Denis Blight
In 1901 a young parlour maid, Janet Loaring, stepped on Board the S.S. Perthshire to travel to Australia from Dorset in the United Kingdom with 43 other young, single women, escorted by a matron. In the Upstairs/Downstairs society of Victorian England, like her fellow travellers, she was definitely from the lower floors: her father a domestic gardener who died in six months earlier in 1900, her mother a dressmaker. Her eldest brother had emigrated in 1886, which was some comfort as she waved goodbye to her mother.
Janet’s diary of the voyage on the S.S. Perthshire from 18 May to 3 July 1901 is rich with observations on life on board and on society of the times. It records the ‘names of girls’ on the ship’s passenger list and their ‘matron’, Miss Monk; that they had fish on the menu of a Friday ‘as all the Irish girls are Roman Catholics and don’t touch meat of any kind; and it notes ‘our first class lady passenger (we have only one in the first class) has been drugged and grossly insulted’.
On landing at Fremantle, Janet was ‘assigned’ and carted off on a horse and wagon to the remote siding of Burracoppin in Western Australia to live in a hessian-walled hut with a dirt floor. As she left, she glimpsed flower gardens in the port town that were just like those ‘at home’ but spent the rest of her life in the dry Australian outback.
On 14 December 1902, just six months after her arrival in Australia, Janet married John Edmund Miller, the gold digger and sandalwood collector to whom she had been assigned. Janet’s elder sister Maud, who immigrated to Australia a short time after her, moved to Burracoppin to be with her sister. Maud was shocked to see the humpy in which Janet lived and even worse to see Janet’s husband coming home – bearded and his skin burnt dark by the sun, gun under his arm, a kangaroo and some parrots on a wire slung over his shoulder. My God, Maud thought, Janet has married a wild native. Maud never slept that night waiting for the other natives to come and get her.
Janet had six children all but one delivered with the help of her sister. Maud Mary, known as Biddy was born in 1910 on a day so hot that a section of the roof was removed and covered with bowers kept wet to reduce the temperature. Robert died aged 16 months and Janet Eileen born in 1912 died aged 9 months in a gastro-enteritis outbreak. In 1913, Winifred (known as Winnie) was born. In 1916, by which time a midwife had taken up duty in the district and the family had moved into a ‘proper’ house, my mother Bernice Ethel, was born.
Janet, progressively with the help of her children, ran a general store and a rough cut boarding house to cater for men constructing a the rabbit proof fence and a narrow gauge railway line to the goldfields. As soon as the children were big enough they stood on a box weighing out flour, tea and sugar; wheeling fresh fruit from the railway station on a trolley; unpacking goods onto shelves; and tediously plucking parrots shot by their father. They waited on tables before school and after cleaning rooms in the boarding house. Jack, the only surviving son, did the mail run and carted stores to families living along the rabbit proof fence. He died aged 23 from pneumonia.
When a cheque came for sandalwood sales, the family celebrated. On a hot day, Janet would hang a red cloth out to signal to her neighbour, a Mrs Elsbury, to come down for a glass or two of sherry.
The children and the more than occasional glass of sherry gave Janet joy but she died in 1934 exhausted in the struggle to make a living from the general store, a boarding house and the meagre income of her husband. Her three surviving daughters survived the heat and dust, a depression and a world war. They married – Biddy to a farmer; Winnie to a railway man; and Bernice, to a soldier and trainee tailor who eventually became a small shop owner. They all raised families, their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren leading good lives variously in the second half of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st century.
Aged 77 and 72 respectively my sister Patricia (and her three children and so far 8 grand children) and I (and my two children) are inheritors of Janet’s adventurous spirit. In September of this year, I hope to meet with a distant family member, Maurice Loaring, in Dorset to celebrate that spirit, maybe over a glass of sherry!
Photo supplied by Denis Blight
Denis Blight ( AO FRSA) is an Australian amateur historian who, as Director of CABI, spent many years in the UK. He returns as often as he can, while maintaining his work as CEO of the Crawford Fund, undertaking historical research and writing a book on his uncle, a former detective in the Western Australian police force.