AUSTRALIAN HISTORY - MARGARET TANNER

FELON’S APPREHENSION ACT 1878

                                              

In colonial Australia the families of ex-convicts and poor Irish immigrants were often on the receiving end of an unfair English justice system, which favoured the rich and powerful.

Against this background, Ned Kelly, his brother Dan and their friends Steve Hart and Joe Byrne formed a gang and became bushrangers (outlaws). They were hated by the authorities but revered and aided by many ordinary folk who thought Ned Kelly had been persecuted and forced into crime.

On the 26^th October 1878 at Stringybark Creek, the Kelly gang shot and killed three police troopers and wounded a fourth after the police set a trap for them. After this incident there was a price on Ned Kelly’s head.

Desperate to catch the bushrangers the government of the time revived a medieval law that had been obsolete in England for centuries.  They called it the Felon’s Apprehension Act of 1878.

This Act enabled the Kelly gang to be proclaimed as outlaws.  It was one of the most serious laws parliament could evoke.  It authorized any person to shoot the proclaimed dead like wild beasts, without demand for surrender, or any process of arrest or trial.

On the ninth of December 1878, the Kelly gang came out of hiding in the ranges to hold up the bank in Euroa, their first public appearance since the Stringybark Creek murders.  They made their way to a sheep station on the Faithful Creek to spend the night, having first locked up the manager and his men in the storeroom.  The next day after a hearty meal they rode away.

On the day of the tenth, at the exact time the

Licensing Court

was in session and the town's only policeman otherwise occupied, the Kelly gang robbed the bank. They got away with more than nineteen hundred pounds as well as thirty or so ounces of gold.  After a siege at the Glenrowan hotel, Ned was finally captured. Dan Kelly, Steve Hart and Joe Byrne were killed when the hotel was set alight.

Ned Kelly was subsequently put on trial, found guilty and hanged in what is now known as the Old Melbourne Jail.

The Old Melbourne Jail is now a tourist attraction and is open to the public and what a spooky place it is even in daylight.  Ned Kelly’s death mask is out on display and the scaffold still stands with the rope swinging over the trapdoor.

I visited there one day when I was researching one of my books.  The stone cells are small and icy cold, and there is an aura there that chilled me to the bone. At night time not a skerrick of light would come in through the tiny barred window up near the roof. Once the door of the cell was shut, I swear, you would have felt as if you had been entombed.

A few years ago, remains that were suspected to be those of Ned Kelly were discovered in an un-marked prison grave. Using DNA from one of his descendants, the authorities have established that these bones are indeed those of Ned Kelly, and it is now hoped that they will be handed over to his descendants so that he can be buried in consecrated ground.

SAVAGE UTOPIA /STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT – a 2 for the price of 1 e-book from Whiskey Creek Press

A dark secret and an act of treachery lead to a terrible injustice. And how can an English aristocrat marry a convict’s daughter?

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AUSTRALIA DAY FROM MARGARET TANNER

AUSTRALIA DAY JANUARY 26^th by Margaret Tanner

Hi everyone.

I know this has nothing to do with New Years Resolutions or a lead up to Valentine’s Day, but as I am an Aussie and my post is due on the 23rd January, and Australia Day is the 26^th January, I thought this would be a change of pace.

Captain James Cook (1728 – 1779) was born in Yorkshire, England.  He was the man who discovered Australia. He led an expedition to the South Seas in command of the Endeavour. They sailed from Plymouth on the 26^th August 1768 with a compliment of ninety four, including the Botanist, Joseph Banks. Sailing via Cape Horn they reached Tahiti on the 13^th April 1769.

Cook had been instructed to determine the existence of a southern continent. He sailed to New Zealand in August, circumnavigated the islands, and charted the coastline and took possession of New Zealand for the British government.

On the 19^th April, 1770, they spotted land at the south east of the Australian mainland. Cook continued sailing north, charting the coast as he sought a safe harbour for repairs to the Endeavour. They landed at Stingray Bay on the 29^th April and renamed it Botany Bay. As he did with New Zealand, Cook claimed the great south land for the British government, who a few years later decided that this would be a great place to send their unwanted convicts, many of whom, because of overcrowding in the prisons because they could no longer be shipped off to America, were incarcerated in rotting hulks on the river Thames.  Many were petty thieves, who were transported for what we would consider minor crimes – stealing a loaf of bread, shop lifting some hair ribbons. Others were political prisoners or innocent victims of an unjust and uncaring society, like Maryanne Watson, the heroine in my 1820’s novel, Savage Utopia, which is set against the background of transportation to the penal colony of Australia.

On the 26th January 1788 Captain Arthur Phillip, who guided the First Fleet to the island continent of Australia, claimed the Colony of New South Wales for the British Empire.  He also became Governor of the colony. Slowly, a British society evolved based on the distinctions between convicts and free settlers.

 The fledgling colony began to mark the anniversary of the 26th January 1788 with formal dinners and informal celebrations.

In 1817 when Governor Macquarie recommended the adoption of the name ‘Australia’ for the entire continent instead of New Holland, a new nation started to emerge. By the 1820’s, Australia began to prosper and Australian patriotism started to be expressed at gatherings. In the early days the colony was a small society of cliques, with severe social requirements and rigid class lines, but the stain of convict blood could not be completely obliterated even though many tried to hide their tainted past. Many ex-convicts prospered and their Australian born children began to see themselves as unique because of their upbringing and isolation from Europe.

Throughout the early nineteenth century, Foundation Day, as it was called, became known for sporting events. But the growing sense of patriotism was being expressed in by poets. On the 26^th January 1824, poet, Charles Thompson paid tribute to his native country with a collection of poems even though his father had been transported to Australia as a convict.

In the summer of 1836, a group of seafaring Sydneyites decided to celebrate the founding of their new nation with a sailing regatta. The Australia Day Regatta is still held on Sydney Harbour on the 26th January each year and it has become the oldest continuous sailing regatta in the world.

In 1838, fifty years after Captain Phillip landed, a number of celebratory events were organised and the first public holiday ever marked in Australia was announced for the 26th January.  This started a tradition which lasts to this very day.

SAVAGE UTOPIA published by Whiskey Creek Press

On board the convict ship taking them to the penal colony of Australia, Maryanne Watson and Jake Smith meet and fall in love, but Jake hides a terrible secret that will take him to the gallows if it ever comes out.

On arrival in Sydney the lovers are separated. Maryanne is sent to work for the lecherous Captain Fitzhugh. After he attacks her she flees into the wilderness and eventually meets up with Jake who has escaped from a chain gang.  They set up home in a hidden valley and Maryanne falls pregnant.  Will Jake come out of hiding to protect his fledgling family? And how can love triumph over such crushing odds?

Margaret Tanner is an award winning, multi-published, Australian historical romance writer who loves delving into the past.

Her website is http://www.margarettanner.com/

NEW YEAR RESOLUTION - DE-CLUTTER

THE PERILS OF NOT DE-CLUTTERING – Margaret Tanner

Happy New Year to everyone.

The start of a new year is a great time to de-clutter, figuratively and literally speaking. A time to cast off the old and start afresh with the new.

I am a clutter collector from way back. I figure why throw anything out; you never know when you might need it. I inherited the hoarder gene.

“Waste not, want not” was my mother’s motto and she lived by it the whole of her life. Maybe it was because she lived through the great depression of the 1930’s and World War 2, that she would use and re-use, save and squirrel away stuff. Our house was never untidy, because most of the hoarded items were well out of sight. 

 
I should have learned my lesson after my dear mother died about 20 years ago and my sister and I had to clear out her house. To say it was a nightmare was an understatement. It took weeks. My mother had kept receipts from the 1940’s, even her World War 2 ration book. And speaking of books, she had hundreds of them. Then there were the ornaments, pretty little knick-knacks that reposed on every shelf or level surface in the house. Boxes of china. Well, you get the idea.

Now you would think that after all this trauma and angst, I would have dashed home and gone through my own cupboards.  I didn’t, but I did take a lot of my mother’s stuff with me.  Well, how could I let it go?  All those little treasures.

My mother-in-law passed away, same story, I kept a lot of her things too. I was a hoarder.  It came as naturally as breathing or eating.

Well friends, retribution did come. The youngest of our sons finally left home, so hubby and I decided it was time to downsize. We bought a smaller house, and put our larger house on the market. “We’ve got a lot of stuff here, we’ll have to get rid of it,” hubby says.

Over my dead body. “No, we won’t do anything rash,” I said, “we’ll put it in storage, which we did, and it wasn’t easy, took us several weekends. So, my house was partially emptied and ready for the pre-sale inspections.

A week before the auction of our house, my husband had to have heart by-pass surgery, so I had to go on with the sale alone. After the auction and hubby’s successful operation, I had to start packing, because when he came home he couldn’t do anything for eight weeks. I really hit the panic button because we had a short settlement. 40 days to clear out all our stuff, that of my mother and mother-in-law (that I had kept, and shouldn’t have). Well, it was a nightmare. I did most of it on my own.  I don’t know how many trips I made to donate all these “treasures” to the second hand thrift shop (we call them Op shops here in Australia.  They are run by charities to raise money to help the less fortunate).  And I did help the less fortunate - big time.  The Op shop manager must have thought I was Mother Teresa re-incarnated.

It was terrible. I cried because I had to give away my ‘treasures, mum’s treasures and my mother in-law’s treasures’. Worse still, was the time it took to pack them and deliver them to the Op shop. 

With the clock ticking, I had to be ruthless – and I was.

If you are even contemplating moving house, start to get rid of your surplus stuff early.  In fact, don’t collect it in the first place.  A lady once told me that if she didn’t wear a dress for a year, she was probably never going to wear it again, and she got rid of it. Smart lady. Wish I had such courage.  I still cling to my favourite dresses, hey I might lose weight and they will fit me again???

The moral of this story is -  don’t hoard. De-clutter as much as possible, because one day you will have to sort it out, or your children will have to sort it out.  

The same goes for your writing.  If it isn’t working, discard it. Be ruthless. Start all over again if necessary, but never ever give up.

My website:  http://www.margarettanner.com/

I am multi-published with Whiskey Creek Press and the Wild Rose Press.

REMEMBRANCE DAY - Red poppies and apple blossom

                        The 11^th of November, is Armistice Day or Remembrance Day. It commemorates the signing of the Armistice to end the carnage of World War 1. On this day we spare a thought, and give heartfelt thanks to the brave men and women who bought freedom with their blood. The wearing of a red poppy on this day symbolizes their sacrifice.

                               

            The battlefields of France and Belgium were covered with red poppies, and they grew profusely, nurtured by the blood of thousands of soldiers. In Northern France when he saw the poppies growing on the battlefield, a Canadian officer, Lt.Col. John McCrae penned his immortal poem. In Flanders Fields. Moina Michael, who worked for the American YMCA, read the poem just before the Armistice was signed. It moved her so much she decided to wear a red poppy in remembrance of the fallen.

 I thought the following story was appropriate. Soldiers sacrificed their lives on the battlefields. The women they left behind wept and mourned, often living a sad and solitary life, bereft of children and the men they loved.

             

            The title for my little story is – CALL OF THE APPLE BLOSSOM.

Mary wore her hair pulled back into two tight little plaits that met at the back of her head. She stared sightlessly ahead, not blind in the literal sense, but blind to the future and the present.  She had sight now only for the past.
            Memories in a kaleidoscope of colour flashed through her brain. Gone, erased forever would be the pitying looks from the nursing staff, other patients and their visitors in the geriatric ward. She moved her hands, with the grotesque, arthritic knuckles to brush a fly away from her face.
            The nurse came over, starched and pristine in her uniform, to tuck in the blankets.  Mary had suffered a stroke, which partially paralysed her. Just because she’d lost the power of speech didn’t mean she was deaf. She smiled inwardly, because her slack lips were incapable of forming a smile.  People talked about her, thinking she could not hear them.
            “Poor old thing doesn’t get any visitors,” they would say. “Been here twenty years and hasn’t ever had any mail, not even a card for Christmas, Mother’s day or her birthday. Unloved and with no-one to care. It’s such a shame.” They would shake their heads as they discussed her.  How she hated their pitying looks.
            She wasn’t lonely, wasn’t unloved either.  She did have a visitor, a special one who came from another age, through the swirling mists of time, came fleetingly, but more and more often now, closer and closer. She could almost reach out and touch him. Could smell the scent of apple blossom he brought with him from the orchards that had once been their home.
            She glanced at the other occupant of the ward, Jessie who pushed her teeth in and out all the time, and dribbled saliva from the corner of her mouth.  Who would want visitors like Jessie’s?  Her daughter paid duty visits, accompanied by the granddaughter in skin-tight jeans and too tight tee shirt, and her loutish boyfriend with his bleached frizzy hair and earrings dangling from his nose and eyebrows.
            No, she did not miss having visitors like that. She had memories more precious than the most beautiful flower and they would not wither or die, because they had been nurtured through the years by a million teardrops. Fresh, poignant memories even the ravages of time and age could not destroy.
            The end would come soon now. Each time her visitor came, he always brought the scent of those blossoms with him. She reached out her hand - so close, but as their fingers bridged the time barrier and almost touched, he would disappear.
            No, William could never really leave her.  His memory was locked in her heart for eternity. A misty veil came down. She felt his presence and tried to call him through the mists of years, but the time had not yet come, and he disappeared into the swirling clouds that had separated them for so long.
            Through the years, she often heard the muted march of countless feet, as ghostly battalions passed by as they marched to immortality.
            William, her tall, handsome husband, with his blonde wavy hair and deep blue eyes, had donned khaki and sailed away with a smile on his lips.  He promised to return, but a bullet had cut him down in foreign fields.  Every now and again, the scent of apple blossom wafted on the air, alerting Mary that her love was not too far away.  Everything became confused.  Had William really marched off to fight in a war on the other side of the world?  Had he died on some blood stained foreign field, or was it all a dream?  A dreadful nightmare, when she would awaken and see him standing at the gate again.  They would be smiling and laughing as he grasped her hand so they could run through the orchard like carefree children.  The soft winds would cause the blossom to cascade upon them softly, nebulous as tiny snowflakes.  The air would hang heavy with their perfume, and the sound of bees buzzing carried on the stillness.
            Oh careless youth, who knew no sorrow.  Who had no inkling of the black clouds forming on the horizon to blot out their sun.  For this would be their last meeting. No, it wasn’t a dream, awake or asleep the memory remained.
            A strange silence shrouded the ward, interrupted intermittently by the clacking of Jessie’s false teeth. Mary lay in bed with a screen pulled around her. A man in a white coat stared down at her. She didn’t remember going to bed.  In fact all she remembered was the apple orchard and running hand in hand with her handsome soldier.
            A breeze rustled the curtains hanging over the opened window, and the soft swishing changed into the muted marching of many feet, as ghostly columns of a long dead army passed by.  On the breeze came the first scent of blossom as it drifted through the window, gradually becoming stronger and more overpowering. The room filled with a perfume so strong Mary felt as if she was back under the trees in the orchard.  The white coat turned into khaki, the years rolled back as if they had never been, and she knew now that the time had come for her to slip away and join William and his comrades.

Wild Oats, my novel from the Wild Rose Press, is set against a background of the 1^st World War. It was an EPIC Finalist last year. One lucky blogger will win a PDF copy of Wild Oats.  Please leave your e-mail address.

http://www.thewildrosepress.com/wild-oats-p-3893.html

My website: http://www.margarettanner.com/

Margaret Tanner's Unsung Heroine

I have no picture to post with this. There are no newspaper cuttings, no articles in magazines or books. Few even know this lady’s story.

Born in a family ravaged by the Great War (1914 -1918), her father had his lungs poisoned by mustard gas in France in 1917. He returned to his farm, but never recovered, thus dying young and leaving a widow with 8 children to struggle on alone. Where were the male relatives, the uncles and brothers who might have helped the bereaved family? Sadly, the battlefields of France and Belgium had taken their lives or their health.

For years this unsung heroine, with the help of an older sister, milked 40 cows in the morning, then they rode their bicycles 8 miles into the nearest town to work, and after they returned home in the evening, they milked 40 cows again and did other farm chores. Needless to say, they handed their weekly pay packets, unopened, to their mother.

Years passed, and when the younger siblings were old enough to help, things became easier. The lady was able to enjoy a social life.

 As the black clouds of World War II hovered overheard, she became engaged to a young man before he marched off to war. And she waited, like thousands of other women, for her man to return, stoically working in the munitions factory and helping with the war effort.  Soon the love letters stopped, her soldier was listed as Missing In Action, believed Prisoner Of War. For two years she didn’t know whether he was alive or dead, but finally the news came. He had escaped his captors.

On his return home they married, had three children and settled into suburbia. Money was tight, but having been trained at a young age to be frugal, she managed to keep things going, and all was well.

But fate had another cruel card to play. A slow moving muscle wasting disease. But did she give up? No. She enjoyed her children and grandchildren, took holidays with her husband and did charity work. All the while, this hideous disease spread it’s ugly tentacles throughout her body, sapping her strength, but never breaking her spirit.

After her husband died, she stayed in her own home for a few more years.  The disease spread, hungry and evil, it could not be stopped.  Finally, when she could no longer walk, she bravely set about finding a suitable nursing home.

Thankfully, she died before she had to leave her beloved home and cherished memories.

How do I know all of this? The lady was my Mum.

My message to everyone is – cherish your mother while you can, because the world is a sad and lonely place without her.

Please raise your cyber glasses of champagne, and drink a toast to yet another unsung heroine.

 http://www.margarettanner.com/