As Long as I Remember

AS LONG AS

I REMEMBER

Thecla Marie Duggan

Copyright © 2013 by Thecla Marie Duggan.

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-4836-7637-1

   Ebook   978-1-4836-7638-8

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Rev. date: 07/29/2013

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Contents

PART ONE

HERE WE ARE

Written By Us

The Children Of John And Lucy

The Infant Jesus Of Prague

Shooter’s Hill

The Bad Old Days

Feebrey’s Farm

The Concert

Sports Day

Oberon Show

Local Dances

I Lose Nora And Gain Bert

Family Friction

Work

Aunts, Uncles And Cousins

My Mother

Going Home

My Round Up

PART TWO

MY VERY GREEN YEARS

To Sydney From The Bush

Off To Saint Mary’s And Goodness Knows What

Shock And Horror Of Boarding School

More Dining Room Capers

Nocturnal Outings

Further Transgressions And The Forgiveness Of Sin

The Tricky Art Of Good Intentions

The Damned Elusive Intermediate

Liberation And Splendid Days

Off To Seek My Fortune

Try, Try Try Again

Mercy Convent, Star Of The Sea, And Blasted Men

Consequences

Of Dallying About With Men

Nun Too Soon

Trying Time In Bathurst

The Wild, Wild West

Mum’s Last Stand

God Was In His Heaven And All Right Was In The World At Grattai

Peas, Peas, Peas

Koora Koora Disturbances

DEDICATION

I think Nora and I should dedicate this first part of my writings to each other, and Mary and Bert. We wrote it for the four of us. At that time of our lives the other people in the world didn’t matter much to us one way or the other.

Therefore the above paragraph has been the dedication of the first part of my life story since, with my dear sister, Nora, I began it all many years ago, but times have changed, and with the loss of so many, the slowing down of me, and the speeding up of the years, I have somewhat welcomed the interest of others.

My story is for me and mine. It is about me and mine, and this very first version of affairs beginning with our own ancestors, and then more importantly my family, it winds itself down the years to this day when I endeavour to put it down in books of my own.

I don’t say ‘books’ lightly. I have about seven or eight, that I wrote when all was right within my world, but then I mercifully desisted for a few years while I tried to come to terms with the loss of my dear good man after 42 years one month and one day of married happiness. But time lies heavy on a heavy heart so I began again in writing the day to day dairies of my life without him. But still my story mainly features the lives of my family, my sons and daughters, my in-laws and outlaws, my very dear grandchildren, and now even a delightful little emerging crop of great grandchildren, and of course, my few steadfast friends who are woven into the tapestry of my life for over fifty years. They are all so important to me. And ‘Me’ is still my number one interest so what they do, what they say, what they think is my never ending interest. And ‘Me’ is still my number one interest, and so, please God I shall go on writing in some sort of fashion, While Ever I Remember.

PART ONE

HERE WE ARE

WRITTEN BY US

My sister Mary once told me that Jeanette Davidson had just informed her—You are only important to yourself.

And do you know what? Mary said to me solemnly looking at me with round, unblinking, blue eyes, She is right. You are only important to yourself.

Rubbish, I contradicted vehemently, without giving it any thought at all—that’s the way I come to most of my conclusions—Jeanette Davidson is a gloomy, pessimistic, bitter, disillusioned woman and she has no sense at all. Don’t repeat her rubbish to me.

I walked off in a huff at the very idea. I’d applied it to myself and I didn’t like it at all. Besides it was wrong. Very, very wrong. I loved the whole world and the whole world loved me.

Well that was many years ago, when I was young, so very young, and like the words of the song;

"When I was young my slippers were red,

I could kick my heels right over my head—"

Now, alas, I have come to the part, that in those halcyon days seemed so far off, I never thought I’d come to it at all.

"Now that I’m old my slippers are black,

I huff to the store and I huff and puff back—"

Well indeed I do not! I might be old—that I have to concede to in some small way at least—but I most certainly do not huff and puff. And if I did, it wouldn’t be to the Store. Forsooth!

But still I try to thrash out in my mind if there is true wisdom in those words from Mary so long ago.—You are only important to yourself. Stubbornly my heart contradicts. All my dear children, how important they are to me. So surely I must be important to them.

And to Mary herself—my eldest sister—and Bert and Nora, my brother and other sister, and to my good man himself, I love him dearly and I’ve been married to him for a million years but I dare not name him—he’d kill me if he found himself in any way associated with these mad scribblings of mine.

And my grandchildren, my so very dear and beautiful grandchildren, and one or two others like Lotte and Anna who worked with me so faithfully and well for over twenty years. But sadly enough, there is the end. I know my limitations. The rest of the world, according to both Mary and me and Jeanette Davidson, does not give a hoot.

But shouldn’t I be satisfied with the number I have come up with? Aren’t they enough to fill my days with all the loving and the living and the worrying I can wrangle round with? I think they are. They are important to me, and I am important to them. So with sublime trust in this conviction, I am going to put it all down, the very foundations of my life story as I remember it, to let us all, or at least as many as are slightly interested, remember where our roots began.

I have diligently worked away on this, recording some of the memories of my childhood to pass on to our future generations, and maybe as they go, they can add theirs. This done, I have a nagging unease that I have been remiss in not making any effort at all to delve a little into our ancestry. Other people can trace their family lines back to the year dot, so I feel the time has come for me to exert myself and find out a bit.

As I always do when snowed in on some project my enthusiasm has led me into, I have looked about for help, and Nora has come up trumps. She is my main stay, my right hand man, and my main source of information. Neither of us are positively dedicated family tree fellows, but we have managed to go back to the first landings in Australia of our ancestors, and that is enough for me.

Like a fox terrier half way down a rabbit burrow, Nora would like to burrow further, especially when she comes on to the scent of some items showing promise that, if we go far enough back, we’ll find we have sprung from Lords of this or that. Then she triumphantly waves the evidence in my face.

It doesn’t interest me much. I’m happy to welcome in a poor fellow from a chain gang, but again Nora leaps in hastily to set the record straight.

Political Prisoner, she reminds me sternly time and time again. Well, true enough, I’m relieved to find I didn’t actually descend from cutthroats, pickpockets or thieves, but for God’s sake as far as I can now see, few of them were that. The damned English just sent them out to get rid of them.

Well, to begin. They got rid of the first Phillip we are interested in on the 24th August, 1799, when ‘The Friendship II’ sailed from Cork with poor Great-Great Grandfather Phillip well and truly on board.

He was born in Ireland in 1766, tried at Clonmel in 1797 and transported for life to Port Jackson. All those on that voyage of the ‘Friendship’ (and the ‘Minerva’ who sailed with her), were members of the United Irishmen who took part in the rebellion of 1798. Phillip therefore would not have taken part in the actual rebellion, but his involvement in its planning was his crime.

The ‘Friendship’ arrived at Port Jackson on January 16th 1800, after a voyage of 177 days, so the day Phillip and John Brennan stepped ashore was the beginning of our long and prolific family line of Irish Australians.

Nora and I wrestled out reams of information as we did our time at Mitchell’s Library and the Archives, and although initially I had instigated the whole procedure and Nora had joined in only to support me, soon her enthusiasm was tremendous, her interest boundless and she was unstoppable. I was grateful to her, I truly was, but in my shocked opinion she was carrying the whole damn thing too far. She was never going to let go. Her quest for more and more details and facts was insatiable and it was worrying the devil out of me. In a flash she had cleverly picked up the workings of the ‘fiche’ thing and as she reeled off her findings of stuff, I weaved around with shorthand book and pen and jotted it down, but Nora was never going to be satisfied. Poor blind Freddy, blindfolded and in the dark, could see that.

The very thought of the task ahead, and the pain my unsuitable footwear were causing, sent me into such a flap, day after day I was barely able to do more than think about my screaming toes as Nora relentlessly marched me from one end of each damned place to the other.

My main and predominant failing was my pride, and at the silly era of time you were considered a hick from the sticks if you weren’t teetering along in shoes with pointed toes and ridiculously high heels. Despite my already excessive height I wouldn’t have been seen dead in the dark in the sensible little Cuban heels Nora was sporting. But free from the excruciating pain of pinched toes and blistered heels, at least she had her wits about her

Therefore there was nothing I could do except grit my teeth and reel along after her. And I couldn’t hobble or moan. I had to gracefully glide along completely ignoring my poor tortured feet that were howling their heads off. But after all we were accomplishing my mission, and despite myself I was slightly carried away by the euphoria of Nora’s relentless curiosity, so no sooner had we finally come up with a great list of dates and incidents, than I happily snatched them up and took off from there to write my own fancies, which were quite often, according to vigilant Nora (who was constantly keeping one eye on me and was therefore often exasperated), a gross miscarriage of the actual facts. This was unfair of her because I never tampered with the facts at all. I just slipped in my version of the way they were probably carried out.

Why do you do it? she often demanded, and I would say back to her with no sign of suitable chastisement.

I just spice it up a bit. Gosh! If it was left just as a list of names and dates you might as well be reading the Bible.

"Have you read the Bible?" Nora once queried me with some interest, and, when I had to admit I certainly had not, she informed me it was just as well because the Bible was spicy enough. Well anyhow, I still don’t think I did much harm putting in my two bob’s worth.

Leaving Ireland as a convict with the pretty sure knowledge he’d never see the land of his birth or any of his family again must have been a dreadfully sad affair for poor Phillip Hogan. He was 33 years old. He was a mounted messenger who carried orders and information from village to village. Nora nearly went mad with excitement when we found he is still remembered in Irish folk law to-day in the saying, going like galloping Hogan.

I would have nearly gone mad too if I had the time, but the whole thing was becoming more tedious with each passing day. After all we did have husbands and families and we couldn’t spend the rest of our lives on this project so I had to restrain Nora and she had to control me and we finally had to desist. So the years before Phillip are lost to us. But we can well imagine the memory of the grieving mother and father, sisters and brothers that he would carry in his heart for many a long day afterwards.

Nora, (reading over my shoulder as I typed away), said she couldn’t imagine that at all. In fact she was inclined to threaten me into substantiating my remark. "You might find he didn’t have any family to speak of, she warned me. You can’t write things we can’t prove."

"Nonsense, those Irish breed like rabbits. He’d have had hordes of kin and they would be grieving their heads off, because bewailing is another thing the Irish are good at, but don’t you start trying to prove any point here. We’re up to our ears as it is. And I badly need a drink."

As well as disapproving of my insistence to liven things up a bit, Nora disapproved even more strongly of my little itsy bitsy drinking. At times like this she would jerk her head back to look despairingly at the ceiling rolling her eyes until they nearly left her head altogether. If I’d been the town drunk she couldn’t have shown more gloom and despair.

Neither of us ever sulked though, so we proceeded on, Nora trying to put up with me and I trying to restrain my silly self.

There wasn’t, thankfully, for Nora I’m sure would have thrown a tantrum there in the middle of the Archives if we had found otherwise, any evidence that Phillip was drastically ill-treated. In fact it was recorded the prisoners came ashore in good spirits.

He was also in the company of educated gentlemen—both Protestant and Catholic—who were members of the Society of United Irishmen whose only fight with the law was a bid to gain parliamentary reform that would have ridden Ireland of her English oppressors.

England had been in possession of Ireland for centuries and now intended to dissolve the parliament of Ireland, although the vast majority of the people had no voice in the election of members of parliament. Their farms had been taken from them and they had to pay tithes to support a clergy of an alien church, and education was denied them unless they apostatized from their religion. Their desperation for survival, as dignified human beings in their own land, led them into the ‘98’ Rebellion.

Catholics and Protestants, who recognised these injustices, joined forces and formed the United Irishmen and mustered a small army in an endeavour to rid their country of the English. They were no match for the well-equipped and well trained English army and the rebellion was suppressed with great savagery. Shiploads after shipload of the captured Rebels were transported to New South Wales and those on the ‘Minerva’ and the ‘Friendship’ were some of the earliest arrivals.

As these Irish people began to accept that they were never to be allowed to return to their native land many of them realised the possibilities of making a new life here and making the best of their lot—sort of exchanging the shamrock for the wattle. However, they clung to their religion and love of the soil. Groups met regularly for prayers in various houses. Years later, every layman on the committee for the building of the first St. Mary’s Cathedral was a Rebel of the ‘98’ Rebellion.

The ‘Battle of Vinegar Hill’ put paid to all that rebellion business and Phillip was one of the unhappy victims who finally found himself on alien Australian soil. Also on the Friendship with him was John Brennan—another of our ancestors—Dr. Redfern, a surgeon of the Navy, whose crime was bandaging a wounded rebel, Henry Hayes, a County Sheriff who was alleged to have seduced a wealthy Quaker lass, a Protestant clergyman Rev. H. Fulton, and a Catholic Priest, Father Dixon. Both of these reverend gentlemen were often referred to for their intervention between the early Colonists and the English Government. Father Dixon was especially active as he fought on behalf of the Catholic Irish against, for the most part, Rev. Samuel Marsden, commonly known as The Flogging Parson.

No part of history ever exonerated the cruelty of the Flogging Parson and it was to this man Phillip was assigned to labour for on his properties at Parramatta and at Mamre, South Creek, which was Marsden’s Farm. Marsden was also the Magistrate at Parramatta. Phillip must have hated the man with every fibre of his being for he would have been witness to the dreadful man’s constant injustices and intense cruelty. But apparently he did nothing to bring Marsden’s wrath down on him for his sentence of life was revoked on22ndJuly 1811 when Phillip was granted his freedom.

Mary McMahon was born at Innis, Ireland about 1777. She was convicted at Clare in June 1800 of a crime unknown and transported for seven years. She left Ireland on board the ‘Rolla’ on 4th November 1802 and reached Port Jackson 13th May 1803 along with 119 male and 37 female convicts. Whether she had known Phillip before in Ireland remains unknown but it is recorded that Phillip and Mary’s first child, a son they named Michael, was born in 1804, one year after Mary landed. Their marriage would have been performed by Father Dixon, but as all Masses, Christenings and Marriages of Catholics had to be carried out in secret, there is no record of this or of the christening of Michael and the first of the children that followed.

Here Nora, ever the romantic, imagined the notion that it was likely that Phillip and Mary had been lovers in Ireland, and that Mary had schemed her way to Australia to be with him. It was a fine idea that quite appealed to me, but I proved to be the practical one here and decided we should stick to facts. Fancy me wanting to stick to the facts! I could be contrary, right enough.

Children of Phillip and Mary: Michael, born 1804, Catherine 1806, Robert 1808, Margaret 1812, Henry 1814, John 1818, Dennis 1820, Bridget 1824.

The record of the 1806 muster (census) shows there were now a son and daughter, and Phillip had ‘ticket of leave’ which meant he was free to work for anyone but was obliged to stay in a certain district. Mary was pardoned.

Samuel Marsden was known for his hatred of the Irish Rebels and his harsh and cruel treatment of any convict who had the misfortune to come before him in his role of magistrate. Phillip must have been a valuable man to Marsden and must have been treated as such or he would have smartly shaken the dust of Mamre from his feet the day he was given his ‘ticket of leave.’ Instead he leased 20 acres of land from Marsden for five years and set about clearing it of timber and preparing it for cultivation. It is hard to imagine the dreadful toil of chopping down the trees, grubbing the stumps and burning the green timber with the only tools being an axe and mattock.

In 1808 Robert their third child was born and they were still toiling away at Mamre. But a new era of hope was about to dawn for Australia and for Phillip and Mary.

On New Year’s Day 1810 the inhabitants of Botany Bay were assembled to witness the arrival of the new Governor, Lachlan Macquarie. Quite a spectacle it was, two regiments of soldiers firing volleys continuously while the military band played God Save the King. The Governor and his entourage stood immobile under the fierce January sun.

Then the Governor stepped to the dais and began his address in his rich Scottish voice. Fellow citizens and fellow soldiers… . He told them he intended to govern strictly, justly and fairly. He hoped all the past grievances and jealousies would end forever and that all classes would work together in harmony and justice.

He urged all classes to strictly observe all religious duties and to attend divine worship, and he trusted all persons in authority do their utmost to rid the colony of vice and corruption.

When the natives came to the settlement he wanted them to be treated kindly and not molested in any way. Finally he said the honest, sober and industrious, whether free emancipist or convict, would ever find in him a friend and protector.

It is most unlikely that Phillip and Mary were present on this momentous occasion but news of the event most certainly reached them and they must have believed and trusted Lachlan Macquarie as they wasted no time in making their needs known to him.

On 29th January 1810, Mary appealed to the new Governor petitioning him for some land, and to free her husband. She stated that they had no land of their own and had been obliged to lease 20 acres of standing timber for 5 years, from S. Marsden. The land was now cleared and ready for cultivation. They could have one crop, then must leave it and take on another 20 acres.

The Governor took a very dim view of the practice of so many couples living together without marriage—in fact he was appalled, and set about rectifying the situation wherever possible. Phillip and Mary were devout Catholics and it us most probable that their union was secretly blessed by Father Dixon, old Rebel shipmate and friend, but of course this would have been would not have been recorded in the marriage registry.

It must have been a sore decision for Phillip and Mary when they finally decided to bow to the hated English laws that were still being imposed on them here in Australia. They had given their all to free themselves of the English oppression of their Catholic Faith. Phillip had fought and lost and suffered for his defeat in this exile. Mary, an exile too, was also a devout Catholic, yet on 26th March 1810 they finally humbly trotted along to the Church of England Cathedral of St. John in Parramatta and submitted to being married by the Flogging Parson.

It was probably a wise move for after being granted his freedom Phillip was also granted 40 acres of land—his first Australian soil—and the year after in 1812 he received cattle from the Government. Things were certainly looking up for Phillip and Mary!

Mary’s request was granted and 60 acres in the vicinity of Cooks River was given to her and her heirs and assigns forever."

Phillip was now a free man in all ways except he could not return to Ireland. His 40 acres was in the Airds or Appin District but he remained in Mambre in his home on the banks of the South Creek where five more children were born to him and Mary, the last Bridget, in 1824. Our Great Grandfather John was born in 1818.

Nora and I found a news item in the ‘Sydney Gazette’ dated 10th December 1814 which states; William Thompson, a black man, was indicted for stealing wearing apparel and a quantity of silver out of the house of Phillip Hogan, on the banks of the South Creek on the night of 13th or morning of 14th (November) and found guilty of stealing from the dwelling house to value of 20s. He was remanded for judgment."

A letter from Governor Macquarie; dated 13/1/1818 reads: "Unto Phillip Hogan, His Heirs and Assigns to have and to hold for ever and ever, one thousand and twenty acres of land situated in the District of Bringelly. Conditioned not to sell or alienate the same for space of five years.

Also in that year their sixth child, John, was born and things were looking rosy for them as well as for many other fellow exiles. The Irish were becoming established along the Hawkesbury River and along South Creek and through to Bringelly and Cambelltown. Some of them had been assigned as workers for wealthy land owners but had their own blocks of land for themselves, as had Phillip.

Phillip now wanted more land. He had a large family to support and enough stock to justify expansion.

He was given a grant of 50 acres on the Medway Creek between what is now Sutton Forest and Berrima, and his son Michael acquired 60 acres adjoining. These lands were retained in the family for generations. The younger Hogans looked north from Medway and southwest from Claremont (their South Creek/Cosgrove Creek land). They settled along Cooks Vale Creek which runs into the Abercrombie River. Henry reached as far as the Tuglow River, where he lived for many years. His mother, Mary Hogan, nee McMahon, died there on 7/9/1859.

It is virtually certain Phillip Hogan moved into the Bubalahia area on the left bank of the Abercrombie before 1832 as Hogan’s Station is shown on Govett’s survey in 1832. Also in 1818 they were given one thousand and twenty acres of land at Bringelly that they named Claremont. There was quite a bit of evidence of Mary’s petitions for this and that evidently weren’t all falling on deaf ears.

Phillip died in1829 and afterwards his family moved to the Abercrombie onto land that we found referred to as Hogan’s Station.

Phillip’s headstone above his grave in the old Catholic cemetery on the corner of Windsor and Pennant Hills Road, Parramatta, is clearly legible. The epitaph reads:

How lov’d, How valu’d once avails thee not,

To whom related, or by whom begot.

A heap of dust alone remains of thee;

’Tis all thou are—and all the proud shall be.

Who chose this epitaph will forever remain a mystery, certainly someone familiar with literature. His wife, Mary, was illiterate and their children reared in the wild Australian bush could not have known ‘Pope’s Elegy to an Unfortunate Lady’. Perhaps Phillip chose it himself.

Mary died in 1859 and was buried at Black Springs. No lines from Pope for her. Her headstone reads;

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF

MARY HOGAN

WHO DIED

SEPT 7TH, 1859

AGED 85 YEARS.

A loving wife, a mother dear

A faithful body lies buried here

Ten children she has left behind

A guide in heaven they will her find.

I think they must have made it up themselves. After all there were enough of them to do it, and also grandchildren by the dozen. But it is son John who is our next interest.

John was the sixth child of Phillip and Mary and was born in 1818 and married Ann Scott (who was born at Limerick in Ireland 1820) at Hartley in 1849. John Hogan held the license of the first hotel, The Club House in Oberon, which stood where the Esso service station is now. The Catholic School, St. Josephs, is on land that was once owned by John. In the cemetery on the hill behind where the hotel once stood, John and Ann are buried. Their tombstones remain, weather-worn and moss-covered but the lettering still clearly legible. His death certificate shows he died on 17th April, 1881, and his occupation is given as that of hotelkeeper. Anne died on the 7th of March 1901.

The inscription reads:

Sacred to the memory of

John Hogan

Died April 17th 1881

Aged 61 years

Leaving wife and eleven children

to mourn their loss.

Also

his beloved wife

Ann

died 7th March, 1901

aged 84 years.

Their eldest child was also christened John. He was our Grandfather and he married Lucy Ann Brennan, (Born Narellan 1848—died Oberon1945), who was the granddaughter of the John Brennan, a Protestant, who was transported along with Phillip Hogan on the "Friendship.’

Children of John II and Lucy: Eva, Thomas, Anne, John, Robert, Phillip (1882-1932—our father), Lucy (Cissie) Emmy, Ida and Cecil.

So what of John Brennan—this other Rebel ancestor of ours? When Nora and I were diligently searching for the history of Phillip Hogan and peering at the tattered list of prisoners transported on the famous ‘Friendship’ on the ‘fiche’ thing, we found to our surprised delight that there was the name of John Brennan. Could it be our ancestor? Not likely, Nora thought. Grandmother Lucy surely had come from an aristocratic background, probably English, hadn’t she?

Back at Oberon visiting our cousin Mena, Nora was told of some old letters Mena had in her possession which might help and very obligingly she produced copies of correspondence between solicitors in Sydney and Dublin dated October 1902. The correspondence referred to the disposal of land belonging to John Brennan in County Wexford in Ireland, namely Castleheyston and Tintern Abbey. Lucy had written back to Ireland inquiring about the ownership of her grandfather’s property, but of course the English had long since confiscated all of that.

It also said he had been given a grant of land on Hawkesbury River by Governor King and had died in March, 1819. Mena also showed Nora an old St. James bible which had recently been given to her by a distant relative of Granny, (as Nora persisted in lovingly referring to the old biddy), and on the fly leaf was the name and birth dates of the family of Thomas Brennan.

A note attached to the letters Mena said John Brennan left a son Thomas, who was reared by Captain Piper.

We subsequently found that our John Brennan was a man of means and a respected father of eight. He was tried at Wexford as a Rebel Commissary, found guilty and sentenced to transportation for life to Port Jackson aboard the ‘Friendship’. He would have been 46 years of age then.

From the beginning he was given rather special treatment and was assigned the task of managing the farm of a James Williamson during his absence in England (1800/02). On Williamson’s return he was given a conditional pardon and his own farm of 120 acres at Cattai (adjacent to Paradise Gardens). He called his grant Mary’s Mount. It was subject to floods and partly rock-strewn but he battled along and took an active part in the controversy between Governor Bligh and Major Johnston. His conduct was exemplary and he dreamed of one day returning to Ireland and perhaps a son coming to take over the Cattai farm. His family in Ireland had continued to appeal for his release from exile until his death in 1819.

However, a census taken in 1814 shows he was married to Elizabeth Seagrave and they had two children. For the first time in our dogged search for facts and information, Nora showed splendid indifference, and more astonishingly, the signs of rattling things along. The respected father of eight seemed to be taking to exile in a foreign land too enthusiastically for Nora’s liking. She said offhandedly, Since we haven’t been able to find anything about Elizabeth Seagrave, or the other child of the union of John and Elizabeth, we will pass on to what we know of this son Thomas.

John Brennan died when his son Thomas (Lucy’s father) was six years old. For some reason this Captain Piper, a very big wig with oodles of money made out of the excise charges on spirits, reared Thomas. Captain Piper built a mansion on land granted him by Governor Macquarie and to-day the site of his home where Thomas grew up is known as Point Piper.

It seems Captain Piper did very well by Thomas who was able to rear his large family in a genteel way of life and give them all a good education in spite of the rough and ready way of life in those early days.

We did a bit of research on Captain Piper and from The Rum Rebellion by H.V. Evatt, found that Captain Piper was quite a colourful figure in those early days of Australian history. He was Macarthur’s second in the duel with Lieutenant Colonel Paterson, which resulted in Macarthur being exiled to England for some years. His fortune fluctuated; sometimes he had lots of money, and sometimes was hard pressed. At one time he owned Alloway Bank at Bathurst.

Thomas married Mary Walsh in 1838 and they had a large family, our Grandmother Lucy was their sixth child. She was very well educated, accomplished in all the fine arts and was considered a regular lady. She married Grandfather John Hogan in May 1873.

Phillip Hogan and John Brennan—United Irishmen, Rebels, shipmates, exiles—had so much in common that it appears fitting had they been able to look down through the years, seventy-three years on, to the day John Hogan and Lucy Brennan, their grandchildren, who called Australia Home, were joined in matrimony at Oberon.

Lucy met John when she was bridesmaid at the wedding of her brother William and John’s sister Margaret and the story goes that her father Thomas strongly objected to Lucy’s marriage on religious grounds. Captain Piper had reared him in the Church of England faith. Thomas gave her three thousand pounds and cut her off from any further claim on him. She used the money to build ‘Evafields’ at Ginkin near Oberon.

Mary, Bert and Nora seem to have a variety of memories of Grandmother Lucy, ranging from ‘tolerant’ to ‘fond,’ and they all loved Grandfather John. I do not remember my Grandfather at all and my one solitary memory of Grandmother Lucy is extremely ‘unfond’ (and if that isn’t a word, it ought to be). I have always regarded her as a stiff-necked old biddy who, all in one day, brought no cheer to my sick father and grossly insulted me.

On my Mother’s side William Dennis was born in 1811 in County Surrey, England. So he was a Pom. He came as a free settler to Australia in 1837 and married Mary Ann Murphy, an Irish girl.

Mary Ann came from Tower, Cork, Ireland. She was born in 1820 and migrated to Australia in 1835 in the ‘Duchess of Northumberland.’

William and Mary Ann were married on the 7th May 1844 at Camden Village. They made their home in Burrogorang Valley near the junction of Wollondilly and Nattai Rivers and gave it the name ‘Summerfield. It lies submerged under the water of the Warragamba Dam.

The children of William and Mary Ann: James, William, Mary, Edward, Michael, John, Patrick, Joseph, Henry, Reuben and Robert. Michael and Patrick died in infancy. William and Mary, along with their own family, reared Mary’s two nieces—Ellen Clarke and Ellan Miller. These two married Robert Cranfield (brother of Suzannah) and James Thompson, respectively.

These children received their education from tutors, usually remittance men, who would receive a small wage and their keep.

We do not know much of life in the Valley. In a book about the Carlon Family there are references to William Dennis, the building of the Church, and floods.

Here is an extract from a book Historic Roads Around Sydney.

The term ‘Burragoranger’ was applied to animals as well as to men. The men were wild but magnificent horsemen, the cattle wild and ferocious, and a long lean breed of pig in the Valley also went by the same name.

J.B. Martin says in his book that whenever such men as James Gorman and William Dennis came into Camden with a mob of bullocks a cry would go up. Burragorangers! and the townsfolk would scatter before the trampling hoofs and threatening horns of the wild-eyed mob. He gives a picture of a typical ‘Burragoranger’, the untrimmed beard and whiskers, the shot pipe and strapped trousers the long spurs and rough leggings, the ready-for-anything seat on the doubtful horse, the pouch carrying the ‘Dover’ knife and a piece of punk to strike a light with, and the readiness to swap anything, distinguished our drover from his fellows and constituted a ‘Burragoranger’.

Just how well William fitted into the above picture will never be known, but coming from the green fields of Kent to the rugged valley must have taken some adjusting to. We know from old letters that he was a man of considerable education and sensitivity, and the education of his children was high on the list of his priorities.

Here was an Englishman of some means and education who married an Irish colleen in this new land, allowing her to raise their large family in the Catholic faith and giving her support and encouragement along the way. Shortly before his death in 1887 he was received into the Catholic faith and was the first person to be buried in the Shooter’s Hill cemetery. Mary Ann lived until 1893.

Their eldest son James married Suzannah Cranfield on 7/5/1844. They were of course my Grandfather and Grandmother on my Mother’s side.

Their children were;—William, Edward, Emily, Anne (Wistie) Fredrick, Amelia, (1880-1943 our mother), Herbert (Bert) and Gertrude who died in infancy.

William and Mary moved to ‘The Swamp’ sometime in the 1870’s with the youngest of their brood. Some of the oldest remained at the old home ‘Summerfield’, but James was married and lived at the Oaks at Camden with wife Suzannah (nee Cranfield) and their family. And between 1880 and 1883 this family followed and settled about 3 miles from ‘The Swamp.’

Just imagine the trek through rugged un-roaded country with Suzannah riding side-saddle, baby Bert in her arms and James with Amelia (Mum), less than three years old, in from of him on his saddle !.

The older children, William, Ted, Emily, Elizabeth (Wistie) and Fred were riding. Indeed there was no alternative as there were no roads to this place, which was really was no place.

But Shooter’s Hill must not have been a disagreeable place to live if you were a child. Mum spoke fondly of her relatives and friends of those far off days. It was a close-knit little community of aunts and cousins in the cottages scattered in the bush round. The families were the Barkers, Dunks, Watsons, Feebreys, Maxwells, Cranfields, two lots of Dennis and others on the small holdings of 200 or 300 acres with about 30 children attending the school.

James used to go on long droving trips into the outback and be absent for months at a time, so it is just as well there was plenty of support from neighbours and kin. When Mum was four, her Mother was milking while Mum, Uncle Bert and a small Cranfield cousin, (who was in Suzannah’s charge while his mother had another baby), played nearby. A small stick fell from the tree above them and hit the little visitor on the head killing him instantly. This happened during one of James’s absences.

Suzannah used to bake bread and make butter which she sold to the men who were employed making the road to Oberon. Mum told us her father said he had traveled thousands of miles in his droving days and never at any time experienced anything that could not be explained naturally—haunted houses dragging chains, or cries in the night, with exception of Fisher’s Ghost.

James Thompson surveyed a road to the tiny village of Oberon and by 1870 there were seven houses in Oberon, a store, a butcher’s shop, and a Post Office and, of course, there was John Hogan’s Hotel.

At the back of our old home at Shooter’s Hill, which had been built by Grandfather James Dennis about 1885, was a shingle-roofed building we called ‘The Storeroom’. Saddles and bridles, whips, surcingles, traces, reins and winkers hung from wooden pegs all along the western side of the wall. On the other walls were deep shelves, which held an assortment of tools, balls of twine, tins of grease, and boxes of nails. In our childhood it was called ‘The Harness room’ before finishing up as Mary’s Post Office. It had been added on by Mum’s eldest brothers, Bill and Ted, and this new addition had begun life as ‘The Shop’. Bill or Ted would take their wagon to Bathurst for their stock of flour, sugar, tea, rice, candles, kerosene, cotton, needles, bolts of cloth, boots and many other items necessary for the day to day life of the settlers and road workers round about who came for their supplies.

Eventually Bill and Ted married and moved to homes of their own and after her mother died of a stroke in 1904 Mum kept house for her father and brothers, Fred and Bert. She also kept the shop going so her days were very busy and I suppose quite interesting with all the people calling in to purchase their odds and ends.

One day a tall stranger came to buy horse shoes. After he went she walked back through the house to the front verandah and watched him unhitch his horse and ride away. It was shortly after his death that Mum told us of her first meeting with our father. She said it was the way his eyes smiled as he talked that first attracted her. The attraction must have been mutual and very strong for they were married on 11/11/1911.

It seems incredible now that these two who had been raised only about eight miles apart had never met before. But the roads were just tracks through the bush and transport was by horseback, sulky or dray and the people at Ginkin went to Oberon another way. Dad worked in the mine at Cobar and later spent two years at the mine at Burraga.

Mum and Dad were married in a little tin Church in Oberon that was pulled down last year to make more room for the new church. For years it had been used as a classroom and in later years as a wood and craft room. Bert’s and Nora’s children were among the later lot who attended there where they tried to assemble paddle pop sticks into baskets and shoeboxes.

Mum’s brother Ted and his wife Minnie gave Dad and Mum a little wedding breakfast after which they lit out by coach for Tarana to take the train to Sydney, to catch the boat to New Zealand.

Mum often told us of her last memory of Uncle Bert, who was her favourite brother. At the last moment he thrust a new rug into the coach and tucked it around her knees. That will keep you warm on the boat, Ame, he said. It must have been a bitter sweet memory for my poor mother. Uncle Bert had a heart attack and fell off his horse near the Shooter’s Hill cemetery and died while she was away.

Mum’s sisters were not enthusiastic about her marriage. They had each married tidy little men with tidy little farms and after their weddings each had climbed into the sulky beside the man of her choice to drive the eight or ten miles to ‘Maryvale’ and ‘Waterford’ and no nonsense. In their eyes Amy had been very foolish indeed. She had turned down much better matches in the material sense, certainly with much ‘steadier’ men. Dad made them uneasy. He was different. He enjoyed a few drinks with his mates and he liked a bet on the Races. He was a good dancer and he dressed with a bit of flair. He rode or drove smart stepping horses. He had ‘whims’ about his beard. Sometimes he had one, sometimes he didn’t, but when he had, he kept it clipped and well-trimmed like his hair. There was none of the typical long flowing beards for Dad.

I suppose Mum’s sisters loved her and were concerned for her welfare, but more importantly they were concerned for theirs. There was the matter of their children’s education. There was no school at Porter’s Retreat where they lived, so the young Conlons and Maloneys stayed with Grandfather James and Auntie Amy and attended Shooter’s Hill School.

Now Mum was gone, Grandfather’s needs were well cared for because Bert had just married Dad’s sister, Ida Dennis, and they moved in to take care of him. But would the newlyweds welcome their offspring as Amy had done? It was all very unfortunate that their younger sister had met Phillip in the first place, and then been so headstrong and foolhardy about marrying him and moving so far away.

But Mum’s brothers approved of Dad, especially Bert. From reading the letters he wrote to them in New Zealand it is evident that he and Dad had been great mates.

Dad found employment in New Zealand at the Mt. Martha Mine in Weihi and they settled happily into their new life, making friends and taking part in the usual doings that make the pattern of life in any small town. Across the street lived Dick and Nellie Landy with their two little girls. In no time a strong friendship grew between the two young couples. Dick also worked at the Mt. Martha mine and Nellie quickly drew Mum into her circle of friends.

Everything was working out well in New Zealand for the young couple and the following September Min (Mary Lucy) arrived and the future seemed full of promise. Then came the trouble in the mine with the Union making their usual stir. From old letters it appears it was a squabble between two Unions. By the time Amy was born the mine strife had escalated to its worst and all the men were out of work. Mum had developed rheumatic fever an it was life threatening. She had not recovered from this when the sudden death of Bert cast a dark shadow across the Tasman to sadden the lives of our parents in their little house in Matuara Street, Weihi. Mum’s brother Fred, and Dad’s sister, Cissie, hastened to their aid and when Mum was well enough to make the journey they insisted Phillip must return with his family to Australia.

Mary and Amy were born in New Zealand, and after they returned, came Monica, Bert, Nora and me, (Thecla Marie). Both Amy and Monica died before I was born but Mum often talked about both her lost babies. Her ‘little angels in Heaven’ she called them.

I have a photo of Nora and Monica taken just before Monica died. Nora had a chubby little face and curls out of control all around it. Monica looks frail and tired with big sad and wistful eyes.

Mum and Dad were happy to be ‘back home’ with their baby girls but they always had fond memories of their first home and the friends they made there. Mum’s favourite song, Loch Lomond, always took her back to the nights on the ship ‘Niagara’ when the band played and she and her Phil danced to its strains as they began what they had hoped to be their big adventure.

In the years that followed there were good times and bad times, happy times and sad times. At first they stayed briefly with Dad’s parents at ‘Evafields’ and then made their home with Grandfather James Dennis.

When Grandfather James died in 1920 it was August. On that day funeral snow and sleet were falling. The Priest used to ride from Oberon about his parish and on this occasion he was very late. So it was decided to carry on without him as a number of the mourners had miles to travel home. James’ brother Bob could read Latin and used to serve Mass so he read the appropriate prayers and James was lowered into the ground and the grave was filled in just as His Reverence rode up. He was quite put out to find they had jumped the gun on him but there was nothing that could be done about it by then.

On the death of Grandfather James the property was auctioned off and Dad bought it. Mary can remember watching the place and all its bits and pieces being auctioned off and Dad buying it all for eight hundred pounds. And so there, where it all began when he bought the horseshoes from the shop nine years before, our parents, Phillip and Amelia, had their own little piece of Australia, and they finished up their lives there.

To register your brand it is necessary to name your holding so they chose Koora Koora, which is aboriginal for ‘meeting place.’ It was the childhood home of all of us and there were many happy gatherings and many partings. Our sisters Monica and Amy died there in childhood and, like Dad and Mum, went from there to Heaven. Mary and Bert never left to live anywhere else and as for Nora and me, a part of our hearts never left there either. Min, Bert, Nora and I, and Bert’s family call it Home. To the children of Nora and me, it is a special place. It is a special place because there was always love, and trust, and loyalty and truth. Our parents built their life together on those principles. They hadn’t much in the way of worthy possessions but they loved each other, and us. We felt their love around us always and we feel it to this day.

This does not mean we have not had the usual family differences of opinion, often seeing things from opposite angles, and we have different temperaments, and we (Nora and I) had many fiery exchanges in our young days. But we have never lied to each other, mistrusted or doubted each other’s word or complete loyalty. We always knew, no matter what else prevailed, we were there for each other, four square against the world, if need be.

‘He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much.’

Our parents therefore achieved success.

o0o

Since I had washed my hands so completely and at such an early age of my father’s mother, Grandmother Lucy, I gave all my granddaughter attention to my mother’s mother, Suzannah. Mum was always happy to relate stories of her childhood and I think was pleased that I had such an avid curiosity about her mother.

From my mother’s yarns I grew to know and love Suzannah very well. I approved of her thoroughly, even though I was half scared of her. Of course I never knew her personally as she had died before Mum was even married, but there was a very large portrait of her in my mother’s bedroom and her eyes would follow you around the room. She was as handsome as anything with the most wonderful hair you’ve ever seen but, according to the apparent custom of those days, she looked as stern as blazers and didn’t show the slightest glimmer of a smile.

A pity, I used to think as I stood with my hands clasped behind my back gazing up at her. If Suzannah had smiled I was sure it would have been something to see. But Mum saw nothing severe in Suzannah. She depicted her as strong minded, relentlessly capable, as courageous as a tom cat and as fearless as Ned Kelly. But she also assured me Suzannah was a real lady, soft and warm and lovely and kind.

I used to think that if I ever had a daughter I would name her Suzannah. I only got to think I would though. The nearest I ever came to actually doing it was when my youngest daughter was born, but the opposition I struck nearly knocked me off my feet. I don’t usually bow gracefully to opposition but perhaps I wasn’t quite myself and those who opposed me seemed so genuinely horrified I wondered uneasily if perhaps I had flipped. If I’d said I wanted to name my baby Nebuchadnezzar or Billy the Kid they could not have been more dismayed.

As it was we all settled for Mary Tracey and her father, (I suppose in an effort to appease me), tacked on ‘Thecla’ as well when he went to register her birth. It didn’t appease me though. To this day I would have liked to have christened her Suzannah. I’d have called her Zannah, or perhaps even Zannie. I suppose that’s what everyone was frightened of.

Flipping through all of Nora’s pages I realised that she had also gleaned information of our ancestors from apparently millions of ‘old hands’ who’d known them personally. She had so much interest and such a store of knowledge it was a pity to waste it, so I suggested brightly, Perhaps you would write some of this down, and then you could add some of the little stories of our childhood. It would be nice to hand them down to our grandchildren, don’t you think?

She was horrified and refused flatly. You’re mad, she told me sternly. I haven’t any grandchildren, and I can’t write.

I can’t write either. I pointed out reasonably. But I am not going to let that stop me. And you will have grandchildren one day and then you’ll be very sorry you were so lazy.

She has never refused me anything so back she came with some little snippets I can add to mine. It’s amazing how, without discussing it beforehand, we have sometimes written of the same things, albeit not always presenting the same facts. And now I wonder where I got a lot of my own ideas from. I seem to have been much less tolerant of my ancestor’s ways and doings. Nora on the other hand was ‘fond’ of them all and was often at a loss at the callous way I dealt with them. For instance, she was horrified when I depicted Grandfather James, father of my mother Amelia, as being lazy in the story of the Tasmanian Devil.

James was mostly away droving at any rate and Suzannah was used to having to deal with the day to day chores on the farm. She dealt with farm hands, planted the flowering plum trees, the apple trees, the elderberries, the elm tree, the May bush, and the lilacs and other flowers that grew in profusion around the house. It was Suzannah who made sure the fields were plowed and the seeds sown. It was Suzannah who always made sure her sturdy gates were always kept closed so that Lily the goat, and all the pesky animals that lived in Badger’s Scrub, would not get into her garden of vegetables, fruits and flowers and especially harm her precious chooks, which she called her ‘girls’.

The Badger scrub was full of badgers, wombats, possums, rabbits, foxes and, believe it or not, a family of Tasmanian Devils. God alone knows how they came to be there but there they were.

Suzannah’s pride and joy were her ‘girls’. The chook house was built a fair way away from the house on the end of the cow bail at the bottom of the cow yard. It was made of thick strong slabs with a thatched roof and a heavy hinged door. Inside there were five rows of perches for her chooks and each row sloped back from the one in front. Underneath were the nesting boxes she had made from butter boxes.

Every evening she filled her blue basin with chook feed and scattered it among her ‘girls’, who would gobble up the corn in five minutes before making their way back through the heavy chook shed door to nest for the night. The door was left open all day so they could go inside to lay their eggs or hatch out their chickens. In the evening they would tuck up on the perches with their heads under their wings and sleep. After tea, if James was home, she would ask him to go down and lock the chook shed door for her. Quite often she would give up on him, light the lantern and go to close the door herself so she could sleep in peace knowing her girls were safe—and safe they were. That was until the Tasmanian devil family that lived in Badger’s Scrub began to grow.

Suzannah didn’t mind the Mother Devil, she never saw the father, but one of the pups, that she nicknamed Gus, was troublesome for her. He was shy and sneaky and loved to watch the goat and the big old bull from behind the bushes. But he especially liked to watch the chooks with his steady gaze. He would stiffen in fright however when he saw Suzzanah striding out to check the farmhouse workers or feed her chooks. Sometimes he would sneak back at night and try to find a way into the chook shed. The ‘girls’ would set up a tremendous racket whenever they sensed he was around, and that would have Suzannah rushing down with her lantern to see what the commotion was all about. Often she would glimpse Gus hightailing back through the yard towards the hollow tree