In 1942 Aunt Hon also looked after Granny M, or Fido as Mum and Aunt Hon called her, when she was staying at Blowering and fell ill with pneumonia. Aunt Hon hadn’t had time to go out in the mountains or write books or paint, as indeed she too might have wished: she had to put chores first. Before the end of the war Mum had two books published and the third was almost complete. She could not deny that she had written a lot. But to be fair, Mum had given credit where it was due and wrote to Dad on 19 August 1945 saying, ‘[Honnor] has done an incredibly good job managing Blowering all the time [Moreton] was away.’ In the early war years, Mum and Aunt Hon had kept in close contact by letter and telephone, and at that time it seemed that there was almost nothing they didn’t discuss, from farming matters to philosophy. Mum even said that Aunt Hon was an oracle about contraception – perhaps she had Marie Stopes’ books and Mum hadn’t.
But exposure to publicity had already sown some seeds of discontent. An article published in February 1944 in Pix stated, ‘Despite difficulties, Mrs Mitchell has been able to send about 700 fat cattle to Melbourne markets each year.’2 It was unfortunate that after the war Mum allowed remarks such as, ‘she had coped during the war at Towong Hill single-handedly’3 to persist; even if sometimes she corrected them it was often inadequately. Dad mentioned the hurt this had caused him and the loyal employees who had helped her through those difficult and uncertain years. Once, in a bitter moment, Dad told me that for most of the war ‘there would have been eight people employed at Towong Hill in addition to Mr Herbert and including Mrs Scammell [who frequently cooked at the homestead] and Mrs Davis’. It could only have added insult to injury when Mum claimed that Aunt Hon had ‘brought Uncle Moreton home’ before the end of the war because she couldn’t cope. ‘One just didn’t do that sort of thing,’ Mum told me.
Undoubtedly, the two women coped differently. Understandably, at a time when Mum was scarcely even receiving letters from Dad, it must have upset her that not only was Aunt Hon able to communicate with Uncle Moreton, she was able to ask him (thanks to exemptions from service granted to primary producers) to come home. All Mum knew was that Dad was alive. In February 1944 she would not have known how many really tough months she had to endure before the end.
Whatever really happened, it is easy to understand why Aunt Hon might have needed her husband at home. Perhaps Aunt Hon was wise to recognise that she was not coping and the steps she took to rectify the situation were therefore sensible. Whatever happened between the two sisters-in-law, Uncle Moreton’s arrival home in November 1944 must have had some impact on their relationship.
Meanwhile, Mum had her own sad difficulties towards the end of the war that Dad and his family appeared not to understand fully. Nevertheless, in 1950, before Harry was born, Mum wrote to Aunt Hon outlining her wishes about Indi’s upbringing in the event that Mum didn’t survive childbirth. Then, over subsequent years, it seemed that the friendship cooled. It was a complex situation. The mystery of this change haunted me throughout my childhood and later, until after Mum died and I inherited her davenport desk containing correspondence that shed light on her experience of the final year of the war.
What I discovered was that 1945 was a very testing year for Mum. In the summer of 1944 and early 1945, concerns about bushfires were running so high that Mum remained alone at Towong Hill rather than spending Christmas with her family in Melbourne. It was to be her father’s last Christmas.
In a telling letter to Dr Euan Littlejohn, her parents’ family doctor and great friend in Melbourne, she asked, ‘Did I say I behaved like an over wound clock when I talked to you […] I seem to have in this letter too!’ By June 1945 Mum was utterly exhausted and must have reached the nadir of her loneliness. Quite apart from the anxiety and strain of war, by that time she had packed in an amazing amount of work at Towong Hill and a huge amount of writing and reading, as well as some skiing, bush walking and riding in the mountains when possible.
A month after Singapore fell on 15 February 1942, Mum typed in her wartime notes, ‘Tonight I feel that all this is going to take something more than I have got.’ But Mum had what it took – she simply demanded too much of herself, just as she continued to do throughout her life. Strangely, she seemed to think that her work at Towong Hill was so important that she couldn’t be spared to help Granny and Eve nurse Grandfather in his last illness. Even though Dad and Aunt Hon never mentined it, at least not to Mum, Mum’s prioritising Towong Hill over her own father must have been something they noticed.
Grandfather died on 4 March 1945. In a letter written to Dr Littlejohn on 9 April of that year, Mum admitted, ‘You were awfully right about missing Daddy. At the moment things seem to be more in perspective and the haunting images gone but the missing him is going on.’ Just as I was born relatively late in my parents’ lives, Mum was born late in her father’s life – when he was forty-eight. Almost until the end of his life, a shyness between them somewhat blighted their otherwise warm father–daughter relationship. Mum felt that she had missed out on something because their relationship was so inhibited. Perhaps Aunt Eve, who was living at 49 until Grandfather died, had a closer, warmer, more open and relaxed relationship with her father.
Mum always said that her parents were delighted when her books were published. As Granny and Grandfather had very traditional views about marriage, I often wondered if they were bothered about the amount of time Mum spent writing and whether she would have space in her life for Dad if and when he came home. I could wonder all I liked, because even if I had asked Mum or even Granny it was unlikely I would have received a satisfactory answer.
Later in the same letter to Dr Littlejohn Mum wrote, ‘You do see, don’t you, that I don’t want to turn into the sort of ruddy neurotic that can’t keep on an even keel without medicine.’ Mum often spoke of her regret that her father did not live long enough to see peace. It must have pained her deeply that he wasn’t there to share the war victory with her. Dr Littlejohn was trying very hard to help Mum through a difficult time, perhaps one of the greatest troughs that she had yet encountered. Perhaps few would have understood better than him: not only was he a close family friend but Brefny, one of his own two sons, had just been shot down over Holland. He had also lost a nephew, Ross, a commando who was killed on the Brenner Pass. If anyone knew something of the sorrow of bereavement, Dr Littlejohn and his wife, Mary, certainly must have done so.
Dr Littlejohn told Mum to write to him when she felt ‘blue’. Mum was quick to acknowledge and express her gratitude for his help. In her letter dated 5 May 1945 Mum wrote, ‘You were a dear to say that you don’t think I should worry about the future. Your letter arrived on the fourth anniversary of the day Thomas left, and it helped to smooth out some of the bumps – and some of the unevenness of the travelling of the last few days.’ In her letter of 25 June 1945 Mum explained to Dr Littlejohn that, ‘It seemed so silly to sit there quietly listening to you saying that I might have to get worse before I got better, when I so desperately don’t want to burst. The getting near to bursting point has the awful effect of seeming to take away from me all I have tried to create for Tom.’ Although in some of the correspondence Mum treats her health concerns as a mere nuisance, it seems that she was anxious she wasn’t going to be able to last the distance until the end of the war. Dr Littlejohn tried to persuade her to have a break, which she did when she went to the Chalet at Charlotte Pass for a fortnight’s skiing during July 1945.
As a child in the 1960s I was too young to understand the complexities of the relationships between grown-ups. I thought Mum was prickly and critical of Aunt Hon for tidying and cleaning the house rather than using her talents for drawing and painting. On the other hand, I thought Dad was trying to encourage Aunt Hon to gang up on Mum a bit with him. I wished they were still friends, then I might have seen more of Aunt Hon.
I suspect Mum’s decision to name me after Aunt Hon was intended as an olive branch and that Mum was disappointed and irritated when it backfired.
It was a great relief to find that my name and the designs for my christening robe were probably not the only reasons for the fallout; war can be a great maker and breaker of friendships. While Mum told me part of her story, Dad said little and Aunt Hon was utterly silent on the subject. Aunt Hon and Uncle Moreton visited Towong Hill when I was about five after they had returned from an overseas trip. I recall Aunt Hon giving Dad a huge pair of scissors for cutting out press clippings and me some turquoise beads that I have to this day. I can’t recall Aunt Hon coming to our home again. But she always seemed delighted to see me if I visited her and I suspect she would have liked to have seen more of all her nieces and nephews.
At the end of our visit to Blowering in the early sixties, we returned via Batlow and Tumbarumba to Towong Hill. Tweedle Dee accompanied us, which thrilled me, as I knew that an aircraft tyre would be ideal for shooting the rapids at Waterfall Farm. I also looked forward to lying with my bottom through the hole in the middle, my back and legs supported by the tyre, while sailing gently around the lagoon. Thoughtful Uncle Moreton had made a sort of net of rope held together with naval knots and attached to the tyre so a swimmer could catch onto it easily.
The bush was very dry that summer. Blue sky and shafts of sunshine flashed between branches overhanging the road. This must have been the route along which Mum and Aunt Eve had ridden in 1942, before Aunt Hon’s and Mum’s friendship was blighted, when they, like us, were returning from a visit to Aunt Hon at Blowering. Wartime fuel shortages would have been part of their reason for choosing to ride. I never heard how long it took – almost certainly it would have taken all day and perhaps part of a second. Even though Mum would have loved the adventure, they must have been brave as it would have been a long, lonely ride for two young women.
As we drove back home, Dad told Harry and me about an ‘open’ low-security prison near Batlow. I hoped we wouldn’t have a flat tyre or break down, imagining us being robbed by modern-day bushrangers. Dad told stories about how his father had seen the Kelly gang on their way to hold up the bank at Jerilderie. ‘They stuck up Jerilderie for three days, and they robbed the bank of £3000 and got clean away.’ I was not certain that there were no more bushrangers in that lonely stretch between Batlow and Tooma. Somewhere along the dirt road we passed a property that Dad said was called Willigobung. The owners who named it must have pondered the very question enshrined in the name. I never found out if anyone did go ‘bung’, but living miles from anywhere and trying to make a living must have been hard and lonely.
Back at Towong Hill and despite Aunt Hon’s rather daunting housekeeping standards, it was difficult not to admit to Mum that staying with Aunt Hon and Uncle Moreton was pretty good fun. It had been interesting and I had learned a lot about making beds, cleaning silver, domestic perfection and Dad and Aunt Hon’s friendship – nothing that Mum would have wanted to hear. That visit was one of my last to Blowering. By 1968 the property was vanishing beneath the waters of Blowering Dam. Together with Uncle Moreton, Dad battled the New South Wales government to ensure that Aunt Hon and Uncle Moreton received fair compensation for the loss of their beautiful home. Eventually they moved to Taminick Station near Glenrowan in Victoria and they never returned to the Tumut district. The new home they created, though beautiful, was not the same as Blowering.
In less than a decade, on 11 June 1976, just after my twenty-third birthday, Aunt Hon died of influenza, emphysema and pulmonary fibrosis. Perhaps part of the cause might have been a troubled heart. It was rumoured that alcohol had something to do with her health problems. Perhaps it had something to do with the rift between her and Mum, but if this were the case, Dad was too loyal to his beloved sister to discuss it. Her death pained Dad deeply. Aunt Hon had been through a lot.
If ever I am trying to improve my own domestic standards, I think of Aunt Hon. She might be rather disappointed in her niece’s efforts, but her eyes might still sparkle with fun. As she grew sick in her later years, one of the things she enjoyed most was hearing news of the family, the more colourful and entertaining the better. When she asked for news of Mum, the sparkle in her eyes was replaced by a rather sad, distant look. I wondered if she was craving her old friendship and was too ill to rekindle it. On the last occasion I visited Aunt Hon, she gave me her velvet wedding dress and the baby clothes her mother had embroidered. Because of the bulk of the wedding dress, I left it wrapped in my room at Towong Hill when I went overseas in 1976 and I never saw it or her again.
I used a small bequest Aunt Hon left me to study French Civilization for three months in Paris. While she would have approved, she might have been saddened that I didn’t become a talented French speaker. I would have needed much longer for that, but I was grateful for the time I had.
21
War Friends and Waterskiing
‘Uncle Ken was the only brother I ever had,’ Dad said. ‘He saved my life and looked after me in Changi.’ Dad was paying tribute to ‘Uncle’ Ken Burnside’s abilities as a doctor and his extraordinary and wonderfully loyal kindness as a friend. In Chauvel Country, Mum wrote, ‘If it had not been for Dr Kennedy Burnside’s care, he [Dad] might never have survived imprisonment in Changi.’1
In February 1943, a year after Singapore fell to the Japanese and when he and Dad were prisoners of war in Changi, Uncle Ken managed to send a message to their families via a Singapore Radio broadcast. Apparently the words ran: ‘Thomas Mitchell and self well.’ A short time before, on 17 January 1943, Mum had received a telephone call from the Red Cross informing her that Dad was officially a prisoner of war. Uncle Ken’s message on Singapore Radio was confirmation. Usually when Changi was mentioned, Mum shook her head as if the very name hurt and she didn’t want to discuss it. Dad said little beyond expressing his gratitude to Uncle Ken.
Uncle Ken was thus an honorary part of our extended family, but far more so for Dad than for Mum. As with other honorary family members, the title ‘Uncle’ was used as a measure of respect in that more formal era, when people shied away from letting their children call their friends by their first names.
For at least a couple of summers in the early 1960s, Uncle Ken brought his family from Melbourne for holidays on the shores of the Hume Weir at Tallangatta, about an hour’s car journey from Towong Hill. Nobody could have looked forward to their arrival more than Dad, and presumably Uncle Ken too. Both men shared a passion for boats, and Uncle Ken brought a speedboat with him, as well as a large collection of tents and deckchairs. Dad called the little metal tub he had at that time Ena, after Great Grandfather Dibbs’ Ena that he took out on Sydney Harbour before the First World War. Even with an outboard motor Ena was no match for Uncle Ken’s boat – not that Dad was worried because Ena had a versatility that Uncle Ken’s boat didn’t have in being small, so Dad could load and unload it by himself.
As a longstanding local member of parliament, Dad was well known and well liked. He was easily recognisable driving around the electorate with Ena on the homemade boat trailer behind his car, or with a kayak on the roof. On the way home from the various party meetings in major centres in the electorate he would stop at Boathaven or Tallangatta and relax for an hour or so in his little watercraft. Dad was quite content to putter around and explore the nearby inlets and peninsulas where dead trees stuck up out of the water while Uncle Ken took the younger generation of Burnsides and Mitchells waterskiing. I don’t think I would have had the courage to ski if there had not been a large area clear of dead trees. Standing up out of the water of the Hume Weir, those dead trees were as spooky as ghosts even in daylight, and approaching them in the speedboat scared me out of my wits.
When we were not waterskiing, Dad and Uncle Ken sat in deckchairs, talking quietly at the water’s edge while Ken’s wife, Wendy, prepared meals in the mess tent. I’d probably been asked to call her ‘Aunt Wendy’, but I didn’t feel I knew her well enough to do that so I avoided, if possible, calling her anything. I remember sometimes calling her Mrs Burnside, and that didn’t feel right ei
ther.
Dad and Uncle Ken talked a lot about Malaya in 1941, the Australian Imperial Force, Singapore, their anti-malarial work while in Changi and, most importantly, swapped news of their mutual friends and acquaintances who had been through so much with them. I remember Wendy sitting with them once or twice and that it seemed those times were for the grown-ups only, particularly for the two men. I heard very little of the detail of the conversations. The mood was serious; the two men were totally absorbed.
Eventually I found Malaya and Singapore in the atlas at Towong Hill but I couldn’t see where the Causeway was, knowing as I did from Dad that it was over this link between the Malay Peninsula and Singapore Island that the Allies had to retreat in the face of Japanese advances in January and early February 1942. The map in the atlas simply wasn’t big enough to show the necessary detail. It was confusing that both the island and the city were called Singapore at a time when I thought nations had to have different names from their capital cities like Australia did. Only when I went to school did I find out where on the map Changi was. It was strange that I had to go away to learn more about the world in which my parents had lived. Their world affected me too and I wanted to understand more about it.
Honor Auchinleck Page 15
