The sheep

Uncle Tony Trumble has been mining the bottom of his cupboard in southern Tasmania. Here he is, circa 1932, with Uncle Arthur, one of our great-grandmother Campbell’s many Frew siblings. According to Uncle To, Uncle Arthur asked him to go in and bring him a baa. Tony marched in and attempted to do so. The baas were understandably startled, and Uncle Arthur had to go in and rescue him. This is what is happening in this action shot, presumably captured by Pa—evidence, perhaps, of the long Trumble tradition of capturing on camera moments of distress experienced by the children. I am rather taken by Uncle Arthur’s belt and braces, and that traditional stockman’s hat. Uncle Arthur’s property was at Binalong, near Coonabarabran, northeast of Dubbo in New South Wales. My grandparents drove all the way up there in the car they knew affectionately as Leaping Lena. Arthur Frew was a well known identity in the district, and gates to his memory were not long afterwards erected at the Binalong Show Grounds. In about 1939 the Coonabarabran Agricultural Society co-opted those gates for their own show grounds, but after the war Binalong demanded them back. Much later Uncle To investigated, and found them in a very diminished state. He dug up the committee and donated a couple of hundred dollars to get them fixed. It cost a great deal more than $200, but the Show Society generously paid the difference. I gather Uncle Alec has since called in to check up on them. Thus our footprint endures.

The Campbells of Argyll

My paternal grandmother, Iona Heather (Nan), was the daughter of “Alexander Campbell of Argyll,” a doughty Scots Presbyterian mining engineer and businessman, and Jane Heather, the daughter of George Frew, a Catholic grazier, who owned property at Tabor in the western district of Victoria, not far from the southern end of the Grampians.

The Alexander Campbells married in 1886.

The Frews’ ancestors are said to have come originally from Killyleagh, Co. Down, on the west side of Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland, where they are well documented in about 1800.

In 1856, George Frew married Eliza, the daughter of a Mr. Wright, and in due course they had nine children, at first living in Brunswick: (1) William George Frew (1857-1931); (2) Richard Henry Lee Frew (1859-1931); (3) Jane Heather, our great-grandmother, who was born in 1861; (4) Eliza Annie Frew (b. 1864); (5) James Frew (b. 1866); (6) Mary Frew (b. 1868); (7) Frederick Frew (b. 1871), who died aged five; (8) Arthur Frew (b. 1873), and (9), the baby, Alice Maud Frew (b. 1876).

Evidently, Nan’s mother “married well,” in that ghastly Victorian phrase, because at least one of her first cousins, Kathleen, the daughter of Jane Frew’s eldest brother, William George, entered domestic service aged fifteen, and worked as a nursemaid for the Bigelow family at Bloomfield, the big property a few miles south of Beechworth. She eventually transformed herself into Mrs. Griff, and died in 1982.

Presumably the sectarian issue arising from the Alexander Campbells’ mixed marriage, to which the odd compromise solution was for Nan and her siblings to be raised in the Church of England, caused some distance to open up between Jane Campbell and her Catholic Frew relations.

Alexander Campbell of Argyll was immensely proud of his solidly documented connections to the Clan Campbell, and, ultimately to the earlier dukes of Argyll, though it is impossible to work out from which of these he claimed descent, because the huge and complicated hand-drawn family tree that Nan once owned went missing after she died.

This invaluable document commenced at its apex with none other than the Emperor Constantine the Great.

Now, according to my estimable colleague Roberta Frank, Marie Borroff Professor of English and Professor of Linguistics here at Yale, there is some evidence to suggest that Constantine’s mother, St. Helena, was actually born in Scotland, so this claim may not be as kooky as it looks, although the document never offered much historical reassurance because from Constantine the Great it led, only a few generational notches down, to a Scottish medieval person who rejoiced in the name of “Egon, Fool of the Forest.”

By a process of remedial adjustment, it seems likely that the compiler of Nan’s ambitious pedigree was hopelessly mixed up, because, according to the hugely relevant Popular Tales of the West Highlands (Vol. III: “The Lay of Diarmaid”) by John Francis Campbell (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1860–62, p. 94, referring there to “a MS. which came from Cawdor Castle…called “GENEALOGY ABRIDGEMENT OF THE VERY ANTIENT AND NOBLE FAMILY OF ARGYLL, 1779”),

Smoroie Mor, or as others have it, Sir Moroie Mor, was “a son of King Arthur,” of whom great and strange things are told in the Irish traditions. He was born at Dumbarton Castle, on the south side of the fort, in the place called the Red Hall, or in Irish, Tour na-hella dheirg, i.e., the Tour of the Red Hall. He was called to his by-name, The fool of the Forest; he was a wild and undaunted person, and married a sister of King Andar’s, the forty-ninth king of the Scots, and was contemporary with Columbus pius; called in the Gaelic Colmkill, or Calum na-kill, because, when he retired from company they were always sure to find him in his cell at prayer.

“Constantine,” almost certainly therefore refers to that mythical person who was traditionally thought to be grandfather to the legendary King Arthur of the Round Table.

The reliability of this document is deeply questionable also, because, according to its anonymous author,

In the following account we have had regard to the genealogical tree done by Niel MacEwen, [who] received the same from Eachern MacEwen, his father, as he had the same from Artr. MacEwen, his grandfather, and their ancestors and predecessors, senachies and pensioners to great familys, who, for many ages were employed to make up and keep such Records in their accustomed way of Irish Rhymes; and the account left by Mr. Alexr. Colvin, who had access to the papers of the family, and Pedro Mexva, a Spaniard, who wrote the origin of diverse and sundry nations, in his book entitled the Treasury of Antiquities.

This last reference is another extremely garbled but failed attempt to get it right.

The “Mexva” book is actually a wacky post hoc English translation, The Treasvrie of Avncient and Moderne Times: Containing the learned collections, iudicious readings, and memorable obseruations: not onely diuine, morrall and phylosophicall: but also poeticall, martiall, politicall, historicall, astrologicall, &c.; translated out of that worthy Spanish gentleman Pedro Mexio. and M. Francesco Sansouino, that famous Italian. As also, of these honourable Frenchmen, Anthonie du Verdier, Lord of Vaupriuaz: Loys Guyon, sieur de la Nauche, counsellor vnto the king: Claudius Gruget, Parisian, &c. (London: Printed by W. Iaggard, 1613) by Pedro Mexía (?1496–?1552).

Naturally it’s in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library here at Yale, and I’ve checked it.

I am not quite sure how the compiler of Nan’s pedigree managed to turn the MacEwens’ “Smoroie Mor” into “Egon, Fool of the Forest,” that wild and undaunted person, but I am rather glad he did.

Uncle Attie

Nan (q.v.) had two brothers, the younger of whom, Uncle Attie, as he was known, fought in World War I and, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, became involved with the New Guard, the rather hopeless Australian fascist-leaning paramilitary organization centered in Sydney.

The New Guard was led by a disgruntled veteran of the 15^th Hussars, the marginally successful antique dealer and upholsterer Captain Francis de Groot. Uncle Attie rose to be one of his deputies.

Both men (and others) were arrested after the intervention of Captain de Groot at the ribbon-cutting ceremony when, on March 19, 1932, the socialist premier of New South Wales, Jack Lang, opened the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

In an ostensibly harmless political gesture, De Groot upstaged the premier when, in front of a crowd of tens of thousands, he advanced on horseback, drew and brandished his saber, and used it to slash the ribbon, loudly declaring the bridge open “in the name of the decent and respectable people of New South Wales.”

I am not sure that we can be comforted in any way by that form of words, because, of course, Nazi Germany demonstrated just how effective a shield the concepts of decency, even respectability, yield to a well-organized gang of vicious murderers.

In any case, some years ago, on a visit with my mother, my eldest brother Nick, and his younger son, my dear nephew Ned Trumble, to see the excellent historical display housed in the south pier of the bridge, whilst watching a public presentation of a documentary film about this infamous event in the nation’s interwar history; apparently disregarding the admirable tone of disapprobation with which the film was imbued, in the part where they showed the footage, accompanied by sinister, martial, rat-tat-tat sound effects, in which these notorious, Nazi-ish uniform-wearing Australian would-be fascists were hustled into the Sydney Magistrates’ Court (to be charged, first, with lunacy, and, when that charge was dismissed, with malicious damage to the ceremonial ribbon), Mum immediately recognized the compact, blond, Nan-shaped figure at Captain De Groot’s elbow, leaned across, and, unperturbed by the presence of a good number of other, somewhat startled members of the audience, piped up cheerfully:

“Dear, look, there’s Uncle Attie!”

Rock Cakes

Nan (q.v.) took her special recipe for rock cakes to her grave, or, to be more accurate, the Springvale crematorium. However, reconstructing the general approach from memory, it must have gone something like this:

Heat your oven to 340 degrees Fahrenheit. Rub 4 oz of butter into 8 oz of self-raising flour with the tips of your fingers until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

Add 4 oz of sugar, ½ cup of sultanas, ¼ teaspoon of salt, ½ teaspoon of cinnamon, ¼ teaspoon of nutmeg, and maybe some other spices, to taste, allspice perhaps?, and mix them in thoroughly.

Make a little hollow in the middle, and add 1 egg, lightly beaten, and 3 tablespoons of milk. Gently mix all this into a good dough.

Place heaped dessert-spoonfuls of this promising concoction in lumps on a greased baking sheet, allowing some room for spreading, then bake for 10 minutes, or until the rock cakes are very lightly browned.

Allow to cool, make a pot of tea, then devour.

Now, something tells me that there was a certain astringency, a nip in the aftertaste, that suggests that Nan may have used baking soda, but I cannot be sure.

As well, this illustration is all wrong, because Nan never permitted her rock cakes to assume more than the slightest hint of brownness. Her rock cakes, in other words, were essentially blond, and smoother in texture, so the dough was therefore probably a few notches higher on the sloppiness scale.

Although the basic features are certainly correct, this recipe has Tasmanian provenance, and is therefore not entirely reliable.

Nan

Iona Heather Trumble, my paternal grandmother, was the daughter of Alexander Campbell, a director of the Broken Hill Proprietary Block 14 Company, Ltd., whose head office was at 31 Queen Street, Melbourne.

Great-grandfather Campbell was a mining engineer, and migrated from Scotland some time in the 1870s or 1880s.

The division of B.H.P. which he, Clive Baillieu, and others created was incorporated in the colony of Victoria on February 19, 1887, with capital of £155,000 in 100,000 10% “cum.” preferred 6s. shares, and 100,000 ordinary 25s. shares.

The company owned property at Broken Hill in New South Wales (obviously), but it developed an interest in the King Island Scheelite Company in Bass Strait (est. 1915), of which Great-Grandfather Campbell was chairman from 1917.

The Campbell family lived in Brighton, and spent their weekends and holidays at Portsea. Campbell’s Road was named after my great-grandfather, who, I seem to recall, first surveyed it. Owing to the Scheelite venture, the Campbells regularly sailed from Portsea or Sorrento to King Island aboard the two-masted wooden screw steamer S.S. Wauchope, occasionally bringing with them Nan’s pony.

Nan and her father were on board the Wauchope on August 1, 1919, when she was anchored at Portsea for a compulsory quarantine stop of seven days. It is hard to know what bio-hazard was thought to emanate from Portsea that might endanger King Island, but presumably the authorities knew what they were doing.

The ship was carrying a cargo of 250 tons, including flour, sugar, maize, machinery, a motor car, drapery, gasoline, oil, and, unfortunately, twenty-eight cylinders of acetylene gas for the lighthouses on King Island.

Five crew and seventeen other passengers were also on board. At 7 o’clock that evening a fire broke out in the hold of the ship.

The passengers were straight away ordered to pack their belongings, and board the two lifeboats. Despite their best efforts to bring the fire under control, naturally the cylinders of acetylene gas produced a large explosion, and the captain and crew were forced to abandon ship at 11.oo o’clock. The burned out hulk was later scuttled in Port Phillip Bay.

Over the years the family developed a close friendship with an old local on King Island, an unmarried Scot, who knew the ropes, and was ever after affectionately known as Uncle Jock. The friendship lasted, and eventually Nan and Pa looked after Uncle Jock in his old age and, when he died, arranged for him to be buried in a plot they purchased for him at Springvale.

At least they thought they purchased it.

Some years ago, Uncle Alec received a telephone call from a cheerful young person at Springvale, who informed him that Uncle Jock’s tenancy had effectively “expired.” In the absence of any next of kin, was there anything in particular that Uncle Alec wanted to do with him now?

The options seemed to be either to pay a substantial fee for another expensive but finite period of repose, and thereby lob this problem on to the next generation of Trumbles twenty-five years hence; effectively to authorize Springvale to deposit Uncle Jock in an unmarked mass grave, or to seek alternative accommodation.

After some consideration, Uncle Alec rang the local authorities on King Island, inquiring whether a spot could be found for Uncle Jock in the local cemetery. He explained that as an early resident of the island in theory Uncle Jock’s claim for a plot was as good as anyone’s.

He need not have worried. Uncle Jock, they said, would be more than welcome, in return for a fee so modest that Uncle Alec felt it necessary to ask a tactfully phrased follow-up question as to how long Uncle Jock’s next period of interment might reasonably be expected to last. The answer was unambiguous, in that refreshingly characteristic Tasmanian way:

“Oh, forever,” said the man at the King Island cemetery.

Nan’s father, Alexander Campbell, a doughty Scots Presbyterian, married Jane Heather, the daughter of George Frew, a Catholic grazier, who owned property at Tabor in the western district of Victoria, not far from the southern end of the Grampians.

The bizarre solution to the sectarian problem posed by this mixed marriage was to split the difference, and to agree that my grandmother and her siblings would be raised “Church of England.”

As a young woman Nan was a keen sportswoman, and a champion golfer.

Here she is in London in 1949, where my grandfather T. C. Trumble (Pa), was one of the instructing solicitors to Garfield Barwick, Q.C. (a future Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia) in the famous case of Commonwealth of Australia v. The Bank of New South Wales, which was decided on appeal by their lordships of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

Nan and Pa sailed to England with the Barwicks aboard the Stratheden in 1948, and took up residence at Claridge’s for eighteen months, while the case was prepared, argued, heard, and ultimately decided in the banks’ favor, in effect overruling the High Court of Australia, and overturning the Chifley government’s Banks Act of 1947.

The case was complex, and partly hinged on the constitutional issue of free trade between the states. Pa’s client was actually the government of the state of Victoria, whose interest in the matter arose from the serious implications of the proposed nationalization of the Australian banks for the cultivation in and around Mildura of raisins.

Rarely, if ever, has dried fruit assumed such constitutional importance, and the case stands as a tribute to the ingenuity, not to say brilliance, of my grandfather’s legal reasoning.

Pa went to school at Brighton Grammar, fought in World War I in the Royal Naval Air Service, and single-handedly disabled a German U-boat from the cockpit of his Sopwith Camel biplane, an achievement that was mentioned in despatches.

He became senior partner of Malleson, Stewart, and Co., as it was then known, and sat on the boards of several public companies. He was a churchwarden at St. George’s Church of England, Malvern.

Nan baked exceptionally good rock cakes, and liked to smoke Benson and Hedges’ cigarettes.