Authors: Vines of Yarrabee
Dorothy Eden
Dorothy Eden
ContentsAuthor’s Introduction
I
AM A NEW
Zealander by birth, an Antipodean, so that I am completely identified with the birth pains of those two countries, Australia and New Zealand.
In childhood we were fostered on stories of the brave pioneers, and brave they were, struggling to live in isolated places, the bush of New Zealand where hostile Maoris roamed, and on the infinitely vast grassless plains of Australia where the only shelter from the blazing summer sun was a one-roomed comfortless cabin. Medical help, such as it was, might have been a week’s journey by horseback away. Women had their babies and nursed them through childish and more sinister illness in the most primitive conditions. There were droughts, floods, snake bite, sunstroke, near starvation, and every kind of accident with which to contend.
They were gallant people, those pioneers, but this was not surprising considering their reasons for emigrating. They had already been toughened in their countries of birth by poverty, harsh laws, persecution, or war. And they must also have had a fearless adventurous spirit, and plenty of optimism.
My English grandfather was one of a family of ten children, his father a parish clerk in a small Cotswold village, where the picturesque cottages are now sought as desirable investments. In my grandfather’s day those same cottages would have had no electricity or sanitation, they would have been damp, dark and cold, and they would have slept four or five children, as well as their parents, in two rooms. Jobs would have been grossly underpaid, and hard to come by. There would have been no prospect in old age but the workhouse. So my grandfather, with his wife and three young children, set out on the great adventure of beginning life in a new country. All of his children died on the voyage to New Zealand, the last one, and the only daughter he was to have, as the ship sailed into the haven of Lyttelton harbour.
However, he had the stamina to survive. So did his wife. They had four more sons, one of whom was my father, also a resilient and undefeatable character.
My mother’s parents came from Schleswig-Holstein, in Denmark. This charming province was overrun by an invading German army in the 1860s. So my grandparents were displaced and homeless, and also sought a new life in New Zealand.
I was brought up on these stories of hardship and heartbreak. So, when on a visit to Australia, I decided an Australian book was not only a good idea but an inevitable one.
I felt I knew instinctively the terrors and homesickness of the young people who so gallantly determined to put down roots in an alien soil. The old cemeteries, mostly in sandy and thorny ground withered by the pitiless sun, fascinated me. I deciphered the tumbled headstones, so often of children, for the climate in Australia, without modern amenities, can be harsh, and the hazards for young lives in the nineteenth century were often too great.
Now Australia is a civilised country, but still only round the edges. There remains the vast interior, waterless, hostile, infinitely lonely. Indeed, so heartbreakingly lonely, as the sun sets and the crows call over the dusty empty land, that I knew my characters, especially the women, would hardly be able to bear it.
This was how
The Vines of Yarrabee
was born, and a healthy infant it turned out to be.
I think maybe we all hanker back to those days when the struggle to exist was purely basic and was built on so much real faith in the future.
Kensington, London
March, 1978
Dorothy Eden
W
HEN THE RAPIDLY SPREADING DISTRICT OF PARRAMATTA, IN THE AUSTRALIAN STATE OF NEW SOUTH WALES, HAD EXCEEDED TEN MILES FROM THE OLD CHURCH AND CEMETERY, IT THREATENED THE EXISTENCE OF THE BIG HOUSE CALLED YARRABEE, AN HISTORIC DWELLING BUILT IN THE LATE EIGHTEEN TWENTIES. THERE COULD BE NO QUESTION OF IT BEING PULLED DOWN TO MAKE WAY FOR THE NEW HOUSING ESTATE. IT WAS AN AUTHENTIC PIECE OF AUSTRALIAN HISTORY, AND AS SUCH MUST BE PRESERVED.
A notice was put on the rusted iron gates ‘YARRABEE, the former home of the early pioneers Gilbert and Eugenia Massingham, and the site of one of the first vineyards in Australia. Circa 1827–1864.’
The house itself was opened to the public. Lovers of architecture could admire the verandahed colonial style with the honeysuckle (cuttings from the original plants) twining round the verandah posts. The garden had been famous and was still a source of delight and wonder. The familiar jacaranda, oleander, waratah and wattle made a background for a most comprehensive selection of English flowers and shrubs, including a profusion of white climbing roses that cascaded over an ancient trellis, like snow in the blazing Australian sun. A lily pool held a few inches of dark green scummy water. It was still possible to decipher the words on the sun dial
Every hour shortens life.
Indoors, the furnishings were true to the period. Visitors might admire the faded Chinese wallpaper in the drawing-room, or more particularly the charming portrait hanging over the fireplace. It was of a slender long-necked young woman holding a rosy-cheeked little boy on her lap, a hat with green ribbons dangling from her wrist, and a white cockatoo in a cage at her side. The small brass plate read ‘Eugenia Massingham and her son Christopher with parrot. Painted by Colm O’Connor, Irish exile.’
There was a story that the house was haunted by a lady dressed in lavender carrying a parasol. No one knew whether this was true, but one of the dresses in the glass case was lavender in colour, and there was an ancient parasol, furled and faded.
A Sheraton writing desk with a not very craftsmanlike mend in one leg stood in the little room called ‘Eugenia Massingham’s sitting-room’. Across the hall, in the high-ceilinged dining-room, there was a long oak table set for dinner with old English silver and a sophisticated number of wine glasses, four at each place setting. It was well known that guests were invited to drink riesling, claret, champagne and port, all of Yarrabee vintage.
Upstairs in the main bedroom an elaborately carved bed bore an inscription stating that this bed in the French Empire style had been part of the dowry Eugenia Massingham had brought with her from England.
Another plaque claimed that Governor Sir Charles Fitzroy and Lady Mary Fitzroy had slept in one of the large bedrooms facing south.
In the grounds there was a winery with concrete walls eight feet thick. It contained an ancient press and vats that still held a faint sour odour. This was the only evidence that a flourishing vineyard had existed on the sunny slopes beyond the house. There was not even a gnarled vine left. They had all been destroyed long ago when the devastating disease phylloxera, that had mysteriously crossed fifteen thousand miles of ocean from the vineyards of Europe, had ravaged the vineyards of Australia.
If one wanted more evidence of the vanished family, one had to go to the old cemetery and find the large ornate headstone with the inscription ‘Gilbert Massingham formerly of Suffolk, England, late of Yarrabee, famous vigneron, and Eugenia, his dearly beloved wife.’ Nearby was a small sandstone angel, badly eroded, on which the lettering could just be deciphered. ‘Victoria, beloved infant daughter of Gilbert and Eugenia Massingham of Yarrabee.’
And a little farther off, for the cemetery must have been getting crowded by then, ‘Lucy Massingham, youngest daughter of the late Gilbert and Eugenia Massingham of Yarrabee.’
Not many people noticed the simple cross that said, ‘Molly Jarvis, former native of England’, but then no one was likely to connect her with the occupants of the big house on the edge of the town.
E
UGENIA COULD SEE HIM
at last. She had been gripping the side of the small rowing boat, straining her eyes shorewards, ever since she had clambered down the ladder of the
Caroline,
leaving that three-months-long home anchored in the blue waters of Sydney Cove. Mrs Ashburton was perched on the narrow plank beside her, taking up the room of two with her ample girth and billowing skirts. She was exclaiming petulantly as the wind tore at her bonnet. The brisk breeze had also nearly snatched Eugenia’s parasol from her hand. She had had to furl it and let the sun beat on her unprotected face.
Sun and wind and water, wooded slopes with rocky outcrops, glistening honey-coloured sand and patches of pale red earth, primitive rows of buildings clustering round the little jetty. The town of Sydney in Botany Bay, or New South Wales as this part of Australia was now being called.
When Eugenia at last caught sight of Gilbert she thought that he was the colour of Australia with his red hair and sideburns, his sunburnt skin, and strong blue eyes.
He was waving wildly.
‘Eugenia!’ She could hear his voice above the clatter and confusion of the boat being tied up at the jetty.
He cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed, ‘Welcome to Australia! Have you brought my vine cuttings?’
Mrs Ashburton gave Eugenia a nudge and began to laugh in her jolly fashion.
‘Well, that’s a fine welcome, miss! Which is more important to this young man, his intended wife or his vine cuttings?’
Mrs Ashburton, a family friend who had providentially been travelling to Australia to join her son, and who had agreed to chaperone Eugenia, had proved a great trial on the long voyage. She was garrulous, tetchy, unpredictable, and had an irritating habit of constantly losing her possessions. The voyage had been spent in a search for a mislaid fan, or lorgnette, or shawl, or smelling salts, or any of a dozen other objects. But she was kind. And at this moment Eugenia’s only friend.
All the same her ribald remark gave Eugenia a flutter of uncertainty. She knew Gilbert’s dedication to his vineyard, but she had not imagined it would take precedence to her in this first moment of encounter.
She had met Gilbert three years ago at her uncle’s chateau in Burgundy. Her mother was of French descent, and her Uncle Henri was a noted viticulturist with a chateau and vineyard. It happened that the young Englishman, Gilbert Massingham, who had already spent five years in Australia and had seen its possibilities as a wine-growing country, was visiting France at the same time as Eugenia, for the purpose of collecting vine cuttings. He had been travelling in Malaga, Portugal and the wine-growing areas of the Rhine for the same purpose.
On her first evening Eugenia had seen the way he had looked at her Uncle Henri’s wife, who was a very beautiful woman, still young and graceful, and a gifted hostess. Indeed, she had been convinced that he had been interested in no one but Aunt Honoria, until she realized that he saw her aunt as an essential complement to the dinner table, the silver and fine crystal, the epergne full of roses, the good food. And the wine. A chilled white burgundy in long-stemmed shallow glasses with the fish, and later with the pheasant, a full-bodied claret. Eugenia watched the young man raise his glass and silently toast Aunt Honoria. Then, with a speculative look in his eyes, he had turned to Eugenia and raised his glass with a curious deliberation.