No 55 Clarendon

When you are not going up a hill in Clarendon you are going down one. You haven't any choice. I do not think there is a square yard of level country in the whole town. You enter it down a hill four miles long. You climb a hill to go to Church. You climb a hill to go to lodge. You even climb a hill to pay your rates— but not a very steep one. I suppose they reckon the rates are steep enough. Personally I always reckon that— on principle.

Now, what puzzled me as I sat on the hotel balcony, and gazed across at a hill somewhat reminiscent of the Grand Corniche at Nice, was how the early settlers got there in the days when there were no roads. Of course I know all about driving your bullocks on a zig-zag course, and chocking your wheels to defy the laws of gravitation. I have told you those things in former articles. But there are hills and hills — and Clarendon hills are of the latter kind. Do I make myself perfectly clear?

A Man Named Grant

Who was the man who founded Clarendon? Well, I suppose it was Richard Morphett. It was he who cut up his section to lay out a town. That was in 1846. But neither Richard nor Jeremiah Morphett were the first white men in Clarendon. Edwin Burgess, who had three sections on the other side of the river from the town, was there before them. But there was a man there before Edwin Burgess — a man named Grant.

So far as I can find out no one has ever bothered to take the unknown Mr. Grant out of his century of obscurity to place him in the historic niche which is his due. But that is what I propose to do. For I insist that the aforesaid Grant, as the first white settler in Clarendon, must be regarded as a person of importance.

Unfortunately I cannot tell you much about this interesting gentleman. From what I was told, and what I can conjecture, he was one of those retiring individuals who asked nothing better than to be left alone. And that is precisely what they would not do. The ''they" in this case was Edwin Burgess. It seems that Mr. Grant, whose Christian name is lost to posterity, happened into what is now Clarendon in quite a casual fashion. Coming across a slice of nice looking country south of the Onkaparinga, he took possession without as much as "By your leave." That is what many of our early-day squatters did, and that, probably, accounts for the restful designation we have so indiscriminately bestowed on our pastoralists.

However, Mr. Grant "squatted'' so long that he forgot to acquire a legal tenure. Then, one day, much to Mr. Grant's annoyance, Edwin Burgess strolled on to the property with a properly attested deed of ownership in his pocket. This he showed to Mr. Grant, and requested him to "get." So Grant "got.

Who Was He?

I fancy, from what I heard, things did not go as quietly as the preceding paragraph suggests. My informant's terse version was, "They chucked him out." The scene of that historic incident is now known as Park Farm, the property Mr. A. A. Harper. Grant's Gully, a piece of local nomenclature, perpetuates the memory of this interesting character of over 90 years ago, who, when there were two settlers in Clarendon, complained that the "place is getting too damned crowded," and took him self and his sheep to some obscure portion of the continent where he would not be worried by the seething waves of civilisation.

The Morphetts

The Morphetts who founded Clarendon — that is, laid out and named the town— were Richard and Jeremiah, cousins of Sir John Morphett, one of the members of the first Legislative Council of South Australia. There have been Morphetts in Clarendon ever since. There are some there today. Henry Morphett is one, and his sister (Mrs. E. Edwards) is another. Reg. Morphett, clerk of the district council, is a younger descendant of the family. And there are others, scattered, like the castles of Henry IV., here, there, and everywhere.

It was in 1846, 87 years ago, that the Morphett section on which the town stands, was cut up as a private township, and named Clarendon, after the earl who at that time occupied the position of president of the Board of Trade. There was no reason, as far as I can see, why the right honorable gentleman should have been so honored in South Australia. I think the native name was much more appropriate.

The blacks called the place Toondilla.

The idea of turning the section into a town was suggested to Richard Morphett by a friend named Mitchell, who was then coachman to Dr. Kent. Dr. Kent's name is perpetuated in Kent Town. As there is a story in the naming of Kent Town I may as well seize on this rather doubtful connection with Clarendon to give it to you.

Dr. Kent

You all know the Kent Town brewery? Well, that covers the site of Dr. Kent's wooden house of 90 years ago. It was an unpretentious affair, set in the wilds. It will probably seem absurd to the generation of today to talk of this populous suburb of Adelaide, but a few minutes' walk from the city's eastern boundary, being in the wilds. But that is literally correct. Let me give you a picture of Kent Town of that day. Of course it wasn't Kent Town then. In fact, it didn't have a name at all.

First you must take note of the date —1840. South Australia was a little more than three years old. There were no park lands as we know them today — just natural, almost virgin country, bespattered with magnificent old gums reaching away towards the eastern hills. There were no fences to the parks, and no roads through them. Everything was in a state of nature. There was no residence between the city and Kensington, except the small wooden cottage of which we write. The cottage stood in the centre of a big garden, and the garden again in an immense wheat paddock. Naturally there were no roads through Kent Town in those days. They were too busy cutting down the trees in Adelaide, and grubbing out the roots, leaving great, gaping holes in the roadways, to worry about such a remote place as Kent Town.

What country was occupied outside the boundaries of the city proper was farms and sheep stations. Prospect was a sheep station. Mitcham and Unley were sheep stations. Goodwood was a sheep station. These are just a few I recall at random. Where they weren't raising sheep they were growing wheat. So Dr. Kent built a flour mill in a paddock close to the site of the present brewery building. Alexander Borthwick Murray, father of the Chief Justice, who became one of South Australia's biggest pastoralists, delivered the first load of wheat he grew in this country to Dr. Kent's mill.

Having only incomplete records before me as I write, I cannot tell you at the moment how it was that Dr. Kent's estate came into the hands of Mr. (later Sir) Henry Ayers and Charles Robin, and I would have ignored that circumstance had it not been necessary to state that it was these two men who cut up the land into town allotments, named the subdivision Kent Town after the original owner, and so founded the suburb we know today.

You say this is digression? I plead guilty. It is digression — of malice, aforethought. But I submit that the interest of the subject is a justifiable excuse. Now, if you please, we will return to Clarendon.

First White Baby

The Morphetts arrived in South Australia in 1841. They had been persuaded to come here by their cousin John. They took out two 80-acre sections, made an adventurous journey over the hills in the inevitable bullock dray, and pitched their camp on a hill overlooking the gully which constitutes the main street of Clarendon today. Just above where the District Council office stands now, they built a wooden hut, which they roofed with bark. It was in this modest structure, totally devoid of architectural design, that Frederick Morphett, the first white child to come into the world in Clarendon, was born. Pioneering was exciting work. It was full of adventure. You never knew what was going to happen next — anything from a raid by a hundred naked savages armed with barbed spears to an 80-mile gale, which left you desolate and homeless. Those times are fine to write about; they were difficult to endure.

The valley which is Clarendon formed a natural funnel for strong winds when they were inclined to blow. The pioneers found that out. There were times when it seemed as if all the fiends of Hell were determined to prevent the invasion by the white men of this naturally favored country times when the wooden hut trembled like a leaf at the fury of the storms, and the bark roof went careering down the gully in recklessly playful mood, while the rain pelted down on the drenched occupants crouching for shelter where they could, and the bed clothes oozed their watery contents on the mud floor.

There was one incident of this kind soon after the Morphett baby was born. Rain poured through the in secure roof, as though it was being poured from buckets. Richard Morphett had to lift mother, child, and mattress together and put them under the bed, and cover the bunk with what ever he could find to keep them sheltered. Pioneering! Anyone who likes it can have my share of it.

Courting In The Cold

When I go love-making— perhaps I had better say when I went love-making — my choice in the winter was a comfortable couch and a roaring fire — and, of course, the indispensable "thou." But courting eighty-five years ago was as hard and as comfortless as every other incident of those barbarian times. You see, in those days the boys and the girls did not live in nicely balanced flocks in corporate towns, where they could visit one another easily, and indulge those looks, and heave those sighs, which indicate that the cardiac disease has reached an acute stage. Instead they were scattered all over the countryside at great distances from each other. The boys, of course, as the hunters, suffered the greatest inconvenience. Anyone who knows our hills knows what an intense, high-powered cold they are capable of developing: in the winter, when the sky looks black and hard, and the grass looks white and cold, and the stars sparkle like miniature icebergs in a frozen lake.

Imagine, then, those conditions. Imagine also that the girls of your hearts lived miles away at places like Kangarilla and beyond. Most of all, imagine—for the picture I am painting is actual fact— that the flooded Onkaparinga, flowing swift and ice-cold, lay between you and your heart's desire. What would you do? Would you strip stark naked in the merciless freezing air of the hills, and, tying your clothes above your head, swim the stinging river, redress, and repeat the perform ance on your way home again?

That is what the men of Clarendon did night after night in the forties and fifties of last century, when there were no bridges over the river, and there were no other means of having those heart to heart talks with one's beloved unless they did. The wonder to me is that there was any courting at all in those far off days. Many of the "boys" I met at Clarendon did it. As they told me about it while we sat round a well-laden table in the district council office, with a stove pouring out its beneficient warmth, their faded eyes lighted up with those early memories, and their white-crested heads nodded sympathetically as they told each other of those happy times of eighty years ago and more. But the present generation know nothing of these things. There are expensive motor cars and solid, ornamental bridges to aid their twentieth century love-making.

A Sister's Joke

And while we are on this romantic subject, let me give you another courting story, related by a lady— Mrs. Edwards. She did not say whether she was the victim or the culprit in the case, but the point is not material.

I told you Mrs. Edwards was a Miss Morphett. Well, about the same time as the boys were braving the frozen waters of the Onkaparinga on their nocturnal pilgrimages to the shrine of Venus, one of the Morphett girls acquired a young man. The courtship had not sufficiently advanced to allow the beau openly to approach the Morphett domicile, where dad, if he took a hostile view of the new development, would not be slow at translating it into action. These old pioneers were never neutral. As dad knew nothing of the flirtation, and his attitude to it, if he did, was regarded as doubtful, it was deemed advisable by the smitten pair to resort to strategy to arrange their meetings.

So it was agreed that whenever the coast was clear the stricken Miss Morphett should place a stone on the gate post, Romeo had to hang about in the cold waiting for the signal. When he got it his lot was bliss. When he didn't he had to console himself the best, way he could, and, after a cold and fruitless vigil, crawl home to bed heavy hearted and despondent.

There were two Morphett girls, and it sometimes happened that the sisters were not on good terms with one an other, as is the way of sisters all the world over. Whenever these trifling differences occurred between the girls, the beauless one would revenge herself by slipping outside and removing the precious signal. And a disconsolate Romeo and a disappointed Juliet would have to add another lost opportunity to the sum total of life.

Conquering The Hills

I do not want you to imagine that pioneering in Clarendon consisted entirely of courtship and marriage. But these are interesting sidelights on the customs of the times. Let me tell you now of some of the transport difficulties of eighty to ninety years ago.

I mentioned earlier in the article that I speculated as to how the earliest settlers travelled over these mountains what time there were no roads worth the name. Well, a settler never set out with one team. He always took two, even though his loading was scant. The reason for this was that he knew he would be bogged on some part of the journey. Then he would unhitch the second team, add it to the first, and use the combined oxen to pull him out of his trouble. The distance to Adelaide was only 18 miles, but it took three days to do it. When a high hill had to be conquered the same procedure of combining the two teams was employed to get the load up. Than the pioneer would have to return down hill with his bullocks to take up the second waggon.

The original road to Adelaide went via Happy Valley, and the Happy Valley creek was the bugbear of the journey. Of course, there was no bridge. The stream had to be forded, and this in variably meant that the waggons would be bogged. In descending the hills the usual practice was employed of cutting down trees to tie on behind the carts as a check on the law of gravitation.

The worst hill to be beaten in those days was Chandler's. It was worse going down than it was climbing up. Charles Chandler, whose name is perpetuated in the monster protuberance, leased this land from White and Counsell, a company which owned a great deal of country in the vicinity. But Chandler was not the first owner of the hill which bears his name. Bannister Booth had it before him. Booth was one of the original councillors when the Clarendon District Council came into being in 1853.

Part The Women Played

But if the lot of the men was hard, that of the women was worse. I never write about those early days without silently paying a tribute to the females of the species who helped their male partners with the digging, the fencing, water carrying, and many other hard manual tasks, at the same time running their homes with the most primitive conveniences, and rearing the large families which were the fashion of the period.

Thoughts of this kind came into my mind while I was listening to the tale of how the women of Clarendon 80 years ago had to do their shopping in the city. This meant rising at some ridiculous a.m. one morning, dressing the baby, getting the breakfast, and setting out in the dark through the bush and over the hills on a long walk to O'Halloran Hill, carrying the latest infant with them. The hills were covered with beautiful grasses which have long ago disappeared, and giant gums, whose final destiny it was to be cut down for skids by teamsters on the down grade.

Arrived at O'Halloran Hill, the women waited about patiently for the coach from Willunga, which took them into town. There they did their shopping, hampered the while by a peevish baby. Then they repeated the performance on the return journey, finishing with the seven-mile tramp home across the hills, carrying child and parcels the best way they could. Yet you hear people sigh for "the good old days!"

The Demon Driver

But the day came when Progress decreed that Clarendon should have a "coach" of its own. The enterprising individual who in augurated this service was named Williams. The first "coach" was a one horse spring dray which made three journeys a week to the city, carrying mails and passengers. The patrons were seated on one or two planks placed crossways, without backs. When the wheels hit a rut or a stone, which was not infrequent, the passengers were tipped out. But these mishaps were all part of the game. No one grumbled.

Of course the aristocrats of the sixties disdained this lowly means of transport. They preferred to travel to town in their own bullock drays. In 1866 there was only a weekly mail, carried on horseback. Apparently the venture of Mr. Williams was a money making proposition. It is not long be fore we find rivals in the field— Cooks making three trips a week. Fox's twice a week, and Gobies once a week.

But all these primitive conveyances were put out of action when Hill and Co. inaugurated their flash service with gaily painted coaches, and a red-coated guard in the box at the rear, blowing furious blasts on a bugle as the coach, with five fast galloping horses, approached the town. Dick George, the demon driver, had the reins.

The way Dick came down those hills and swung round sharp comers often made his passengers gasp. He would dodge a huge boulder by inches, and navigate the edge of a precipice with the accuracy of a surgeon running his scapel along your vertebral column. Dick gave his passengers more thrills to the mile than any other driver on the road — before or since. He never slowed down unless he intended to stop.

Even now, sixty or seventy years after the advent of Dick, his erstwhile passengers shiver when they recall the demon driver. They used to pray when on the coach that Dick would not encounter Charlie Dashwood, for that always meant a thrilling duel. I don't know why. Perhaps Charlie was a demon, too. But the fact remains that Dashwood was like a red rag to a bull as far as Dick George was concerned. If Charlie was on the road Dick would never be happy until he had passed him.

The Charlie Dashwood concerned was, of course, our old friend, now departed, whom most of us knew as Crown Solicitor. But in those days Charlie was not the dignified old gentleman of the law in the grey bell topper we knew so well, and who looked as if he had never seen a horse in his life. He was a dashing young pastoralist living on his father's estate in Dashwood's Gully.

Dick's antithesis was Spinkston, the most cautious jehu who ever took leather in his hands. But there you are— memories of the reckless Dick are vivid; even Spinkston's Christian name has been forgotten. One must be naughty to be remembered.

"This Is The Way We Wash Our Hands"

Now I am going to tell you some thing about the "higher education" of the sixties, when Mrs. Crisp opened the first school, and was successively followed by Daly and Cowell, whose front names I am not able to give you. I happened, to mention something about early education.

"Education!" snorted one veteran, his tone full of disparaging marks of exclamation. "Education — rubbish. They taught us the A.B.C, and to repeat a lot of rigramole which cost our parents a shilling a week. Education! Lord, they knew very little more than we did."

And that. I fear was perfectly true. For in those days anybody could be a schoolmaster, and some queer specimens were produced. Anyhow, in the case of Clarendon, the whole school was assembled and marched round the little room singing. This is the way we wash, our hands . . . This is the way we brush our hair . . . It was an action song, and each verse had to be accompanied by the appropriate movements. It was a monotonous business, followed by elementary instruction in the three R's.

There was one incident during the regime of Mr. Daly. He was thrashing a boy named Charles Davis when an other boy grabbed the whip and threw it into a recess over the chimney. Daly's sight was not too good, and he was neither able to find the whip, nor to ascertain from any of the boys who it was that had deprived him of it. So he vowed that Charles should have no dinner, and locked him in during the dinner hour. But Charles's mother heard of her son's plight, and forcing open a window, passed the boy's meal in to him. Daly was a man with a long beard, and sometimes when his attention was engaged elsewhere a boy would tug it. Daly would wheel round slowly to encounter a sea of innocent faces.

"You pulled my beard," he would cry peevishly to the class in general. But he was never able to detect the culprit. Not a boy in the room would tell. By the way, the schoolmaster Cowell I mentioned, was, I believe, the father of the founder of the well-known timber firm.

NEXT WEEK: Story of Clarendon (concluded).

Images:

• Clarendon in the sixties. It will be seen that most of the roofs are thatched. The first building on the left was the original store and post-office.

• Richard Morphett, the founder of Clarendon.