholic faith and held a strong belief in trusting the Catholic Church.  As luck would have it, the Order of the Sisters of Mercy along with the Catholic Church were offering assisted passages to Australia for ten pounds.  Mary Jane had just enough in her savings to buy a ticket and get by for a while in Australia until she found a job.  With her background and experience in wine and spirits she was certain she would find a job with ease, for surely the people in Australia must drink alcohol.  After all there was no doubting that the folks in the colonies were kin.

Being of an age to make her own decisions she stepped out and purchased that fateful ticket, the ticket that would see her turn her back on everything and everyone she'd ever known.  There was certainty in that step yet this did nothing to fend off the trepidation she felt at the thought of delivering the news to her parents.  She knew it would be heartbreaking for them and she was in no way mistaken about that.  When she broke the news to her mother, my grandmother Mary burst into uncontrolled sobbing. She was inconsolable.  Her father pleaded with her not to break their aging hearts. 

We are in grave fear for your safety, he told her solemnly by way of begging her to stay.  Many emigrants to Australia from Ireland have perished horribly at sea in search of a new life.

I am prepared to take the risk, she assured him.  If I stay here I am certain to die, just by a different means.

The danger is far too great, her father pleaded. And even if you survive the journey, mother and I will likely never see you again.  Don’t you love us? 

His words cut into her heart like a knife just as she'd feared they would. Nonetheless, she steeled herself against the verbal blade, resolute in her decision. Eventually her parents had to concede there was nothing they could say to dissuade her from this decision. She was headstrong and fearless. Mary Jane's adventurous spirit could not be denied. She would travel alone to Australia and that was an end of the matter.

After several weeks of preparation, tearful farewells were inevitable.  Mary Jane assured her heartsick parents that God would protect her from harm and she promised to write often.  By the middle of January 1890, Mary Jane had left Galway far behind. She was in Southampton, England, making preparations to board her ship bound for the Colonies.  The time was upon her to start a new life, closing the chapter of her past firmly shut.  January was bitterly cold.  As Mary Jane boarded the HMS Jumna her extremities stung from the frost that hung in the air. The Jumna was an ex-British troop ship which had been converted for use as an emigrant vessel.  She was a large single screw steam ship equipped with sail in the event of engine failure on the long journey to Australia. 

The journey from Galway to Southampton had been uneventful. The first step at least had been smooth sailing, notwithstanding she was so filled with excitement and anticipation there was absolutely no room for fear or doubt.  There were, however, other considerations she was mulling over.  She knew she had to adopt a posture and position for her aloneness on this lengthy voyage.  Ultimately she decided on holding herself with a friendly disposition but not too friendly.  A certain aloofness and confidence was required to erect a safety barrier around herself for there was no doubt there would be many men lonely, bored, afraid and frisky ready to make merry with single women as they steamed across the face of the globe.

Anxiously waiting to board the Jumna, Mary Jane surveyed the other waiting passengers. She estimated around three hundred of them.  There was a mix of different ages and classes. Most of the passengers were men but there were a few women and children among her fellow emigrants.  There were very few young women and none of them were travelling alone.  My petite and nimble mother couldn't help noticing that many of these travelers were dressed in attire she judged to be most unsuitable for a long journey at sea.  Men and women alike appeared to her as though they were dressed for the theatre rather than four long months at sea.  As she ambled around the people she would share close quarters with for the next four months, she heard some of the older men regaling all in earshot about their deep and abiding knowledge of seamanship in open oceans.  Others spoke about the Jumna as though they had built her themselves, rivet by rivet, weld by weld.

Built in the 1860’s you realize, one pompous fellow sprayed.  A Euphrates class built just after the Crimean War and that infernal Indian mutiny.  She’ll do fifteen knots and is specifically designed to travel through the Suez Canal.  We will be in the colonies in no time.

The poor fellow didn’t seem to realize that this crusty old vessel was only a few years short of being scrapped or scuttled and had been deemed only suitable to ferry the lowest of the low, the desperate and forgotten who no one would miss should they be lost at sea.  There was every chance that the Jumna’s sails would be needed at some point in the voyage and that would be the end of fifteen knots.

After a frustrating and uncomfortable wait, the passengers were permitted to board.  The women and children were escorted to segregated sleeping quarters amidst the oppressive stench of coal and old metal from below deck.  The single females were all bunked in together in what their escort smugly and disrespectfully referred to as, The Doves Nest. It appeared to be no accident that The Doves Nest was situated immediately adjacent to the ship’s saloon.  It was only a matter of time before the men would come knocking.  Mary Jane had to remind herself that the trip would take around sixteen