Matilda Wallace
Matilda Wallace was a 19th century pioneer Australian pastoralist. Born in High Ham, Somerset, England to Sarah and George Hill. She emigrated to Australia departing Liverpool on 31 October 1858, joining members of her family in Coromandel Valley, in the Colony of South Australia. She was a twenty-year old sponsored by brother, Robert Hill. Wallace and her husband Abraham were for many years frontier sheep and cattle farmers, which she documented in a memoir.Her account provides a view into the place of women in society at the time, the hardships of frontier settlers and their interactions with Indigenous people.
Her early life and journey to Australia
Matilda Hill's family lived in the hamlet of Henley in the Parish of High Ham, Somerset. High Ham is surrounded by small farms and has a temperate maritime climate with mild, damp winters and warm, changeable summer. January is the coldest month, with mean minimum temperatures generally between 1°C and 2°C. July is usually the warmest month with temperatures occasionally reaching above 30°C. Annual rainfall is 725mm spread evenly through the year.George Hill married local woman Sarah Meaker on 13 January 1827 at St Andrews Church, High Ham. They had five children the youngest being Matilda. Matilda was baptised in St Andrew’s Church of England at High Ham on 11 November 1838 a short time after her birth. She attended the village school attached to St Andrew’s Church until the age of 11 and, at the age of 12, she was employed as a glove maker, or glover. According to the 1841 census, all five of George Hill’s children were living at Henley. In 1851 only Robert, scholar 16, and Matilda 12, glover, were at home with George and Sarah at the time of the census. Robert Hill, baptised 26/10/1834 at High Ham, stayed at school until he was 16, and then worked on the land. Matilda led a sheltered life on the farm and helped with milking. When Matilda emigrated, she was described on the passenger list as a dairy maid.
Young people from rural Somerset were affected by the repeal of the Corn Laws and the increase in farm size, resulting from consolidation, decreased the number of small landholders and led to substantial poverty and a reduction in the need for farm labourers. Many were destined for Australasia as was the case for members of Matilda's family.
When Matilda was born her siblings were Mary 13, Susan 12, Robert 4 and Jeffrey 1. Matilda kept in touch by post with her three siblings, Mary, Robert and Jeffrey, who had emigrated to Australia. Matilda knew why her three siblings had left Somerset and how they fared in the Colony of South Australia and decided to follow them and knew what that entailed. When Matilda emigrated the cost of an assisted passage was £5.
Matilda’s sister, Mary Elliot Hill, married Samuel Bartlett, a farm labourer. They emigrated on the ship Himalaya to the Colony of South Australia on 1 August 1849 from Southampton. The passenger list includes Samuel 29, Mary 23 and their daughter Emma, aged two, and a baby son, Arthur. They settled at St Mary's Coromandel Valley in the Adelaide Hills.
Once Mary and Samuel Bartlett had settled in the colony other members of the family also decided to emigrate from Somerset. Samuel’s brother, James Bartlett, married Elizabeth Culiford of High Ham on 9/3/1852 also emigrated. They arrived later on the Sultana on 7 October 1852 from Plymouth. Matilda’s brother, Robert Hill, and Mary Allen from nearby Puriton, married at St Mary Magdalene, Taunton on 29/5/1855. They travelled on the Nimroud, arriving in February 1856 He was listed as an ag labourer 20 and Mary 35. In 1857 Matilda’s other brother, Jeffrey Hill 19 farm labourer, and his wife Mary 23 sailed from Liverpool on the Tantivy to join them The families all settled in Coromandel Valley, less than 20 km from the centre of Adelaide, then a town of about 15,000. Robert and Jeffrey both spent time as sheep farmers.In 1874 Robert was described as a market gardener at Scott's Creek.
As a nominated emigrant, Matilda's passage in steerage was subsidised. Subsidies were used to encourage migrants and thus provide much needed labour. Of the 156 young women on the passenger list, 10 from Somerset, most were domestic servants in their early twenties, so Matilda had companions with a similar background.For steerage passengers, life aboard ship, was characterised by poor hygiene and a lack of privacy for ablutions with limited access to fresh water and toilet facilities. Washing facilities were also communal and basic, often involving buckets of seawater and limited access to fresh water. During severe storms in the Southern Ocean passengers were confined below, sometimes for days, sick and tossed around, often in complete darkness, and fearing for their lives, as water swept across the decks. Anne Grafton, who migrated from England in the same year as Matilda, wrote: Our water barrels were rolling from side to side and our cans, teapots and cooking utensils were adding to the confusion by bouncing one after the other down the area between the bunks.
The barque North, owned by Boyd and Company, was built in Quebec in 1855. Its first voyage from Liverpool to Adelaide was chartered by the Emigration Commissioners, who facilitated emigration within the British Empire, to sail with Government emigrants. It departed from Liverpool on 1 November 1858 and carried passengers in cabins and government-assisted emigrants in the steerage. The "North" arrived in Adelaide on 28 January 1859.The 1,238 tons North carried a full complement of 417 passengers, including 51 young married couples with 34 boys and 49 girls including 15 babies, five of whom were born on ship, 74 single men, 156 single women. Matilda was fortunate as passengers were generally satisfied 'with the conduct of officers and crew, as well as the quality and quantity of provisions served out.'
Early Years in Australia
Matilda Elliot Hill arrived in Port Adelaide on 28 January 1859 and was met by her brother, Robert, and travelled via Adelaide to Coromandel Valley to meet her sister Mary, brother-in-law Samuel, and her nieces, Ann Matilda and Mary Elliot. She stayed with her sister Mary and brother Robert. She later recalled: Matilda later reflected on her arrival in the colony: 'I, then a girl of twenty-one, having left my native land, father and mother. What for? I used often to ask myself'.While in Coromandel Valley, Matilda became acquainted with Australian farming on the sheep runs associated with Robert and Jeffrey. Matilda travelled around the colony for about two and a half years staying with friends and relations in almost every inhabited part of South Australia, and finally settled in Mt Gambier in early 1861 where she met her future husband.
Abraham Wallace, the youngest son of Jeremiah and Anne Wallace, was born in 1828. At the age of sixteen he emigrated from Ireland with his parents and two brothers, Jeremiah, and John, arriving in Australia on 24 November 1850 on the Joseph Somes from Plymouth. The Wallaces kept a shop and were well known in Mt Gambier.
Abraham first settled at Mt Gambier but went to the Victorian goldfields, where he engaged in hawking goods. He returned to the Southeast where he met Matilda. Matilda and Abraham were married at Weshill, the residence of Anne Wallace, on 9 December 1861 by the Reverend J. Sheldon. The couple stayed in Mt Gambier for 18 months. During that time Matilda helped in the Wallace’s shop and the couple suffered the loss of their first child, a boy..
The couple left for Queensland equipped thus: a waggon and pair of horses, bedding and provisions. They travelled up the Darling River to Mount Murcheson, the only place above flood level. Matilda wrote: "I not being strong enough to travel, we stayed here and opened a store. After sending to Adelaide for goods, my husband then applied to the New South Wales Government for land to purchase; in four months' time we received an answer that we could buy land, and that a surveyor had instructions to survey it, in the meantime my husband put up a house 28 by 18, divided into two rooms, in which we had to pack our stores as well as ourselves, but as the surveyor never made his appearance, of course we could not open a store. My husband got discontented having nothing to do, and started hawking to dispose of his goods." Matilda was still frail when Abraham left her to dispose of the stock. Not Long after he left, "24 blackfellows appeared at the house, but Mrs Wallace put on a bold front, and made friends with them. They brought her much game and a lot of eggs.The second child, a boy, of the marriage was born here but did not survive.""Upon his wife's recovery, Mr Wallace left her alone again for another month, and at the end of that period decided that hawking was not his forte, and that he would continue the journey to Queensland. The remaining stores were sold to a pioneer from the Paroo, and the waggon was headed into Queensland. After having travelled 200 miles beyond the border it was learned that the government would not allow stock to cross from any other colony, and so a return was made to Mount Murchison.On his return it was resolved to proceed to Adelaide via the Barrier Ranges.This was breaking new ground, and everybody at Menindie said the Wallaces were mad to face the perils involved."
However, they did get through, risking death from thirst on what would have been a hot dry journey to Mingary,80 miles over the South Australian border. From there pushed on to Adelaide.
In her later years, Matilda reflected that during her overland trips she was filled with both fear and trepidation.
Late in 1863, they returned with 25
horses, 1,400 sheep, 18 months'
provisions, and two men in order to
settle on some country on the other
side of the ranges, travelling via Boolcoomatta Station. From there they probably went north along the border area between the colonies of South Australia and New South Wales, crossing the Barrier Ranges near Byjerkerno in early January 1864.
Local Aborigines showed them a waterhole in the creek where they camped. The Wallaces were on land to the north east of Boolcoomatta and became squatters. They were now at the remote front
of European settlement in a locality named Sturt's Meadows in honour of Sturt's 1844-5 journey in which he followed the Darling River to the point that gave the shortest plains crossing to the southern end of the Barrier Range.
Once settlers arrived at the frontier of white settlement, they "squatted" on Aboriginal land, became pastoralists, grew food, selected land - later applying for leases, built homesteads, fences and watering points. These early settlers relied on each other for support far from the jurisdiction of the law. Matilda’s memoir seems to indicate that she and Abraham did not see themselves as invaders of another’s land, but as hard-working pioneers in a land yet to be developed, a view promulgated
by governments at the time.
The British government had sought to occupy Australia exclusively without any agreement or treaty. All land was declared to be owned by the Crown. Reynolds has stated:
It is of course equally possible that they did know what they were doing! Early European accounts of frontier settlement did not include recognition and reflection on the conflict and violence committed against Indigenous people, initially by the British, then by pastoralists, then by police, and then by Aboriginal militia, conflicts that are now recognised as frontier wars in which Indigenous people battled to defend their country.