The Wasp and the Orchid

by Danielle Clode

  Towards the tail end of 1887, an intercolonial coaster attached itself to a trail of muddy water drifting out across the open bay and, like a dog homing in on a scent, followed it to the wide entrance of the Yarra River. The river headed north, between the low hills and open pastures, before snaking east towards Melbourne itself.

  Ships of all shapes and sizes crowded the busy harbour – steamers, clippers, scows and barques. The Harms family would have been offloaded at the Sandridge Railway Pier, to be met by Harry, brown and healthy since leaving England’s damp shores a year earlier. The Exeter family was there to welcome them too, and bring their weary visitors home to stay with them until they found their land legs.

  Migrants disembarking from a ship, about 1885

  As the steam train pulled them away from the port and towards the city of Melbourne, a remarkable vista opened up from the Sandridge bridge, as they crossed diagonally over the busy brown Yarra. The northern riverbank was stacked with factories and warehouses. Teams of bullocks and horses clustered along the shore, carting goods to and from the docks. Steam trains rumbled along tracks behind the warehouses, their piercing whistles adding to the general cacophony. Beyond, a great city stretched before them, a grid of streets running parallel to the river, church spires, grand stone edifices, banks and businesses rising across a hazy horizon. Home to the famed Cole’s Book Arcade, the biggest bookshop in the world, visited by Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling. Everything brand-spanking new and modern. Steam, smog and smoke clouded the distant hills, the pungent smell of tanneries and industries from upstream mixing with the fetid aroma of the river itself.

  Bourke Street looking east, Melbourne 1880–1900

  This was Marvellous Melbourne – an astonishing place for a family from the rural backwaters of the English countryside. A city built on gold which, from a scraggly little wool town of 20,000 people, had become in just thirty years the second-largest city in the English empire after London itself. With a population of half a million people, Melbourne was bigger than Liverpool or Birmingham, on a par with St Louis or Boston.

  ‘Everywhere they looked, the humble buildings of the early colonists were being pulled down,’ describes Melbourne historian, Michael Cannon, ‘and in their place were rising the great granite piles of myriad financial institutions . . . Business boomed. Banking boomed. Money poured in from overseas. The frenzy grew and fed on itself. Thousands of acres of suburban land were subdivided and resold many times, each time at a higher price. Millions of shares changed hands in a stock exchange saturnalia. Anyone, it seemed, could make a fortune in this incredible colony.’

  Just the place for a successful builder and his wife, for a family of young men and women approaching adulthood, to embark on a new life. The Harms family were together again, their reunion and excitement tinged with sadness at the thought of a lone grassy grave left behind in the Surrey countryside.

  Edith’s thoughts, as a thirteen-year-old girl, on her arrival in Australia are unrecorded. For all we know she may have stood silently at the deck of the ship as it slipped through the heads under Point Lonsdale. She may have watched with eyes clear and curious as Port Phillip Bay opened out ahead, her future in the thriving city of Melbourne appearing before her. And said nothing at all – until such time as she had something worth saying.

  Ships that pass: Fascination of Point Lonsdale

  By Edith Coleman, 1931

  Perhaps nowhere may one read more of the romance of the sea than at Point Lonsdale, where, day and night, the slow sailing of ships as they pass through the Rip is a source of wonder and delight. The Point is just inside the western Head, at the entrance to Port Phillip, only 68 miles from Melbourne, or four miles from Queenscliff, of which it is a suburb. Its isolation and the absence of hotels are the reasons for its popularity and its unpopularity, but its aloofness has recently been modified by motor conveyance from Queenscliff.

  Apart from the customary attractions of the seaside the situation of Point Lonsdale, so close to the Rip, makes it an ideal holiday resort for those of a nautical turn of mind who are compelled by occasional attacks of sea-fever to take the long path to the sea. As one idles luxuriously on warm summer sands one may learn much of the beauty and mystery of ships and read many a romantic story of the high seas. One learns very quickly to listen and look for whistle and flag, the hail and farewell of outward and homeward bound ships. One follows a broken procession of splendid ships that sweep by with the grace of swans, or small craft that dot the blue water like daring sea birds. As one walks out on brown rocks left bare by the ebbing tide to obtain a closer view of some opulent ocean liner, one hears the throb of her engines, and catches the voices of happy crowds that throng her decks to wave a greeting. If one follows regretfully the furrow she leaves in her wake and feels somewhat envious of her fortunate passengers, one consoles oneself with the thought that after all ‘it is not they who carry the flags but they who look on who have the fun of the procession.’ So one scans the stream of ocean traffic, butterfly boats that bob like corks or flit merrily before the wind, ships solid and dignified as befits vessels whose ways lie over the farther paths of the sea. A ship passes, all spic and span, with polished metal flashing proudly in the sun. Another with, one thinks, the rust of years upon her, creeps by like a grubby schoolboy. They are all interesting, and even if one be not well versed in nautical phraseology and foggy about the difference between a cutter or a ketch, a brig or a yawl, a satisfying pleasure is derived nevertheless from watching the procession . . .

  February and March are golden months at Point Lonsdale, but autumn, when voices carry over the still water with startling clearness, is even more delightful. There is never a moment of monotony, for the moods of the sea are as inconstant as Proteus himself. To-day may be perfect, the sea all sunshine and glitter. To-morrow a cruel fog may blot out its beauty – not the soft silver mists that fill mountain valleys or brood over quiet rivers, but an impenetrable pall that occasions a feeling of anxiety, an apprehension of impending danger, which is intensified as the deep call of the foghorn thrills through the dense white wall.

  There is a large salt lake near the golf links. Its margins are covered thickly with salt-encrusted shells. It is a beautiful sheet of water, and one is glad to brave the rather odorous mud to see the reflections at sunset or to see a freshening wind whip its surface into tiny furrows.

  Not far from the lake one finds growing in abundance a dainty sea-lavender which is possibly peculiar to those parts. In February and March the coastal melaleuca or black tea-tree (M. pubescens) is in full flower. Its shapely trees have a billowy growth, rolling away, wave on wave, in long lines. Among its dark folds one may read a little of insect romance, for the creamy flowers are thronged with bees and butterflies, which crowd in bewildering battalions about the scented blossoms. Swiftly the news is spread and from distant parts myriads of tiny creatures wing their way to the banquet halls, reflecting myriad lights as the sun touches their transparent wings. Great ichneumons in russet and gold, huge flies in orange and black, lift steel-blue wings as they forage among the feasts set by the gods. Fireflies, like flakes of opal, flash red and green, the whirring wings of a cloud of honey-loving beetles softly hymn their thanks for the floral hospitality. These scenes leave pleasant memories. But the chief memory of Point Lonsdale is the ocean traffic – that procession of ships which tend to ‘create and perpetuate international curiosity’.

  Chapter 4

  A TEACHER OF GREAT PROMISE

  ‘Nothing in Nature is too lowly to inspire man with new ideas. All his contrivances for diving and floating and flying, for pulling and stretching and rolling, for boring and digging and ploughing, his weapons of defence or the tools of his trade, have been based on the teachings of Nature.’

  January 1896

  The steam train hisses to a halt at the tiny station, which is barely more than a collection of corrugated iron sheds on the siding. A shady verandah, labelled ‘Foster’ in black and white, i
s the only concession to a welcome.

  Edith disembarks, one hand gripping her bag and the other holding her hat as she looks down the platform for the porter unloading her luggage. Twenty-one years old with wide eyes and dark hair piled up in the Edwardian bouffant fashion, and smartly dressed: all mutton sleeves, high neck and tight waist. It was promising to be a hot day, nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit, when she left Melbourne but here, closer to the coast, is a little cooler. She had caught the 6.50 am train to Foster so as to have most of Saturday and all of Sunday to organise accommodation and familiarise herself with her new role – her first teaching appointment as temporary assistant at Foster State School No. 1172 in the rolling hills of south Gippsland.

  Foster is situated along Stockyard Creek in a region renowned for its scenic beauty. Edith has done her homework. Wilsons Promontory lies just to the south, Venus Bay to the west and Corner Inlet to the east. If she has the time or inclination for nature exploration, some of the region’s finest, if densely forested, natural wonders lie within easy reach.

  As Edith steps out into the main street, she can see that Foster is a pretty town, despite the detritus of the gold-mining industry scattering the hillside. She looks down the road, past pale painted weatherboards: the butcher, the post office and hotel. The Mechanics Institute boasts a library of some 494 volumes. But her only thoughts are for the school in which she will soon start work, at 9.10 on Monday morning, and the students currently enrolled under the head teacher James W. Anderson. This is the position she has been training for, as a pupil-teacher, for the last seven years.

  FOSTER STATE SCHOOL was typical of many small Victorian country schools opened in the late 1800s. The building was a standard-design, high-gabled weatherboard Education Department building: in effect, two halls joined at right angles, with an added front porch for hats, coats and bags.

  At the height of summer, when Edith arrived, the schoolhouse would have been stiflingly hot, the small high windows providing little in the way of ventilation in the standard 20 by 50 foot rooms. Heat poured through the uninsulated tin roof.

  ‘The long, narrow room with the windows behind the pupils, the faulty means of ventilation, and the inadequate provision for warming were all in evidence,’ recalled educational pioneer Charles Long. ‘Hundreds of thousands of pounds have been spent during the present century in remodelling the buildings in the seventies, eighties and nineties in order to get rid to some extent of their defects.’ Long was overly optimistic in 1922. Many of these buildings are still used today, reverse-cycle air-conditioning finally mitigating their deficiencies.

  Fifty students to a class was not uncommon. The children sat in rows, from smallest at the front to oldest at the back, manageable only by strict discipline, regimented routines and the assistance of the older students. Edith’s duties, as a young female assistant, would most likely have been with the ‘bubs’, some of them as young as three. The older children, up to fifteen or sixteen, were taught in the larger room by the head teacher. Technically, children were required to attend school between the ages of six and fifteen, but many parents sent them much earlier. The teachers did not complain. Their wages were determined by the size of their class, irrespective of age.

  In Foster, like in many Victorian country schools, most of the children came from mining, forestry or farming families, who were frequently illiterate and sometimes from non-English-speaking backgrounds. The students were often absent due to illness or work commitments. Many would rise before dawn to milk the cows and attend to their chores before walking miles through diggings riven with shafts and stopes, through remnant forests and cleared farmland, past an abundance of hotels and illegal drinking houses that lined muddy or dusty main roads, to school. They frequently fell asleep in class, had no shoes, suffered chilblains from the cold and had no food for lunch. Epidemics of scarlet fever, typhus, measles and diphtheria were common. As their newly qualified teacher, Edith would have to educate them all with little more than her own enthusiasm and the landscape around them to draw upon.

  It was surely as different from her own childhood experiences in the village schools of Woking and Guildford, or even the suburban schools of Melbourne, as it was possible to be.

  The brief biographies of Edith’s life are sketchy on her early years, unsure if she married before or after she emigrated, uncertain of which schools she attended. One of the few joys of bureaucracy is its bounteous supply of historic paperwork. Somewhere, deep within the bowels of the Public Records Office of Victoria, are all the Education Department archives. Details of budgets and buildings, appointments and resignations. All of Edith’s teaching records, her exam results, inspectors’ reports, correspondence and appointments should be here.

  I’ve looked for school records here once before. For a whole day, I searched through index folders which referred me to microfiche which referred me to record numbers, which had to be ordered from the store, which turned out to be another index, or an empty folder. This doesn’t feel like an archive designed for public use. I’m trapped in Dickens’ Circumlocution Office, chasing flying papers around and around the stairwells and always coming up empty-handed.

  In the end, I enlist the help of an expert, and all of Edith’s records arrive by post – sorted, labelled, catalogued and annotated.

  The path to Edith’s teaching career began almost as soon as the Harms family arrived in Melbourne. They settled into a cottage in Avenue Road, in the eastern suburb of Camberwell. Even today Avenue Road is a quiet little street, sheltered from the busy traffic of the surrounding arterial roads and lined with shady trees and pretty Victorian cottages and mansions. The gardens along the street are over-manicured: neat little low-maintenance lawns with trimmed box hedges, tussock grasses and topiary iceberg roses.

  According to the Sands & McDougall street directory, the Harms family lived in ‘the fourth house on the east side from Riversdale Road to Camberwell Road’. I find myself in front of an immaculate nineteenth-century weatherboard cottage with a neat picket fence. Unlike its neighbours, the front garden of Edith’s former home has an element of wildness about it. A spectacular ornamental gum is hung with clusters of large gumnuts like silver cowbells. It looks as if the tree has been spray-painted for Christmas. It is a Western Australian species – Eucalyptus caesia or the silver princess.

  I suspect Henry purchased this house, rather than renting or building. The footprint of a similar building appears on a map from 1851. Even so, Henry the builder immediately set to work on arrival, calling for tenders for ‘slating Villa all materials’. Henry was either repairing the house himself or he had already re-entered the building trade.

  I head west down a lane, arriving at Camberwell State School three minutes later. The two youngest Harms children, Edith and George, enrolled here on their arrival in Australia. From the street, the school looks much like it would have in 1888 – a handsome little brick building with elaborate Federation Queen Anne ornamentation, surrounded by trees and large playing fields, which in Edith’s time bordered open paddocks.

  I grasp the antique doorknob, heeding the instructions on the door to turn firmly, and step across the threshold into Edith’s old school.

  Students and staff at Edith’s school, Camberwell State, in 1890

  The once high-ceilinged hall has been cropped and divided into a warren of stairs and mezzanines. I sit at a desk in a quiet room as the busy school ebbs and flows to the electronic bell. Piles of frayed pupil registers and inspectors’ reports are stacked on the desk in front of me: neatly transcribed ledgers of school performance entered into columns like an accountant’s balance book. Their coverage is patchy. I can’t find the pupil registers before 1900. But the inspectors’ reports for 1886–1889 are here.

  The Education Department in Victoria used to have a history branch, which helped archive, research and document school histories like this. But it closed in the 1980s. There is no funding for schools to maintain their own histories now. Schools are only
expected to teach a narrowly prescribed national version of history, not to live, learn or conserve their own.

  In 1889, Melbourne and its suburbs were rapidly expanding. Camberwell State School enrolments grew from 34 children when it opened in 1867, to 150 the next year and nearly 300 children by the time Edith enrolled, mostly in the younger classes.

  The inspectors’ reports are musty and frayed, their fabric binding stretched across the years. Cryptic pencil marks annotate the margins, faded in time and meaning. On one page an inspector has scrawled a blunt comment in orange pencil down the side. Inspector William M. Gamble was neater, more circumspect, when he recorded his opinions on the school in 1887. Cursive script scrawls across the page, written with pen and ink. I am grateful to be part of the last generation of Australian students to learn cursive script at school, even though my own children claim they cannot read mine. I am out of the habit of reading it, and I have to concentrate, as if reading in a foreign language, to decode the unfamiliar formality of Gamble’s conclusions.

  ‘Buildings are clean and tidy,’ he notes. ‘When will the shade trees be planted?’

  It’s a complaint he’s clearly made before.

  ‘Furniture and apparatus. Of what use are short pencils that they should be in such general use? I am disappointed that previous suggestions have borne so little fruit.’

  Edith would have been in Class IV when she arrived. I cannot find the class lists for her years, but George completed his standard Class IV examination in 1889 at the age of twelve years and eleven months. Unlike Edith, he must have left school at this point. Edith became a pupil-teacher at the end of 1889 when she was fifteen, on £20 per year. A housemaid earnt £30–40 per year at that time, as well as food and lodging.