The fairy ring

Mum again, at around the age of eight or nine:

We always went for a walk with the governess in the afternoon, usually along the railway line which ran in front of Raeshaw. There was only one train a day. Sometimes we would see some rail gangers on a push-me-pull-you trolley riding along the track to check the sleepers. In the spring it was a good place for wildflowers: bachelors’ buttons, egg and bacon, bluebells, etc. If we walked back towards Melbourne we would come to wattle and sheoak trees planted by Dad I think to where I was convinced there was a fairy ring. I was very fairy ring-minded right up to the time we left Gippsland and went to live in Geelong. I used to write letters to them and leave them at the ring and some kind person (probably Mongie) would leave replies written on gum leaves on the step outside the sleepout where we younger ones slept. David had his own room in a small hut outside the house, approached through the vegetable garden I think. The smell of Cootamundra wattle still takes me back to those walks. The ring was formed by toadstools spreading spoor ever outwards and had a mossy floor. Very authentic to my way of thinking!

And again:

I used to write letters to the fairies and leave them presents of cups made out of silver paper. They used to write back on gum leaves which was terribly exciting. I remember clearly finding one such note outside our sleepout door on the step one morning. It said that the fairies were going away for a holiday but would return some day. Funnily enough our dearest aunt (Mongie) who had been staying with us, left that day too, but I never twigged.

There is a reason for these two versions. Twice Mum went through the exercise of committing her childhood recollections to paper, beginning in the early 1990s. Because she mislaid the original notebook, with characteristic patience and determination she sat down not so long before she died and wrote it all again. The two books are remarkably alike, in both content and arrangement. She must have had a very clear memory of what she wrote the first time, or else she followed similar processes of retrieval that led her in essentially the same directions. Still, there are telling differences. The second book contains much that was prompted by conversations with Uncle John, who was by then living back in Melbourne and ailing. It is also more squarely addressed to Nick, who supplied the new notebook. And there are occasional hints that by then Mum was aware that she did not have much time left. The arthritis in her hands was giving her trouble, so the entries are briefer. When the family went for the interment of Uncle John’s ashes under a tree on the edge of the oval at Geelong College, Mum was reluctantly persuaded to take that opportunity to re-visit Raith and 188 Noble Street, the two Borthwick family homes in Geelong:

The day was very successful and I felt that John would have felt at home where he was buried. I hope so. On the whole, though, the hunt through what is now suburbia to find Raith confirmed my belief that, on the whole, it is better not to go back. 188 Noble Street was bad enough, but Raith was quite depressing. It looked so different to what I remember. It was no use asking me for street names as there were very few streets and our address was simply Raith, Herne Hill, Newtown, Geelong. The cypress hedge was intact to protect the house and garden from the tearing westerlies. The cement works at Fyansford was very much smaller and invisible from the garden.

Poor old Mum. She was quite right. It is better not to go back, yet despite her better judgment I usually do.

Raeshaw

This is the farm called Raeshaw, at Fulham, near Sale in East Gippsland, where my mother and her siblings were born, and spent the earliest years of their childhood before the family moved to Geelong in 1936.

Granny’s baby Austin is parked on the drive, and the structure by the front gate on the far left is in fact an old Melbourne cable tram which my grandfather bought and installed in the garden as an extremely exciting plaything for the children.

The tennis court on the right was where the children’s lessons were conducted by the family governess, Kit Fife, and my grandfather created little open-air work tables for the children descending in scale according to the appropriate age and dimensions of each. A vital part of the children’s daily lessons was a long walk along the railway line, and much of value was learned on those foraging expeditions, and even imaginations fired.

Mum remembers monitoring for several months a genuine fairy circle, and delivering gifts of home-made fairy crockery and flatware for which there were always enchanting thank-you letters written out on gumleaves waiting for her the next day. These were in fact created by Mungie.

The enormous vegetable garden must have gone quite a long way towards feeding the whole household at the height of the Great Depression, and, of course, there was always a convenient supply of mutton and lamb.

I think the stables where the children’s ponies lived must be the structure tucked just behind the house to the left, behind a stand of trees.

This photograph was taken “from the Shell Company’s machine, ‘Golden Shell,’ flown by Captain F. C. Penny.”

Uncle David's First Birthday Party at Raeshaw

Some photographs capture far more than a group of people, a place, an event or happening. Such is the case with this marvelous snapshot which my grandfather, William Borthwick, took at his eldest son’s first birthday party in 1922 at the family property, Raeshaw, which is at Fulham, a few miles west of Sale, on the northern side of the Princes’ Highway in East Gippsland.

The dramatis personae are friends, relations, and neighbors, evidently engaging in a friendly tug-of-war between two teams of women and children apparently of roughly equal strength—the kind of happy social exercise in which by all accounts my grandfather specialized.

Ably assisted by my mother, whose memory is good, I have decyphered the highly abbreviated key on the reverse, which consists only of surnames. From left to right, therefore, beginning with the little boy, Cousin Norman “Torch” Gooch (so named for his glowing red hair), the son of Uncle Arch and Aunt Norn (Norma), the rest of the group may be identified as follows.

After Torch comes Airlie Harrison, a friend of Granny’s. The Harrisons were an old Gippsland family. Then comes one of the three little Bowman cousins, the grandchildren of my grandfather’s Aunt Gwladys Bowman (Bell), of The Ridge, a portion of the original Snake’s Ridge station. Note the rather fetching headbands à la mode, and matching outfits. Reenie Crooke (Irene), or perhaps another of the Crookes of Holey Plain, who shared a long boundary with Kilmany Park, comes next. Then another of the Bowman girls, then Miss James, who was apparently something to do with the Crookes, maybe a governess. The little boy giggling immoderately next to her is Dale Crooke, then comes Aunt Kit (Gooch), then another Bowman child, and an older Bowman girl, evidently in her teens, and finally, leading the team on the left, Iris Thompson of Clydebank, another friend and neighbor.

Leading the opposing side is Alison Reid, a friend from Sale, dangling sprightly toggles from the waist of her cardigan; then Edward Crooke of Holey Plain, Dale’s elder brother, holding on with some determination. Then comes their sister Marie Crooke (pronounced like starry); then Granny (Helen Borthwick); then Rose, whom Mum describes as “a funny old factotum who lived with Uncle Arch and Aunt Norn” (Gooch); then Granny’s loyal school friend from Hermitage days Eily Madden; then little Gwen Foster (who eventually married Dale Crooke); then Rosemary Thompson; then her grandmother, Mrs. Thompson, Iris Thompson’s mother-in-law; and, finally, bringing up the rear, Ruby, the wife of Ormond Foster, of Boisdale near Maffra.

The three infants in the foreground are (left to right) Master Macdonald, Miss Macdonald (of Armadale—the property, not the suburb of Melbourne), and Uncle David Borthwick, aged one, who sits cheerfully on the rug.

The Bowman girls’ party dresses, the hats and coats worn by most of the grown-ups—where on earth are all the men?—the neat lawn, those plucky shrubs newly planted by Granny, and the wide gravel drive in the foreground stand in surprising contrast with the flat bleakness of the distant paddocks that descend into the background and the numerous dead trees dotted over them, although these are actually remnants of the aggressive process of land clearing, and not really any indication of severe drought or blight. (The whole of East Gippsland was once densely forested.) The locality is not far from the site of the present Sale aerodrome.

The Fosters, the Crookes, the Thompsons, Harrisons, Gooches and Pearsons (Granny’s family) could justly lay claim to being the closest thing to a landed gentry that ever existed in East Gippsland, but the mood here is hardly formal. They were pretty tough farming people, who educated and kept their small children fully occupied at home with the aid of governesses, or middle-aged spinster relations whose marital prospects were completely wrecked by the industrialized slaughter of the Great War. All were yet to be cast into the abyss of the Great Depression, though most of them survived it more or less intact, not without years of self-sacrifice and the mind-bogglingly ascetic money management strategies of the dessicated clerks of the Trustees Executors Company in Melbourne. Most of their living descendants, including me, remain powerfully connected to the rough and not especially hospitable sheep country that their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents opened up in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Unfortunately we do not know which of the two teams won the tug-of-war, but I rather fancy that Alison Reid, who was formidable, made sure it was hers.

Uncle David

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Uncle David, on the verandah at Balmadies, Metung, teaching me all about Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

David William Pearson Borthwick (1921-2000) was Mum, Uncle John and Aunt Anne’s eldest brother. He was a yachtsman, pilot, farmer, and great friend to many. A fourth generation Gippslander, he was born and spent his early years at Raeshaw, his parents’ sheep property at Fulham, near Sale.

On May 9, 1927, with his parents, David witnessed the opening of the Provisional Parliament building in Canberra by the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth), an occasion upon which every aircraft in the fledgling R.A.A.F. was excitingly grounded, and all the pilots returned to Point Cook unhurt, but by train. Clearly, aged six, from that moment only the Air Force would do.

At nine, David went to Geelong College as a boarder. He was a prefect, and represented the school in rowing and athletics.

In 1940, David entered Ormond College to study engineering at the University of Melbourne. War had broken out in Europe, and he volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force as air crew. As a member of the Empire Air Training Scheme, he trained at Somers, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), and in England. After six weeks’ operational training on Hurricanes, at Unsworth in Lancashire, he was posted to the Middle East.

Shortly after arriving in Cairo David contracted malaria, and went to the Sudan to recuperate. His host was Douglas Dodds-Parker, governor of the Blue Nile province, not far from the Ethiopian border, such as it was, who gave David a lasting interest in the region.

Dodds-Parker was a veteran of the Sudanese Political Service in the Anglo-Egyptian administration, and closely involved in the Special Operations Executive push to restore the Emperor Haile Selassie to his throne, a goal that was attained rather easily in 1941, to the lasting humiliation of the approximately 20,000 Italian personnel who were captured by an allied force not much larger than 1,700 men.

When travelling by camel with His Excellency on imperial business, David celebrated his twenty-first birthday (August 8, 1942) in a mud hut in Khartoum.

He then joined 450 Squadron flying Kittyhawks, and took part in ground strafing, escorting light bombers and dive bombing operations before, during, and after the Battle of El Alamein (July 1942).

On November 9, 1942, David was shot down by a Messerschmidt Me109. It was reported that his aircraft had crashed in flames, and that there was no chance of survival. However, he had parachuted clear of the plane, an instant before it crashed behind enemy lines.

He was severely wounded in both legs, and was unable to walk. Knowing that the British forces were advancing, he bandaged his legs with pieces of his parachute and set out, crawling backwards for four days in a sitting position, using his hands for propulsion. He survived by eating beetles, and drinking dew. On the fifth day he was found by two Bedouin who helped him reach and cross the British lines.

David was in hospital in Cairo for six months before returning to Australia in a hospital ship.

After more rehabilitation, he was posted to various bases in Australia before returning to operational flying in 1944 with 78 Squadron on Noemfoor Island (in the Papua province of the Dutch East Indies’ western portion of New Guinea). He was mentioned in despatches for the second time after leading an attack on a heavily defended Japanese base.

In December, his legs were causing him difficulties, and he was sent down from the islands.

The R.A.A.F. offered him an intelligence job but, rejecting the idea of not flying, he resigned from the Air Force and joined Australian National Airways as a commercial pilot.

During the next four years, he flew DC2s, DC3s, and the very rare DC5 on the Sydney, Brisbane, Broken Hill, and Tasmanian routes. In 1949, he resigned from A.N.A., and bought a farm through the Soldier Settlement Scheme at Giffard, on the shore of Bass Strait, along a stretch of the Ninety Mile Beach in East Gippsland.

He developed a productive farm, rearing sheep and Hereford cattle. He was an early and vigorous experimenter with techniques of cultivating salt-tolerant plants for his livestock.

David was also one of the original members of what would eventually become the Metung Yacht Club.

In 1986, he bought Chindrina, a 26-foot yacht which he and his two sons, my Borthwick cousins Ian and Keith, sailed from Hobart, Tasmania, across Bass Strait to Metung.

In 1970, he sailed down to Hobart again (with Dad and their old friend Kenneth Aitken as crew), but most of his sailing was around the Gippsland Lakes, either solo, or with a crew of family, and friends. The occasionally shambolic Marley Point Overnight race became an annual event from its inception, with his children and grandchildren all assisting.

David Borthwick died on September 1, 2000, after having suffered a stroke, and was survived by his wife Jeanie, two sons, and six grandchildren.

Acknowledgment: This obituary was written by David’s son, Keith Borthwick, with the help of family and friends, and appeared in The Age newspaper (Melbourne) on November 17, 2000. It is here slightly augmented.

David and Jeanie also had a daughter, Janet, who was my godmother.

As a little girl she had been a bridesmaid at Mum and Dad’s wedding in 1949, and Mum was especially attached to her.

She grew up, followed both her parents to the University of Melbourne (and her mother to Women’s College, as it was then known), and afterwards worked for a time in counter-intelligence circles. The authorities were somewhat taken aback when Uncle David robustly sought assurances (in person) that Janet’s undercover activities would not put her in harm’s way.

On one occasion she tailed a visiting Soviet agricultural delegation to Wangaratta, and it would be amusing to know exactly what information the K.G.B. gleaned en route—interesting ways with manure, perhaps?—and what information Janet noted in the relevant file; I do not know if she spoke any Russian.

Janet got married at St. George’s Church of England, Malvern, to which ceremony I was allowed to go, wearing an extremely fetching pair of bottle-green velvet shorts, smocked white shirt, and a pair of red patent-leather buckled shoes. I vividly recall Uncle David’s tail coat, and spectacular collapsible silk top hat.

Janet and her husband moved to a farm near Albany in Western Australia, but in 1969 was killed in a tragic car accident.

No parent recovers easily, or ever, from the death of a child, but I am sure David and Jeanie were long comforted by the knowledge that Janet’s infant son, Robert Campbell, who survived the crash, grew up, spent regular holidays with his grandparents, his uncles and cousins, then studied engineering, and prospered.

Robert now lives with his own family in New Zealand.

William and Helen Borthwick at Raeshaw

William and Helen Borthwick, my grandparents, at Raeshaw, Fulham, near Sale, East Gippsland, c. 1924.

William Arthur Borthwick (1894–1953) was the fourth son and sixth child of William Borthwick and Ada Maud Mary, the eldest of the eight daughters of Edward Connor Bell and Katherine Anne Wallen.

William senior, my great-grandfather, migrated from Scotland in 1869, aged 19, after his father, Alexander Hay Borthwick, refused to buy him a commission in the Indian Army, in which two of his uncles had served with some distinction.

He may have been prompted to go to Australia by the fact that his father’s brother, Uncle John James Malcolm Borthwick, preceded him, and created in about 1850 the Tarong station atop the Blackbutt Range in the South Burnett region of southern Queensland, approximately sixty miles due west of Caloundra, and was one of the first men to ship wool from Brisbane.

On reaching Melbourne he joined the National Bank of Australasia Limited, and became the youngest man ever appointed manager of a branch, in this case at Maffra. Thence he was eventually transferred to Sale, where the family settled permanently.

My grandfather’s eldest brother, the namesake of their grandfather, Alexander Hay Borthwick, or Uncle Lex, as he was known, served in the A. I.F., lost an arm in Palestine, married Eva Sage of Mildura (a nurse whom he met whilst recuperating), and settled on the land not far from Cowarr in East Gippsland.

The second brother, 1st Lieutenant Keith Borthwick of the 8th (Victorian) Regiment of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade, fell on August 7, 1915, in the first wave in the famous Battle of the Nek at Gallipoli, one of the most famous but costly moments in Australian history. Because he was an officer, the name of Lt. Keith Borthwick, and his occupation (grazier), appear in one of the most haunting footnotes of Bean’s official history. The hundreds of ordinary diggers who died were, of course, not listed.

The third brother, John Malcolm, had much earlier chosen to pursue a career as a professional officer in the British Army, but evidently committed suicide at Aden in 1908, aged 20.

He had two younger sisters, Aunt Jean and Aunt Kath (Kathleen), a talented viola player in what Uncle John used to describe mischievously as “Ziggy Zelman’s Follies,” but which was, in fact, the budding Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, whose first concert took place on December 11, 1906, under the baton of Maestro Alberto Zelman.

Neither Aunt Kath nor Aunt Jean (q.v.) ever married. As a dedicated volunteer, Aunt Jean transcribed by hand entire books in Braille. She and Aunt Kath lived together, first with their mother, known affectionately as “Da,” in Adelaide Street, Armadale, and then in a modest ground floor flat in Myamyn Street, a few doors down from Granny.

My grandfather, William, came after Aunt Kath, and, finally, the baby brother, Ronald Murray Borthwick, who also served in the A. I.F., and eventually married Aunt Meryl, the daughter of Dr. Hagenauer of Sale.

On November 10, 1953, at the Veterinary School grounds at Parkville, Uncle Ron demonstrated a revolutionary stock cradle, which was thought to have considerable influence in the treatment and control of foot rot.

According to an engaging memoir she wrote in the early 1970s, Granny knew the Borthwick family when they were all growing up together in and around Sale. She recalled Aunt Kath coming as Red Riding Hood to a big fancy-dress dance in the drawing room at Kilmany, and, later, in 1912, Granny’s coming out year, going to dances in Melbourne and golfing tournaments in Traralgon with Lex and Keith Borthwick.

The war was as costly for the Borthwick family as it was for scores of others. My grandfather volunteered for active duty, but was prevented from serving due to a heart condition brought on by having contracted rheumatic fever as a child.

In the end he lost two brothers, who, if they had survived might conceivably have been more suitable husbands for my grandmother, such is the vague sense one gets from a close reading of the relevant portion of Granny’s memoir, which was written long after William died of a heart attack at Berwick in 1953.

Granny

Helen Pearson, my grandmother, in London, c. 1913.

Helen (Granny) was the daughter of the Hon. William Pearson, M.L.C. (1864–1919), and his wife Sophie Emily (née Gooch).

Granny was born on November 27, 1893, at Bonegilla Park, Wodonga, and grew up with her brother Roy, her sister Emily (Aunt Mim), and their younger cousin Mollie (Mungie) at Kilmany Park, near Sale in East Gippsland.

She was the head girl at The Hermitage in Geelong in about 1911–12.

Bafflingly, the family spent the years of the First World War living in Europe. At first they were stranded. When war broke out the family was touring Wales in a motor, and had great difficulty finding anyone who could speak English. Uncle Roy immediately joined the British Army, and served in the 13th Hussars in France and Mesopotamia. Although the Pearsons sailed back to Australia at the end of 1914, after a few months they turned around and came straight back again, presumably at some risk of enemy attack, to be nearer Roy, and possibly to resume a style of life in England that clearly suited their daughters. They settled in a large house called The Orchard on Chorleywood Common near Rickmansworth, on the northeast edge of London.

At the Hermitage, Granny recalled seeing her first aeroplane, a black speck that appeared over the You Yangs, but in early 1914, on a visit to Menton in the south of France, she actually flew in one.

William Pearson died prematurely in 1919, and Kilmany Park was sold not long afterwards. The station was subdivided, and the house was turned into a glum Presbyterian Boys’ Home.

In 1918, Aunt Mim, who was by then the widow of a British army officer, Pat Jackson, contracted Spanish influenza. Granny caught it too. They were both lucky to survive, as were their parents. The family returned to Australia at the end of 1918.

Soon after the end of the war, Helen married my grandfather, William Arthur Borthwick, a grazier, at Sale on October 27, 1920. Before the war she had known his older brothers, Lex and Keith, who was killed in the first wave at the Battle of the Nek at Gallipoli.

The Borthwicks were neighbors. Their property, which was creatively named Bald Hills, shared a boundary with part of Kilmany, and the Pearson and Borthwick children grew up together. Reading between the very discreet lines of Granny’s handwritten memoir – the name of Keith Borthwick crops up from time to time in connection with dances in Sale and Melbourne, golfing tournaments at Kilmany and Traralgon – one wonders whether there was more than a hint of affection between Granny and him. Keith Borthwick survives in one of the most haunting footnotes to Bean’s official history, but fell in perhaps the most disgracefully futile action at Gallipoli.

Helen and William Borthwick settled on a farm called Raeshaw, at Fulham, quite close to Bald Hills and Kilmany Park. My mother Helen (b. July 20, 1926), her brother David (1921–2000), their sister Anne (1923–1986) and brother John (1929–2006) were all born at Raeshaw. Anne and Helen followed their mother to The Hermitage.

The family moved to Geelong in 1936, and eventually settled first in a large house called Raith in Newtown, then at 188, Noble Street, where they remained throughout the final years of World War II.

As a child my grandfather had contracted rheumatic fever, which permanently weakened his heart, so although he volunteered for active service in World War I, unlike his two brothers, he was not allowed to go. In the late 1940s, Granny and Grandad moved from Geelong to Berwick, where he died far too young of a heart attack in 1953 – obviously I never knew him.

Granny retired to a big, rambling Edwardian house with a pretty garden at 5, Myamyn Street in Armadale. She died at Lynn Private Hospital in Melbourne on February 12, 1975, after a brief diabetic illness.