“Monger’s Lake” – The name stared back at me from a large billboard on the green verge of a gravely foot path. It taunted me; pulled hard at my memory. Was it such a place as this of which my father had dreamed when he said: “Someday, Lou, we’ll build a house beside Monger’s Lake”?
Never did my parents build themselves the house beside a lake, certainly not Monger’s Lake, spreading its shallow waters beyond a slight ridge from where I stood, spring-fed, and coeval with Time and its passing, it had survived forlorn hopes and purposes of man, perhaps even my father.
Yet by some twist of Fate it had drawn me to its side, inviting me to rest awhile, and I came willingly, dropping my bicycle and stretching myself beside it on the green sward.
It had been a tiring day. Looking back across the domestic landscape scene from which I had just cycled I gazed on drab streets filled with people pinned down close to the hard earth, spending their lives in living in “little boxes, by the lakeside; little boxes made of ticky tacky; little boxes on the hillside; little boxes, all the same.”
Not all the same to me. During the hot day I had visited many of those little homes, opening gates, stepping timorously inside fences with a warning sign, meeting housewives and their curious/inquisitive children, listening, talking. Ordinary people, each one wrapped within her own small world of light and shade, joy and melancholy discontent, a world differing from mine only in the circumstances which had conspired to make me that day a part of my own self-disciplined program.
Resting on that grassy knoll I could see the fresh water lake, not a ripple on its limpid waters.
Unbidden, the past flashed on “that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude”, and one by one the events of just one month filed past, much like the ducks softly gliding behind each other along the rushes at the margin of a lake.
On the eve of my twenty‑first birthday just three weeks earlier I had farewelled my mother, my sisters, relatives and friends, my birthday Globite suitcase packed to capacity, and joined the Kalgoorlie Express, on the first stage of an adventure filled with imponderables for which no road or rail map was provided. I knew the name and position of every rail siding; each rural community through which we would pass; the eight pumping stations and watering spots where the Puffing Billy would awaken the sleeping passengers with its burst of steam and its shrill whistle. Each one of the 17 hours of travel was taking me further from the only home I had ever known.
I was too excited to be sad; too uncertain of the future to plan; too lonely to interpret the flight of emotions of the night. A friend would be meeting me in Perth; I would chart my course from that point.
Mrs. Adam Baird’s warm welcome on the bustling railway station in Perth was reassuring. By tram we travelled to her home, then to a small lodging room in West Leederville, where I, who had been sheltered for so long would experience the challenge of making my own way in a path of my own choosing, surely like the mystical “arch where gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades forever and forever when I move….” I was not of the breed of Ulysses! I was no Grecian hero. I was but a mere untrained, untraveled girl; but new in faith, hope, and in love! I know of no more rewarding nor victorious an arrival.
Within a day or two I visited the headquarters of the Church, and was interviewed, and refreshed in spirit. From the hands of an enthusiastic man I received a book of rules for beginners, a supply of religious magazines, small topical books, and a prospectus for a larger Home Nursing book for which to accept orders for future delivery. Unthought-of, unsolicited, from the sheds of the Church offices came a lady’s bicycle! That was a long-deferred bonus. All through my early school days I had longed for, and prayed for a bicycle of my own. At no time did I own one.
Life abounds for such pockets of unrequited longings, secretly waiting for the key, which fits! Now I had the key! With the idealism of a new-found Faith I accepted the use of that bicycle as a God-given answer to my most obvious need for transport and portage. I could not have covered my assigned territory without it, newness of outlook came unbidden, a natural component of a two‑way contract I made with God: An attitude of mind perhaps too fragile to be long-lasting. While it stays it is beautiful to experience: A joy to have known.
Into the rear carrier of my bicycle I stacked my stock-in-trade, and became one of a team of colporteurs already threading their various ways through other sections of the City and country towns. Few in number, of mixed ages and backgrounds, most had some specific goal in mind, such as a future college career. Some were stalwarts, spending their years selling the books of the denomination and a personal drive of spreading the Gospel to all the world and in their small corner.
At that time I had not established a goal for myself. I was just assigned to sell books; good books, religious books. I had been assured I would develop confidence, gain experience, and make a token living – in that order.
I was now on my own, dependent on my personal efforts and my ability to adjust to a variety of people of different personalities and situations to work with a will, and to leave behind a good impression.
Never before had I sold anything, not even a raffle ticket for a deserving cause. Little wonder mother questioned my choice of work. I sent her an encouraging report after one week, seeking to impress her that there were many ways of satisfaction and well-being, that I had found one already. All was well. After two weeks I was moving along city streets with a confident air; I had no regrets.
Still dreaming by the lakeside I recalled the day of my baptism in the Perth Seventh-day Adventist Church, receiving the right hand of fellowship, and resolving that I would become a share partner in whatever activities or help I could offer. I had made my decision. I would honor whatever I had promised.
Since then, each day had been occupied in learning my craft, sometimes rewarding, sometimes accomplishing little, like every undertaking of life. The quality and variety of responses was stimulating; the cash returns lean; tomorrow’s hopes always rosy.
Why should they not be? Did I not have in my bag a letter from Roy telling me he would be arriving in Perth on that morrow?
He had returned to Kalgoorlie to pack his goods before moving to a new assignment in the South West of the State. His letter told of a round of visitation, and of calling on mother who received him graciously. He took a small Easter gift for my 4-year-old sister Monnie, and had written a little dizzy for her alone. He told them of a transfer to a small town of Manjimup, and that he was to spend a couple of days in Perth en route. He would meet me there, and would assist me with any plans I cared to make for the future.
I sensed mother expected to hear more of that “Young Mr. Blankslatter”, as she later wrote of the encounter.
Yes, tomorrow! Roy would be here tomorrow, and what better time for day-dreaming beside Monger’s Lake, for was he not a part of those daydreams too? With the shadows lengthening, I gazed once more across the landscape of narrow streets and ticky tacky houses, and was thankful that my parents had not built a home there too.
Those people would never know the delicious unpredictability of the place where I was born, where there was always the promise of gold beyond the far horizon. That had been the hope of my grandparents, of my parents. I too had been cast in that mold.
Now, in some strange way, I had discovered that which glitters is not gold; the golden age comes only to those who have forgotten the Gold itself; to those who have found it in things of eternal worth, faith, contentment, love. The gold mystique lives on, despite one’s moralizings, but I now knew only that I had something of true worth – I had a faith to live by, and the love of a very special kind of man!
Calm was the lake and peaceful, flicked now with rose and gold at the day’s closing. It was time to mount my bicycle, to pedal up the hill, free-wheel down to its base, swing around the corner and reach the gateway of my home. It was good to be alive. Tomorrow I would be on the railway station as the train chugged in! I would pack a lunch for two, the first meal we would enjoy by ourselves alone.
Early next day I joined the expectant crowds as the engine huffed and puffed, its carriages bearing evidence of the long journey, of soot laden smoke from the hot engine. I watched the flurry of disembarking travelers greeting friends; the rear goods carriage disgorging stacks of passengers’ luggage – woven straw dress baskets, tin trunks, even an occasional Globite suitcase like mine.
I watched the copious drafts of steam issuing from the still panting engine, and in an inspired moment of Time was one in spirit with the French Impressionist painters of another day and age, seeing through their enchanted eyes the smoke-laden atmosphere, the billowing clouds of murky steam, twirling to the high-vaulted dome of Gare Saint Lazare or other French railway stations of their day. The rolling action, the moving play of light and shade fired their imaginations, and they captured it on their broad canvasses, a rich, diverse legacy for our day. Heart of the people joining the platform? The children? They were just a setting for such a scene, just background, mere blobs of paint! The one I waited for that day was no mere blob of …………….. I waited patiently. He wore on a vast substantial smile, a smile worthy of the brush of Artist Monet!
Romance stays for so short a time. Within two days we were back once more on another platform, waiting for the shrill whistle of the South-bound train to announce the departure for Bunbury, Bridgetown, and by way of the Timber Company Rail, to Manjimup and Pemberton, the end of the line. With a promise to write frequently, a kiss and a final wave he was gone once more. I made my way to the tram and was soon back to my small room.
My bicycle was still waiting. The drab streets were still waiting; the ticky-tacky houses filled with housewives and children still waiting. There would always be gates to open, doors on which to knock, people to listen when they could, and questions to answer to the best of my limited capacity.
I know I had a newer song in my heart and a spring in my step as I tackled the task again, more determined than ever to make a success of what I had begun. No matter what I attempted I would never equal the audacious effort Roy was planning as he commenced the work then assigned to him. I believe the man and the hour had met. He was young enough to tackle the impossible; imaginative enough to try out new methods; willing enough to spend and be spent.
The project was part of a colonizing effort to bring thousands of British migrants to Australia to help fill the vast empty spaces; the opportunity granted each family a large section of land, dividing wide areas into numbered groups of 20 families each, and under experienced Government supervision, helped them to create their own farms. Known as the Group Settlement Scheme, it ultimately swallowed up 75 thousand people, scattered throughout the continent, and countless millions in capital.
The scheme was struggling to find its feet in 1924, when Roy arrived in Manjimup. Miles of forest land had been cleared. Shacks had been built, the newcomers experienced the feel of colonial living. Some of the land was already in cultivation; thousands of giant Jarrah and Karri trees had been felled, and new townships raised.
It was, in the words of Scripture, a land ready for harvest; the land for sowing the seed of friendship and helpfulness to the new Australians, a small army of ill-equipped settlers from the crowded cities of Britain. It was our task to perhaps help some adjust to new ways of colonial living, so vastly different from the crowded cities of their British homeland. The rough and tumble of colonial life was new, and loneliness a constant companion. It would take time and much effort on the part of all before so vast and imaginative a scheme would prove its worth.
Roy was but one of many who were endeavoring to bring help and support where it was needed, the only young minister (clergyman) working in the several Group Settlements within the reach of Manjimup. Before long Roy’s regular letters became an epic tale of daring, of innovative planning, of improvisation, of meeting and making new friends, beyond what I could have dreamed.
He had early secured accommodation in the homes of several pioneering families of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, drawing support from their strength, and encouraged from their loyalty in the tenets of the faith they had learnt long years earlier from the first evangelist of the faith to visit Western Australia, in the first years of this twentieth century.
In isolation these three or four families had stood loyally by the tenets of their new-found faith, and offered an abounding generosity to help a young evangelist become started in his ministry. From them he had borrowed a stout horse, and ventured into the virgin land, with its deep, wheel-rutted forest trails.
He wrote of visiting in the rough shacks of the new settlers, of calling together the children of the communities, telling them stories beneath any wide-spreading eucalyptus tree, of calling together any willing group for divine service in the open-air, or a mill company’s hall. From his account, it was high adventure at its pioneering best, hard work, but forever-changing interest and its rewarding results.
He developed friendly contacts with some of the local townsfolk in Manjimup, itself quite small, and in the usual way, outflowing in its helpfulness. In a short space of time, Roy was drawn into an honorary appointment as the local Brass Band conductor, playing with them when he could. These contacts opened up a wider range of interests and communal activities beyond the immediate scope of his principal concerns, his regular missionary effort amongst the Group Settlers in reachable areas of his territory.
With all the roads into the newly-developing land mere wagon trails, he soon owned a spritely mare called Tittle, and together they weathered the torrential rains of winter and the flower sprinkled trails of summer. His parish covered Manjimup, Jardinup, and the well-established timber town of Pemberton, where a large Company Mill was in full operation, and where were several pioneering families of the church. In the Mill Company hall he took turns sharing the Sunday pulpit with other visiting clergymen. Through the torrential rains of winter and the glorious wildflowers of spring time he worked and established a sound footing in the district.
There was soon an obvious need for a fellow worker, one accustomed to rural living, and with free-wheeling qualifications of an oldtime gospeller. Such requirements were met in a young man named Albert Markey, who shared with Roy the shelter of a rough built cottage on the outskirts of town, just beyond the reach of the electricity services, and postal and other civic amenities.
A second horse was purchased, as no other means of transport could have traversed those rough tracks. Soon the missionary outreach was accomplishing what it had set out to do, and families were regularly hearing the same Bible truths to which I had listened, and were enjoying fellowship with Church members in Manjimup and elsewhere. They were learning to be at home in their adopted land.
This was part of the story around which my daydreams were now assembled. It was in the best tradition of pioneering, vastly different from the Goldfields which I had known. I was to hear firsthand with Roy’s visit to Perth, when we were able to make more definite plans for our future.
During those canvassing months I had found opportunities to visit mother’s second cousins, the Hawkens, relatives of a great-aunt Alex, whose basketry wonderland had charmed me as a child. While I recalled the visit to Uncle Donnelly’s visit to Scotland on the hunt for some possible inheritance due to my grandmother and her sister Alex, and it was refreshing to review the past with the family once more.
At mother’s request I had sought out and visited her relatives, Great-aunt Alexandrina Donnelly, then widowed and living in the home of her eldest daughter, mother’s cousin. The Hawkens family offered me lavish hospitality whenever I could visit their home, and enjoy a Sunday meal around their long extension table, and the company of their large family of bright children.
Now I well recall the only time I had met Uncle Donnelly, when he was highly stimulated at the prospect of an inheritance from some distant relative of the Campbell Clan, to which my grandmother and Alex belonged.
Of special mention also the visits with the Hockley family, whom I had first met in the little Mission Tent in Varden Street, Kalgoorlie, when I was about 18. With the constantly failing fortunes of the goldmines of Kalgoorlie, the Hockley family had moved to the country areas surrounding Perth, and on the banks of the Canning River had carved for themselves a flourishing market gardening business.
Beautiful for situation, their simple home was a haven of restful abundance for me, carrying with it memories of past friendships, and the light-hearted effervescent atmosphere of their happy home and family. It was a delight to sample the joy of simple living.
We rode to the country Adventist Church at Gosnells each Saturday morning in a large dray or cart, ate with genuine relish a packed luncheon by the river, joined a Youth-oriented afternoon program supplied by clear-faced young people under the direction of their elders. Then it was home in time to milk the cows, collect the eggs, and early to bed in readiness for a Sunday work-out of the entire family in the cabbage patch, the plots of beans, potatoes, tomatoes – anything in season. It was a try-out of the Good Earth at its best. A fillip to jaded canvassing nerves or family-hungry ****!
During those long months I had been working through my assigned territory, and extending it, less exciting, save as I made a determined effort to extract the maximum from each day’s work. My cash returns were just sufficient to cover expenses, but I was happy and in good spirits.
My Kalgoorlie friend, Dorothy Gray, had decided to join me in Perth for a term of colporteur work, while she awaited the arrival of her widowed mother and family. Dorothy was quiet and self-effacing, with no career beyond the career of a home, and I felt she might wilt under the stressful demands of the door-to-door canvassing. Nothing daunted, she arrived, and I moved to larger quarters to share what accommodations I could with her straining my own irregular income. I know I rested in the promise of the Book, so often glibly quoted, “The Lord will provide”. I put it to the test, and He did ! Within a month I was invited to join the offices of the Church headquarters in West Perth.
After almost eight months of canvassing I was invited to join the staff of the headquarters office. I was again seated behind the typewriter and a desk, secretary to a departmental leader, doing that for which I had been trained, gainfully employed with an assured income, albeit, a meager one, in keeping with the depressed times. I had little money, but no debts. I had made friends, and gained experience. I was fulfilled and very happy.
And all the while Roy’s saga of his pioneering adventure brought satisfying emotions as I waited for his periodic visits back to Perth. When I had first commenced to work in the Church office he had made a rushed trip, mainly on Church business, but providing opportunities for a wonderful few days together. Roy had but once come to visit me in Perth, so engrossed was he in his program of activities in the Timber belt. On that happy occasion we met as often as possible, and splurged our cash savings by way of a quietly arranged engagement celebration.
We made our plans for marriage in January 1926, choosing a college friend of Roy to seal the contract.
Roy and I decided to splash out on our first joint enterprise – the purchase of a beautiful, second-hand Wertheim piano, combining our bank accounts – twenty-five pounds each! The purchase was buttressed by my promise to practice faithfully in readiness to play any accompaniment from the wad of sheet music he left in my care.
Dorothy’s mother had arrived in Perth and was just getting up home of her own. The piano was taken to Mrs. Gray’s home and I moved there too, the better to carry out our promise to work on that ivory keyboard.
Roy’s visit set the seal on our engagement and wedding plans, encouraging me to branch out further and to coax from the Singer Sewing Machine, treadle model. Before Roy returned to his wide-spreading parish we added this second joint venture, easily contrived by each of us sharing the initial deposit, and a monthly installment of 16 shillings.
While I now write it, for sweet nostalgia’s sake, I must spare a word or two for that sewing machine. I find it difficult to decide if I were an old-fashioned bride-to-be, honoring the tradition of a home-sewn, hand-crafted bridal trousseau/or if indeed I represented the pre‑synthetic era of a time which knew nothing of the audacious wisps of diaphanous lingerie, held in reserve for a more modern generation. My old-fashioned approach to the unalloyed pleasure of assembling a trousseau of cotton cambric and muslin belonged to the pre‑synthetic era of time. To the delight of an age of practical brides, a silken fabric known as tussore or fuji silk, plus a softer variety called crepe-de-chine had just reached the markets of the world. How we pounced on these.
This I know: I worked that Singer treadle sewing machine hard, hemming sheets, making pillowcases, embroidering pillow shams, sewing petticoats, nighties, and unmentionables, all in cambric cotton, muslin and soft calico, known as long-cloth. This also I remember: I explored the possibilities of an early intruder into the world of fabrics: tussore and fuji silk. Nylon and the vast array of synthetic fabrics which followed in its train were beyond the realm of thought.
As the completed items began to pile up, I was aware of the need for a Glory Box. Providentially, Roy arrived on the scene just in time to save the situation. On a hurried visit to Perth, Roy went on the hunt to satisfy my extraordinary request, guided by an uneducated knowledge of brides-to-be and their demands. He soon returned carrying a cumbersome wooden box carrying the identifying stencils of its original contents – dozens of Marmite jars from Stoke-on-Trent, England! Nothing daunted, Roy sawed and hammered, added a suitably hinged lid, and, presto! I had the most solid, commodious Glory Box in all the land! At least I could rightly claim it was a hand-crafted model. That versatile box survived the long years filled with blankets and linen whenever we were called to pull up stakes, nor has it yet out-lived its usefulness for in our California garage it now holds a supply of household tools in constant demand. The favored man or woman given the talent for improvisation in every straightened circumstance is blessed, especially if he be a hot gospeller sent to practice his calling in a pioneer land.
That Red Seal Singer Treadle sewing machine holds a special place in my memory. No more productive an instrument was ever made by us, nor did we part with it until the year 1964, when we gave it away. It had served us long and well.
Those two purchases, the piano and the sewing machine, became the foundation on which we were the following year to establish our first home in the magnificent timber belt of the West.
So small, so simple such enterprises now seem as I in retrospect recall them. So wonderful full of promise and hope they were when I was scarcely 22, and in love with a wonderful man!
It was just one year since I had attended the Camp meeting, and had decided to join with a people whose way of life had so impressed me, and to which I had dedicated my future. It was Camp time once more, this time under different conditions, for I was a working unit of the Church, happy in service, and engaged to be married to one in whom I reposed my full confidence.
So the months passed for both of us, he in his large corner, I in my confined sphere of influence, but both of one common thought, of a time when we would commence our lives together, and declare our truth before the marriage altar of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Perth.
It is impossible to approximate my own experience or to measure my development or change of direction. This I know, I entered into every area of the Church’s plans and purposes, and with each enquiry became more confident and assured of the Truth of its claims. I was sublimely happy that I was soon to be a more active member in service.
We set the wedding date, 5th January 1926, and made our plans, simple to a fault. We had chosen as a celebrant a college friend of Roy, then a Youth Leader in the west, by name, Harold J. Meyers. It would be his first nuptial service. Though Pastor Harold Meyers was a gifted preacher, his wedding performance was in the low key, at our bidding.
Mother made my wedding dress, but at no time did I aspire to be so regal and beautifully gowned as was she! Married in the year 1902, she had designed and made her own beautiful gown, with its frothy, swirling hemline and sweeping train. She belonged to a romantic, elegant age. In 1926 I was also part of my age, wearing a simple calf-length, trainless dress, paying my dues to the current foibles of a short-lived tasteless fashion. My wedding dress was cream crepe-de-chine.
Why is it that most of us dance to the piper of fashion!
Mother made my two-tiered wedding cake, which was artistically iced by the young minister’s wife.
I had asked mother’s cousin, Uncle Hawkens, to act as stand-in place of my father, assisted by his son Jack, and with the help of my sister Marjorie as first bride’s maid, and a cousin Alice Bennett. The ever-loyal Albert Markey served as best man, his last act of helpfulness, for he was to leave the Group Settlement Ministry following the wedding. The wedding feast was spread in the humble home of Mrs. Gray. The simple wedding plans were complete.
I had dressed for the occasion in the Hawken’s lovely Mount Lawley home, where bed‑ridden great-aunt Alexandrina gave me a matriarchal blessing, whispering, “You are pale my child. You must have a glass of my special blood tonic to bring color to your cheeks.” Soon a Glass goblet was handed to me, and I quaffed it down, the while praying it may accomplish its purpose – rosy cheeks and a sparkling eye. That fragrant “blood tonic” of my dear Aunt had a sweet tangy flavor – and aroma of fresh-pressed grapes! What better tonic for a wedding day?
As we drank a wedding toast, this time not-so-tangy grape juice, Roy whispered in my ear: “I’ve been up since sunrise – at the markets – buying fruit for the fruit salad – helping to churn the ice cream – I’ve had two shaves today!” Tradition has it that he regaled the market merchants with [a] rollicking melody.
Much of the early history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the South-West corner of the State is tied up with the history of such missionary gospellers as Roy and his fellow worker Albert Markey, and others were soon to follow. I shared it myself by way of a regular flow of letters and by word of mouth. More important, earlier in the year 1926 I was able to become a share partner in so unique an effort of evangelism. So rare an opportunity seldom comes to a new bride – to experience life in its uncomplicated aspects; on the threshold of a modern world, yet still with its feet in the past.
My early background on the Goldfields in Kalgoorlie set its seal on my life forever. I quote to myself the Scriptural admonition, “Speak to the earth and it shall teach thee ….” and I do just that! On the surface of the earth with its craggy mountains and its pebbly river basins; in deep copper mines or shallow probings of the earth’s crust I know a strange exhilaration and stirring of other days, and I feel young again.
Yes, it was the Message I heard in the little two‑pole tent in Vardon Street, Kalgoorlie which changed the direction of my life, and set my feet on something much more valuable than any rich ore from the land of my birth, if one can measure the things of eternal worth, the gold of faith, hope and love. This is my confession of true faith.
