No 9 Port Wakefield

In a young country like Australia eighty years is a long time. Eighty years ago there was no Port Wakefield. There was just a great swampy marsh and sandy plain at the head of St. Vincent Gulf. At low tide there were miles of swampy mangrove country. At high tide there was just water where the swamps had been. It was wild, desolate, and inhospitable country. Then the powers that were decided to establish a township at the head of the gulf. Lord knows why they did that. There were lots of places better suited for a town; infinitely many more better fitted to be a port. The land was nothing to boast about, having in mind the quantity of good country then available in the province. Steamers were scarcely thought of, and small sailing ships dotted the seas. If, in those days, you had been indiscreet enough to mention that iron steamers requiring twenty to thirty feet of water under their bottoms, would be the common ocean carriers half a century hence, they would have laughed at you, would have derided you in the street, and regarded you good naturedly as a harmless lunatic. Yet, as we know, these marvels came to pass. So they carried out their intention of creating a town on the swampy marshes.

The next step was to find a name. Port Young was suggested. It was intended to honor Governor Young, the administrator of the day. Governor Young made one wild, horrified survey of the spot. Nothing more dreary or unpromising could be imagined. He failed to see where the honor came in, and declined to have his name associated with the place. Then some genius thought of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the originator of the colonisation scheme under which South Australia was founded. So the future town was called Port Wakefield.

Abduction Of Ellen Turner

Port Wakefield, therefore, is named after a man who abducted a school girl. It commemorates Edward Gibbon Wakefield, constitutionalist and Empire builder; one of the most romantic figures in the history of British colonisation. He was not only the author of the scheme under which South Australia was founded; incidentally the same plan was applied to the colonisation of New Zealand. Behind the name of Wakefield lies a story almost without parallel — the story of a young man's folly, his fall, his redemption, and his immense services to the Empire. I propose to tell that tale.

The events narrated happened in England over 100 years ago. One day, March 7, 1826, a carriage drove up to the door of a school for young ladies in a suburb of Liverpool. The school was kept by a Miss Daulty, and was one of those very select and strict institutions in which the daughters of well-to-do-parents were incarcerated in the days when girls were of the prunes and prisms type, and to look at a young man without the supervision of a sharp-eyed, old fashioned chaperon was a social sin equal to the violation of all the commandments. A servant descended from the carriage, and presented a letter to the principal. It bore the signature of a Dr. Ainsworth. It told her that the mother of one of her pupils, Ellen Turner, had been suddenly taken ill, and desired that her daughter should be sent to her immediately. The further request was made that the girl should not be informed of the cause of her recall.

Ellen was an heiress, the offspring of a wealthy weaver. The school mistress never suspected that the letter was a hoax. The girl's box was hurriedly packed, she climbed into the vehicle, and it started off. A few miles along the road the carriage stopped, and Edward Gibbon Wakefield and his brother William got in. They were ready with a plausible story, and got the girl to go with them to Carlisle. There they told her that her father was on the brink of ruin. The only means by which she could save his fortune was by her marrying Edward Gibbon Wakefield. The seclusion by which girls were surrounded a hundred years ago did not make them adept at seeing through a ruse. Ellen proved remarkably pliable. She consented to go to Gretna Green, where the ceremony was performed. It was a strange fact that the marriage was never consumated. Wakefield told her she must learn to love him first before she became his wife in fact.

After the wedding the young couple set out for London, and then for Calais. When news of the girl's abduction got around there was the devil to pay. Her father was the sheriff of his county, and he raised Cain. The girl's brother and some friends followed the young pair to France. Confronted by her relatives, Ellen renounced her husband, and returned with them to England, after a curious scene, which appears to have been conducted on the lines of exaggerated politeness rather than hot anger. Wakefield calmly admitted that, had the circumstances been reversed, and his sister been the victim, he would have shot the abductor in cold blood. He made a vow that "she and I have been as brother and sister." The girl's brother politely removed the ring from his sister's finger, and handed it to Wakefield. Wakefield said he would preserve it all his life. I can not tell you if he did.

Divorced By Parliament

The case became the sensation of the day. It was now evident that Wakefield could not escape the legal consequences of his prank. His friends urged him to fly to the United States. He decided to return to England and face the music. His reason was that his brother William was already under arrest for his part in the business. Edward Wakefleld was sentenced just a year after the abduction to three years' imprisonment in Newgate gaol. That, however, was not the end of the story. The question now arose, was Ellen Turner the legitimate wife of Edward Gibbon Wakefleld? By Scottish law she was. By English law she was not.

Here was a tangle. It was unravelled by the English Parliament passing a special Act disallowing the marriage. But Wakefield still wanted his bride. And he fought for her. He appeared before the House of Lords and made a wonderful appeal against the dissolution of the marriage. But to no purpose. The Bill was passed. Ethel Turner subsequently married a Mr. Legh. She died in childbirth about the time Wakefield came out of gaol. One curious fact which emerged from the trial was that the abduction was the result of a promise Wakefield had made to his "set" in Paris that he would "carry away the weaver's daughter."

This matter of carrying off his wives was a habit with Wakefield. He was married in strange circumstances before the event occurred of which I have told you. He eloped with his first wife in 1816. I should have told you he was a widower when he abducted Ellen Turner. His first wife was a beautiful girl with means. Wakefield was practically penniless. It was said at the time of his first marriage that he was after the girl's money. But that was disproved. He was passionately fond of Eliza Pattle. She was the daughter of an Indian merchant. Her father was dead when Wakefield met her, and she lived with her mother under the care of two uncles.

These gentlemen were much addicted to cockfighting, which the future coloniser of South Australia abhorred as brutal. But he pretended a keen interest in the sport, and so won the regard of the two elders. Nevertheless, they did not want him for a nephew. One day in July, 1816, two carriages left the place in Tunbridge Wells where the Patties were living. In one were Edward Wakefield and Eliza. In the other were two people dressed to represent them. The uncles were given the "tip" about the elopement, but — well, they followed the wrong carriage. Such, in his youth, was the man whose name was given to Port Wakefield.

As an Empire-builder he was a genius. It is to his efforts that we owe self-government in the dominions. Wakefield established it in Canada, Then it could not be refused to Australia and New Zealand. The Wakefield plan of colonisation was thought out in prison; indeed, some say that had Wakefield not come into contact with the miseries of Newgate the famous scheme would never have been given to the world. At all events, it was after his release that Wakefield took up so energetically the question of scientific colonisation.

One of his earliest converts was George Fife Angas, who founded South Australia. I do not wish to worry you with a detailed description of the Wakefield scheme. Briefly, it called for a scientific combination of land, capital, and labor. Land was to be purchased by capital; capital was to provide the money to develop it; settlers were to be brought out to the new lands to work it, and were to be allowed to purchase the blocks as soon as they had gained the necessary experience; and the profits made were to be employed in bringing out more settlers. Properly applied, it was to be a sort of endless chain. The Wakefield scheme is still being advocated today for filling up the empty spaces of the Empire.

Old Port Wakefield

The more I look at Port Wakefield the more convinced I become that the town should never have been put there, it is not a port. It never was. It never will be. There is a wharf. There is a small channel leading to the gulf. There is the open sea. But no steamer of any size has ever lain against that wharf, and none is ever likely to.

I know you are going to tell me that in the early days Port Wakefield was a busy centre. I know it was. Those were the days when the copper was run there from the Burra mines. There were days, also, when it was not uncommon to see some 500,000 bags of wheat stacked in the sheds that do not exist today; five or six deep-sea steamers lying out in the gulf ready to receive it, and 25 to 27 ketches running between the jetty and the ships. But that did not make Wakefield a port. Rather, it proved that it was not. No place can be called a port where lighterage is necessary. It makes too much handling, and handling is expensive.

Wakefield is one of the towns which have been killed by the railways. That is a matter which should give many towns food for serious thought. A few years ago, before the clouds of depression swept over the land, there were many centres clamoring for lines. A number of them got them, and the taxpayers today are handing out the interest on them which otherwise might have been employed in stemming the flood of unemployment.

If these lines were necessary, and are really developing the country, there is nothing to be said against their construction. But if they were "political" lines, mere vote-catching propositions, then the fate of Wakefield. Morgan, and other centres one could name, should be quoted to show that railways are not always an unmixed blessing. Instead of making a town they can, in certain circumstances, destroy it.

Years ago Port Wakefield cried out for its railway, just as other places are doing today. The result is that the produce from the town, which used to go from Wakefield by sea, now goes to Wallaroo by train. Wakefield to day, except for an occasional stray ketch, does not pretend to be a port. It knows that soon no ketches at all will come.

Early Day Store

Down near the wharf stands "Johnson's" store. It is quaint and old fashioned— one of the few remaining examples of what old-time country stores really were. It has no shop windows. Outside there is a high platform for loading goods. It is still used, of course, but it is no longer necessary. But the store is a landmark. It dates back to 1854. The founder, Joseph Johnson, has long since passed over to the great unknown. But it is carried on by his descendants. That, I think, is something of a record in South Australian storekeeping. It was the pioneer store of Port Wakefield, and still belongs to the Johnsons.

There is a big open space in front of Johnson's store. In the hectic days of Port Wakefield this field was commonly covered with the campfires of teamsters who had brought their loads of copper ore from Burra Burra to be shipped away. That old camping ground could tell tales of high revelry —of tragedy and comedy. They were a hard living, hard drinking, and hard working crowd, those early day teamsters. It was not uncommon for the proprietor of the store to take £10 before breakfast. There was no early closing in those days, but there was early opening — 6 a.m.

Johnson's claims to be the oldest store in the Lower North. In the days of which I write its vans went through the bush regularly for towns between Wakefield and Crystal Brook and Balaclava. These old days, when the Burra Burra mines meant so much to Port Wakefield, are commemorated still in the names of the principal streets — Burra street, Copper street, Company street, Mine street, &c. Today Port Wakefield is a town of empty houses. There are rows of them. Some belong to the State Bank— the legacies of unredeemed mortgages. The bank refuses to pay rates on them, and I don't blame them. They are tenantless and likely to remain so. Many of them are falling into ruin.

The local council, I expect, will have to seize them eventually; I don't think it wants to. It wouldn't know what to do with them. Looking at these empty houses, one finds it hard to realise there was a time when houses could not be procured in Port Wakefield for the proverbial "love or money." In those days, before the railway, wheat teams lined the roads to the port, and the ketches and ships I have mentioned rode at the wharfs and at the anchorage. In those days two and three families had to share a house— and were lucky if they could get even that accommodation.

The Town Today

A month ago Port Wakefield was a corporation with a mayor and all the dignity of a corporate town. Last week (July 2) it stepped back to the lesser dignity of a district council. The alteration, of course, means nothing except perhaps a blow to local pride. The change was made as the result of the Royal Commission's enquiries into the boundaries of local governing bodies. Prior to the amalgamation, Port Wakefield ran both a corporation and a district council. Its last mayor was Mr. R. M. Drake. On Saturday (July 2) he was elected to the new council which then came into being! The chairman is Mr. R. E. S. Gale. The district clerk is Mr. T. M. McCabe. He had been town clerk of the now defunct corporation for 29 years, and clerk of the council for 31 years. He is justifiably proud of that record — one of the best in the State.

Port Wakefield is a town of limestone. Its roads are of limestone, and so are its houses and its public buildings. If there is an edifice of any other material I did not see it. This gives the place a distinctiveness which immediately impresses the visitor— the limestone houses and the avenues of pepper trees in the streets. The mangrove swamps bordering the edge of the gulf are as much (or more) in evidence today as they were when Governor Young turned up his nose at the honor it was proposed to do him. He did not like those mangroves. I thought them rather picturesque. After all, it is a matter of taste. In spite of his former Excellency's opinion of Port Wakefield, it is well laid out, and is one of the cleanest and most healthy places in the State.

It has one remarkable feature— its natural drainage. The ground is limestone on the surface, and shell grit underneath. The heaviest rain soon disappears.