wildflowers

My Aunt, Vi Taylor, spent much of her childhood in the Eastern Goldfields, where she developed a great love for Western Australian wildflowers. As an adult, she depicted them in paint and stitch on a veriety of surfaces.

This jarrah fire screen was painted as a wedding gift for my parents.

Here is a detail.

Vi also embroidered table linen.

I inherited this tablecloth

along with the notebook my aunt took out into the bush with her to record the plants.


Costume Curator Jo Pearson's interest in my aunt's work led to a joint display of Vi's wildflowers alongside items from the Historical Society collection. Jo brought out a wonderful nineteenth century dress thought to have been made locally in Guilford for Miss Ethel Marion Gull or perhaps even made some years earlier for her mother Annie. This delicate dress is thought to be possibly Western Australia's earliest garment featuring local embroidered flora.





Here is a close detail of the embroidery, stitched on the finest of cotton cloth.


Jo also put on display part of a collection of pressed wildflowers gathered and mounted by Alfred Hillman in 1832, when the colony still was very young.


This flower, seemingly an orchid of some sort, has long since fallen away from its mount, but its memory has been captured in surface of the paper.


This spider orchid was collected and pressed my my aunt Vi over a century later, around sixty years ago.

Ora Banda

My father was born in Western Australia's Eastern Goldfields in 1915, in the town of of Ora Banda where his father was postmaster.


I didn't get back to Ora Banda on my most recent trip to Kalgoorlie, but the town DID play a part in my visit nonetheless. Eileen Moroney, a member of the Eastern Goldfields Historical Society which hosted my visit, grew up in Ora Banda. Eileen kindly shared with me information she has gathered about Ora Banda's history. Her own story actually links to my father's.

With the town's population diminished and most of its buildings gone, the local post office and telephone exchange was run by her family from their home. Eileen still has the tags, twine and sealing wax used to seal the post bags sent between Perth and Ora Banda.

Eileen also gave me tangible memories to bring home in the form of precious gifts.

She grew up with this old eiderdown, which had worn out and was put in the shed to await recovering. However, the moths found it and when she went to retrieve it a month ago, only two squares retained their feathers, as the moths had eaten all the others away. Hearing that I collect and treasure old damaged fabric, Eileen valiantly cleaned it and presented it to me, and I suspect her washing machine will never be the same again.


There were some great holes with wonderful edges. Eileen was somewhat flabergasted when I declared my intention to use a some cloth from her eiderdown in the artwork I'm making for an upcoming Kalgoorlie Museum exhibition.

She was even more flabergasted when I declared my desire to take home her other gift, which I think she had brought along only to tease me.

This old potato sack had been hanging on a hook in the chook yard for a year or so. The combination of goldfields dust and rain had stiffened it like a board.


I had to repack my bags to fit it in, but now it lives in my courtyard, along with other goldfields memorabilia.

Odd couple

This odd couple occupy a corner of the costume storage room at Stirling House.

There they stand, patiently waiting, until they are deemed the best fit for a garment about to be put on display in the Society's museum.


In this tiny space dwell many treasures. Packed to the rafters, in large storage boxes, are garments relevant to Western Australia's history.

The museum display is changed periodically, and this process is currently underway. It is a busy time in the costume room as boxes are shifted so that items removed from display can be repacked and stored and fresh items selected by Hon Costume Curator Jo Pearson are unpacked and prepared for display.


This is an exciting time to be around, as Jo offers me the chance to see inside these boxes as garments are removed or replaced. I was very happy to be reacquainted with this beaded dress which first drew me to the Society's doorstep a year ago whilst it was on display. Its beauty and careful conservation had been described to me so enthusiastically that I simply had to see it for myself.


Here is a highly magnified detail of the tiny stitches used to support the damaged areas of the dress on a fabric carefully dyed to match. Conservation is not meant to hide the marks left by time. So the missing areas of the original fabric are still clearly visible, telling the story of many hours of strenuous exertion on the dance floor.

Kalgoorlie and the Eastern Goldfields

This week I pay my second residency visit to the goldfields, when I return to Kalgoorlie for several days of activities. My previous trip, just over a month ago, was shared with my husband.


Carrying our bedroom on our roof, we slept at secluded spots such as Rowles Lagoon, north of Coolgardie, where we shared the dawn with abundant birds, a lone kangaroo, and the echoing presence of the many generations of indigneous Australians for whom it provided succour prior to European settlement.

Scattered all over the goldfields there is evidence of fleeting European settlement. Sunlight glistens brightly on patches of broken glass and china scattered incongrously amidst the red dirt.


Removed from this environment, do these artefacts become something different?



This is an idea to explore, I think.

Spreading the word

The first week of June was Heritage Week here in WA - a time for the state's many local heritage organisations to highlight local history. I was pleased to be invited to be part of the festivities.

Last Sunday I gave a talk as part of the Historical Society of Cockburn's heritage week celebration at Azelia Ley Homestead Museum.


This historic homestead holds a wonderful collection telling the story of life as it was in the early days of settlement. Museum curator Carolyn Mutzig is supported by a dedicated band of people who give their time to ensure local history is not lost to future generations. I urge you to pay them a visit if you get the chance.


The homestead has some lovely examples of quilts and everyday clothing. These inspired my talk, in which I shared quilts and clothes from my own collection drawn from many different cultures.


Emma Knight, seen here taking a closer look at the careful mending in a Japanese under-kimono, was one of my most attentive audience members. I heard from Carolyn that Emma and her sister Aimee make a valuable contribution to the life of the museum. It's great to see younger members of the community getting involved in caring for and sharing our history.

Two days prior to my visit to Azelia Ley Homestead, I participated in the Fremantle Heritage Festival as guest of the Fremantle History Society and the Fremantle Local History Group. I spoke about the port's significance for me as the point of arrival and departure for three generations of my family, and recounted personal and family memories of these comings and goings. I shared some of my textiles whose working class origins connect them to Fremantle, and also talked about my residency.

At 2pm this Saturday, June 20, I will be showing some of my old textiles at the Mundaring Arts Centre and all are welcome.

quilts made for travelling rough

Since I wrote about the waggas I found at the museum in Rockingham, another one has turned up much closer to home. The Royal WA Historical Society's curator of costume, Jo Pearson, has recently accessioned a wagga into the collection.


The wagga is made from two layers of suiting samples. It is quilted by machine around the edges,

but a large portion of the centre of remains unquilted and forms an envelope which could be filled with newspapers, hay, grass or whatever else could be found to add some extra warmth.

Jo put the wagga on display in time for the Society's May 19 Open Day. The donor, Fr Ted Doncaster, accepted Jo's invitation to attend and I was pleased to meet him and hear the wagga's story.


The wagga was apparently made for the Reverend John Frewer by a kindly parishioner, during his time as a Bush Brother in the 1920s. He would have been grateful for its warmth on cold nights camping out in the Great Southern, as he travelled around by horseback or horse and buggy, then later in a car called Lizzie. He was not likely to have needed it so much on his subsequent appointment as Bishop of North West Australia. Yet the wagga was one of few possessions which he retained all his life, so it must have been special to him.

I also brought along some quilts to display at the open day. These came from diverse cultures, but all had the common purpose of making do with available materials to create something useful. One of these quilts bears a strong resemblance to the wagga, and is from the same era.

This American handman's quilt is one of my precious possessions, a gift from US friend and colleague Rosemary Claus-Gray. It would have been used by a handyman travelling the highways and byways looking for odd jobs, and would have kept him warm at night as he slept in the barn or by the roadside. The quilt is made from recycled suiting and furnishing fabrics, and is lined with old shirt fabrics.


Open Day visitor Rosemary Fitzgerald, from Museums Australia WA, was intrigued by the one edge of the quilt (the blue one on the left) which was made of soft cotton flannel cloth instead of wool, so that the rough woollen cloth would not scratch the handyman's neck as he slept.

wartime gifts

I start this post with a mystery object, a detail of a 'gift' to my grandfather, Harry Sinclair, whose embroideries I've written about previously. The object's identity will become clear as you read.


Today is ANZAC Day. For those of you who live overseas, I should explain that this is a day great historical significance in Australia. April 25th each year is a hallowed day of remembrance, the anniversay of the day in 1915 when many people believe Australia came of age.


At dawn on that day Australian troops of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, my grandfather Harry among them, landed on the hostile shores of the Gallipoli Peninsular in Turkey. By the end of that day 2,000 'ANZACS' lay dead. After eight months of bitter fighting and many more deaths the campaign was lost, but the ANZACS had forged a name for themselves, built on courage, resiliance, mateship, a healthy disrespect for undue authority and a sardonic sense of humour.

This seems an appropriate day to share some more of my grandfather's story. When Britain declared itself at war, he lied about his age in order to enlist in the Australian Imperial Force. By late 1914 he was stationed in Egypt, where his Christmas was brightened by a gift, given to each soldier, from Princess Mary of the royal family.


I don't know what the tin originally contained, but it was accompanied by this card.


Harry survived the inital landing at Gallipoli, but was wounded six weeks later and shipped to England where he eventually recuperated sufficiently to return to Australia, along with his royal Christmas memento. He was followed some months later by the English sweetheart he had met whilst in hospital and persuaded to become his bride. Sadly, he never fully recovered from his wounds or the tuberculosus he had caught in the trenches. He died a young man when his daughter, my mother, was only six.

Princess Mary's tin now belongs to my mother, and today we looked once more at the memorabilia stored inside it; a small patriotic doll which was most likely part of the gift, and a cardboard jewellery box containing a cigarette paper protecting the colour patch off his uniform.


The colour patch in turn protected the final layer of objects.


Alongside the uniform badge were placed these three war souvenirs, gifts from the Turkish army.....

These pieces of shrapnel were among those removed from my grandfather's head wounds. The many they were unable to remove were eventually buried with him.

Rockingham visit

On Saturday I had the pleasure of meeting the members of the Rockingham District Historical Society, in their museum close to the beach to which I made many childhood excursions. This was the first of a number of talks I will be giving for the Historical Society's affiliated societies as part of the residency public programme. It was a great opportunity to talk with interesting and knowledgable people and a chance to learn more about local history.


Rockingham museum has some wonderful displays of the early days. I was surprised to discover group settlements were sited in the Rockingham area, much closer to Perth than I'd realised. Among the collection relating to group settlements was a familiar cupboard made of recycled kerosene cans.


Best of all, I found a domestic 'wagga' quilt, a utilitarian covering made from a variety of old clothes patched together.


This detail of the wagga shows the coat front with button holes. My own grandmother made a similar quilt during the depression using her old coat.

exploring the collection

I've been exploring the objects currently on display at the Historical Society. Among them I found some which brought back fond memories, like this paper doll and her clothes, although she comes from an era half a century earlier than my own childhood paper dolls.


I was fascinated to find this album, which contained something quite unexpected.


Apparently, collecting and pressing seaweed was a popular activity at the turn of the twentieth century, as in this album containing seaweed collected on Rottnest Island.

a quick trip into the past

It might seem from my recent silence that things have been quiet, but in fact the opposite is true. So much has been happening that there's been no time to write.

I've just returned home to WA from a quick trip to Victoria, where I travelled some of the ground my paternal ancestors trod as they moved from town to town in goldfields and farming districts. A number of the family are buried in the peaceful Newstead cemetary.


I was struck by the contrast between the two states. A multitude of Victoria's small goldfields communities still exist, unlike the many remote WA communities which sprang out of nowhere then just as quickly disappeared when the gold was depleted.

My grandfather broke from the family tradition of bricklaying and came West as a young man around 1899 at the height of our gold rush, gaining employment as a telegraphist at Southern Cross, Coolgardie then Leonora post offices.

In 1901 his Victorian sweetheart Lily Arthur left her parent's comfortable home in Carlton and travelled by sea, rail, then Cobb and Co coach to remote Leonora.


There they married in style in a double wedding with friends

then started their wedded life in a small white-washed hessian walled hut with a dirt floor!

I will be visiting the WA goldfields area as part of my residency, an excursion which I eagerly anticipate.