Special features Francis Singleton: Magistrate of the Murray Jan Baker Belle of Bunbury: Dave Austin

Regular features. From the MDO . Nicholas Reynolds. Education Matters. Katrina Gauci Spotlight on Volunteers. Jan Baker Chairpersons report – Jan Baker Events, activities, and Exhibitions. Then & now. (Occasional feature)

Friends of Mandurah Community Museum Newsletter August 2016

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Francis Singleton, second Resident Magistrate of Murray District. Francis Singleton was the third son of Francis Cor-bet, of Aclare, County Meath, Ireland, who assumed the additional name of Singleton in compliance with the will of his great grand-uncle, the Right Hon. Henry Singleton, sometime Master of the Rolls and Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in Ireland. From the years 1825 to 1836, Singleton served in the Royal navy progressing from college midshipman at the age of 13 years, to 3rd lieutenant. He was pre-sent at the capture of the Morea Castle in Greece.

On 20th April 1839 Singleton arrived in Western Australia on the Hindoo with 46 passengers on board, including another settler for Mandurah, Creery, and with several servants including William Pollard, McLarty and Fairbairn. Having purchased 10,000 acres of Thomas Peel’s land at a bargain price he proceeded to settle some of his servants and others on small blocks with frontages to the Murray or Dandalup rivers. On his own property Dandalup Farm, Singleton began breeding horses for India where there was a lucrative market, but he suffered the same problems with land in the Murray districts as many others did. These included poison plants and pastures unsuitable for horses or cattle.

In 1839 Singleton was made a Justice of the Peace and this saw a period of significant involvement in community life of the Murray Districts as he also ap-pears to have taken on much of the role of Resident Magistrate due to the absence of Richard Mears. By 1840 he is formally the Resident Magistrate for the large area of Murray, and in 1841 he also took on the role of Registrar for Births, Deaths and Mar-riages.

Francis Singleton’s farming continues and in 1841 he presents a paper to the Agricultural Society on the planting of wheat and barley and their diseases in the colony.

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Francis Singleton (cont) It was also in 1841 that he was appointed to the Legislative Council of W.A. In 1844 Singleton suffered some reversals due to a fire on his farm, where he lost his home, furniture, plate and other goods.

Over the next several years Francis Singleton continues his involvement in the lawful management of Mur-ray. He is known to have been involved in tendering for bridge building both at Pinjarra and especially near his property in Dandalup. These bridges also suffered problems, being washed away in floods.

Correspondence from Francis Singleton include such items as a murder in the area involving one of his past servant’s children, George Pollard. However, the murderer, a Parkhurst boy was apprehended easily. Evi-dence of coal was found but the amount was insignificant. There were also reports relating to firing of the bush by Aboriginals and they may have been the first support for routine burning recorded within this state. Another letter deplores the possibility of convicts being brought to the state and stating they weren’t required.

In 1846 Francis Singleton promoted the inclusion of WA in plans by Peninsula and Oriental Steam Naviga-tion Company to provide a service to the Eastern States of Australia. The state ship Champion was put at his service by the Colonial Secretary and he leaves for Singapore to negotiate this.

In 1847 soon after he returns from Singapore he applies for and is granted 18 months leave to return to Eng-land. This may be when he meets his future wife. It appears that on his passage he visits South Australia and while still at sea is chosen for the position of Auditor General in South Australia. He actually hears about this on his arrival in the United Kingdom.

While he still retains his property in Western Australia, Francis Singleton never returns to WA, instead on his return to Australia he takes up the position of Auditor General of South Australia in 1848. The position had a remuneration of 400 pounds, a much higher amount than he is earning here as an added incentive he re-ceived half pay for the duration of his leave in the UK. In 1849 Singleton married Louisa Susanna Gore (possibly his cousin). They had five children born in South Australia.

His employment in the role of Auditor General is short lived due possibly to mismanagement or disagree-ment with others in 1850, however he is employed as Clerk of the Executive Council for a short period until he became Clerk of Legislative Council. His efficiency and attention to detail saw him remaining in this role until his death in 1887 at the age of 75 years, after actually dying at a sitting in the Parliament.

According to Obituaries Australia, Singleton was a councillor of the Brighton Council and subsequently Brighton's mayor. In the list of key organisations there is mention of him being a member of the Adelaide Club and a director of the Wallaroo Tramway Company, but there is no mention of his long service as a com-mittee member of the Adelaide Homœopathic Dispensary. He also had significant mining interests and is said to have been quite rich.

In so far as his property in Western Australia, there was significant flooding twice more at the farm. Singleton retained this property for some years after his move to South Australia with W Oakley managing it and then leasing it to Francis Corbett Singleton followed by Anthony Cornish and Nicholas Paterson, who in Decem-ber 1856 purchased Dandalup Estate.

After Francis Singleton left WA the role of Resident Magistrate of Murray was then undertaken by David Mur-ray, but it is well documented that during Singleton’s time significant work within the district and attention to his role meant he was well respected as having contributed a great deal within the short time he resided and

farmed here. Jan Baker

Then and now. While I was walking through the museum I noticed this satchel from the early years of the school and then considered what I went to school with. I took to school my reading book, my lunch duly wrapped in greaseproof paper and placed in a brown paper bag, both the greaseproof and the bag had to be carefully folded and taken home for the next day. If I was lucky and the orange tree was producing I might have an orange, or Dad might have brought home some grapes from the vineyard where he worked. I would also have had my cray-ons or colouring in pencils, an ordinary pencil and maybe a couple of 50 page exercise books with a pad for our ‘sums’. Picture this today, my granddaughter has a big backpack which sometimes her Mum has to carry as it is too heavy. She has just been told that in preparation for the big school she must have her piece of fruit prepared, cut up and placed in a container she can take out and identify. Her lunch is in a separate container and has partitions to separate her ‘snacks’, her sandwich or wrap, she also has to have her water bottle (we drank out of the water fountains). Of course she also carries her reading book plus other items. She is not yet 5 years old and very small for her age. Soon she will carry her laptop as well (well maybe in 4 – 5 years but still prior to leaving primary school). In her bag she may also have her sunburn cream, hat and wet towels to clean up with. We completed our school life with strong straight backs and legs, I am not sure about whether she will have a straight back but she will have strong arms, shoulders and legs. Jan Baker

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Museum Development Officer

The Mandurah Community Museum once again had an all-time record number of visitors come through the door for the month of May 2016. 681 people enjoyed the various displays, events and education pro-grammes which the Museum had to offer during the month. This marks a 50% increase over May 2015. We have seen an increase in school visits during this cur-rent term over and above those seen in previous years. The Mandurah Community Museum then went on to set a record June for visitors take it to an-all time 12 month high attendance figure. In 2015/16 6,897 people accessed our services which cements the ongoing steadily increasing use of the Museum, year-on-year. The Dawesville and Mandurah RSL sub branches kind-ly loaned the Mandurah Community Museum a variety of naval objects to display which complemented the nationally touring Maritime Museum of Australia’s War at Sea panel exhibition. This exhibition, focusing on the role of Australia in the Great War at sea was on display over the month of June. The opening had an attendance of 23 people. It was lovely to see a variety of people from the wider commu-nity which included the Navy association, RSLs and interested people who hadn’t attended an event at the Museum previously. All the secondary schools in the region were invited to visit and were given educational information however there were no visits from secondary schools. Following on from this, the first month of the new finan-cial year has seen an absolute all-time high in visitor statistics for any month of the year in the Museum's history, with 1,472 people coming through the door. The immense success of the Dinosaur Park children's activity was the main driver behind these excellent re-sults. The benefit of having an after-hours session for children and family of City of Mandurah workers was also apparent, with over 90 people coming through the Museum between 5 and 7 PM of an evening to see the animatronics dinosaurs themselves. This was beneficial not just for the overall increase in numbers for the month but also in terms of raising the profile of the Mu-seum amongst City staff and the resources that we of-fer to the organisation. The number of comments re-ceived along the lines of "I've always meant to come down to the Museum for a visit, but I never thought it would be this engaging" were very gratifying to hear. An issue which occurred regarding an error in the Mu-seum’s Archives cataloguing module has now been successfully resolved. Working cooperatively together as part of our Wednesday cataloguing team, and with the valuable assistance of Bruce Pascoe, Library Tech-nician, we have now completely solved the original is-sue. Not only that, we have now entered the entire storage location system across the Museum store rooms into the database and have a better understand-ing of the capabilities of the Archives programme. This is also true for Bruce.

Not only have we been able to return to cataloguing new objects into the collection, but for the last two weeks we have also been updating the object storage locations that Colin Warne has been diligently recoding on Tuesdays. By continuing this process we will be able to develop a cataloguing system that functions at 100%.

War at Sea travelling exhibition

Captain Brian Delamont & Able Seaman Scott La Praik

Councillor Jane Field and Nicholas Reynolds, MDO.

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Education Matters

NAIDOC Week July 3-10 Bringing Noongar History to Life Showcasing Gloria Kearing’s Aboriginal Art Work. A self-Guided trail where children answer the questions as they make their way around the exhibition was created. This involved the children reading Gloria’s stories and looking at each of her paintings.

Yarning about Yaburgurt

Aboriginal elder George Walley agreed to be a guest speak-er at the Museum on Wednesday July 6. Through music and yarning he told the story of Yaburgurt and his importance to Mandurah’s history. He shared his knowledge with 7 adults and 20 children.

The children sang with George and asked him many ques-tions about Noongar life and in particular about the 6 sea-sons. After George Walley’s presentation the children partici-pated in making a 6 season’s art activity.

Peel Heritage Art Competition This is an annual competition that invites primary school students in the region to illustrate their local her-itage, built and/or natural, and encourage them to rec-ognise its value for the future.

This is the fifth consecutive year it has run. In 2015 eight schools were involved with 295 entries. The Art Work will be on display from Saturday 24 Sep-tember to Sunday 23 October. I would like to thank the following business for providing prizes.

Mandurah Cruises kindly donated two family tickets on a dolphin and canal cruise. Mandurah Indoor Rock Climbing donated a Family Pass to the value of $80 Jacksons Drawing supplies provided two $25 vouchers. Kmart donated two $20 vouchers. The photos below show the 2015 winners.

July Holidays Tyrannosaurus Park visited the Mandurah Community Museum during the second week of the July school holidays for four days. This included three life-like, large scale moving and roaring animatronic dinosaurs and eight comedy shows with Dezzy the Dinosaur and Ranger Jim. Ranger Jim’s comedy shows were a huge success as were the animatronic dinosaurs.

Over the four days 1162 people visited the Museum

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From The Maritime Projects team Mandurah Area Shipwrecks (Belle of Bunbury 1877-

1886)

The Belle of Bunbury was a wooden hulled vessel built in Bunbury by James Dagley Gibbs and was owned by Hay-ward Stuart Reid and was described as a fore and aft rigged schooner. Her tonnage was 42 tons and she had a crew of 4. She sailed from Bunbury destined for Freman-tle with a cargo of Wool and potatoes. As she was sailing in Safety Bay, The weather was fine with only a light wind blowing in an easterly direction. The Captain decided to run inside the Murray Reef which was a common course for coastal vessels under these conditions but despite these favourable conditions and the Captain’s ten years of experience she struck a rock just off of Penguin Island at 8.45am on 10 December 1886. An enquiry into the sinking of the vessel heard the lead had been on deck but Captain Miller saw no need to deploy it. It was also re-vealed that the mate was stationed as a lookout and that at the time of the accident all of the crew were sober. The site of the wreck of the Belle of Bunbury is of historical significance as an example of a locally built vessel in-volved in the coastal trade of Western Australia and is one of only three local wrecks to have been built in West-ern Australia. David Austin. (From Trove). The West Australian, Monday 13

th of December, 1886.

WRECK OF THE "BELLE OF BUNBURY.' FURTHER PARTICULARS. From a report of Mr.Miller, master of the “Belle of Bun-

bury”, it appears that the vessel struck on a rock in "Tub

Passage," near Penguin Islands, almost exactly 15 miles

from Fremantle as the crow flies. Easterly winds prevail-

ing at the time of the accident, and it is to that cause Cap-

tain Miller attributes the fact of his vessel's position. On

previous occasions he had frequently taken shelter in Tub

Passage, and never experienced any danger. The cargo

on board consisted of 70 bales of wool and 6 tons of po-

tatoes. Nine of the wool bales were on deck and slipped

overboard when the vessel sank, floating towards land.

The vessel is uninsured, and belongs to Messrs. T. Hay-

ward and Wm. Reid, of Bunbury. On Friday evening, Mr.

Reid started from Fremantle on board the schooner

“Theresa”, accompanied by the lighter "Two Sons," carry-

ing gear for the raising of the sunken schooner.

Editor. I looked

around the inter-

net for a appropri-

ate picture of the

schooner, while

this reflects the

rigging I suspect

the Belle of Bun-

bury would have

had less in the

way of sails.

Duyfken is coming to Mandurah 5 – 14 September, to mark the 400th anniversary of Dark Hartog’s

landing. The museum has booked to tour the vessel for volun-teers . Time Wednesday 14th September, 10 am. Any volunteers who haven’t placed their names on the list, now is the time to do so.

The above photograph was submitted to our recent Herit-age Art Competition by Joyce Frost, is the 1st and 2nd Central Mandurah bridges during building in 1952-53 It is probably a good time to commence thinking about photographing the new bridge being built. We are asking that anyone who is near the bridge with a camera at any time to take photographs of the progress being made. We know that everyone who photographs bring their own unique view to them and it for this reason we are asking you to assist and donate your images to us. Ideally we would like them to be labelled Central Bridge No 3 and the date YYYY-MM-DD. It is hoped that by doing this we will be preserving these images for ever. Jan Baker

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Mandurah Community Museum, 3 Pinjarra Rd, MANDURAH WA 6210. Telephone: 9550 3680. Email: museum@mandurah.wa.gov.au Internet: www.mandurah.wa.gov.au/Facilities/Museum/Friends Opening hours. Tuesday to Friday. 10 am to 4pm. Saturday & Sunday. 11 am to 3pm. Closed Mondays and Public Holidays.

Friends of Mandurah Community Museum, 3 Pinjarra Rd, MANDURAH WA 6210. Meetings are second Tuesday of the month at 11 am. The mission of the Friends is to provide assistance and support to the Museum in all its endeavours. The ‘Friends’ also seek to promote the heritage and history of Mandurah, and to assist other like minded bodies. Membership of the Friends is by a yearly member-ship fee of $10 due each August.

Chairperson’s report. While the committee of the Friends have continued to be busy we haven’t called a meeting during the colder months. At the Museum we continue to care for the finances with monies coming in from sale of books, calendars and especially badges and other souvenirs which are prepared on site by Julie Brown. Julie will now be attending the Museum once a week and we hope to be able to assist her efforts with Toni Maisey being able to do some of the graphic design.

Our next Friends meeting will be held at the museum on Tuesday 23rd August, this will commence at 10am with morning tea.

Currently we have commenced the planning for next year’s calendar and we will use photographs from the recent Heritage Photo competition complemented once again with words to describe the photographs. The Mu-seum will organise another Heritage Photo Competition and the calendar should be another way to promote our Museum collection.

Our financial information has been placed with our audi-tor and they should be back in good time for our AGM. This will be held in the early weeks of October.

While we are on Financial matters, the 2016 –17 mem-bership fees will be due shortly and notice of this will be with the newsletter either by email or posted.

It is also timely to notify you that under the laws of the Friends I cannot continue as Chairperson and that nomi-nations will be called shortly for that position, forms will accompany this newsletter. I would encourage all mem-bers to consider nominating for this position. This organi-sation may be a quiet unnoticed portion of the Museum but it is also very valuable to the Museum both in its sup-port and assistance with functions and the role within the community.

Lastly, in the boxes below is the new internet sites provid-ed by the Council, there is a section in this for the Friends and past newsletters are now available at ……...

http://www.mandurah.wa.gov.au/Facilities/Museum/

Friends Jan Baker.

Volunteer Notes. The last few weeks have found several new volunteers starting with us and we would like to welcome them. They will mostly be working with us on Thursday, Friday or the weekends for the moment.

Tamara Bulcock Is a trained archaeologist and she helped us some years ago when we under-took an archaeological dig near the old police barracks. Over the last several years Tamara has been working in Queensland concentrating on Indigenous history. While she assists us at the Museum she will be focusing mainly on indigenous history and

may be able to assist us with some further recording of oral histories.

Rob Hewer has been in busi-ness and marketing and since retirement has felt the need to become involved further in the Mandurah community.

Toni Maisey, is also re-turning to us after several years. She has been doing some graphic design studies and working in various are-as. Toni will also be assist-ing in the weekend volunteer duties

Over the last 2 months, Leanne Adams has been volun-teering as part of her studies at TAFE, and has assisted us greatly with weekend days. We are hoping she may have time to continue in this area while doing her studies.

.

Membership renewal now due For 2016 –1017

$10 single or double.