The Townend Family Letters

1941 July

Family letter from LJT No 24

Eagle Heights Hotel.  Tamborine Mt

Q’sland.  Australia.

July 3rd 1941.

My Dears

No sooner had I posted the mail letters last week, than three weeks supply turned up from England, i.e. Grace’s Nos 4,5, & 7 of April the 4th, 12th and 27th respectively.  Another letter, No 6 of April 19th came two days later, on June 30th.  There were enclosures from Richard and Annette, and the letters had much news in them.  It was a rare treat, I can tell you, to sit down and plunge into such a feast of home talk!  Letter No 2, which was presumably written between March 9th and 29th, has never turned up.  It cant have got lost in N.Z. for No 1 of March 9th was directed to Sydney, and anyhow the N.Z. Bank has been sending everything on most faithfully.  I fear it must have been lost.  I am so specially glad these last letters, telling of Dora’s illness and death, and of Peggy’s engagement, and Joyce’s expected baby, have come safely.  It is a relief to know that Dora’s death was not directly caused by an air raid, and I am thankful she did not have a long illness.

When the war news is bad, it is always specially hard to write of trivial things.  To-day we feel desperately anxious about the situation in Russia.  The merciless power and strength of Hitler’s army seems beyond what anyone was able to expect or imagine, and on every occasion he has been able to choose his own time to attack.  The newspapers here are specially trying, for they splash great scare headlines across the front page, even when the news is vague and uncertain.  Thank goodness we are able to hear the News Bulletins pretty well here.  I wish they could bring some better news.

Our peaceful life here seems in such contradiction to all that is going on in Europe and the Middle East.  We walk through this beautiful countryside, write letters, talk to many people, and that is about all.  Each day has been brilliantly fine, except yesterday, when there was a roaring “Westerly”, grey skies, and showers.  I refused to go out in the morning, for the wind was really biting.  A fire was lit in the lounge, but I could not write down there, for there were too many people talking, so I came upstairs, put a second cardigan over the one I was wearing already, and wrapping my eider-down round my legs, I set to, and wrote letters to a whole group of friends, who, I thought, might be interested in our doings and plans.  I did ten letters during the day, so felt well satisfied.  In these war days it is so easy to slip away from people, not because one does not think of them, but because everyone is liable to move, and be caught up in some new sphere of activity.  We have managed to find a new or partly new walk every day, but I think we have pretty well exhausted all but the very long ones now, and shall have to repeat some of them.  It’s no hardship to do this, for the birds and animals are so charming, and trees and plants are beautiful.  The birds are beginning their days of courtship.  One morning we saw two Kukaburras (laughing-jackasses) sitting on the forks of a dead tree.  The branches had been broken off, and each bird had the top of a stump, but they were only abut a foot apart, one lower than the other.  As we came near, they were making the loud gargling noise that preceeds their peals of laughter.  When they were clear in view, we stopped to watch and listen.  They lifted their big beaks in the air, and opening them they gave peal after peal of laughter, now and again quieting off, when the more highly placed one turned his head and stooped his beak till he almost touched his friends beak, as she stretched it up to him.  (I fancy it was the female on the lower perch)  After a second or two of this contact, up would go the heads again and the mirth or song, ring out once more.  We have seen many couples calling to one another from tree stumps, which seem to be their favourite perches.  I wonder what they did before Australians thought of clearing bush and leaving dead stumps about six or eight feet high all over the place.  The butcher birds, which are very  plentiful also seem to be pairing off, but they sit in the live gum trees and call to one another pretty notes, which can easily be construed to mean “over here”.  After calling to one another for awhile, one flies to the other, swoops towards her, till he almost touches her, when she rises in flight, and they go off together, wheeling past and over and under each other, to some other tree.  They are handsome black and white birds, not unlike small sized magpies to look at, but about the size of a blackbird.  They are often in company with magpies, which are also common over most of Australia.  They are friendly to man, and easily form the habit of coming to a house to be fed. 

4/7/41  Another courting performance we came upon early one morning in the Bush.  There are some birds, rather smaller and rounder than a thrush, dark chestnut brown with black spots, the male with a red throat, the female with a white one.  They hop about in the undergrowth and scratch in the rotten wood of fallen trees.  We disturbed a cock and two hens, and we suppose he must have been dancing to them, for while the ladies scuttled up the hillside, he jumped on to a log, stamping his feet and rattling his quills, like a peacock does.  One might almost have imagined that he was menacing us, but I don’t fancy that was so.  I think he was so absorbed in his dance that he just carried on with it.  We had our first really good view of a wallaby yesterday.  We were making our way through a big stretch of bush, by tracks made by getting timber out.  Up the hill in front of us, right in the middle of the track, sat a big wallaby, looking straight towards us.  We stayed quite still, and so did he, for a minute or two, and then turning, he lolloped off into the forest.  In the afternoon we were having tea in the charming home (see!  I am getting the Antipodean habit of useing the word “home” for “house”) of an elderly spinster, Miss Macdonald, who, though Australian born, says she never ceases to feel surprise at the queer appearance of wallabies and Kangaroos.  Her home is made from two small cottages, joined by a covered way, and more English in appearance than any other houses up here.  They are just on the edge of one of the scenic reserves, and while we were wandering in her interesting garden after tea, two pairs of bush-turkeys were digging about in her rubbish heap. I was delighted to see them out in the open, for I had only been able to catch a glimpse of them in thick undergrowth previously.  They are not popular with Miss Macdonald, for she says they do quite a lot of harm in the garden, and the attentions of her two cats, Ashes and Coal, are not sufficient to keep them out.  They are the intelligent birds, who lay their eggs in a great mound of rotting leaves and twigs, relying on the heat set up by the fermentation of the decaying vegetable matter, to hatch out the chicks.  In Miss Macdonald’s garden, as in so many gardens here, plants from the tropics and from temperate climates rub shoulders happily.  On Tuesday we had tea with a very old friend of Teresa’s, an old lady of 79, who is a passionate gardener, and I went all round her garden with her, remarking on the juxtaposition of plants from such varying climates.  She says that the head of the Botanical Dept of Queensland told her that this place is just on the border-line of the tropical and non-tropical flora, and since it has enough altitude to escape the greatest summer heat, and yet escapes winter frost, both sorts of plants flourish here.  I was delighted that both this old lady, and Miss Macdonald, were able to give the plants in their gardens their proper scientific names, and also to give me the correct names for various things I had found growing in the bush.  I have felt quite exasperated by the habit in this country, of giving plants names in the loosest possible way, without any reference to their families or general orders.  To give a plant its aboriginal name, or a good country name like “Stinking Roger” (a tall weed which rushes into fields when they lie fallow) is reasonable and good, but to call things “wild tobacco” and “wild cotton” and so on, when they obviously dont bear any resemblance or relationship to the plants named, is all wrong.

On Sunday morning we walked down to a farm, set in a regular basin of the hills, where they grow avocavo pears, (also oranges and Queensland Nuts).  Teresa has a passion for these avocavo pears, which,  as some of you may know, are eaten as a salad with pepper and salt.  We thought it would be nice to send her a dozen, for they are expensive in Brisbane, and purchasing of them made an excuse for a pleasant little outing, and an interesting talk with the farmer.  The Queensland nuts are round with a fearfully hard shell, so that to open them one has to give them a shrewd blow with a hammer.  Once broken, the kernel, about the size of a marble, is delicious, half way between a hazel nut and a Brazil.  There is thought to be a good future for these nuts, for they are rich in oil, and last extremely well.  Experiments are being made to produce them with a softer shell.  The farmer had also got two small tea plants and two cinnamons in pots, with which he is going to experiment.  I should doubt if there is enough rain here for satisfactory tea-growing.

Those nice people, Mr and Mrs Warren White, whom we met in Southport, had written to several of their friends up here, to be kind to us, Miss Macdonald being one of them.  Other friends of theirs, who live about 7 miles away, on the South end of the mountain, fetched us over to tea with them on Sunday.  They have a farm, dairying chiefly, but some oranges, I gathered.  They are old inhabitants, and originally owned a great part of the land up here.  There we met Mr George Davidson’s brother, “Uncle Monty”, and I asked him if he knew Teresa in the old days up here.  He said of course he did, and when I replied that I am her cousin, he immediately said, “Your are not by any chance a relation of the Miss Bevington who was here with her before the last war?”  When I said I was her sister, he was quite excited, and sang Dora’s praises so warmly, that I cannot help thinking that there may have been some sentimental attraction . It makes me sad to think that Dora is not there to hear how well he remembered her.  One of the things we remark here is the smallness of the houses and the apparently low standard of comfort amongst the farming community.  A wooden shack, standing on piles, and consisting of three or four small rooms, with verandahs back and front, seems to satisfy even the well-to-do.  It may in part be due to the wonderful climate, which encourages people to live out-of-doors, or on the verandahs for more than is possible in a climate like that of England, but this does not explain the sordid untidiness of so many of the houses.  This does not refer to the Davidson’s house, which we actually did not enter, since we had tea on the verandah, but from the glimpses one caught, it had a pleasant look, and they are keen gardeners, and have a good flower-garden. They are proud of English primroses, and gave me a little posy to bring away.

There are a nice crowd of people staying in the hotel, mostly other than those who were here when we arrived.  The bride and bridegroom and the young airman from our table, left on Sunday, and we were sorry to bid them good-bye, but have promised to go to see the young couple in their new home when we get to Sydney.  Just room to send you all my love.

LJT

From LJT to Annette No 24

(written on Eagle Heights Hotel printed headed paper)

c/o The Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Brisbane.
July 5th 1941

My darling Annette

Until I had gone without letters for several weeks , and that in these times when you are all in danger to some extent, I did not realize what a supreme pleasure letters could give – On Sat and Monday last I got your’s of 8th, 19th, and 24th april, covering the motor trip to Essex with Uncle Bous – The week-end at Highways, when you found Richard there and Peg just engaged – and Aunt’s visit to the Bevington family, with your day in London with her on her return. Its good to hear from you and from Richard that you approve of Michael – and I hope he and Peg will be happy together – In spite of a likeing for gaiety, I think Peg has a very real love for home and certainly for babies. Perhaps you will have a chance to meet Michael’s Don brother, if you go to Cambridge to see John Bev and others. I suppose one of the next excitements will be to hear how Gavin did in his finals and what happens to him afterwards. it beats me how anyone can go on believing in the pacifist theories in the face of Hitler’s doings. Was his attack on Russia as startling to you in England, I wonder, as it was to us out here. This is one of the times in the War when I feel tempted to turn on the wireless many times a day – but common sense luckily controls me – and I only listen-in twice a day. Its an odd position that we should be in league with a Communist state. I wonder what effect this friendship will have after the War. To find a form of government that is both practical and yet does not hamper the freedom of the individual, seems to be one of the urgent needs of the world. Socialism under any of its varied forms, is so terribly difficult to work. It needs such high individual morality and ability. One can see so clearly in New Zealand and in this country, that political leaders do need to be men of wide education and that the mere fact that men of poor education are championing, or think they championing the cause of the under-dog, does not make them satisfactory guides for a country in the complications of international trade and politics. That is true even when they are honest, as the late Mr Savage one time Premier of N.Z. is generally conceeded to have been, but the sad and significant fact is, that most of them are not honest, but flagrant go-getters –

Your comments on “Gone With the Wind”, chime exactly with my own – How astonishing that there are still big queues for it. It seems such ages ago that I saw it in Calcutta. Another film which presents the book well and in truth of detail is better that the story from which it is taken, is “The Rains Came” – So many people here ask whether it is a good picture of Indian life. What they dont see is that the interest of that book, is the reactions of a certain set of characters to an extraordinary situation and that the question of whether it is true to Indian life is not important. The Indian background is, on the whole well done, but what is true of a State like Baroda (on which the background is based) may be in complete contrast to other States, or parts of India under British Rule.

Its nice to hear you talking a little of clothes. I hope there will be some snapshots of the wedding coming out soon, so that we can see you all in your new clothes – I wonder whether the green of the “twinset” I’ve sent, will go with the green of your new skirt. The old red woolen skirt and cardigan that you took up to Scotland from Wales, has done me proud of this trip, but its getting faded, so that when we get back to India, I purpose to have it dyed dark purple and it should then do well enough to wear while we are out on tour in the Cold Weather, or for walking round Darjeeling.

I am awfully glad that Aunt got away for a visit to the Bevington family – I am sure a change and rest must have been good for her, though she said in her letter that she did not feel happy in her mind being away from home in these anxious days. Yours and Aunts accounts of the various shops in London have been of great interest to various ladies in the house here – Many people fear that there is just nothing left in London – especially those who have never been there and have no conception of its size. That is more so in New Zealand than here, for the N.Z. capital cities are so very small, whereas Sydney is a great city and takes some getting out of, and though Brisbane has not a large population, it spreads itself over a big area, for it has wisely had the idea of putting each house in a garden, and most of the houses are only single stories. It covers the biggest area for its population of any city in the world, I am told.

How I sympathize with you over the matter of meeting Mokes – I was so angry over a letter she wrote me last year, in which she categorically set forth all the disasters she expected to take place during the next few months – that I wrote and told her she had no business to write like that, and that if the letter had fallen into the hands of Indians, it might have done immense harm – I have never had an answer, and I dont suppose I shall, but its far better she should not write at all.

It certainly is odd that Romey should have become so fussy about her use of English, but it is a fault on the right side. I dont know what Canada is like, but in N.Z. and Australia the sense of language is lamentably lacking. Both in speech and in writing, words are used in the most casual way, and its evident that people dont know what they really mean. An old friend, school-master-padré Tonge, has often told us what a poor appreciation of education the average citizen has out here – He asserts – I cant say whether it is true, that it is thought rather “pansy” to be in any way intellectual, and that the great thing is to be “tough” – That attitude must be somewhat on the wane, I fancy to judge from the people we have met up here. I have been questioning a good deal about schools and education and with most of the people I have met, there appears to be an appreciation of the value of education and of keeping the standards high, or building them up to be higher. I should not say that the average Australian is a great reader, even of tripe books – an astonishing number of people holiday making up here, are never seen to open a book. They sit about, when they are indoors, pleased to talk, if there is anyone to talk to, but otherwise they just sit! Probably the generation that is growing up now, will show the influence of decent schooling. Another thing we notice out here is very small appreciation of beauty. The houses are obviously (with a few exceptions) build with the sole idea of making a place to sleep, eat and work in, for the smallest possible amount of money. I sometimes wonder whether any architects exist here

Thank you for writing so regularly – I hate to think that by the time this reaches you the summer will already be on the wane –

Best love – Mother

Richard’s personal letter has gone direct – as Dad was writing too – PS You have not adopted the plan of numbering your letters, which I think is good.

From HPV to Romey

At Eagle Heights Hotel,
Mount Tamborine, Queensland
July 4th, 1941 Friday
My dear Rosemary,

Perhaps a week has elapsed since I sent off a letter to you, and it lacked the essential thing which was to have made it memorable. The very next day I copied out the sentences, but too late.
Now I send the masterpieces. The three new ones just occurred to me, without being wanted, one on my bed before I went to sleep (and it takes me a long time to get off to sleep) and the others on a walk. Another and the best had to be rejected before being typed, because when I arrived home and wrote it out for examination, I found that it lacked a ‘z ‘ and I could think of no way of remedying this except by using a place name, which is an evasion at best and which I could hardly adopt again after using “Prezemysl”. This last, to tell the truth, I put in for Annette’s benefit because she is learning Russian. It is a strange thing that your dear mother should object to my wasting my time, which is worthless these days, on learning a few Malayan sentences and yet views with equanimity Annette’s attempt on Russian. To the thinking man or woman, boy or girl, the latter are far more waste, for the chances of learning enough Russian to be of the least use are very small, no one would really want to talk to a Russian even if the language was learnable (though I admit that we find Irene charming and talk to her at every opportunity, which is never, because she is not within reach of us ) and after the war no one will have the money to go to Russia or anywhere else.
Will people return to the Channel Islands and will they revive all the futile historical survivals about which the halfpenny papers made so many songs and dances, if one can say such a thing, which of course one cannot ….? It grieved me always that I never learnt enough Hindustani, or for that matter Bengali, to be able to carry on a civilized conversation. Vitality is always lacking. And there is so little interesting stuff to read in either that perhaps the will was weakfish. It has been lack of vitality that in recent years prevented anything real from coming of my efforts to acquire French. To converse in a foreign tongue with which one is not quite familiar requires concentration, and I, who find it exhausting to talk to strangers for an evening (because, said the offensive Mrs. Sawday, our family always imagine that if they do not manage to entertain the company will be bored) cannot drag up from the depths sufficient energy to produce not only amusing conversation, but French phrases to wrap it in. There may be something of the sort about my conversation with the people here. There are some words peculiar to the Australian continent. One is “crook” and another is “gutza”. This latter turned up in a magazine, and I asked the man who had suggested my reading the article what it meant, to the consternation of those assembled in the lounge. It is derived from the word “guts” which to an Australian appears to be a very indelicate word, and one comes a gutza where in England one would do a belly-flop. In Singapore the healthy old English word “belly” is regarded as anathema, and the word “stomach” also is thought to be coarse, which it may well be, but preserve us all from the suburban refinement of such words as “tummy” and “middle”! I would that the exclamation marks that can be produced on this typewriter were better.
You owe this to the fact that I am sitting in the bedroom, in my greatcoat, after finishing dinner, instead of in the lounge, because there was noise in the lounge, and I detest noises. Including the wireless. It consoles me to think that it was an Italian who made wireless practicable.
Saturday. Today has been very cold and dreary, sun hardly showing and wind cold. We wrote letters this morning. I hadn’t written to Richard anything but the circular letter for quite a time, and I wrote two double-sided sheets, by pen. Not very lively stuff. My letters all relapse into disquisitions on my present hobbies and early life, but there is no alternative and at least this keeps the fun clean or reasonably so. Letters from England have been irregular of late, and no wonder. After my letter, I drank tea. No longer being allowed to drink at meals my liquid ………. But that is bad grammar! I take my liquid in the form of tea, reserved for me in a thermos specially purchased for that very end; three cups it runs to, and I suspect that I drink far too much of it. Anyhow, I took my three cups and rather gloomily went out for a walk, for conscience sake. It turned out to be rather amusing. I went down to the little falls (not worth calling falls, but it is a very pretty bush walk) about twenty minutes from here, intending merely to come back again, for it had started to rain slightly. But the impulse seized me to try making my way up the stream or creek and coming out on the road which goes westwards from the hotel. It turned out to be hard work, for the stream ran between rocks and there were many fallen trees, thorns and bushes as well as marsh. After blocking my way through for perhaps 300 yards I gave it up, and struck off to a place where I saw some trees had been felled. It was as I had guessed; there were the tracks of men who had been working there and after following these for a comparatively short way I came out upon a tractor track where timber had been hauled, and so to a path along which we had gone exploring a couple of days ago when we fetched a compass about the Katoomba Heights. This was a surprise to me, for I had no idea that I was within 1000 yards of this path, and though your mother has a compass, it doesn’t work very well. It was quite content to point anywhere within ten degrees of North. In the afternoon I fudged the map to make it more consistent with the day’s discoveries.
Sunday. The cold drove me down from the bedroom to the lounge, where they had let the fire get so low that there was no great comfort to be had from it. These Queensland houses are built for the heat and the breezes zip through them. There is a young man up here now who has brought with him a copy of the pamphlet called the Battle of Britain, about the air-fighting in England last August and September. Very well worth reading, and if a copy comes near you make a grab for it. Most of the war literature, aiming at proof that the Nazis are skunks, bores me to extinction, for I want no convincing and have wanted none for years past, but solid accounts of things done are different. However you will see that within ten years of the end of the war the clever young men will be going around and saying that all the tales of Nazi atrocity are mere tales and that their opponents were as bad if not worse, just as they have been doing about the last war. And perhaps there is something to be said for ramming in the stories about the Nazi brutality. I should much like to know what has happened to Gavin and whether he is still as clever-clever as he was trying to be. I should have been sorry if any of you had been taken that way.
On Sundays there is no morning tea at 11, as there is on ordinary days, and I have just been watching the departure of a large and gay party loaded with the wherewithal for making billly-tea in the bush, in the so-called Park where I was trying to arrive yesterday up the stream. Nice folk. But they started off soon after nine and the Park’s furthest extremity is only a quarter of an hour’s walk from here, so I cannot think how they are going to put in the morning. The Park is merely thick bush without any open spaces and although the sun is shining today, there is a cold wind and it might well be cheerless in the shade.
Two days ago I was seized with a feeling that at last I could type with some confidence. But this letter has shaken it. In spite of the injunction in the Book, I have been using the eraser and I have been using it freely; depressing. If only I made mistakes consistently, it would be an easier thing to find a remedy, but they are now haphazard and do not invite a cure through a specially invented exercise. Did I tell you that Annette, after all , has not been touch-typing all this time? She mentioned in a letter which arrived the other day that she really must try to do it and gave a specimen of what happens when she does try that was really deplorable. To me this is very sad, considering that I have spoken to many about the prevalence of touch-typing among the young of my family. All now prove to be defaulters, for I do not suppose that Richard could have learnt to touch-type without a constant clamour about his progress and his failures such as I inflict on you in my letters.
It makes me wonder how far the family have fallen from virtue in other ways. On this note I close saying fond love and good luck.

Yours, Dad

PS. Forced to take a ticket in a hotel sweep, I drew a horse called Winnipeg. It lost.

Enclosure: Typing Exercises for the Family

How queer the wavy zigzags cut on the ice by the skates of joyous Bishop Max!

Exult and rejoice in your king, ye virgins: be proud, ye daughters of Zion, whether queens or handmaidens.

The malicious bird quacked wildly, puzzling Jim’s ox restive from long confinement.

The Macquarry zoetrope works on an axis balanced or jacked on a floating pivot.

Zeuxis was ranked by Quintilian, that jealous critic, among the very finest Greek painters.

The practical joker was vexed at being quizzed unmercifully.

He queried whether the average zip-fastened bag was better than a locked box for journeys.

Jumping up, the goddess calmly fixed to the back of her zone a quiver full of arrows.

Syzygy is a quaint word from the Greek, much affected by ex-scholars but now justly avoided by others.

The females of zebras, quaggas, kangaroos and jerboas would not properly be called vixens.

Kids mostly go for jaunts to places where the booze is cheap and the food by no means exquisite or varied.

Some of the zinc plates in our Exide battery are good, some equivalent to mere junk.

Just before the vernal equinox the planet Mars crossed the zenith at precisely four o’clock at Greenwich.

Their stark cynicism shows Zeno and Jeremiah to be equally governed by fondness for paradox.

The Byzantines were said to make extravagant requests for bright purple from Tyre and rock crystal from Java.

Our jaded explorer deftly squashed the mosquitoes with his finger and applied zambuk to the bites on his calves.

The schizanthus quivered slightly as the fuming adjutant kicked the box in which it was planted.

The Yankee barman threw in a dash of aqua fortis and a drop of nux vomica to produce what he described, to our amazement, as a julep cocktail.

This awkward sequence of notes, jazzed on the drums, xylophone and cymbals reduced the monkey to grins of ecstasy.

The sick Jew lazily watched patches of the quagmire exude varicolored bubbles of marsh gas.

Cavaliers habitually ejaculated the exclamation ‘Zounds’ as they quaffed cups of excellent Malmsey wine or gulped down their Canary sack.

Crazed by his discovery of this theft the raven squawked execrations against the jackdaw, who put on airs of modesty and innocence.

“By Jove,” cried the marquis, “zero has turned up again!” That makes five times in sixteen minutes! The Bank must be hoaxing us! The wheel must be crooked!

“Pax vovicum.” quoth the jovial friar of Prezemysl. “Ave Maria to you.” replied the well-meaning English tourist, rather weakly.

Common folk would agree in supposing that the very valiant and perfect knight, Don Quizote, was no better than a jabbering zany.

It is forbidden to stock Japanese matches in any grocery in New Zealand, but I shall have to enquire whether a similar rule applies to wax-vestas, which often start disquietingly dangerous fires in the bush.

From LJT to Romey

Eagle Heights, July 8th, 1941

My darling Romey,

Here’s economy of space, for weight’s sake again! Owing to doing so much typing to make a number of copies, I have got into the habit of hitting the keys rather hard, and the letters on this machine are sharp cut, so that on thin paper the result is disastrous if I try to do the original on both sides, so I do your letter on the back. It is thirteen days since I got the last splendid batch of letters and photos from you, so I now begin hoping for a new supply. I am sorry mine have been getting to you irregularly. As a start to writing this, I have re-read your letters Nos 18 and 19, and the personal letter with them, as well as the notes about the photos, so I have a nice feeling of being quite near you. These letters have some interesting general information and descriptions in them, which help to give us a better idea of the prairies, and of the Lake country where you go for holidays. When Uncle Tim was talking about Winnipeg, I sometimes used to wonder whether it was not as you report Helen says it is, that is, so far away from the older and more cultured centres that it is too big a city to allow of any feeling of rural charm. I would like to read the book “As for Me and My House”. I wonder whether I am likely to be able to get it in India. If it is not an expensive book, or if you can get a second-hand copy from one of the libraries, perhaps you could send it to us in India. I expect H.D. and Winsome would like to read it too.
Thank you for remembering to tell me about the meaning of “brush”. I have been trying to find out about the different terms for woods and forests in Australia. An intelligent man, who is keenly interested in all sorts of things, has given me the following information. He says that “Bush” covers any sort of wild land with bushes or trees on it, and from his description the word is used in a sense almost as wide as our word “jungle”, though he laughingly denies that the word bush can be used to describe the weeds in a flower bed or on the lawn. He says that tall hardwood timber trees, such as the eucalyptus, growing to a fairly uniform height without much undergrowth, and with grass growing on the ground such as one sees miles of between Sydney and Brisbane, is known as forest. Scrub, which to my mind conveys something short, untidy and possible thorny, he says is the mixed forest mostly of soft-wooded and shallow rooted trees. When I had started to write this, I suddenly thought that there might be some information about the different types of country in an excellent bird book which old Miss Staples has lent me, and sure enough in the introduction there is some clear information. Forest, is exactly what he says. The next thing given is “Brushes and Big Scrubs” dense vegetation of the Rain-Forest type; generally very tall trees, with luxuriant top foliage, creepers, palms, and abundant undergrowth. It adds that this is know as Scrub in Queensland and Brush in New South Wales. Scrub-lands consist of mixed eucalyptus, (gums) acacias of many sorts, some small pines and casuarinas, which are known as “She-Oaks”, and are situated in the dry inland or semi-desert areas. However the fact remains that the well-known character, “the man in the street” speaks of them all indifferently as ‘bush’.
One thing puzzled me in your letter. You say that there were twelve of you at the cottage on the Lake, and that you coked the meals in shifts of three, doing alternate meals. Well, it seems to me that three goes into twelve four times, so I work it out that you cooked a meal, and rested for three.
Tell me, did I entirely forget to send you Mrs Pilcher’s sister’s address, which both Mr. and Mrs. P sent me some months ago? It is Mrs. Vaughan Green, 252 Roslyn Rd, Winnipeg. Mr. Vaughan Green is a K.C. and also something to do with the CPR. They have children of college age, as well as some a little older. Perhaps you will have met them and know all this, before this letter reaches you.
Did I ever know that you had been made to eat Marmalade at school? I don’t believe I did. I think I should have been rather annoyed had I done so. Dad does not exhibit any signs of becoming a whisky addict, in spite of doctor’s orders, though he obediently takes his tot before dinner every evening. I am sorry I am typing so badly, but he is talking to me, and though I can write moderately well in spite of being spoken to, it upsets my ability to type very much. We enjoyed the story about the arrival of the Torch in Winnipeg, and felt quite an inside knowledge when we read of its arrival in London.
News of the Russian front is a bit more hopeful. It is so queer to be far away as you are and we are, isn’t it? Sometimes I feel rather dreadful when I go out, and for a time, forget about the war, while I am looking at the birds and the plants and the beautiful views in which this place abounds. I have been so glad to have the loan of the excellent book on the Australian birds, for though I can’t of course grasp anything much in the way of the names of so many varieties, I can get a little idea of them, and of which families are numerous.
It is almost tea-time, and at 4:15 we listen to the news, and then we plan to take a quick walk before dark.

Best love,
Mother

Family letter from LJT No 25 

Eagle Heights Hotel.  Tamborine Mountain.

Queensland.  Australia.

July 10th 1941.

My Dears,

This is horrid paper, but it was all I could find in a hurried rush to the shops when we came through Brisbane.  There have been no mails in this week, but I confidently hope that there will be one from Canada during the next few days.  I suppose I must now expect that no more mails may come here, for it is impossible to time them with any exactitude, and you may have plumped for safety first, and begun sending them to India.  This week has been much like the two preceeding ones, but there is a pleasure in not having too constant change of scene.  We are having time to get to know both some of the local people and the people in the hotel.  There has been an exceptionally nice family here for almost a fortnight.  Their name is Watson.  The father tells us that he is an accountant by profession, but a farmer by inclination.  When he had made sufficient money he bought a big pig farm, and when he had made more money, he bought another.  He has a younger brother who is a Doctor of Science, and who has specialized on animal nutrition, and they have made many experiments on these farms.  He is also a member of the Meat Board.  Better than all these things, he is keenly interested in almost everything.  He and his wife, who is an awfully nice woman, went to England for a holiday a few years ago, and spent most of their time going round looking at English farming.  It is nice to hear that he has a great respect for the English farmer, and an immense admiration for the English farm house.  We have had many long and interesting talks with him and his wife about all sorts of things, including Australian politics, a subject which makes them sad, as it does most of the thinking people.  They have two school boy sons, aged seventeen and thirteen and a half, both nice lads, intelligent and good-mannered.  The younger one, George, is immensly tall for his age, and exceptionally clever.  He also has a well-developed sense of humour.  He took a great fancy to Herbert directly he arrived, and gets near him when-ever he can.  His father says of him that he is a dreadful fellah to have in the house, for he never forgets what you say, and brings it up against you six months or a year later, if you happen to deviate from an earlier opinion.  Mr Watson had to go down to Brisbane on Monday and a young Englishman, a friend of theirs who had been up for the week-end was going down too, in his own car, so Mr Watson suggested that we, with his boys and some more lads and lassies who were up here on holiday, should take lifts in the cars down to Cedar Creek Falls, 4 miles away, and walk back through the bush.  It was a nice outing, and we did a bit of mild rock-climbing by the Falls and the cascades below them, and an attractive climb up the side of the mountain partly by timber tracks and partly just through the forest.  Another man with whom I had some interesting talks was a Mr Fitzgerald, a widower with three sons and a daughter.  Mr Fitzgerald is one of Brisbane’s best known solicitors I am told.  He is much interested in education and politics and how they interact with one other.  In his opinion one of Australia’s great needs is an Australian point of view.  At present there is a great deal of jealousy between the States.  He would like to see the State Legislatures done away with and one parliament governing the whole country.  He says with a population as small as that of Australia, it is absurd to have the expense of keeping up so many parliaments, and that they have not enough to do and spend a lot of their time quarreling with one another.  His eldest son, aged seventeen was one of the most charming boys I have met for a long time.  He was quiet and thoughtful, and passionately fond of books.  He could talk very well indeed, and mopped up information eagerly.  I took a great liking to him.  Another personality we have seen a good deal of this week is an old Miss Stable, who has a delightful house close to the hotel and comes here for dinner every evening.  The Warren Whites had written to her about us, but she was away when we came.  She is an Englishwoman, who has settled here, because one of her brothers is a Professor in Brisbane University.  She was a nurse in the last war, a thing she had always wanted to be, but in the good old Victorian way, her parents would not hear of it.  However having got her chance, she stuck to it, and went on working after the war.  When she finally decided to settle out here, she brought out all her beautiful old English furniture, china and pictures, so that her home has an air of individuality and distinction about it which I fancy is rare in this country.  Sad to say she is deaf, and one has to talk to her through an ear trumpet, but with the aid of that, she hears pretty well, and she has a sort of dry humour which is very delightful.  She has offered her house to the Military authorities as a convalescent home for soldiers back from the war, for the duration and a year after, and they are going to give her an answer in a fortnight.  Meantime she had decided to put down lino in her dining-room, work-room, which leads directly into the garden, with the result that the red soil clinging to shoes, was always spreading itself over the rugs and the floor of narrow boards.  She was a little worried, for she had got a young man, who is lame as a result of meningitis, and who makes his living by doing all sorts of odd jobs for people, to do the job for her, and she was wondering whether he could manage it alone.  Herbert volunteered to help, with the result that we spent one afternoon and a morning over there.  The lino had also to be laid along a passage with a kink in it, and in a small vestibule, which meant a lot of careful measuring and cutting, While the men worked, Miss Stables and I knitted and talked, made tea and washed up.  The following morning I went over another an hour later than Herbert, to find Miss S engaged in her weekly wash, so I helped and incidentally got a lesson in useing an electric washer and wringer.  Later we sat on a sun porch and knitted once more, and I discovered that Miss Stable knows the Pearces very well.  She nursed at a hospital at Tadworth during the last war, but even before that her brother had known Jim Pearce well, and she remembered their house at Snaresbrook.  Her old family home was Wansted Park, in the days when Wansted was still country. She has been living in Australia for about ten years now, and it is interesting to hear her views about many things.  We agreed together abut certain things, which ones innate conservatism about foods and feeding makes us dislike.  Sausages are stewed in gravy.  Kidneys are never grilled, but also stewed with gravy.  Pumpkin is much eaten, and that not from necessity, but because people like it.  Water is always provided with breakfast, and a cup of tea or coffee brought towards the end of the meal, unless one specially asks for it earlier.  On the other hand, in many places, no glasses or water are provided at lunch or dinner, but tea is supplied with the meal.  This habit varies a good deal according to the class of hotel.  In the good town hotels it is not so, and the simpler and more countrified, the more difficult it is to get water with the meal, and tea or coffee not brought till the end.  Two other habits, unconnected with food, that we dont like are that the bed clothes are always small for the beds, and dont allow a proper tuck in, and that every bath has a shower over it, often with no screens or protection to prevent the water splashing everywhere, so that unless one is first in a bathroom, it is nearly always a flood, for it seems all Australians like showers.  To return to the subject of food: meat is good, but there is not much variety in cooking.  It is almost always roast, boiled or grilled.  Vegetables should be good, but are indifferently cooked.  Puddings and cakes and scones are excellent, and all food is on an ample scale.  Things that are nice are the friendliness of everyone; the way that hotel people dont in the least mind one washing clothes, and hanging them out to dry on the hotel washing lines; the fact that most hotels provide an ironing room, and that they are willing to do anything they can to oblige guests.  There are certain things one has to learn about habits of speech.  For instance you always, (and I am speaking of men) use the “Mr” until you know people well enough to call them by their Christian name.  Mr Watson tells us that to all a man you have only recently met “Townend” without the “Mr” would be considered rude, but you soon get to the point of not only calling him “Herbert” but “Herb”, for whenever possible a Christian name is shortened.  For instance Russell, which happens to be the name of a charming little boy staying here, becomes “Russ”.  Maurice becomes “Maurrie” and so on.  Its an ugly habit and I hope they will grow out of it some day.  There is quite definitely an Australian speech growing up, some words are created here, and others alter their meanings, so that a recently advertised dictionary of the Australian language is not the foolish thing it might seem.  Herbert discovered a word “gutsa” in rather a vulgar little Australian paper he was looking at the other day, and he asked the assembled company what it meant.  There were delighted titters and exclamations, and he was told that it was a word not used in polite society, but that it meant originally “belly-flop” and its meaning had been extended to cover coming a cropper or making a flagrant mistake.  This reminded me of the days in France, when Herbert used to read French detective novels, and ask the ladies assembled in the salon after dinner what strange words meant; a habit which sometimes caused great flutterings and gigglings, and such replies as “But, monsieur, that is a word only used by sailors”.

Its a stormy day, after two or three perfect ones.  It was raining early but cleared and the sun came out, tempting Herbert out for a walk, but I remained firmly indoors with the purpose of writing this letter.  I am glad I did, for not only am I pleased to be doing it, but the clouds have come up and it looks as if it might rain again at any moment.

Best love to you all

LJT

From LJT to Annette

(on Eagle Heights Hotel printed notepaper)

c/o The Commonwealth Bank of Australia
Brisbane.
July 11th 1941

My darling Annette

Hurrah! There is a letter from you to answer after all! The missing letter No 2 – Aunt’s dated March 18th and yours dated March 11th has turned up at last. It was sent only Air from New Zealand, so in the interim it must have been wandering elsewhere. You tell of the formation of the recorder band – Mr Millar’s enthusiasm – and Mr Cooper’s interest. I wish I knew just what a recorder looks like.

The moon has been wonderful here the last few nights – making a great path of silver across the sea. Every time I have gazed at its beauty, I have been saddened by the though that “on such a night as this” the German bombers do their worst – The wireless however, tells that there has been little activity over Britain the last few nights – and I suppose one may feel some satisfaction with its ominous accompanying thought – “What horror are they planning next” – for presumably they have tried to take a huge bite in Russia or are doing their best to chew it – The news seems a little more reassuring from the Russian front to-day.

Have you read von Passenn’s Book “The Days of our Years”? It has the infuriating quality of so many books written by journalists – i.e. that no one but the writer ever guessed what what was going to happen or advocated the correct proceedure - but all the same there’s a lot of interesting stuff in it – and much that is horrible. Against the objection to reading of horrors, I advance a belief that sometimes it is good for us to hear that such things exist, for it is only by the world knowing of them that abuses of power and habits of gross cruelty, can be cured. Whether all that von Passenn says is true, I dont of course know – but there is probably some foundation of truth anyway. I have many times before heard rumours that the French treatment of the African natives in northern central Africa was terrible, and that the German used to be worse – The Belgian at one time were, of course notorious – The treatment of slaves by Arab slave-traders in Abyssinia was pretty well known and was one of the reason why Dad found it difficult to be pro-Abyssinian, even though he was so hotly anti-Italian –

To turn to very much lighter matters, old Miss Stable was lamenting the fact that many children out here get no religious education at all – and told of the small girl attending Sunday School for the first time. On being asked whether she knew the hymn “Stand up! Stand up! for Jesus!” – She replied “no – All I know is “For God’s Sake Sit Down”. We have been told several comic stories lately, but I never remember them – I have appealed to Dad, who is working on the “Map of the Mountain” – and the only one he can remember is that of the maiden lady, no longer very young, who, finding a burgler under her bed, exclaimed “What are you going to do to me – I hope! –“

The five school boys, all in their ‘teens, who have been staying here, present a most favourable sample of intelligence, good manners, and general information – but I suppose they all spring from rather outstanding families – Mr Watson (see family letter) is evidently a man of outstanding ability and his wife is intelligent too – Another lad was here without his parents, but is a close friend of the Watsons – The other two were sons of one of Brisbane’s best known solicitors – Australia should make great strides in the next few generations if she is producing many boys of quality such as these seem to have – Young George Watson, aged 13 ½ and already 6 ft tall, chose to walk with me on the way out to a morning tea picnic to-day – and he put me through a regular catechism on the subject of how India is ruled – Native States – Congress, Education and Religion – His questions were all well put – and his comments on my answers, shrewd and showing that he was taking in and understanding all I said – I thought it rather a remarkable exhibition for a lad of such tender years –

The light is fading fast – The sun has gone and its getting cold up here in the bed-room, so I must finish this off and remove myself to the lounge, where there will, I do not doubt, be much chatter going on – I may be able to read – or I may just knit and join. I have enjoyed some good and profitable talk up here – but, I am sorry to have to confess it – the interesting stuff has been almost entirely from the men – Most of the women are so full of household cares that they dont seem to read or think very much beyond their home interest – Best love, my dear - Mother

Family letter from LJT No 26.

Eagle Heights Hotel.  Tamborine Mt.

Queensland.   Australia.

July 17th 1941.

My Dears,

Once more it happened!  The letters had just gone to post when a double mail came in from England as well as from Canada.  It took me a large part of the evening to read all the letters, and I felt so happy and satisfied after it.  Thank you all for writing so much.  Grace’s letters were Nos 8 and 9 of May the 6th and 18th, telling all about Peggy’s wedding.  It was lovely to hear that it all went off so well; that the weather was kind; the bride looked charming; and that everyone had lots to eat in spite of Hitler’s efforts to prevent any such thing.  The previous evening, Grace’s missing letter, No 2 had arrived, so now the series is complete.

As the time for our return to India draws near, I find my mind jumping forward to anticipate life there once more, and I feel warm pleasure at the thought of seeing Harry and Winsome and many of our other friends again.  Three weeks to-morrow is the date of our departure, and I expect these last days will slip quickly away.  When one does look forward in these days, its strange how the mind always begins to question what will have happened in the world at war by that time.

Our life has gone on here much as it has in the previous weeks.  The stormy weather that was prevailing when I wrote last Thursday, soon cleared up, and Friday though still windy, was fine.  The Watson family suggested a morning- tea picnic down to a water-fall about an hour’s walk through the bush, and it turned out a delightful outing, for there were an exceptionally nice lot of people here at that time.  The party totalled seventeen.  We took a billy, cups, tea, bread and butter.  There is a stone fireplace down by the Falls, and the gum wood, bark and leaves burn splendidly, so that its not hard to light a fire even on a morning after rain.  We made tea and hot buttered toast, and revelled in the sun and glorious view, so that the morning passed quickly and we only got home just in time for lunch.  It was our last outing with the Watsons, for, to our great regret, they left the next afternoon.  They are people with whom I should like to keep in touch, and we are definitely going to see them again in Brisbane.

During the week we have had some beautiful walks, and have joined up some previous routes by making our way through the bush here and there.  The map which Herbert has been making of the Mountain is pretty well complete now.  He has paced a lot of the distances, and we have timed ourselves, and taken compass bearings, as well as getting distances clocked on the speedometer of the Watson’s car.  Herbert has wonderful patience in doing this sort of thing, and he is so thorough in anything he takes up.  A woman arrived here a few days ago, and is sitting at our table.  She has given us some unconscious amusement.  She is English, but came out here as a bride some 28 years ago.  She is of the type who loves to tell everybody everything.  The trouble is that most of her information is incorrect, for her mind is fluffy and muddled.  She has known this place for many years, but I don’t think she has been up here for some time.  Finding that we were innocent English, she at once gushed, “Oh!  You should go to Panorama Point!  Its a lovely walk!  My husband used to ride out there!”  Then followed instructions quite inaccurate about how to get there, and after all, it takes less than half an hour of easy walking.  We meekly said it was one of our favourite short strolls: and so it went on.  Each new and twisted memory she produced, proved to be something we already knew and had mapped, and moreover, linked up with other points by bush tracks, usually spoken of here, as sneaking tracks.  In spite of this annoying fore-knowledge on our part, Mrs M has remained extremely friendly, but we shant regret it much when she goes, for she takes the longest time to tell stories which have little or no point, of any one I have ever met.  We have been lucky though, in getting at our table a Major and Mrs Fox, who were up for a few days about a fortnight ago.  He was through the last war and always remained on the reserve of officers.  He is now in command of a depot on a big island just off the coast near the Brisbane River, and gets a few days leave now and again.  Mrs Fox is a lively little woman, who was at school in England.  She is a great reader, and holds very clear ideas on all sorts of subjects.  Oddly enough she is a through-going Tory and Imperialist, and she and Herbert agree about many things.  I have spent a good part of the last two evenings discussing all sorts of things with her, while her husband sits and smiles quietly, occasionally making sage remarks.  Her company is a pleasure, for she likes to talk about what is happening in the world, and enjoys argument and discussion.  So many of the women here, though pleasant and friendly, are limited in the scope of their interests. 

I have done a small job to help Miss Stable again this week.  She has been washing old curtains, and making new ones to get her house ready for handing over to the Military, if they take it, and I spent an evening with her, putting on rings.  Herbert went over with me the following morning, yesterday to wit - - and we hung all the curtains for her.  I think the old lady was much pleased, for it was quite a big job to tackle single handed.  She is an amusing character to find here.  In many ways she is so very much the English gentlewoman of the old school.  She speaks beautifully and gives her views with ease and decision.  She has relatives scattered all over the world in the army, navy and diplomatic service.  She delights in telling some of the Australian women who don’t seem to think there is any call to help with Red Cross or Comforts for the Troops, work, that her brother, who is a judge in England, is busy knitting socks.  This might read as if I were referring to all Australian women, which of course is not so.  There are many who work hard and well, but there are quite a few to whom the urgency of the war does not seem to have penetrated.  Major Fox was saying the same thing at breakfast this morning.  He says it seems to him that war actually on their own shore seems the only thing that would rouse some people.  I wonder what is the cause of this strange inability to see beyond their own immediate environment.  It cant be just the fact of living in isolated places, for it appears that men join up more readily from the “out-back” places, than from the towns, and I gather that scattered groups of women in small townships are doing a lot to help the different societies which attempt to help the war effort.  It seems that in the big towns you find the greatest number of people who do not understand.

We have been trying to find out about some of the personalities in Australian politics.  We listened to Mr Menzies various speeches since his return, and we have thought them all excellent.  He speaks well and what he says is sound.  Why, we wonder, does he not command more whole hearted support.  Mr Watson gives as one reason that fact that he is intolerant of any sort of pretence or sham.  He cannot do with people who pretend to be full of good work or wishes for the country, when in reality they achieve nothing, and he lets them see it.  Most of the people I have asked about him say that he is completely honest, and that he has given up a very large income to devote his life to politics, for he was one of the most successful lawyers in Australia.  His position with such a narrow majority is most difficult.  Some people hold the view that it would be better to take a strong line, and risk defeat by the Labour Party, for once they get into power, they, like other labour governments before them in other countries, will find that international problems push in and demand attention, so that the privileges which they are always wanting to give to labour are not always so easy to carry out.  I feel sorry for Mr Menzies.  He must be having a hard and difficult time of it.  We listened to Sir Ronald Cross speaking over the air last night.  He has just arrived to take over the post of High Commissioner for Australia.  He spoke well.  The Australians sitting round were favourably impressed.  They said he spoke like a good honest man.  I think the first essential of getting on in this country is to show a desire to learn about the country, rather than to display an immediate desire to teach.  The teaching should wait till a good bit of learning has been done, and it should then be conducted with extreme tact.  The country is young and sensitive.

The enclosed notes on our impressions of the Government of New Zealand I put in because some of you asked what we thought about the subject.  It was not possible to write much from N.Z. for we were told that any criticism of the Government was cut out of letters by the censor.  The opinions expressed are based on nothing more than masses of talk heard here and there up and down the country, and so should not be taken as being too reliable.  Australian politics, owing to the great size of the country and the fact that it is divided up into States, differing so much from each other in every respect, and in some cases so cut off from each other, as are Western Australia and the Northern Territory, are much more difficult to learn about.  I would like to have gone to Canberra with introductions to some of the members of the Federal Government there, and so to have seen something of the working of the machine.

Time and paper are running out and its time to say good-bye.

Best love to you all

LJT

Impressions of the Government of New Zealand

The following impressions of the Government of New Zealand, although written down by me, are the result of many talks and much comparing of notes with Herbert.  There are many things I should not have grasped, or understood, had it not been for his guidence. 

During the five months we spent in New Zealand, the impression gradually grew that the people of the country were no longer free.  More and more details of business and of every-day life are regulated by Government, and the ordinary citizen is hedged round with regulations.  Many of these regulations were in force, or had been planned before the war.  To begin with it is difficult to get permission to send or take money out of the country.  To go on with, it is difficult to get permission to leave the country oneself.  Should a visitor happen to earn some money while in New Zealand, he is not allowed to take it away with him.  (Ex: An artist, friend of people we met, painted pictures and sold some, but was forbidden to take what he had earned away with him)

To my comment “What a beautiful country this is” more than once I received the answer, “Yes!  But we are no longer free.  We are shut up in it”.

To understand the present position, one has to go back a few years, and glance at the history of the previous government.  In common with the rest of the world New Zealand passed through a period of severe depression.  As recovery was taking place, the Government detirmined to build a sound foundation for the future.  They taxed the country in order to build up satisfactory credits in London.  This they succeeded in doing but at the expense of popularity.  The mass of the people were unable to see that a sound financial basis for the country was good for them all.  when the election came Labour promised all sorts of remittances of taxation, and many public benefits.  They swept the country.  For a time they were in the apparantly happy position of being able to spend the credits their predecessors had built up.  They put up grandiose buildings, Public Libraries, Government Offices, Schools, Art Galleries and what not.  On roads too, they spent large sums, but this is an activity for which many people accord them praise.  The danger of this reckless spending is that the credits in London have been cut down to narrow limits.  New Zealand money is no good outside New Zealand.  No one wants it!

To return to the subject of the regulation of people’s affairs, there is no certainty that if an individual or a company works up a business it wont be taken over by the Government.  We heard a good many details of this from a man who had been an accountant, and after retiring from his business, occupied himself with promoting companies in a small way, and getting them on their legs.  It was confirmed by many other people.  The present Government have a craze for taking over any activity that, in private hands, pays.  Most of the railways have always been run by Government.  The few run by private enterprise, paid.  Government took them over, increased the number of officials, and now runs them at a loss.  Certain steamer companies on some of the big lakes were likewise taken over, and have ceased to pay.  The Government could not even resist taking over several hotels.  The result was the same in all cases but one.  The exception is a small hotel at Waitoma Caves, which is blessed by an exceptional manageress.  I may mention here that the Government Hotels are not half as nice to stay in as the privately owned ones.

The government professes to be anxious to encourage people with capital to settle in the country, and finance industries, but since they assume such wide powers over private incomes and business, their efforts are not meeting with much success.

Boards of all sorts have been set up.  Fruit now has to be graded, and what is under standard may not even be sold in the local shops.  The result of this, plus high wages and short working hours, has make fruit so expensive, that only well-to-do people can afford to buy it.  When we were in Sydney in December, cherries were 6D and 8D a lb.  In New Zealand, where they grow equally well, they were 2/6 and 3/- a lb.  Eggs are controlled, and people complain that it is impossible to get a really fresh egg.  Prices of everything are high.  There are heavy duties on all imported things including books, and a sales tax as well.  Anyone wishing to import goods of any description has to get a license to do so, and this is extremely difficult.  On every hand one hears stories of industry being held up for lack of materials which cannot be produced internally.  We were told an amusing story to illustrate this.  Somewhere in the North Island is a factory which makes cardboard containers for various things.  It was to be visited by one of the Ministers.  The company had been doing everything they could to get a license to import the material for making the containers from Australia, as they had always done, but had been met by blank refusal.  The visiting Minister made a speech, saying how gratified he was to see New Zealand turning out her own boxes, etc. etc.  In reply the Managing Director said that speaking on behalf of the staff and work-men, he wished to express their pleasure that the Minister had visited the factory, and especially that the visit had come when it had, because, oweing to the fact that there was only enough material to keep the factory going for four weeks, it would have to shut down at the end of the month.  They got their license to import what they needed.

Many aspects of the exclusion policy seem almost childish.  It is hard to see how ships can be expected to come empty to New Zealand, to fetch goods away, but that is what the Government seemingly expect they will do.  Roughly speaking they want to do all the selling and none of the buying.  The inhabitants complain that at present New Zealand is a country suited for primary production, and that they are not able to manufacture many articles at reasonable prices, largely because their market is so small.  I think N.Z. total population is something like one and a half millions.

The forty-hour week has complicated life for many people and has made it particularly difficult for hotels to run efficiently.  The maids and men who benefit by this law, dont by any means all like it.  We talked to many who say that they prefer to do their work in their own time, rather than rush through it with one eye on the clock.  Those are the good ones.  There are many who take advantage of it, and idle when they should be working, so that they do not give value in their short hours for their high wages.  Decent treatment for domestic servants is assured by the fact that they are so difficult to get.  So many rules for safeguarding them are therefore not necessary.

We had no opportunity of seeing factory workers or the conditions under which they work and live, so that we are not in a position to say anything about them at first hand.  We suppose they must be in favour of the present legislation, for it must be from them that Government gets its votes.  Some of them are beginning to realize, however, that the best of Geese cannot go on laying golden eggs for ever, and eventually the burden of paying for the high wages, short hours, and lavish public benefits must fall on the people themselves.  To take one example, we talked to an intelligent young man, who was working as a porter in a big hotel.  He said he had just been looking into his financial position, and found that though he was getting far higher wages than he had been doing five years before, he was worse off because everything was so expensive.  Another young man told us that he had recently bought a dairy farm, but he did not want one bigger than he could manage himself, or else all the profits were eaten up by the high wages, and the awkward rules about the hours of labour.

The much talked of Social Security of which the Government is so proud, seems in many ways a good thing.  Under it everyone has to pay one shilling out of every pound they earn to Government, for this old age insurance.  At the age of 60 everyone is entitled to draw so much a week (I have forgotten the exact sum) regardless of whether they have other sources of income or not.  The idlers and N’er do weals profit somewhat unfairly it seems to me.  There are people who say that the scheme is unsound, and that the time is not far off when the burden of supporting the old so liberally, will prove more than the young can bear.  What few of the workers seem to grasp is that the money they are paying now, is being used now, and not laid by for their use.  They will be dependent on these who are young when they are old.  Who knows but that the young will not by that time have struck against the system?  Both in New Zealand and in Australia we have noticed a strange ignorance about Banking.  One or two people in N.Z. said they could not think why Government did not borrow all the money in the savings banks to use for the war,  In Australia we have even seem letters to the same effect in the papers.

Opinions seem divided on the subject of education.  People speak well of the system, and many well-to-do and well educated people send their children to the Government schools.  We saw one Boys Secondary School, the Boys High School at Waitaki, and were much impressed by it.  It seemed to conform to the standard of an English Public School.  The education was free, and there were two or three boarding houses for which moderate fees were charged.

To the credit of the Government it must be said that one sees no beggers, and few people who look really poor.  When I come to think of it, though, this may not be due to the Government at all, but to the fact that there are so few people in an extremely healthy country, that it is not difficult for anyone who is willing to work, to earn his bread and butter and a bit over.  All the same behind the prosperity, there is a great deal of anxiety, and a feeling that sooner or later there will be a big financial crash.

All over the country, rich and poor alike, have the worst opinion of their own ministers.  The Finance Minister is said to have been twice bankrupt, and several others have bad records.  They do not in their personal lives preserve the simplicity they would seem to advocate for others.  The late Mr Savage, so we were told, was not like this.  He had the reputation of being absolutely genuine.  that is conceeded by the people who were most strongly opposed to him politically.  Further he remained scrupulously simple in his personal life.  We had neither the time not the opportunity to find out to what extent the ministers are genuine in the belief that they are doing the best for the country.  One supposes they must have some faith in what they are doing, but it appears that in education and mentality, they are not up to their jobs.

Hearing the present Government decried from one end of the country to the other, we asked, how is it that they remain in power.  Part of the answer seems to be that the Opposition lacks leaders and a policy.  Furthermore the Trades Unions control the votes of the workers.  I do not understand how they can tell which way a man has voted, but we were assured that they do, and that the man who votes against labour loses his job.  Subscriptions to the party funds are compulsory.  If you dont pay up you lose your job.  Subscriptions to some Trade Union publication is practically compulsory too.  Its a bad mark against you if you dont take in their paper.  This I had at first hand from two girls working in a Government Office, and it was mentioned as a fact by many other people.  The danger of controlled votes grows greater and greater as Government takes over more and more business concerns.  One cannot help feeling a grave danger that the country will find itself bound hand and foot by a system as rigid and didactic as those of Nazi Germany and Facist Italy. 

It is commonly said that the Government would have crashed long ago had it not been for the War, through which they have been able to camouflage their mistakes.

If New Zealand is a country run on Socialist lines, it is not much encouragement to people to adopt the Socialist creed, for it is clear that most of the enterprises Government have taken over have detiorated, and that development is held up through lack of confidence.  It is sad to see a country so young, so beautiful and with so may potentialities, being so badly mismanaged.

From LJT to Annette (on Eagle Heights Hotel printed paper)

c/o the Commonwealth Bank of Australia
Brisbane
July 18th 1941.

My darling Annette

The double mail from England and the same from Canada, which arrived last Saturday, were a rich feast – There were Aunt’s letters written on the 6th and 18th of May, telling all about Peg’s wedding. I am awfully glad that everything went off so well. Aunt was evidently delighted to have you there and so many of you at home to-gether again. She says the chatter round the table with only Romey absent reminded her of old times. It must have been a great help to have you at home – She also mentions Frank as being so methodical and useful. Do you know what Frank and Joeys views on pacifism are now?

Your letter was the one written at 4 a.m. on May morning, and it brings the good news of the recommendation for your promotion to be a Junior Assistant. I hope the recommendation goes through. Its always nice to have improved status, even if the net increase in money, is not very different. Its satisfactory to know that your work has been sufficiently good to warrent being taken notice of – Congratulations to you!

When I write about our travels, I always have un uneasy feeling that it may be giving you that nostalgic feeling. Of all the family, I think you would most have enjoyed the New Zealand mountains. I used to think of you so often when I was amongst them – As for your plan of sailing amongst the Greek Islands, it will be more important to know how to sail and navigate a boat, than to learn modern Greek! Perhaps you would take Richard and some of his friends to do the sailing part. The news from Russia the last few days makes rather anxious reading, but I suppose the Germans are buying their advance at huge cost of life and machines – Looking back, I see that I seem to have jumped from your dreams of post war holidays, to the fighting in Russia, with no connecting link – but in my mind, the link was there – the question – How long will the war last?

This letter of your talks about Auntie Do. it is sad that she should have sacrificed herself to her house – but one need not rush to the other extreme of living in a sack. Modern inventions and ideas have helped us, and probably will help us even more in the future, to lead a reasonably comfortable and comely life, without sacrificing all our time to the household gods. People have learnt to manage that way in these new countries, where servants are almost unobtainable – Old Miss Stable’s house and especially her kitchen arrangements are a masterpiece of convenience and labour-saving. Its well to remember that admirable teaching of the Lord Buddha about “The Middle Way of Virtue.” – Aunt tells me that Auntie Do left you her diamond and sapphire ring and some opal jewellery – I remember the ring, of course, but cant recollect the opal jewellery at all.

A remark about Mr Millar in your letter puzzels me. You say you do not think he can understand English verse, though he can follow quite rapid conversation – Is he not English? Also you write of Mr Hooper and Mr Cooper, when speaking about the recommended promotion. Are there a Mr Hooper and a Mr Cooper, or did you hit an H instead of a C one time? I have never carried out my intention of going back through your letters and making a list of the people in the office and of your friends –

You and Richard both talk about spring flowers, which gives me pleasure – This is an amazing place for flowers – It is mid-winter, but the narcissus, daffodils and violets are out – The peaches are just coming into bloom. Enormous Iceland poppies and very fine stocks have been in flower ever since we came up here and lo! yesterday there was an enormous bowl of sweetpeas in the hall. I suppose, like India – the summer here is too hot for the English flowers.

Dad has been very busy with his map and on some of our walks lately he has counted paces all the time and left me plenty of time to think. The birds are so plentiful and varied here, that they catch ones attention. I though that if only I had a better trained ear for sound, I might be able to write down some of the bird calls in musical symbols – Then I thought that surely the once talked of clash between science and art, must be ficticious, for surely both in sound and in colour, it is a fine susceptibility to the vibrations that cause the sound or the colour, and the ability to make patterns of them, that creates the artist, and he is making use of scientific fact. Four red and blue lowreys or mountain parrrotts have just flown screeching so close over the top of my head, that if I had put my hand up sufficiently quickly I could have touched them. They are now making a lot of noise in a young gum tree at the side of the lawn where I am sitting. Most of the birds are in a great state of fuss now – I think it is the beginning of the courting season – Six magpies were making a terrific din this morning, and “flying their beautiful flying” (as Richard said in his early poem) darting at each other and zooming up, just in time to avoid a collision – We watched them fascinated (Curse! I had brought a chair to the end of the garden to get away from the chatter of a group of females on the verandah – The sun has gone off the verandah and they have brought chairs quite near me and are shooting platitudes at one another with great content. Many of the Australian women are just as limited in the scope of their interests as the Indian women. I suppose they work so hard that they have no time to read – but truly I think that’s only an excuse with many of them – for those that have questing minds, find the time to read. The Mrs Fox who has recently arrived (see family letter) is a great refreshment. She reads and thinks has a shrewd humour and a caustic wit, which she is not slow to use on her own country. I am looking forward to more talk with her. She enjoys argument delightfully, which always points to a good quality of mind, dont you think? So many people, if you disagree with them, think you must be either a fool or a knave –

Best love, my dear
Mother

From LJT to Romey

Eagle Heights Hotel, Tamborine Mt
Queensland, Australia
July 22nd, 1941

My darling Romey,
The end of last week brought us a fare collection of letters from you. The handwritten one from the Gamma Phi House Party, Posted at Kenora on May 28th, with only 20 cents in stamps on it, reached us on July 12th and No 20 of 18/6/41 from Winnipeg, as well as the handwritten one from Keewatin, both came on the 13th, so with those three and the photos of the Gamma Phi party, as well as two weeks mail from home, we had a grand time.
Your descriptions, helped by the photos, give us quite a good idea of what holiday-making on the Lake of the Woods is like. It was a pity you had to go back to Winnipeg to work when Helen’s holiday was only half over, but it will be a great thing if you manage to get through your second year Chemistry at the Summer School.
It is very odd that my letter No 7 never reached you. I wonder what happened to it. I can’t send you a ‘repeat’ copy, for I sent the file with copies of all my letters up t that date, off from Sydney. I hope the swimming, boating and relaxing in the sun did both you and Helen lots of good, and I also hope that you are not getting it frightfully hot through July and August, when you have to be at work. I have looked at the Gamma Phi house-party photos a number of times, and various friends agree with me that the girls are a handsome and jolly-looking crowd. Some of them look very pretty; but one, who looks rather plain has a face that attracts me. She looks as if she might be a real humourist. In the photo of you sitting on the steps, she is on the extreme left of the front row, wearing striped socks and in the one where you are sitting one behind the other up the balustrade of the steps, she is behind you. It was a pity you did not have better weather for that party.
I sent quite a long letter to Helen with some notes on our impressions of the New Zealand Government, by sea mail, earlier this week. Impressions of the Australian Government are harder to gather, especially as we have traveled so little here and the country is so bit. Australia thinks of itself very much as different States. Is that so in Canada too? When I get back to Calcutta, I must search the Libraries for books on Canada, and try to learn a little more about it. Through the kind offices of my various American friends, I have been reading quite a lot about America during the last few years, but I don’t seem to have come across books on Canada.
Did I ever ask you whether you could find out from some photographer whether the photo of you in your fur coat “Quite the young lady” -- would enlarge well? It is such a nice picture that I should like to have it in a bigger size if possible. Now that the time of going home is drawing so near, I am beginning to feel excited about all sorts of things connected with it. There’s the trip in itself to begin with -- and seeing H.D. and Winsome again, and then we shall have the long overdue treat of seeing the film of you and John, taken and sent to us for last Christmas.
Our Flying Boat is leaving one day earlier than was originally planned, and I must send a letter to H.D. and Winsome, telling them of the change. It was lovely to get the letters last week telling about Peg’s wedding. I hope we get some photos of it soon. Michael sound a very nice person.
In the family letter I have mentioned a Mrs. Fox who is staying here. I have had some such interesting talks with her. She has been through hard experience of life on a far-off station, years of drought, complete financial ruin, and having to start again. It is the men and women who have come through this sort of thing and survived without being bitter, to whom we owe admiration, I think. Many of the Australian women are terribly dull to talk to. They are the ones who have not been “out in the blue”, but tend to do household duties in or near the towns, and with not sufficient energy or intellect to interest themselves in the world outside their limited circle. Mrs. Fox herself is a severe critic of them. She reads widely and voraciously. She went as far the other day as to say that she thought the Queensland women were the worst educated in the world. That is probably a big exaggeration, but there is truth behind it.
When we were discussing horses and riding, she said an English friend of hers, after staying in Australia, said he thought Queenslanders were the best horsemen and the worst horse-masters he had seen anywhere. That, she thinks, is true. There are lots of horses up here and quite a number of people have horses for riding, but I have not seen one that looks as if it had ever been groomed. Mrs. Fox says they don’t groom their horses. After a long day in the saddle a man comes in, and taking off saddle and bridle, just turns the horse into a paddock --- or if he’s in the open, hobbles him, and lets him find his own food. It seems odd to us, doesn’t it?
I would love to see some stockmen rounding up a big herd of cattle, but I know I won’t get a chance to do so. The old legend that an Australian would run half a mile to catch a horse to ride across the road, is not of course true of the sort of Australian life we have seen, but Mrs. Fox says there’s a lot of truth in it as regards station life -- “out back”.
I wonder whether I will be lucky with letters from you and from England and whether you and Aunt will have been able to judge the dates pretty well. I hope I may get one more mail from Canada and one from England before we leave. It’s been a lovely morning, but the wind is now rising almost to gale force, though, as is so often the case with these “Westerlies”, the sky is clear blue and the sun shining brightly. Please give my love and greetings to Cousin Susie and to Helen, and with dearest love for yourself,

Love,
Mother

Family letter from LJT No 27

Eagle Heights Hotel.  Tamborine Mountain.

Queensland.  Australia.

July 24th, 1941.

My Dears,

Our very pleasant visit here is almost at an end.  To-day is Thursday and we leave on Saturday afternoon.  When we were out walking this morning I began wondering what I would put into one of those Impressionist Pictures if I were asked to paint one representing this visit.  There would be gum-trees on jutting headlands - - tall silver trunks, and sunshine filtering through feathery foliage on to the grass-covered ground - - Dense rain-forest, huge tree boles festoned with creepers, and covered with ferns and mosses, reaching up to the light high above the dense undergrowth. - - Small streams cascading over rocks - - Groves of slender palms, the light slanting through their leaves as through the clere story windows of a cathedral - - Red and blue parrots chasing one another, and chattering in the trees - - fantails fluttering above ones head - - kukaburras sitting on tree stumps splitting with rollicking laughter - - walabees hopping across the road and thudding away through the bush - - sloping hill-sides set with orange trees heavy with yellow fruit - - meadows with inquisitive calves, ruminating cows and ungroomed horses - - small wooden houses with tin roofs and untidy surroundings - - Clear blue skies - - Brilliant sunshine - - flaming sunsets behind ranges of dark blue mountains - - Shining rivers snaking down to the sparkling blue ocean - - dead half burnt tree stumps - - Friendly people - - Log fires indoors of an evening - - cold nights with bright stars overhead or moonlight on the sea - - - - There could be a lot more, but the picture would by this time have become quite unmanageable.  Painters belonging to that school must have been able to shut out much that they saw from their consciousness.  I’ll be sorry to say good-bye to all this, but I know that one thing alone would set me against settling in Australia and that is the wretched standard of housing.  The houses are small, ugly and inconvenient.  From looking at them one would suppose that architects dont exist.  Some people from Melbourn tell us that the standard of housing in Victoria is much better.  Maybe the wonderful climate which allows people to live mostly out of doors in Queensland, has made them care little about their houses.

Mrs Fox and her cousin, Mrs Maclellen have been our fairly constant companions so long as we have been in or about the hotel, during the past week, but in true Australian fashion, they are horrified by the idea of walking.  Major Fox only had a few days up here, but the other two are a great joy.  Little by little Mrs Fox has told me the outline of the story of her life.  She must be about my age or a little younger.  Her mother took her to school in England, and she had not long left school when the Kaiser’s war broke out.  They took a flat in Westminster and made a sort of headquarters for any Anzac lads they knew, wrote to give their people news of them and helped them in any way they could.  This business grew till they had really to make a business of it, hired an office on the ground floor of the building and employed two stenographers.  They had 2,500 soldiers on their books before the end of the war, and used to act for their people in getting presents or advancing money to men coming on leave, and so on and so on.  The mother was given an O.B.E. at the end of the war, and Mrs Fox, having come back to Australia, married her husband, who had known her since she was a child.  They put all their money into a sheep farm in Western Queensland, and were just making good nicely, and had two young babies, when they were struck by a drought lasting five years.  Before the end of it they had spent their last shilling trying to feed their sheep, for they could not bear to see them die, or be pulled down and eaten by wild pigs while they were still alive but too weak to resist or run away.  All this while, with the thermometer standing often at 110° in the shade, Mrs Fox had to cook and look after the house and the children, as well as cooking for all the shearers in the shearing season.  When the well water got very low and seemed to be tainted, her husband sent her and the children away to her mother.  She said when she said good-bye to him she feared she would never see him again, for he hates suffering and was almost demented at being able to do nothing more for the sheep, and she knew he still had his service revolver.  However he did stick it out, but when there was not a sheep left alive, he came away and had to go bankrupt.  He got different jobs, and settled down to buying cattle or wool for firms, till he was able to pay off 16/6d in the pound.  I gather he has more or less stuck to this line ever since, till this war came, when, since he had always remained on the reserve of officers, he was called up to serve.  His wife says that now he is a soldier again, she realizes that he has never been really happy out of the army.  Wishing to save their son from what they had suffered on the land, they put him into the Forestry Dept.  He has now joined up in the Army and gone off to start his training.  When he went away, he said, “Mother!  I dont believe I shall ever be really happy till I am rounding up cattle with a good horse under me”.  “So you see” says Mrs Fox, “Its no good!  He will go back to the land if he comes back from the war”.  I have repeated all this at some length, for I think it is interesting to come across lives like this at first hand.  I marvel how people can come through experiences like that and not become bitter.  I look with amazement at the twinkle in Mrs Fox’s eyes, and her readiness to laugh at a joke, and wonder whether I would have had the courage to come through grilling experiences like that and still be able to present such a cheerful face to the world.

The week’s doings have gone on as before.  We usually go for a long walk in the morning, and we had quite a succession of tea-parties at the end of last week.  I dont remember whether I ever told you of the queer old retired padre who has a dairy, chicken and orange farm close here?  We went to buy oranges there soon after we arrived.  The old boy was leaving next day to visit a married daughter in Darwin, but the daughter came to call on us and invited us to tea last Friday.  She and her brother are nice folk to talk to.  There is another daughter who is a bit queer in the head, but she was delighted with Herbert’s conversation, and rocked herself about with laughter at his smallest jokes.  The living room was a depressing place, just the wooden floor walls and ceiling, all rather grubby.  The furniture was very old, with springs gone and covers worn out.  There was a closed-in stove in one corner of the room, a dining table in another, and some untidy books arranged higeldy-pigeldy on a couple of shelves.  I don’t remember anything else except a few faded photos on the walls.  The windows were so built that sitting in the room, one could not see the glorious view away down the hills to the sea, which alone would make the room worth living in.  They say they do quite well with their farm.  I wonder whether it is necessary to live in such squalor.  Miss Macdonald’s where we had tea the next day was a very different story.  I think I mentioned her in a letter a few weeks ago, for we had been to tea with her before.  She has two charming cottages, joined by a covered way, and they have been build to show the beautiful views from the windows and to let in the garden, so to speak.  She has good furniture and pictures and lots of books in all her rooms, and it was a refreshment after seeing such an uncouth home the previous day.  On Sunday evening we were helping old Miss Stable with curtains again, and had tea with her.  People here are so interested in all her old English furniture and china and glass and pictures, that she was asked to set aside times when people might come to see her house, paying 1/ to the Red Cross Funds for the priveledge of doing so.  She has made quite a lot of money in this way.  She says the comments of the visitors are sometimes very funny.  Treasures brought from English homes are not so common in Australia as they are in New Zealand.

Herbert is still working on the map.  Miss Macdonald produced a big map of the mountain marking all the plots of land for sale, and the scheme for development.  This showed that Herbert’s sketch was pretty good, but not quite accurate in some respects, so he has set to, and redrawn it.  He has infinite patience when he is doing anything like this.

Our day of departure has been put forward and we now leave on Thursday the 7th, so two weeks to-day we shall be on our way.  Its hard to realize that we shall have to abandon all wooly clothes so quickly.  At Townsville we are definitely in the tropics.  Letters came from Harry a few days ago, saying that everything will be ready for us in Calcutta.  It will be nice having a day or two with them before Herbert takes up work again.  

My inspiration seems to have run dry, and so its obviously time to stop.

Best love to you all

LJT

From LJT to Annette No 27

Eagle Heights Hotel – Tamborine Mountain
Queensland Australia
July 23rd 1941

My darling Annette

Before I forget – Will you number your letters? It is satisfactory to be able to check up whether any have gone astray. There’s a “Westerly” blowing – a strong cold wind from the interior, but it does not disturb the cloudless blue sky and the brilliant sunshine. The art of being happy and comfortable this morning, is therefore to get out of the wind and into the sun – There’s a wide sun-porch between two wings of the hotel which accomplishes this, but there are many people there and no chance of writing quietly, so I have brought a chair out into the garden under lee of one wing of the house. Its a great success, except that somehow in this chair, the writing pad does not balance very well on any knee – I’ve got another letter from Romey – or rather two in one envelope – Yesterday – accounts of the holiday at Keewatin Beach with Helen and her friends and of starting work at the Summer School – I hope she manages to do the Chemistry II successfully and to get through her exams. In a recent letter to me, she says that she has still no idea what she would like to do – I mean in the way of a career. Have I ever mentioned to you my idea that Romey might make a good doctor? I think she has the right sort of temperament, but I dont know whether she has the brains – Also I dont want to suggest it to her for fear of influencing her too much, for I think medicine is a profession the following of which should essentially come from the heart. I have a shrewd idea that a Manitoba B.A. – (Pass – for Romey clearly wont get Honours) wont be worth much, but after all, if she takes it next Spring, she will still be only the age that most people are when they go to a University in England –

There’s been some quite good talk going round this week – Mrs Fox (see family letters) and her cousin, Mrs Maclellen are both intelligent women, who read a lot, have quick minds and an almost too well developed sense of humour, so that we often have to avoid catching each other’s eyes when another woman at our table, who is plum stupid, and very sentimental and pretentious as well, really gets going. Its a treat to meet women like these two cousins out here, for the women, however much praise is due to them for unremitting hard house work and so on, are poorly educated and intellectually, very dull. Mrs Fox is very free in her criticism of them. She thinks most of them are mentally lazy, and when they do have time to read, either dont bother, or content themselves with tripe novels. Most of the men are better, because they can at least talk about their jobs.

This V for Victory campaign is a queer thing – I can well understand its use in the occupied territories, but I dont quite see the point of it in Britain and the Empire. True it might help to wake up some of the people here, a proportion of whom seem not to realize the stupendous importance of the War in the least. In life one is always running up against strange mixtures – and so it is here, for one hears of families where three or four sons have all gone to the war – and left an old father and some women-kind to carry on the farm and the next moment you see that iron smelters – or engineers, or some men engaged in key industries have struck for an extra ½ an hour on their wages, or something of the sort, and have downed tools, holding up war production, without giving time or opportunity to the conciliation boards to look into their grievances. it makes us sick to read of it, as indeed it does the good Australians, but the great question is how to control it. It seems that there is no strong and disinterested political leader – or leader with a group of men to back him, who can voice the disgust of a large and the best educated section of the public against such things. Menzies people believe to be disinterested and honest, but he has not got the backing. In Australia one sees very clearly the danger of manhood sufferage – The balance of voting power is held by people who have no ideas beyond increasing their own personal pay and advantage – Even in this crisis of world affairs they fail to see that if Britain were beaten, the few extra shillings in their pockets and the few extra hours free from work, wont profit them much – I think it would be beneficial to many of the sentimental type of socialist, to come to this country and to New Zealand and to study the working of governments who are controlled by the Labour vote.

Its naughty of Dad not to have written to any of you this week – He has been absorbed in his map – He and Dicky are very much alike in the way that when they get a craze for anything, they bury themselves in it and forget all about the everyday duties – I believe its sometimes called “the artist’s temperament!!!

Bless you, my dear – and love to you as always
Mother

Family letter from LJT No 28

“Montpelier”

Brisbane.  Queensland.

Australia.

July 30th, 1941.

My Dears,

A week to-day we leave Brisbane: I was just going to say, we leave Australia, but that would not be correct, for we spend two more nights on Australian soil.  I think this will be the last letter I shall write before we go, in all probability, for it seems I am going to be pretty busy next week.  We have several engagements.  We have our own packing to do, with elaborate weighing of the suit cases for transit by air, and Teresa who is again uprooting herself, and going down to Sydney, wants me to help her pack up her hoards of treasures.  Our visit to Tamborine was an unqualified success, and we said good-bye, with some regret, though we have not so far felt of any place in Australia that we should like to live there.  We had the company of Mrs Fox and Mrs Maclellan (her cousin) on the journey down, and the descent from the Mountain was looking its best in the afternoon light.  It was dark before we reached Brisbane, and glittering lights of the city, with the dark line of the mountains discernable against the faint light in the Western sky was beautiful.  Teresa was waiting for us in the hall-lounge, eager, poor dear, to pour out all her troubles and money difficulties.  It seems to me so strange that she should not have realized earlier that her income, all derived from investments in England, would not shrink with the strain of the war.  It undoubtedly is hard on old or infirm people that the money on which they live should grow so much less, but in Teresa’s case she still has enough to live on in reasonable comfort.  The trouble is that her ideas are so large, and she chafes against having to curb them.  I devoted the first half of Sunday morning to listening to her, and then Herbert and I escaped into the sunshine and took a walk through two of Brisbane’s parks, which lie on the slope of a hill, above a valley along which the railway runs.  On the opposite slope there are golf links, so the whole effect is quite rural.  The weather in Brisbane is lovely, but we find it cold in the house.  We have an excellent large bed-sitting room, with a balcony, but it gets no sun at this time of year, no more does Teresa’s sitting room next door.  This must be a great advantage through most of the year, when people want to dodge the heat.  Once the sun is well up, it is glorious out-of-doors.  We have been quite busy since we came back here, attending to the business of getting away from Australia, shopping, meeting people, and seeing places.  Our nice friends, Mr and Mrs Watson, have been kindness itself.  Mr. Watson had been away in Melbourne for ten days or a fortnight, so they had some petrol saved up, and they took us and Teresa as well, for a most lovely drive.  Brisbane, as you probably all know, lies some way up the Brisbane River.  Off the coast, opposite the mouth there are two long narrow islands, Moreton Is to the northward stretching for about 25 miles, and Stradbroke is to the South, stretching for about 35 miles, right down to Southport, and sheltering a big family of little islands between it and the shore.  Mr Watson drove us out to the coast to the South of the River, through pleasant forest country, grazing lands and fruit gardens.  The coast stretches a series of long points into the sea towards Stradbroke Island.  Tall gum trees, and wide spreading figs grow close to the coast, and in places both on the mainland and the islands, mangrove swamps edge the sea.  The whole stretch of Moreton Bay, sheltered from the surf and storms, by the ranges of hills on the islands, is a yachtsman’s paradise, each little bay has its fleet of sailing boats and motor boats.  We visited one headland after another, including Cleveland, which at one time was intended to be the Port of Brisbane.  Each point has its collection of small wooden bungalows on stilts, summer cottages for Brisbane people.  Inland most of the land is taken up with fruit and vegetable growing.  There are huge fields of pine-apples, orchards of bananas, and custard apples, and big areas of strawberry fields, (in fruit at the moment!) as well as fields devoted to tomatoes, carrots, peas and cauliflowers.  We saw the remains of the first sugar mill that was started in Australia, and passed the house where Mrs Watson’s grand-father (great uncle?  I am not sure which) lived.  He was also a pioneer in the sugar world.  She pointed out an island lying not far off the coast which belonged to that family, and told us how they used to buy unbroken horses, and swim them over to the island, where there was no difficulty in keeping them till they were broken in and ready for work.  We stopped for tea at a sort of farm house on top of steep banks, almost cliffs above the coast.  There were benches and tables under a sort of rough rustic shelter, from which the lovely view of coast, sea and islands was all visible.  A smiling woman came running from the house to attend to our wants, and soon brought scones, home-made strawberry jam, of the most exquisite, and real Devonshire cream.  In answer to our exclaimations, she said that she came from Devon, and had never lost the art of cream-making.  She stayed and chatted to us while we eat, telling of her brother, who joined up the morning war was declared, and is proud to be No 9 in the A.I.F.  He is in Tobruk, and writes that they are all fit and cheerful in spite of a monotonous life, and an unvaried diet of bully beef.  Her sister had been nursing in England and after an absence of five years, had got as far as South Africa on her return journey to Australia when war broke out, so she turned round and went straight back to England.  These little glimpses give one a good impression of a sound and staunch family.  We came out on to a headland at sunset when the tide was falling and wet sand and mud flats were taking on lovely colours from the red and orange of the sunset.  The Watsons are surpassing ordinary kindness in the things they are doing for us.  Yesterday Mr Watson called for us after lunch and took us to see the State Parliament House.  Its a fine stone building, with dignified rooms.  The Council Chamber gives lavish space for the comparatively small number of members - - forty was the number mentioned I think.  There used to be an upper chamber, but that was done away with some years ago, and the chamber in which it used to meet is now used for special committees and so on. We were impressed by the library, which is made up of books of all sorts, travel, biography, fiction even.  Mr Watson drove us round by the University, housed in the old Government House as a temporary measure, while the New University across the river is being built.  Back in the centre of the town, the men dropped me for an appointment to have tea with the Girl Guide State Commissioner, Lady Macartney and the State Commissioner for Victoria, Lady Chauval, wife of the well known General of the last war, and such a nice woman.  She has two sons in Indian Cavalry regiments, so talk ranged about India as well as about Girl Guides.  Herbert had meantime, been taken on to see the Conservator of Forests, partly because Mr Watson thought the Forest Department might make use of Herbert’s map of Tamborine Mountain, and the guide he has written to the walks.  He is sending one copy to the three sisters who run Eagle Heights Hotel, and the Forest Dept have kept the other.  Mr Grenning, the Conservator, knows our old friend of the Indian Forests, E.O. Shebbeare, and quite a number of the other forest people.  I spent yesterday morning shopping with Teresa and helping her to get some things out of boxes which are in store.  I always find shopping exhausting myself, and standing about watching someone else shop is even more tiring.  Teresa is one of those people who love to have someone hanging round in attendance, but she never will delegate a job, and let an assistant get on with it.  The poor old thing is convinced that she can live cheaper in Sydney, but most people tell me that living is cheaper in Queensland.  She also says that people are used to her entertaining here and will think it funny if she stops doing so.  It seems to me a foolish attitude. I can see no difficulty in telling all ones friends that the War has caused a drop in income, and that entertaining will have to be taboo, but evidently people think differently about these things.  Anyhow I dont suppose Teresa will ever settle until she is bed-ridden.  The odd thing is that in all these years she has not learnt her own character, and each time she takes a house or rooms, she settles in, getting the best of everything because “it will be the most economical in the long run”, and a few months later she sells everything at a heavy loss.  No one can advise her.  She just has to go her own way!

Mrs Wand, wife of the Archbishop of Queensland, came to take us all for a drive this morning.  We went out to the coast north of the river mouth this time, and had morning tea at a little tea house right above the beach, looking across the wide stretch of Moreton Bay to distant Moreton Island, which is much further from the coast than is Stradbroke Island to the South.  On our way home Mr. Wand took us to see their house, which is a nice roomy solid stone building, standing in a pleasant garden.  It was good to be in a solid and comely building again, after the rickety wooden structures in vogue in Queensland, and N.S.W. for that matter.  We only got home just in time for me to rush off to keep a lunch appointment with a Girl Guide who was working in the Guide Office when I went there first.  We discovered that we were both fond of mountains, and we met to-day partly so that she could show me some of her photos of trekking and climbing in the mountains of Queensland.  After parting from her, I went shopping and bought some presents to send home to one or two people, unromantic things of a warm wooly nature.  By the time I got home, Teresa was thinking of beginning to make some little foodings for a small cocktail party she gave this evening.  She denies extravagance, for she says that the party was to finish up the bottles of drink she already had.  It was a nice little party, but the meal times in Australia are not suitable for cocktail parties, with dinner at 6.15, supper-parties are much more suitable.  Several Eagle Heights friends have rung up and invited us out, more actually than we have been able to cope with.  We had morning tea with Mrs Fox, and met her son, now under training as a soldier.  Next Tuesday we are going to dinner with the nice bride and bridegroom who sat at our table for the first ten days of our stay on Tamborine.  Mr Watson is taking us out to see his pig-farm tomorrow morning, and we are to spend Saturday evening with them so that we can see the boys.  Saturday afternoon I am abandoning Herbert and going to a Girl Guide Rally, and on Sunday the State Secretary of the Girl Guides is taking us out to a Koala Bear Park called Lone Pine, somewhere on the outskirts of the city.  On Monday we are going to spend the afternoon with Mrs Fox, who lives in one of the more distant suburbs, and Professor and Mrs Goddard have invited us to a little drink-party before dinner on Wednesday, so you see our time in Brisbane is well larded with engagements.  Professor Goddard has lent Herbert a book on humus by which he is quite enthralled.  Last night we escaped to have a little time to read quietly before going to sleep, and as I was reading Mona Robinson’s book, “Menacing Sun”, Herbert kept on reading me bits out of the humus book, so that I fancy I shall have fixed memories that the making of humus is in some way vitally connected with Siam -- beg pardon -- Thailand.  It was that section of the book I was reading at that special moment.  That book of Mona Robinson’s is worth reading by the way, if you have not already come across it.  She lived in Tokio for some years; worked as a newspaper correspondent in China for the first few months of the Japan-China war, and then journeyed through all the countries on which it seemed Japan had covetous eyes.  I don’t think I’ll start another sheet, but just send my love

LJT