by Anne Connor
One newspaper commentary featured the Larrakia people who had inhabited Darwin sixty thousand years ago. In the 1700s, they traded with the Macassans, who sailed from the south-east of the Celebes. In exchange for fishing rights to the trepang, or sea cucumber – a slug-like creature that lived on the seabed – the Larrakia received knives, cloth, rice, tobacco and alcohol. The Macassans fished for trepang at low tide, by hand, spearing, diving or dredging. Placed in boiling water before being dried and smoked, preserved the catch for the journey back to Makassar and other South-East Asian markets. Trepang became valued for its gelatinous texture, its flavour-enhancing properties, plus its use as a stimulant and aphrodisiac.
It is believed Lieutenant John Lort Stokes of the HMS Beagle was the first person to see Darwin. In 1839, Commander John Clements Wickham named the port after Charles Darwin, the British naturalist who had sailed with them on earlier expeditions. Thirty years later, George Goyder the Surveyor-General of South Australia established a small settlement of one hundred and thirty-five people. Erecting the first poles for the Overland Telegraph connected Australia to the rest of the world. The discovery of gold at Pine Creek in the 1880s further boosted the young colony’s development. Darwin became the settlement’s official name in 1911, on its transfer to the federal administration.
Jock had written notes describing life in Darwin in the 1920s. My research enabled me to expand on his records. Archival material described a sleepy complacent shantytown, untidy and sprawling. Doors and windows were left open and robberies non-existent. Many families lived in tents and buildings made of fibro or hessian. While racially tolerant, with the Larrakia people, Japanese, Chinese, Malay, Philippinos and Europeans living peacefully together, Darwin remained a segregated town. Anglo-Saxons lived in Smith and Mitchell Streets and the Esplanade. Cavanagh Street became Chinatown and Aboriginals stayed at the compound or the police paddock, known as Stuart Park.
Children fell asleep to an orchestra of sound: Aboriginals singing and clacking their bilma by the racecourse creek; frogs croaking, mopokes hooting, insects whirring and buzzing. Dingoes howling around herds of goats, waiting to snatch a straying kid – goats were hardier than sheep and the milk became a valuable commodity. Children milked the goats and cleaned the bottles before school by scrubbing the glass flasks with a bottlebrush and tipping a handful of pebbles into the neck of the container. The children made a game of it, rattling the stones around and around until the dried milk scum coated the grits. They rinsed the bottles before boiling them on an old wood stove that never went out. Aboriginal boys kept the wood boxes filled and fires stoked. Once sterilised and dried, warm, frothy milk was poured into bottles before being corked and sold to the locals for a shilling.
For the ambitious, opportunities were plenty. Cavanagh Street’s Chinatown began with a few modest humpies where staple vegetables and fruit from the local Chinese market gardens were sold. As businesses prospered, dwellings grew to residences and cafes. Ming Loong owned a large general store – Fang Chong Loong – in a long double-storey building with verandas top and bottom.
Chinese boys who worked for Ming left their two-wheelers leaning against the railing, when not delivering groceries. Bikes soon became a favourite method of transport with only a few cars yet in the town. Buildings in the precinct spread by being tacked together with available materials such as corrugated iron, tin or hessian. Joss sticks and ornate dragon doors decorated the entrance to Fang Chong Loong’s store. Stocked shelves contained colourful and mysterious merchandise: Chinese dolls, clothing, strange-looking and smelling herbs and camphor wooden boxes. Pleasant and approachable, Ming made friends with everyone in town; sometimes the men invited him home for a beer. At just four foot ten, with his plaited ponytail hanging to his waist, he cut a colourful sight drinking with the locals. He wore loose pants, elasticised at the ankle, a long tunic and walked with short rushed steps in his black canvas slippers.
At Christmas time, Ming had the Chinese boys deliver Christmas parcels to his customers’ homes. Presents included striking, ornate wooden boxes, their tasselled lids covered in silk fabric of dragons and birds. Sweet-smelling, delicious dark chocolates filled two drawers in the same vibrant cloth, an exotic gift for the people of Darwin.
Ming’s wife Zhou and the other women of Chinatown had tiny feet and wore tiny shoes in which they shuffled along the wide dusty streets of frontier Darwin, a long way from old China where mothers broke daughters’ toes and bound them as an act of love and protection. Zhou’s mother had wrapped her young daughter’s feet as a status symbol, a way for Zhou to marry into money. Ming and Zhou’s daughters Cecelia and Margery came into the world in Darwin’s first hospital; built out of old corrugated iron, the hospital perched above Doctor’s Gully. When not at school or working in the market gardens or the shop, the girls ran barefoot on the beach with the Aboriginal and white kids, forging strong lifelong friendships.
In 1938, the Fong Lim family moved to Darwin and set up general stores, cafes, tailor shops, hotels and wholesaling in the Northern Territory. In 2013, when I visited Darwin for the seventy-first commemoration of the bombing, fifth generation Australian Katrina Fong Lim was Lord Mayor of the town. A welcoming, confident woman, Katrina embraced visitors and locals as old friends. Her ancestor, George Fong Lim, bought a store in the white part of Darwin, next to the open-air Star Theatre in Smith Street; it had a drapery on one side and milk bar and grocery store on the other.
‘It won’t succeed,’ people said. ‘No-one will patronise a Chinese business outside of Chinatown.’ But he proved the critics wrong; the shop flourished. George began work at five in the morning and finished at midnight. George believed business had to be a family affair to succeed; his wife and their children all had their part to play. The boys delivered groceries on their bicycles and the girls served behind the counter or packaged foodstuffs out the back.
Two Japanese pearl-fishermen set up across the road from the Star Theatre. Records show them nameless – just the ‘Japs who sold Jap squashes’. These glamorous drinks became something new to Darwin and for decades after, residents reminisced, ‘Remember the Jap squashes?’
The owners made their own syrup, from a secret list of ingredients. A contraption with a sharp piece of steel at one end held a block of ice in place. It was then shaved with another piece of wood with nails hammered into one end. They shook the frosty scrapings and the secret syrup vigorously. When people attended the Star on Wednesday and Saturday evenings, the two men did a roaring business. People rushed out at interval to buy their squashes and ice-cream from the Japanese and home-roasted salted peanuts from George Fong Lim’s son Alec, who sold them on the street outside the theatre.
For the people of Darwin, pictures at the Star, exotic Japanese drinks and fresh roasted peanuts made for special treats. Wednesday night the cinema opened for Aborigines only and Western movies played. On Saturday nights, Anglos attended and the latest movies featured. They dressed to the hilt, men in white linen suits and ladies in long frocks and straw hats with netting. Tickets to the outdoor theatre cost two and six each.
Tradesmen attracted by the district allowance and overtime earned in such a remote place made their way to Darwin. They constructed bungalows at Miley Point, the New Darwin Hotel, the Bank of New South Wales, the Commonwealth Savings Bank and the post office. Housing was built in a quasi-Asian style to accommodate Darwin’s searing sticky heat and the monsoon rain and winds. The style evoked the tropics and was reminiscent of a long-distant colonial past many associated with leisure, pleasure and prosperity. Constructed on stilts, buildings had enclosed wide verandas around the top storey. With ceiling fans installed and louvre windows opened to let the breeze through or closed to keep out the harsh monsoon rains, people often slept on the verandas to gain the briefest of breezes on a hot night. Gauze wire kept insects at bay.
The two-storey New Darwin Hotel’s colonial architecture and location on the Esplanade overlooking the Timor Sea proved p
opular with wealthy visitors and dignitaries. Business meetings often took place on the second storey balcony. Next door the post office was built at ground level with a wooden veranda at the front and a wire and post fence separating the building from the unmade footpath. This nondescript building became a busy meeting place for many of the townspeople, dropping off mail, picking up mail, sending and receiving telegrams.
Mr and Mrs Bald and their teenage daughter Iris took up residence at the post office and became popular in town. The Bald family became part of the town’s tragic history.
Complacency was rife when the war started, as the war appeared a very long way from Darwin. But, by 1941, a carnival atmosphere had taken hold in the town. The arrival of the Darwin Mobile Force had increased the population. Streets were busy and the welcome sound of cash registers rang out. Canvas-covered army trucks filled with soldiers with time on their hands rolled through town and many of them wound up at the Gordon Don Hotel. I can’t imagine Jock spending much time at the hotel. His alcohol consumption consisted of a shandy on a scorching summer’s night. I imagine he spent most of his spare time writing letters home, playing cards or reading.
Jock’s regiment was kept busy with constructing roads south to Adelaide River and Tennant Creek plus erecting steel poles for signals and telegraph wires. As one of the ninety-nine signalmen across a 373-mile distance, his crew set-up signal bases.
What a change it must have been for my father to find himself in northern Australia living in a dusty frontier town. Since his arrival on the Hobson’s Bay just over a decade earlier, the world had changed for him and for the nation. His accent had changed. The flat Australian inflection started creeping into his speech. He wasn’t the only one who was different; he noticed people around him had altered. When he docked in 1929, the Australians he met had open faces, were carefree, welcoming, trusting. Now, he observed faces etched with worry and fear.
On the day he had sailed into Melbourne in 1929, I can picture a young man on his own exiled from everything he knew. On the deck of the ship as it ploughs through dark water, he leans against the rail, as he did when he left Southampton weeks earlier. This time, he anticipates hellos, welcomes, new friends, a new life. I see him young, excited, faced with endless opportunities. His life filled with the excitement of the unknown. I wish I knew more of what he thought, experienced. What was it like to be displaced from familiar sights, smells, sounds? Had he thought of this, leading up to his departure? Or did the invincibility of youth drive his actions?
What I do know is when Jock sailed into Port Melbourne on that autumn day, the country had a population of over six million. People listened to thirty-thousand radios, spoke to one another on four hundred thousand telephones and drove five hundred thousand cars, making the country one of the top five nations in vehicle ownership.
Possibly, there was a chill in the air that day and I hope bright sunshine. I fancy when he walked down the gangplank, his last step may have been a small jump onto solid ground. Maybe, he clicked his heels together in mid-air.
Immigration processing took place in large corrugated iron sheds on the wharf. Jock wanted to make his way to the port town of Geelong where he knew the Valley Worsted Mill needed workers.
The mill had been modelled on the factories in Lancashire. Except in Geelong the grey smoke wafted up and up into a high china blue sky, unlike the heavy grey sky in England forcing the fumes onto people, houses and streets.
Jock was offered a job, to start the next day working in the weaving room. He found lodgings at The Lord Nelson hotel and after unpacking Elsie’s suitcase, he had a wash, sat at the wooden table and opened his diary. Every time he wrote, he remembered Mrs Dalton’s words on the day his mother pulled him out of school. ‘You’re a clever lad Jock, may sure you read and write every day so you don’t lose what you’ve been taught. A diary’s a good way of keeping up your writing and this is a good start.’ She handed him a leather-bound book of blank pages and a wooden box of pencils. He wrote:
13 APRIL 1929
Arrived at Port Melbourne, caught bus and train to Geelong this morning, found work at mill and lodgings at Lord Nelson. Geelong is a busy industrial town. Plenty of bikes, buses and cars. Kicks up lots of dust. Tomorrow start at mill and hope things not different to factories at home. People friendly. A few factories in other parts of town. Will write Mother letting her know her firstborn son is safe.
The mill’s internal sections were identical to the ones in England, with a large weaving room filled with loud clunking, vibrating looms intertwining the weft and waft threads. Jock knew he had to ensure the looms didn’t jam and threads didn’t buckle and jar the machinery, and if they did, to mend them at once to keep them moving along. Then he’d lift the woven material into large crates on wheels.
Employment made it easier to find cheaper accommodation than the Lord Nelson. He bought a copy of the Geelong Advertiser and found an advertisement for a room in a boarding house a few streets away from the mill. This took place within a couple of weeks after his jump onto Australian ground. With his first pay, he bought himself a new pair of shoes and a second-hand bike, and he joined the throng of Geelong cyclists.
Jock visited the Free Library in his spare time and lapped up the opportunity to read as much as possible. He noticed the poster on the library’s wall: Easter Dance in the Corio Tennis Club Hall – the opening event of the social season.
My mother told me she and Dad met at a dance in Geelong. What I do know is that he asked her for a dance and something began. I suppose many couples had their start on the dance floor; it must be a common story, but to me, it holds a mythic quality upon which hung the future. If I tried to turn their meeting and courtship into a story, based on the man and woman who became my parents, it would go like this.
Jock enters the dance hall and sees Bess, who is hovering by the supper table with two other girls. She’s wearing a pale blue cotton knee-length frock; her dark-brown curly hair is cut short in the flapper-style of the day.
Jock waits and is rewarded when the object of his interest is left on her own. He walks over and taps Bess on the shoulder, and says, in the space of one breath, ‘Hello, I’m Jock Connor. I was wondering whether you’d dance with me this evening.’
‘You’re not from around here,’ she replies, evading the question. ‘Haven’t seen you before and I don’t know anyone who speaks like that either. Where’re you from?’
‘Lancashire, England.’
‘Well, Jock Connor from Lancashire, England, I’ll tell you the way we do things here.’ She smiles and waves the card she is holding. ‘We ladies have dance cards and it’s the blokes’ job to ask girls to book a dance on their card.’
‘What’s your name then? You know my story.’
‘Bess Brown. Family and friends call me Bessie.’
‘And where are you from?’
‘Well if you must know, Mr Sticky-beak, I live in Geelong, but I grew up on a farm at Balliang. We moved into town a couple of years ago.’
‘Well, Bessie Brown from Geelong, who used to live on a farm at Balliang, what’s your favourite dance?’
‘The foxtrot.’
‘May I book the foxtrot with you on that fancy card of yours?’
‘Yes, you may,’ says Bess, smiling.
He sees the two girls making their way back from the cloakroom and he knows at once they are Bessie’s sisters. He nods his head goodbye, puts his hand on his heart and says, ‘I hold my breath until the foxtrot.’ Then turns on his heels and is gone.
‘Who’s the dish?’ says Tilly with a nudge.
‘He’s new, isn’t he?’ says Honor.
‘His name is Jock Connor. He’s an Englishman,’ said Bessie. ‘And he’s booked the foxtrot with me.’
‘He’s smooth. How did he know your favourite dance?’ asked Honor.
‘He asked,’ said Bess, a hint of flush on her cheeks.
The band began the first set with the barn dance, followed by the
waltz, then the quickstep. Jock rested against the wall under a red Chinese lantern and watched Bessie. He liked her smile and how she chatted easily with people.
The music stopped. The bandmaster walked over to the microphone in the middle of the stage and announced, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the next dance is the foxtrot.’
Jock waited and watched to see what Bess’ next moves were. She looked around the room and saw he was leaning on the wall. She waved her dance card and Jock made his way over to her. ‘Wasn’t sure whether you were to find me or I was to find you,’ he said. ‘Didn’t want to get this wrong.’
‘The blokes usually find the girls. But, this time, you’re forgiven; but only this time. Next time there will be no favours.’ Bess smiled at him again.
Next time, she said next time, thought Jock and smiled too. He raised his left hand, ready to begin the dance. She took a step towards him. When the band commenced, they stepped off together.
‘Why are you staring?’ asked Bess.
‘Me! Staring! Didn’t realise, I’ll watch the Chinese lanterns instead.’ In an exaggerated fashion, Jock looked up at the roof, making her laugh.
‘Now you’re being silly.’
As they danced, Bess spoke of living in Geelong and explained she was with her sisters. Jock told her snippets of life on the ship, his work and lodgings. The music finished and they stopped in the middle of the dance floor, neither one of them wanting to be the first to let go.
‘There’ll be a break now,’ said the bandleader. ‘We’ll be back in twenty minutes.’
‘How about a cup of punch?’ Jock asked.
‘Yes let’s. Come over and I’ll introduce you to the crowd.’
