The McTaggarts; stories of a pastoral dynasty - History SA

The McTaggarts; stories of a pastoral dynasty
Invitation to write the book
Ruth Anderson
‘I want you to write our story’, said the man sitting next to me at the pastoral
ball. Too much wine I thought. He asked me again a few weeks later, as
though he were simply asking me to write a letter. He was serious. I knew
that years ago a journalist had attempted the task and given up. I wanted to
do it with all my heart, but I didn’t want to give up half way through and we all
know that families can be tricky when it comes to which side of the story one
tells. Could I be factual without fall out, could I delve and poke and pry and
print it all without prejudice?
This man Malcolm McTaggart wanted me to chronicle the lives of five
generations of his McTaggart family. I knew that he had been President of the
Stockowners Association and chairman of the Meat and Wool section, and
was on the Soil Advisory Board and many other bodies, but I didn’t know him
personally.
I lived on Cooyerdoo Station at the time and the McTaggarts flagship
property, Nonning, lay across Lake Gilles from us. I didn’t really know much
about them at all, but of course the funny thing was I ended up knowing far
more about them than they knew about themselves.
Once I said I’d accept the challenge my life changed. I began an adventure
that took me on the most fascinating historical journey of discovery,
crisscrossing the world, entering wars, witnessing weddings, droughts,
different cultures, (Aboriginal, Chinese and Afghan to name a few). In this
world I travelled by many modes of transport from oxen and dray, camel
buggies, horseback, pushbikes, motorbikes, light aircraft, steam engines and
cruise ships. I learned about shooting horses in the drought and cueing oxen
in the bush.
I met most members of this pastoral family, each telling me their story, and
often their secrets - their side of the story. Sometimes too, during my
research, I learned secrets from beyond the grave, sweet and sometimes sad
snippets of information, unrecorded in the family history, which I never can
tell.
Piled up on my kitchen table I had Bishops and boundary riders, stockmen,
pastoral inspectors, publicans, politicians, poetry and photographs.
The many generations of the McTaggart family were all there too in neatly
segregated piles in chronological order, whether or not they happened to be
speaking to each other at the time.
Imagine my horror though, when one windy day, my husband opened the
kitchen door and a gust of wind scattered my piles every which way.
“Look what you’ve done now,” I screamed, “The Bishop of Willochra has
ended up on top of Mrs McTaggart.”
Malcolm McTaggart, who commissioned me to write the book, supported and
encouraged me, made his records and photographs available to me, and
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often pointed me in the right direction when I became lost. Sometimes I was
even in the wrong generation. Using the same Christian names was helpful
for tracing families, but a trial sometimes to slot them in their respective
generation.
Malcolm’s wife Pam, acted as cook and butler at the family lunches, and how I
laugh now at my first faux pas. I remember handing her the very special bag
of Darrel Lea chocolates to serve with coffee after lunch, but I was horrified to
see her offering the silver platter around the dining room table at Blarentibert
with tiny boiled lollies, the lollies intended for my young grandchildren. I’d
given her the wrong bag. How my grandchildren would have been enjoying
the Darrel Lea chocolates.
The family lunches were a great social gathering and a chance to meet all of
the characters about whose family I was writing, but it wasn’t a great success
in getting one clear story, because of course each person had their own side
of the story, their own opinion about a person, their own memory.
People were slow to offer anything about them selves in writing, so I went
home and wrote a vague representation of what I thought they had meant.
“Oh no,” they proclaimed, “that’s not how it was, this is how it happened.”
They came in like the tide. Family members rang me, some came to see me,
and others invited me into their homes.
Gradually over two and a half years the story knitted together with the editing
skills and wonderful wit of Dr Peter Linklater, a great grandson of John and
Mary McTaggart.
First Pioneers
Over 150 years ago a young man called John McTaggart attended a
Highlands and Islands Emigration Society meeting and what he heard here
encouraged him to leave the small family croft called Blarentibert in
Argyllshire in Scotland to seek his fortune in Australia. He joined many others
at this time, excited about the political promise of being able to rent vast areas
of land in Australia compared to the family’s small unprofitable croft, and
boarded the sailing vessel Bengal Merchant for a wearisome five-month
journey to Australia.
Today there’s a stately home sentimentally called Blarentibert, on Robe
Terrace in North Adelaide, where the McTaggarts who commissioned me to
write the book live. My quest was simply to fill in the 150 years between
Blarentiberts.
Three months after arrival in the new country John McTaggart met and
married Mary McCallum, whose Uncle in the south east of South Australia
helped them to fatten a flock of sheep, which John McTaggart walked to
Adelaide to sell. The profit on this deal enticed him and his brother in law John
McCallum to come north and take up unsettled land near Lake Frome, which
he named Wooltana.
Mary’s journey.
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A year later Mary and their young family of four were sent for. They travelled
by steamship to Port Augusta and then by bullock dray for the month long
journey over rough unmade tracks to Wooltana. On her ninetieth birthday,
Mary remembered this trip, saying, ‘It was a slow journey but we were all
young and happy and quite enjoyed the experience, even if we had to battle
along, it was no worse than all early settlers in any land so why grumble and
make it worse.’
At Wooltana there was only a rough slab hut to welcome her, and Mary and
John McTaggarts nearest neighbors were at Arkaba, 140 miles south. It was
here with constant fear of native attack that Mary raised her family of 10
children. Mary often used her home-made primitive medicines to nurse the
men who were speared by natives, but later the hand of friendship was
offered and the natives said of John McTaggart, ‘that he was a fair man for he
fought with a waddy and not a firearm’ and the natives came to quite like the
white children, the flour-bag piccaninnies.
Carting the Wool from Wooltana
John McTaggart took the wool to Port Augusta by dray and oxen to be loaded
off the roughly made wooden jetty onto the ships that waited there. Broken
dray wheels, lame bullocks and fear of native attack were John’s constant
companions on that month long trip.
On one trip John lost all his bullocks to pleuro-pneumonia and had to leave
his dray and all the station supplies on the edge of the track and walk home.
Usually upon arrival at the Port, John enjoyed the invitation on board the
sailing ships by the captain to hear news of the outside world, and indeed the
seamen were equally as interested to hear from the pastoralists about how
the new country was being opened up. An acquaintance with Captain Begg of
the Pakwan was a friendship that was later rekindled when John’s son
Lachlan visited the old captain in England.
An historical highlight of the years at Wooltana was the visit of the McKinlay
expedition who stayed overnight on their way north to search for the fated
Burke and Wills explorers.
John and Mary lost 4000 sheep in the disastrous droughts of the 1860’s,
when the sheep were, according to a witness at a Pastoral Commission at
that time, ‘like lanterns and scratched up the stones with their poor tongues to
eat the fibres out of the ground as there was nothing else for them.’ Then
when the rains did come they lost sheep in the wet after shearing because
they were so poor.
The McTaggarts saw some of their neighbors walk off their leases, but they
held on and recovered to reap good wool prices in the 1870’s enabling them
to purchase a retirement property in the Adelaide Hills called Forest Lodge,
leaving their eldest son Lachlan McTaggart on Wooltana.
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Lachlan McTaggarts wife had been the former Miss Murray whose family had
owned the Coromandel Valley biscuit and jam factory and farmed that fertile
valley and bred stud rams there.
When I traveled to Adelaide and asked at the Mortlock Library for any
McTaggart files, they searched to no avail, but when I mentioned the name
Murray I had a huge surprise, for this time the archivists surfaced with a trolley
laden with boxes. ‘Which are mine?’ I asked. ‘All of them,’ the archivists
replied.
What I discovered that afternoon in the reading room of the Mortlock Library in
1995 I will never forget. I found diaries, letters, journals, cards and recipes as
well as old photographs that chronicled the business and personal lives of
those early pioneers. Boxes and boxes of what was mainly McTaggart history.
There were photographs of huge teams of donkeys carting the wool with four
baby donkeys lying down asleep, and a small aboriginal boy atop the load. In
another they all were wool washing at Parallana with the ladies looking on in
long dresses and tied bonnets.
I cried out loudly when I opened one journal for there was the old pioneering
John McTaggarts handwriting. I looked around the Reading Room but my
glance was met with smiles, for the other readers understood my joy of
discovery.
How much simpler my task would have been had these papers been listed
under the names McTaggart / Murray instead of only Murray.
There were photographs of many healthy happy aboriginal children among
the family groups - and I was upset upon returning at a later time to discover
they had been removed. I felt somehow cheated for I believed that they
belonged to these archives. Politics aside, this was their place at that time in
the pastoral history of this state. The aboriginal families played an important,
valued role, which was always acknowledged by the McTaggarts.
When I staggered out into the North Terrace sunshine I half expected to see
long gowns and horse drawn carriages, and I wondered where Frogmore
House was, where ‘our dear Bella died at 4 o’clock today.’ I also wondered
where the beautiful retirement property, Forest Lodge had been. I drove
dreamily to my daughter’s cottage in the Adelaide Hills not feeling quite in this
century.
I showed my daughter some letters I had been given, written by a man, Geoff
Nicolle, who worked for old man McTaggart, one hundred years before at the
place called Forest Lodge. My daughter looked at me strangely and took me
outside. Along the road she lifted the ivy from the pillars of the big house next
door and smiled. The sign said, Forest Lodge. This house, where my
daughter had been married, was the place where old John and Mary
McTaggart had their photographs taken with their family in 1908. My
daughter lived in the little cottage, the Lodge of Forest Lodge, and I was
sleeping in the front bedroom where this old man who wrote the letters had
been born.
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This was the place where the retired McTaggarts, away from the harsh
northern climate, grew potatoes, asparagus and gooseberries and where
there was a little thatched dairy set into the bank where the milk separator
was kept, and there was a beautiful English style garden and yabbies in the
creek. There was a pine tree a mere metre high behind the photograph of old
Mary and her grandchildren in 1900. I looked at it now as it soared above the
house. My skin prickled, I felt as though I was walking on McTaggart graves.
This day had been the most unbelievable, the most satisfying day of my
journey of discovery.
I went to bed that night and dreamed of that bygone era and the man who had
been born in that room on August 13 th 1892 and I saw his granny waving the
sheet to give news that a baby had been born to his father working over on
Fern Hill.
The McTaggarts of Nonning.
J.D. and Ruth
When John and Mary’s only other surviving son, John Donald, or J.D. as he
became to be known, worked on Yudnapinna Station he fell in love with the
managers daughter and when he moved to Carriewerloo a young aboriginal
boy, Harry Dare, acted as the go between carrying love letters from Ruth to
J.D. who waited at the Carriewerloo fenceline.
After their marriage, Ruth and J.D. McTaggart took up the lease of Nonning
Station in the Gawler Ranges where they planned to breed excellent sheep.
They were well equipped to handle the harsh life for they knew too well about
droughts; they had seen the rotting carcasses and empty waterholes, but they
also knew the providence of good seasons and great wool clips.
Harry Dare, the go between, was taken to Nonning because as Ruth jokingly
said, ‘Harry is part of my dowry.’ When their first child Ian Richard, or I.R. as
he was known, was born in 1900, Harry was entrusted with the job of
watching over this baby, the precious son and future heir of Nonning. Harry
told friends that he was the buggy boy for he pushed the baby’s pram up and
down the verandah of the homestead. ‘I aint no ordinary blackfella,’ he said
proudly.
J.D.’s first muster on Nonning was of 500 sheep with only one horse, but he
engaged the services of Elias Croft and his family who mustered on foot. The
Crofts were a loyal hardworking mixture of coffee and white and were
cherished as the most extraordinary Bushmen.
J.D. and Ruth McTaggart had ten children, but two babies, Ruth and Jessie
died each aged five months, and when Ruth became ill a young station hand
voluntarily cycled over rough tracks to Port Augusta overnight arriving back at
Nonning at breakfast with the precious medicine for Mrs Ruth McTaggart.
J.D. McTaggart was a tall man of at least 16 stone with an outgoing
personality, who commanded respect from all who knew him. J.D. worked
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tirelessly to develop Nonning and the conformation and constitution of his
sheep as well as the quality and density of the wool. Moonaree was added to
their pastoral holdings and some land at Wilmington. In 1923 the company
carried a total of 33,000 sheep.
On Sundays the Sabbath was observed and the minister travelled from Iron
Knob, often by pushbike, over forty miles of torturous tracks. Sewing and
knitting were not permitted on Sundays, but fancy work was, and after tea the
dining room was cleared and a musical evening held. On weeknights cards
were played and young Gwen said when her luck was out she found that
sitting on her handkerchief or walking around the table once would often
change her luck. Cricket and billiards were also favorite pastimes and of
course the McTaggarts bred beautiful horses for stock work and polo. Cricket
matches were held and teams came from Whyalla, Port Augusta and Iron
Knob to challenge the pastoralists and the feature of the day was a splendid
lunch supplied by the McTaggart ladies.
The homestead garden was developed and Ruth enjoyed the services of a
Chinese gardener, Harry Ying, who the children remembered for growing the
most beautiful watermelons.
I.R. and Gwen
When J.D. and Ruth retired to Adelaide to live, Ian. R. McTaggart or I.R. as he
was known, took over as the managing director of the Nonning Pastoral
Company in 1937, which that year had shorn 49,000 sheep on the 3
properties.
Although I.R. was required to ride horses, camels and mules, and not by
choice, he said, his great passion was engines and the advent of flying. I.R.
had several plane crashes, the first while he was still receiving instructions,
and the second at Modbury when his plane spun out of control and crashed in
pieces in a paddock. I.R. and his flying officer were unceremoniously
transported to hospital in a woodcarters cart. I.R.’s only injury from this horrific
crash was a broken ankle which was to plague him all of his life, but against
all advice he would not give up flying.
I.R. bought his first plane in 1946, a Moth Minor, and thus continued a flying
career that took him all over Australia on business and pleasure and many
adventures - most the family would rather forget. He finally lost his pilot’s
license at the grand age of 83.
I.R. developed the properties with the aid of his brothers, Lachlan, Donald and
Archie. They built dams, fenced paddocks and generally improved the quality
of their sheep. They had professional financial advisors and money from
good years was invested wisely, allowing the family’s holdings to develop and
expand into Western Australia.
Second World War
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Donald and Lachlan went away proudly to the Second War. While flying low
looking for anti-aircraft tanks in Egypt Lachlan’s plane was hit and burst into
flames. Lachlan bailed out and he landed in the desert. He never saw any of
his crew again and he walked 70 miles under cover of darkness until on the
third morning was luckily picked up by an air-sea rescue crew.
Later he was given time off in Cairo where he met up with his brother Donald,
and other South Australians Peter Bowman, Keith McBride and Ian Marshall.
In Cairo they enjoyed ‘four glorious days.’ Sadly Peter and Keith were killed
shortly after this ordeal, but the McTaggart boys returned home physically
unscathed.
One photograph sent to Lachlan many years after the war which had been
found with Peter Bowmans possessions, was of Lachlan on the day he was
picked up in the desert, and on the back in Peter Bowman’s, writing, ‘Lockie
the day we picked him up from the desert.’
Lachlan believed that his ability to survive his desert ordeal was due to his
bush knowledge that he had learned in the station country around Nonning.
Back at Nonning during the Second World War the women found themselves
doing jobs that the men usually undertook and it was a time when visitors
were not made as welcome because there simply wasn’t time to cook and
entertain with all the stock work to be done.
I.R. McTaggart married Gwen Bayly, whose father was headmaster of Prince
Alfred College. Life at Nonning was a cultural shock for the city girl and at first
staff took advantage of her inexperience, but the young bride soon learned
the ropes and entertained many people including Lord Althorpe, later Earl
Spencer, who later became father to Princess Diana.
I.R. and Gwen had four children at Nonning, Alan, Mary, Heather and
Malcolm. Alan managed the Nonning Pastoral Company’s Mundabullangana
Station in Western Australia, but died at the Port Hedland airstrip whilst
waiting to be airlifted to hospital in Perth. He left a wife and 10-month-old
daughter.
Arthur Whyte
Gwen addressed all the male staff by their surnames with the exception of
Arthur Whyte, whom she particularly liked and admired. Arthur arrived at
Moonaree as a 16 year old in 1937, boots polished, riding Bertha and leading
Toby, with his swag rolled and saddle bags neatly packed. Arthur went away
to war to battle Rommel and although he said he experienced some very dark
moments he came home safely, only to lose an arm in a pit in a freak
ammunition exercise. He remembers he stood ankle deep in his own blood.
He also remembers the sweet morphine that ended the pain and the next day
they sawed his arm off.
Arthur didn’t let his disability thwart his lifestyle in any way, he still rode and
shod his horses and climbed windmills. He later entered politics and became
President of the Legislative Council in South Australia.
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Arthur Whyte kindly wrote the foreword to the book, The McTaggart Story,
and his photograph riding Amy the camel graces page three of the book.
Arthur told stories about Bill Holt who worked for the McTaggarts at
Moonaree, an interesting forthright person who was over six feet tall, the last
of the Kokatha tribe with any authority, who took his knowledge to the grave
lest it fall into the wrong hands. Bill Holt is buried at Iron Knob.
I.R. and Gwen McTaggarts’ story at Nonning is a long and interesting one, but
when their time was finished they decided to have their ashes buried atop the
hill behind the homestead at Nonning in those granite Gawler Ranges. From
this vantage point they can survey the homestead and all the buildings and of
course the work continuing below.
Summing up
The McTaggart story, only a portion of which has been recalled here, has
been one of triumphs and tragedies, hardships and survival, of great loves
and strong loyalties. John McTaggart, the patriarch of this family, would be
proud of his successors who have multiplied, diversified and prospered - with
the help of all those shepherds and shearers, teamsters, station hands,
spiritual advisors, financial advisors and tradesmen.
Over 100 years ago Nonning employed 1 man for every 1000 sheep and a
small community developed, bookkeepers, boundary riders, cooks,
governesses, and station hands, gardeners. However today, only 5 men are
employed at Nonning, and the ratio is 1 man to every 5000 sheep.
The present manager, Angus McTaggart, who is the son of Malcolm and
Pam, and grandson of I.R. McTaggart, says he thinks that history is being
made on Nonning right now in 2005 with one of the worst droughts on record.
Angus though, comes from tough pioneering stock, like those before him no
doubt he will survive to reap the benefits of good seasons and better wool
prices.
Bibliography The McTaggart Story
Author Ruth Anderson 1995
Open Book Publisher
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