Listening to my footsteps, I walk through the hall and from one room to the next. I think about the thousands of footsteps that have traversed through this building since its opening in 1880. I set up my tripod (a side of the road rescue) and photograph and video some ideas around presence in this place.
Women were forbidden to enter. I know back then, it was only men allowed here in the bar, but I still wonder if my great great grandmother Maryanne ever stepped foot in The Railway Hotel. We are shown the small room for women in The Railway Hotel. I imagine her daughter-in-law Edie, my great grandmother in Yee Lee’s general store (owned and operated by Wong War Lai and later by his son) down the road. I read Juanita Kwok’s 2019 paper Wonderful Wellington: The Longevity of the Chinese Community in Wellington, New South Wales. I think about the descendants of the Chinese diaspora living today, who like me, and my children may too be sixth or seventh generation Australian from these parts. It's our last day here at the Residency. It has been wonderful to share this time with Therese. She’s shared with me some of her responses to researching Jessie Hickman, The Lady Bushranger. Jessie would have been eighteen when my Granny was born. I haven’t managed to return to reading the book I bought with me - Rebecca Wilson’s Kate Kelly, the true Story of Ned Kelly’s little sister – giving air to Kate’s story from this male-oriented period of history. Kate was found dead in a waterhole further west near Forbes in 1898 ten years before my Granny was born. Later I stand looking over Burrendong Dam where my Granny’s ashes were spread and her sibling’s graves rest under the water. The Ironbark Arts Residency Program is co-produced by Orana Arts Inc and the STAA. Today, the fifth day of the residency at The Railway Hotel, are our public presentations.
Therese reads her poetry. In centring her experiences with the history of this place, I am all ears. I set up my first public site-specific art installation in The Travellers Room of The Railway Hotel where I have been working. As flat as a pancake is how I would describe the plastic sheet this morning after dancing with the drafts since my arrival. I wonder, what will it be like for the installation at my presentation later today? I charcoal some more and lay my drawings and paintings out in conversation with this studio set up and some images on my laptop of the sheets in motion. Generously welcomed later at Kinkara studios, we feast on figs from a local tree, take in the old wooden ironing board alliance with the old printing presses and edge on our seats for the poetry reading. Thanks Tim, Lynn and Margrete too - you make this place in time so yummy. The Ironbark Arts Residency Program is co-produced by Orana Arts Inc and the STAA. A third painting is on my easel. This time it is a view through the doors to what was once the bar here in The Railway Hotel.
The drafts in The Railway Hotel are intense. It’s difficult to stand on the plastic painters sheet supplied by the STAA to protect the floors. I have become so distracted and taken with the sheets that I have been setting up site-specific installations. I watch the sheets’ breath with the drafts and imagine their forms as beings in The Railway Hotel rooms and hall. The Ironbark Arts Residency Program is co-produced by Orana Arts Inc and the STAA. The remains of a wedgetail eagle and the bones of a boar dot The Common where butterflies rise and ironbarks regenerate. Talk of an endangered purple pea piques my interest and I recognise the gold-digging churn of the land. It looks so familiar to where I live now – another recovering landscape from gold rush times. And I think of the stories my granny told of family members finding gold in their backyards. They lived near the legendary Potato Patch field with its tales of alluvial gold dug up like lumps of potatoes. That is all now under Burrendong Dam.
I am taken by the meat safe in one of the rows of the open-air museum. It’s like a funny character to me and kind of out of place with all the rusting farm equipment. Inside in Boehmes Hall is another clutter of domestic helpers from the past. I like some of the newer additions too, signalling the ongoing use of this place – like the turquoise chairs stacked waiting for the next meeting. I snap a picture of a mixmaster, who has done their duty – no doubt many Country Women’s Association cakes came through their beaters. We skirt around a derelict house, with its dilapidated outdoor dunny and mound of cement encased bottles. An upside-down sign with ‘the skin club’ adds to our unsettling. Thinking about this sign, I think of the ghost signs in town too - like the one atop what was once Yee Lee’s General Store. Today there is more local cheer from Marian at the café, Janet popping through from the Post Office next door, and the sunset from the Nunnery – many thanks to Tom for the tour and hospitality. And two little paintings are now on the easel as well – the portrait of the fan and of the light down the hall. The Ironbark Arts Residency Program is co-produced by Orana Arts Inc and the STAA. In the middle of the night, I woke to the sound of something not right. As I raised my hand in questioning, no breeze was felt. On adjusting my vision to the darkness of the unfamiliar, a perplexing strange amiss had befallen the fan. In my acceptance of whatever oddity had occurred, I turned off the fan and went back to my stupor provoked by my month of persistent late nights.
This was the first night of my Ironbark Residency. On arrival we had been welcomed generously by the STAA in the form of Tom, Marian and Ian. Therese my residency peer and I had laughed a lot and stayed up late. We threw ourselves into the unsettling of this place. With vivid and eerie stories abound, I felt enlivened, and my goosebumps flared. She enacted her first dramatic impromptu spoken word performance. It was a ripper. The morning revealed the drama of the night. Plastic shards were splintered over the bed, within my bedding and even expelled under the door gap at the other side of the room. The fan blades had exploded. I am unharmed. There is no question – my openness to be influenced by this place and time has been roused. I am going to start with a portrait painting of the fan. The Ironbark Arts Residency Program is co-produced by Orana Arts Inc and the STAA. My Ironbark Residency 2023 is fast approaching. It is situated in Wiradjuri Country at the Railway Hotel in Stuart Town, previously known as Ironbarks. My plan is to be open to influence whilst contemplating some family stories linked to the Stuart Town surrounds. And I’ll take my regulars - some paints and canvas’, charcoal and paper.
This photo of four generations of women in my family - my older sister, my mum, my granny and my great grandmother is one that I’ve always loved. It was taken by my father. My great grandmother died in Lithgow a couple of years before I was born, not far from where I live now. Family stories of her and of the lives lived of my ancestors have always intrigued me. These three forebears of mine all became single mothers. Their stories, encompassing much grief along with tales of survival, are the backdrop to my life stories. My only grandparent present during my childhood, my gorgeous granny (who as an aside loved very ripe bananas) is up the back on the left in this photo. She, Doris Newton was born at Pine Park in 1908 not far from Stuart Town. Doris' birthplace is under what is now Burrendong Dam. Life was precarious then. Eight of Doris' nine siblings died whilst just babes. They are buried under the Dam where my Granny's ashes were later returned. Granny told stories of the twin babies warmed by the fire and when she was just eight years old hitching up the horse to the sulky to drive her mum who was in labour to Wellington Hospital to give birth to her tenth sibling. It is thought that these devastating peri-natal deaths may have been the result of an Rh Factor incompatibility. Looking at this photo with my great grandmother Edith (Edie) nee Eden suspended in time, I feel a gut-wrenching sense of sorrow for her. The pit of her grief is unimaginable to me. Oral family stories are that wanting to endure no more loss, Edie left the valley with her two girls, Doris and her little sister Amy, leaving her husband, my great grandfather James (Jim) Newton. Jim who was also born under the Dam, worked as a labourer at the Pine Park property. His birth in 1874 was during the gold mining rush at Burrendong reported in the Sydney Morning Herald to have commenced in January 1863. He would have been just 6 years old when The Railway Hotel was built and Ironbark Railway Station was opened (still in operation today as Stuart Town Railway Station). Thousands of people including diaspora from China flocked to the district over the next half century (with only hundreds remaining in Stuart Town today). His parents, my great great grandparents Maryanne Hickmott and Thomas Newton were married nearby in Wellington in 1866. I have read of records telling of members of the Newton and Hickmott families travelling to the region in 1863 through my mum Marilyn Mason’s genealogy research on her ancestors. There is convincing evidence that Thomas Newton’s parents, my great great great grandparents Thomas Newton of the Mary II (1822) and Barbara Laurie of the Buffalo (1833) were transported to Australia as convicts. Maryanne’s parents, also my great great great grandparents Sarah and James Hickmott came to Australia as assisted migrants on the Maitland (1838). Through this one family lineage, I am a sixth generation Australian of convict and migrant ancestry from Britain. This is part of the story of how I am living and working in and now in an artist residency in Wiradjuri country. Wiradjuri peoples resisting invasion on their lands is well documented. My ancestors arrived in this region only forty years after the first Wiradjuri war of resistance (the Bathurst War 1822-24). This colonial heritage of mine abuts horrific truths of genocide, virus decimation, war, massacres and stolen generations of Wiradjuri peoples. Personal questions of how to live and work in Wiradjuri Country today with its continuity of Wiradjuri peoples and cultures are continual. The Ironbark Arts Residency Program is co-produced by Orana Arts Inc and the Stuart Town Advancement Association (STAA). I am looking forward to the residency, to sharing with locals, to thinking and creating and also meeting the other residency recipient Therese Gabriel Wilkins who will be working on her own project at The Railway Hotel. Thankyou Orana Arts and the STAA. |
AuthorNic Mason Archives
September 2024
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