The Opal Dragonfly

by Julian Leatherdale

  With one exception.

  In the front room that was once her bedroom when she was a little girl, your grandmother, Clara Woodhouse, also known as the artist Madame Libellule, has set up her studio. Most mornings she raises the blinds to let in the sun and the dazzling light off the harbour that lights up her childhood memories. Some days she even wanders down to the old grotto in the small park opposite that is all that remains of the Rosemount estate. Much of the view is beginning to disappear behind buildings but she sits there with her paints and sketchbook and studies the play of light and shadow on her beloved harbour. Miss Isobel Clara Macleod, youngest daughter of Major Sir Angus Macleod, has returned at last to her home.

  And you, my loves, have found jobs in the city and rooms on Victoria Street. Who knows what the future will hold? My dreams don’t tell me anymore. But I feel hopeful.

  Here, come closer. I have something I want to give you. It is a promise I made to Clara, to Isobel. It is a promise I believe she made to her mother, your great-grandmother, Winnie. It is a gift for the pure-hearted. I give it to both of you. To share. There has been too much bitterness between sisters in this family, too much jealousy.

  Come, look. It is so beautiful. The bright fire in the cold stone. do not be afraid. Let yourself dream.

  It is an opal dragonfly.

  SOURCES

  While this book is a work of fiction it has its roots in historical research. The character of Major Sir Angus Hutton Macleod is modelled on Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell, Surveyor-General of New South Wales, who completed the Nineteen Counties map (a complete survey of the colony) in 1834. He was knighted for his services to the colony in 1839. He clashed with Governor Darling over his alternate route over the Blue Mountains (Victoria Pass) and with other governors he served. Governor FitzRoy later wrote: ‘It is notorious that Sir Thomas Mitchell’s unfortunate impracticability of temper and spirit of opposition of those in authority over him misled him into frequent collision with my predecessors.’

  Mitchell conducted four expeditions into the interior: the first to the Gwydir and Barwon rivers in northern New South Wales in 1831–32; the second along the Bogan and darling Rivers in 1835; the third in 1836 along the darling River to the Murray and south-east to Portland (changed in the novel to 1838); and the fourth into Queensland in 1845–46. On the second expedition, a skirmish resulted in the deaths of three Aboriginal people including a woman. On his third expedition, a violent encounter with the Barkindji resulted in the deaths of seven Aboriginal people at Mount dispersion. On this same journey, Mitchell sketched the widow, Turandurey, and her child, Ballandella, who joined his party; the injured girl was then taken back to Sydney where she lived with the Mitchell family until they went to England in 1837.

  Mitchell published two accounts of his expeditions and invested in sea trials of a boomerang screw-propeller (1851–53). On 27 September 1851 he fought a duel with Stuart Donaldson (later New South Wales Premier). Both his French pistols are now kept in the National Museum of Australia. The satirical poem (modified and titled ‘A Matter of Honour’ for the novel) appeared in Bell’s Life on 4 October 1851. He died of a chill in 1855 while awaiting a Royal Commission report into the conduct of his department. The other poems in the novel (the two lampooning William Macleay and Mitchell/Macleod as well as the poem read at Macleod’s funeral) are all slightly adapted versions of real poems, the latter written by Mitchell himself (he lost two adult sons).

  I read the two standard biographies Thomas Mitchell, Surveyor General and Explorer by J.H.L. Cumpston (1954) and Sir Thomas Livingston Mitchell and his World, 1792–1855: Surveyor General of New South Wales 1828–1855 by William C. Foster (Institution of Surveyors, N.S.W. Inc., 1985). I also read Mitchell’s accounts of his second and third expeditions in his Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, two volumes (T & W Boone, London, 1838).

  Particularly helpful was The Civilized Surveyor: Thomas Mitchell and the Australian Aborigines by D.W.A. Baker (Melbourne University Press, 1997) and Baker’s essay ‘Wanderers in Eden: Thomas Mitchell compared to Lewis and Clark’ (Aboriginal History 1995, 19:1). The Civilized Surveyor provides close comparative readings of Mitchell’s expeditionary field journals and his published accounts; I have followed Baker’s scholarship closely with regard to the murder of an Aboriginal woman and child on the second expedition and the Mount dispersion massacre on the third.

  Jack Brook’s essay ‘The Widow and the Child’ (Aboriginal History 1988, 12:1) is the only scholarly piece I could find about Ballandella. Brook writes that she ‘was a welcome stranger’ to Mitchell’s children while the family resided in Sydney. Her guardian noted that she ‘“seemed to adopt the habit of domestic life con amore, evincing a degree of aptness that promised very favourably”.’ She and her mother are identified as Wiradjuri in this essay (as well as other sources) but they are also both described as Muthi-Muthi. I have identified them as Wiradjuri and have fictionalised Ballandella’s life with Isobel and later.

  Isobel is inspired in part by Mitchell’s youngest daughter whose diary tells of family life after her father died: Blanche: An Australian Diary 1858–1861 (John Ferguson, 1980). This intimate, lively account helped me find Isobel’s voice and also suggested several incidents including the social outing at Watsons Bay. The State Library of New South Wales holds a great deal of material on Thomas Mitchell (including his sketches and watercolours), some of which informs this novel.

  Rosemount is a closely observed fictionalised version of Elizabeth Bay House, ‘the finest house in the colony’ built by Governor Darling’s Colonial Secretary, Alexander Macleay. Macleay’s portrait in the novel is broadly based on the historic figure but with fictional aspects (for example, the date of his death is four years later than July 1848). His son William did take over the house from his financially distressed father but it stayed in the Macleay family and was never sold to the Surveyor-General, Mitchell. The Mitchell family lived at Carthona at darling Point and when Thomas died, they moved to Craigend Terrace on Woolloomooloo Hill. The two historic figures did clash, notably over Macleay’s interference with Mitchell’s plans for William Street.

  My thanks go to Sydney Living Museums for a private tour of Elizabeth Bay House. Relevant sources were Elizabeth Bay House: A History and Guide by Scott Carlin (Historic Houses Trust NSW, 2000), Fanny To William: The Letters of Francis Leonora Macleay 1812–1836 edited by B. Earnshaw and J. Hughes (HHT NSW/Macleay Museum, University of Sydney, 1993), Taste and Science: The Women of the Macleay Family 1790–1850 by Elizabeth Windschuttle (HHT, NSW, 1988) and the lavishly illustrated House by Robyn Stacey and Peter Timms (HHT, NSW, 2011).

  Charles Probius is an adaptation of colonial artist Charles Rodius (1802–1860), a noted portrait painter including of Indigenous people of New South Wales. Mr ‘Robert the Large’ Cooper, owner of Juniper Hall, Mrs Palmer, wife of Governor Phillips’ commissary-general, William and Fanny Macleay (children of Alexander Macleay), the French painter Rosa Bonheur, exiled Frenchman Count Gabriel de Milhau, Sydney Aboriginal identity William Warrell, colonial artist S.T. Gill and the book collector David Scott Mitchell are historic figures. Many events described in the novel are closely adapted from real events including the New Year’s day Grand Fancy Bazaar in the Botanic Gardens (January 1852), the Boxing day Woolloomooloo Bay Regatta (1852), the SS Chusan Steam Ball (August 1852), and the Hargraves anniversary dinner (1853).

  For background research on the period I am indebted to Peter Cochrane’s award-winning Colonial Ambitions (MUP, 2006) and Tanya Evans’ (also award-winning) Fractured Families: Life on the Margins of Colonial New South Wales (UNSW Press, 2015). For an understanding of women colonial artists, I relied on the excellent Picturesque Pursuits: Colonial Women Artists and the Amateur Tradition by Caroline Jordan (MUP, 2005).

  I was fortunate to find Annette Shiell’s wonderful Fundraising, Flirtation and Fancywork: Charity Bazaars in Nineteenth Century Australia (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012)
. Sources for life in 1840s to 1850s Sydney included Southern Lights and Shadows by Frank Fowler (1859), Sydney in 1848: Copper Plate Engravings from Drawings by Joseph Fowles (1849) and of course TROVE newspaper archives, the dictionary of Sydney and many contemporary artworks. Dr Catherine Bishop’s very readable (and award-winning) Minding Her Own Business: Colonial Businesswomen in Sydney (NewSouth, 2015) also provided valuable insights.

  I was excited to discover just in time Paul Irish’s Hidden In Plain View: The Aboriginal People of Coastal Sydney (UNSW Press, 2017), which filled in important gaps about Sydney’s early and ongoing Indigenous presence as did Grace Karskens’ The Colony: A History of Early Sydney (Allen & Unwin, 2009).

  And last of all I pay my respects to the writers Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw for their prize-winning debut novel A House is Built set in colonial Sydney from the 1830s to 1850s (Harrap & Co, 1929), to which I pay homage with scenes in my novel at Hunter’s Hill.

  There are too many sources (online and in print) to specify for research on subjects as diverse as music and dancing, dandies, cross-dressing, jewellery, opals, fashion, Woolloomooloo, The Rocks, Hunter’s Hill and Watsons Bay but I will make special mention of the entertaining and informative ‘The Cook and The Curator: Eat Your History’ (http://blogs.sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/cook/).

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I owe thanks to the writer Patti Miller for a house-swap that gave me valuable research time in Kings Cross, Potts Point, Elizabeth Bay and Woolloomooloo for taking photographs and wandering the streets for atmosphere. I am also grateful for helpful suggestions from my neighbours, Richard White and Catherine Bishop, both distinguished historians.

  Thanks also to the staff at the Sydney Living Museums for their dedication and the guided tours of Elizabeth Bay House and Susannah Place in The Rocks. My thanks also go to Cathy Brown from the Moran Arts Foundation for a private tour of Juniper Hall in Paddington.

  I am deeply grateful to my agent Selwa Anthony for her ongoing support and wisdom and for the critical insights and enthusiasm of my publisher at Allen & Unwin, Annette Barlow, and my editor, Simone Ford. Many thanks to Nada Backovic for her exquisite cover. My thanks also to Christa Munns and all the hard-working team at Allen & Unwin, who I hope will always continue to believe in Australian stories and support Australian writers.

  I dedicate this book to my daughter and her bright, creative spirit. My greatest thanks go to my brilliant and talented wife Claire, who shares with me the endlessly fascinating, always challenging journey of writing novels. Without her literary companionship and insights, her faith and encouragement, and our shared belief in the whole project, this book would not exist.