Blue Mountains History Journal Issue 2

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Blue Mountains History Journal 2; 2011 stations. The topic of her paper in this Issue is the history of the Postal and Telephone Services and she details some of the intrigue associated with their establishment. Finally, the current President of BMACHO, Pamela Smith of the Springwood Historians, has provided a brief account of the Old Guard, a paramilitary group that operated in the Blue Mountains in the 1930s. This is still a topic that is difficult to tackle because of the secrecy that surrounds the history of this group, the restricted access that still applies to key documentation, and the sensitivities of surviving relatives of the members of that group. However Pamela has managed to convey the extent of the planned activities while protecting the identities of most of those involved. BMACHO is grateful to the Commonwealth Department of the Environment and Heritage for funding, through the GVEHO Grants Program, which has assisted in the publication of this issue of The Blue Mountains History Journal. Dr Peter C. Rickwood, Editor Extracts from this publication may be reproduced provided the source is fully acknowledged. Back to Contents
Blue Mountains History Journal 2; 2011 THE MARTINDALE FAMILY AND THE SKETCHBOOK OF MARY ELIZABETH MARTINDALE John Low 39, Highland St, Leura, NSW 2780 grizzlybear3au@yahoo Abstract In 1860, during a journey along the Western Road across the Blue Mountains, Mary Martindale created a series of watercolour sketches as a memento of her trip. In their modest way they depict road conditions, people and vehicles, buildings and landscape scenery. Mary was the wife of Captain Ben Hay Martindale who spent three difficult years in NSW responsible for roads, railways and the electric telegraph. Soon after this excursion Ben resigned and the family returned to England where Mary died in 1902. In 1930 her daughter donated the sketchbook to the Mitchell Library. Largely ignored, it provides a valuable impression of travel in the years before the railway. Keywords: Martindale; Western Road; travel; art; women; Blue Mountains Introduction In the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, there are 19 small watercolour sketches (the largest measuring 22 x 30.5 cm), collected, in no apparent order, under the title Our Trip to the Blue Mountains NSW 1860 (Martindale 1860b). In their modest way they record the impressions of a young English gentlewoman, Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Martindale, who travelled along the Western Road across the Blue Mountains in the mid-nineteenth century. While other nineteenth century women, including Elizabeth Hawkins (Mackaness 1965, pp.102-117), Louisa Meredith (Meredith 1973), Sophia Stanger (Mackaness 1965, pp.255-266) and Rachel Henning (Adams 1985) have all left letters and journals that vividly record the difficulties and drama of early road travel in the Blue Mountains, the sketches of Mary Martindale provide a visual account, a travel journal without words. Figure 1. Ben Hay Martindale (Anonymous Both sketching and painting were common accomplishments among educated women of the nineteenth century (Hammond 1993; Jordan 2005; Kerr & Broadbent 1980; Sayers 1989). Indeed, drawing was “unstoppably popular and widely taught” as an appropriately moral and innocent component of a middle to upper class woman’s “ornamental education” (Jordan 2005, p.18). Such work was generally limited and conventional in its artistic ambitions, and was almost always pursued as recreation and for consumption within the domestic circle of family and friends. Uninhibited by expectations of a public audience, however, it often revealed a greater honesty in its depiction of subject matter, a quality prized by social historians. A sketchbook was an indispensible companion on any special journey at that time, and the sketches of Mary Martindale have all the above characteristics. Nevertheless, though made reference to by art historian Joan Kerr (1980; 1992), they have been largely ignored, even by Blue Mountains historians. 1 Back to Contents
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Blue Mountains History Journal Issue 2

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