While in Thargomindah Auntie became a Catholic. The
town did not have a resident priest only one that visited about once a year.
The visiting priest knew the people of Thargomindah well and had heard that
Annie Marstin was to be Baptised. The first thing he did when he arrived
in town was to say Mass. Everyone was there and everyone went to Communion
even Auntie. When the priest came to Auntie he leant over and asked her if she
had been Baptised yet. Of course Auntie said ‘No’. So the priest
said ‘You had better catch up with me after Mass’ and gave her Communion.
Auntie told me how the patrons in their hotel in Thargomindah were
mainly shearers. They would come in with their pockets full of money.
Uncle Ted had jars along the back of the bar with their names on them. The
money was put in the jars and the shearers drank until the money was all gone. One shearer always had the back bedroom of the pub, and his one and only bath
was just before he went back to work. There were no bathrooms as we know
them, so to have a bath you had a tub carried to your room and the water was
also carried in in buckets. Whilst this shearer had his annual bath you
could hear him all over the pub calling ‘Water! Water! bring me more water.’ The house work was done by aboriginal girls, who in those days, were referred to
as 'Black Gins'. Auntie and Louise
liked to go for picnics and the girls would go with them. While out the
girls would look for Emu eggs which were a delicacy for the aboriginal people.
If they found an Emu egg they would disappear back to their tribe for days, and
sometimes Auntie and Louise were lucky to ever see them again.
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| Thargomindah, in those days, boasted a Jockey Club and Uncle Ted was a member. Also Thargomindah, Paris and London were the only places in the world that could boast of Hydro electricity thanks to the Pelton Wheel Turbine. |
Amongst Uncle Ted and
Auntie's friends was a prospector who gave them an opal he had found.
Uncle Ted had it made into a broach for Auntie. I have it still in it's
original setting which would make it (in 2002) at least 105 years old.
The next event in the family was the death of Barbara’s
husband Walter Marstin. Barbara left the farm, took her three sons and
moved to Queensland to live. Walter Marstin Snr. then sent for Ted to go
down to Glengarry to take over the running of the farm (he being the next son). So Ted and Auntie left the electricity of Thargomindah for the kerosene lamps
and candles of Gippsland. When my grandmother was about ready
to have her next baby, she travelled down to Gippsland. All this
travelling between Victoria and Queensland, Auntie told me, was done by Cobb
& Co. Coaches.
By this time Auntie had been told that she could never have children. My grandmother then made a deal with Auntie that if the new baby was a boy she would go back to Queensland with all three children, but if the new baby was a girl the girl of the twins would be left with Auntie and Ted. The new baby was Auntie May (May Barr Bulimba), so my grandmother went back to Queensland with only two children leaving my mother to be brought up by Auntie and Uncle Ted as Dorrie Marstin.
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She did not have her name changed legally, so was unofficially known as Dorrie Marstin. | |
| After I was married I met a woman who had gone to school with my mother. This woman did not know the Marstin’s personally, but she felt qualified to argue with me about my mother’s name. I tried to convince her that my mother’s real name was McMaster but she told me I was wrong. ‘I should know I went to school with her,’ I remember her telling me. I replied ‘I should know because she was my mother and I have her marriage certificate’. I have forgotten who the woman was but I can still picture the look she gave me as she walked away. It seemed to say ‘You poor thing you don’t know what you are talking about.’ |
