Books Bundaberg's Beginnings Preface

Preface

Parts 1, 3, 4 and 5

Richard Laurance Connor

My brother John Kingsley Connor was the initiator of this endeavour with his early research into the – amongst others - Adams family and its history. Initial details as to Walter Adams’ life indicated that the acquisition of further information, capable of producing a more detailed biography, would throw considerable light not only on Walter’s career but on the careers of other pioneers and on the initial development of Bundaberg the town and of its surrounding district. In agriculture Walter was, though far from the first, a very early starter in the Wide Bay District; in commerce he was to set up the Adams Hotel in the first year of Bundaberg’s establishment on the south bank of the Burnett River; he was very prominent in the construction of Bundaberg’s early infrastructure, and was well to the fore in civic and religious affairs over the first twenty years of Bundaberg’s existence. All of these activities would have demanded very extensive interaction with other notable pioneers of the time.

When my brother John’s premature death occurred at the relatively early age of 64 years the preparation of these chapters was a work in progress. Shortly before his death John had completed the text for “FARM LABOURER 18 – READ AND WRITE”, a paper on Walter Adams’ life and times and we had compiled, restored and inserted the illustrations. An initial compilation of this document and its companion document on Walter’s descendants had been assembled and had been distributed to several dozen interested friends and relatives for their use and comment. The documents were well received but few comments were returned – I hope that in this case silence means assent. Any comments or information offered as a consequence of this issue were given full consideration and appropriate changes and / or additions were made.

It is sobering to realise that one belongs to the small group of people remaining who had direct contact with the two generations that had, in turn, first-hand interrelationships with the players of that fragment of our early history documented in this study. The thought becomes considerably more sobering on suddenly realising that one has himself attained the age of three score years and ten. When dealing with the normal challenges of life it is easy to overlook the fact that generations do die out, and it becomes too late to ask the questions that we should, with the wisdom of hindsight, have asked of the previous generations. However experience teaches that, even when this source of information was still available, caution may need to have been exercised. The older generation’s recollections, like our own, were fallible. As someone (Mark Twain I think) once very perceptibly observed “It isn’t what we don’t know that’s dangerous; it’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Our mother always referred to Sommerville, our great-grandfather’s plantation, in much the same way as many students of the English language would refer to Camelot. Though the plantation was never the family’s place of residence it obviously provided a major contribution to the family’s self-image. The plantation passed from the Adams’ estate well before my brother’s and my time, but we were left with an enduring curiosity as to its real nature and history. For myself the research on Sommerville has therefore been both educational and rewarding.

When we were boys in the 1950’s the times of Sommerville did not seem very far away, as much of the Bundaberg area – even down to the dry stone walls of basaltic rock surrounding the original plantations – had not changed greatly from the times of Walter and Mary. However, when one considers the massive changes in the character of the Bundaberg area from the 1950’s to the present day, the existence of the old Sommerville Plantation and the town residence of Summerville now has the feeling of being long ago and far away.

On looking back many of life’s experiences have probably reinforced a sense of affiliation with the old pioneers. Apart from the usual activities of home chores and schooling, my boyhood in Bundaberg consisted of horse riding and horse racing through the countryside and through the ti-tree swamps north of Bundaberg. This was combined with more useful pursuits, such as helping a school friend to pull his family’s cattle from the heavily timbered hills to the west of town, and searching for our domestic milk cows when floods had taken out our barb-wire fences, which then needed restoring. Along the line I also acquired some skills with firearms, a quite usual circumstance in the 1940’s and 50’s, given the combination of a rifle’s ready availability, bush surroundings and military training with the school cadets and in national service.

One of my boyhood jobs was the cutting of our rather extensive lawn with the old wood and cast-iron push-mower. In a good growing season the grass frequently passed beyond the control of the mower, and so I was initiated into the use of the cane knife to bring the long grass under control; though, apart from cutting and trimming the odd stalk for chewing purposes, I had no exposure to the arduous task of cane-cutting itself.

Carpentry and axe skills were picked up by necessity for similar reasons to those above; with some tuition by my uncle Les Adams with the former, and in helping him keep his Yellow Waterholes – and later my own island property

Places visited that have some relevance to this work include:

Here in Australia we tend to take for granted circumstances that would be considered most unusual in the old world. The ability to identify the pioneers who established our towns and cities and to be able to detail their works is a characteristic of the new world and of its record keeping abilities. Even so, much can be lost if we become too blasé about this apparent gift. There is therefore some satisfaction in being able to seek out, marshal and document these past endeavours, not to mention the resolving of long standing curiosities.

Bundaberg is fortunate in having such voluminous and detailed historical reference works as those of J. Y. Walker – 1890; Janette Nolan – 1978; and Neville Rackemann – 1992. Life is too short to duplicate work already well done, and so in the following pages I have largely confined my work to a description of the circumstances prevailing in the sugar industry of colonial Australia, and in particular in that of the Bundaberg area, to the relevant pioneering works that made the establishment of this industry possible and to the world wide circumstances that caused the pioneers of Bundaberg to be where they were when they were. This narrow focus is a consequence of the intended purpose – an attempt to describe the atmosphere that prevailed in the time of the very early pioneers and of my greatgrandfather, Walter Adams. This in turn is an attempt to round off the work carried out by my deceased brother John in his detailed study of Walter’s life.

In reviewing the early history of the Queensland planters, for inclusion in the chapter on this subject, the relevance of the problems associated with the acquisition of a labour force necessary to sustain a very large percentage of Queensland’s agricultural industries, assumed the status of a major subject in its own right. On being prompted by some newspaper articles which compared the indenturing of imported labour to the transAtlantic slave trade this subject assumed even more relevance. It is beyond debate that some less than desirable incidents occurred out there in the Pacific Ocean, a rather rugged place indeed in those days; however indentured labour on the mainland was protected both by legislation and by government appointed supervision. This protection has been well documented in, amongst other sources, contemporary newspapers, the records of government officers and in the proceedings of a Royal Commission. From the year 1807 onwards the Royal Navy had orders to stop any maritime trade in slave labour, but the recruitment of labour from the Pacific Islands was policed by a relatively small number of Royal Navy ships, and the Pacific is a very large ocean. In 1833 legislation was passed in the British Parliament banning slavery in all of the British colonies which included the colony of New South Wales at that time, and later the colony of Queensland following its separation from New South Wales in 1859.

In Walter’s case, the inclusion in his personal library of a book that had proven to be a very effective anti-slavery book and that was in the form of an autobiographical work by a former African slave from Benin who was educated and became a figure in British society, begs consideration. The book, The Interesting Narrative of The Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa The African was published in Dublin in 1791, and a copy of this book forms the centre piece for a museum on transatlantic slavery established in Liverpool in 2007. Liverpool had traditionally been the main British port for the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

The difference between the use of indented labour in Queensland and of the African slaves in the West Indies and in the southern states of America was stark. This subject is covered in the chapter on the days of the early planters but, at the end of the day, readers will no doubt make up their own minds on the subject, if indeed one can form hard and fast impressions about a time when conditions for all citizens were so vastly different to our own. Perhaps I could give the last word on this subject to John Young Walker who, in the fronting pages of his work The History of Bundaberg published in 1890 wrote, “The question of agricultural labour for the farms and plantations I have not discussed in the body of the work; although in the democratic community of Australasia, most of whom came out as free immigrants, it has been worked up into, “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence.”

When John and I were burdened with the studies needed to acquire a Master’s Degree in Agricultural Science and qualifications in Civil Engineering respectively (shades of Walter’s influence?), followed by the time consuming demands of our agricultural science and civil engineering professions and, in my case, the raising of a family, there was little time for historical research to be undertaken on the material still resident in the old Adams family’s home. With retirement, and its accompanying increase in time for other pursuits, the old curiosities about the early days returned.

On my part this curiosity was initially directed by my offer, made in the 1990’s, to provide Shalom College (the College has an Adams house) with a history of the Adams family’s, and in particular Walter’s, connection with the early Catholic Church in Bundaberg. The offer was accepted by the Principal of the time. Unfortunately time moves on and, by the time that I had managed to complete this commission in the year 2005, there was a new Principal and there was no system available at the College to cater for the accommodation of historical material. However the work had been executed, has since been published in the Proceedings of the Brisbane Catholic Historical Society, and hopefully is of sufficient interest to enough people to deserve inclusion in the section on church affairs.

In this material I have also included a copy of an article describing Walter’s civic funeral that occupied the greater part of the front page of the Bundaberg and Mt Perry Mail of the 23rd May 1892. To me the article is of considerable interest as it very graphically highlights the differences between the Bundaberg of the 1890’s, and that of the present day, in a much more dramatic manner that I think that I could present. It is hoped that the reader may share the same interest.

The discovery, in an old steamer trunk under my brother John’s house, of a small, plaited cane folder containing clippings of Walter’s parliamentary speeches from his first year in the Queensland Parliament, probably collected by his wife or by his daughter Maria Emily, presented an opportunity to explore Walter’s ideas on a variety of subjects. However the subjects covered were selected by issues then currently before the house and, as such, did not necessarily throw light on Walter’s main areas of political interest. Further, as his parliamentary library collection attests, it represents a small portion of his speeches to the house and there were to be many later, and perhaps more illuminating, issues to be addressed.

I have postulated, in the material on Parliamentary affairs that the acquisition, ownership and retention of the Gladstone plate would not have been for the plate’s aesthetic value and therefore had a differing significance. The most obvious reason for its retention as a prized artefact is an admiration for, or a feeling of affinity with, the person illustrated on the plate. I have therefore included a brief description of the policies and career of Mr. Gladstone as a proxy for at least a significant part of Walter’s own views. By their artefacts shall thee know them.

The text and appendices include some material on Walter’s commercial operations. I hope that this may, in some measure, be of relevance to any readers interested in the activities of our entrepreneurial pioneers. In complete detail these activities would have been unique to each individual but, driven by common goals and conditions; there should have been a considerable amount of commonality in their nation building experiences. Also in this work I have attempted, wherever possible, to paint a word picture of the thoughts and feelings of the early Bundaberg pioneers, and of the conditions under which they lived and worked. To this end I have included material of a nature contemporary with their time wherever possible to enable those early pioneers to speak up for themselves.

Richard Laurance Connor

February, 2009