Rosemary Sinclair (nee Fenton)
The title of the next few Signal articles in the “Being There…” sequence has changed slightly to “Sparks from the Past – and Present”. Sometimes, individual talent and opportunity meet serendipitously, and the outcome produces a real ‘spark’ in which the individual the Island community are both illuminated.
In the next two episodes, [Lord Howe Island] Signal readers are privileged to look inside the life of Islander, Rosemary Sinclair, “Miss Australia” in 1960. Rosie has generously reworked an article about her early life which appeared in the magazine, “Country Style” in February, 1996. Over the course of the next two Signal articles, it will become obvious that, whilst Rosie had an extraordinary life, it had more than its usual share of highs and lows. Rosie and her husband, Ian, still visit Lord Howe regularly, staying with Rosie’s youngest brother, Stan, who now lives in the home in which the family grew up.
Rosie’s description of her early life on Lord Howe from the 1940s takes us back to World War II, which cast a dark shadow over her early life on the Island. Her later success as “Miss Australia” was symptomatic of the post-war optimism which pervaded the Island in the 1950s and 60’s, making her an important Island voice from “the flying boat days” up to the present.
Early life on Lord Howe – Adapted from a Country Style magazine article (February, 1996)
I was brought up in a paradise and it wasn’t until I went to school on the mainland that I realised other places were very different. It was, however, a paradise under threat. During the early years, I went to sleep each night fearing the shadows on my bedroom wall might be Japanese soldiers and enemy submarines, which we were told surrounded the Island and were poised for attack. I wished there was a bridge from Sydney to Lord Howe in case of emergencies.
At school we trained to react swiftly if the worst happened. When a practise bell rang, we had to fling up the sash windows, jump into trenches and crouch there until the all clear signal.
My father was Lord Howe Island’s air radio communications officer. On rostered nights he picked up a hurricane lamp and trudged to the top of a hill at the back of our property. Not even Mum knew what he did up there in the dead of night. It was war work and not to be talked about.
Even before the war we felt very out of touch from other places. My earliest memory is watching the steamship that called once every three months sail out towards the horizon. The sun was setting on the other side of the lagoon and the ship seemed to be getting smaller and smaller. I had a terrible feeling of sadness. My parents were on that ship. My father’s stepmother would be looking after my brother, Peter, and me for three months. She terrified me.
Dad’s parents settled on the Island in 1896. My grandfather, Alexander Fenton, was a landscape gardener originally from Perth in Scotland, and he’d been appointed by Searls’ Nursery in Sydney to help start up palm seed exports that would expand the Island’s industry. He was the black sheep of the family but he made a success of the palm seed enterprise. He exported live trees as well.
Soon the foyers of luxury hotels, not only in Australia, but in Europe and America had potted Kentia palms, and I liked to think that some of the palms I saw on my visits many years later were the trees that my grandfather reared, replanted and despatched in tall containers.
The Island wasn’t paradise for everyone. My father had a difficult childhood there. Maybe because of this, he and mum were determined that the four of us – Peter, myself, Stan and Robyn – should have nothing but happy childhood memories. My mother, who was Elsie Saunders before she married, came to the Island as a tourist on the cargo boat, Makambo. It took two years of to-ing and fro-ing before she and my father were finally married.
She had little idea of how to be an Islander. At sixteen she’d been the youngest person to qualify as an associate of the Academy of Music. She was a stenographer by trade.
On Lord Howe her musical brilliance as a pianist was deeply appreciated. The other necessary skills – bread making, sewing, horticulture and a high degree of improvisation – she acquired as time went by. You couldn’t even buy yeast for dough, you had to make your own from hops or potatoes. When tinned ‘Dribarm’ yeast became available it saved the day!
The same Makambo that brought my mother to Lord Howe was responsible, they say, for a couple of super rats, which bred and multiplied. By the time I was old enough to go to school, rats were scampering everywhere and eating everyone out of house and home. They ran up the trees and gobbled up the palm seed. My brother, Peter and I, were competent with Dad’s 22-inch rifles. We spent every spare moment either shooting rats or setting traps for them. Dad gave us a hacksaw and a trowel, and we sliced off the tails and buried the rest. At the Lord Howe Island Board headquarters, officials solemnly accepted the curled tails preserved in methylated spirits, in mother’s Kilner jars. They counted them out and gave us sixpence for every one of them.
In the photographs from that time, I look like a sugar-and- spice girl, not an exterminator. My hair wasn’t cut until I was eleven years old, and when I took feed to the hen sheds or went to collect eggs, day old chicks used to hop into my waist-length ringlets and settle there.
Only two families sent their older kids to school on the mainland. Dad and Mum must have decided it was important. Mum took piano pupils and grew strawberries for guesthouses. The extra income paid our fares and fees.
My brother Peter’s first year away from home was traumatic. Hardly had he settled in before he got measles, and then pneumonia, and then the dreaded diphtheria. The prognosis was bad. A Catalina flew in to assist a local woman whose pregnancy was in danger, and with great difficulty, my mother secured a seat on the flying boat and was able to be with Peter through the crisis.
At the one-teacher Island school, Peter and I were top of the class (not quite so impressive as it sounds, if you consider that there were only four or five children in each class). At school we had a horrid teacher who always seemed to have it in for us even though we worked well. I was a bit of a fatty and some of the other pupils ragged me. Thank goodness there was another chubby girl, Jenny Kirby.
We became the best of friends. A subsequent teacher, Steven Frew, was wonderful and he became my mentor. He convinced me that I could do anything I wanted to do.
This confidence stood me in good stead when I went to the Presbyterian Ladies College in Sydney. The other pupils in my class had started their secondary education the year before. I hadn’t studied high school maths, nor Latin, nor French. The treatment dished out to me by some staffers was not pleasant. I felt ridiculous because I wasn’t good at sport. I didn’t know what basketball was. There were a couple of tennis courts on Lord Howe, but I’d never played. We had no horses so I couldn’t ride.
What I could do, however, was surf. Our home was fringed by the only surf beach on the Island and from a tender age I’d gone out as far as the men went and could ride any breaker. If body surfing had been on the PLC curriculum, I’d have been top dog and could have shown them! The mainland was a real culture shock and for most of my boarding school years I longed to be home. I did, however, benefit from a good education and made some very good friends.
We had one doctor on the Island, and he had to be a surgeon too. There was no anaesthetist. My younger brother, Stan, cut his eye on barbed wire and I’ll always remember his screams as he was stitched up. If we had been closer to sophisticated medical care, then perhaps my mother’s headaches would have received expert attention. I was at PLC when I received a telegram to say that she’d died of a cerebral haemorrhage. She was forty-six.
There was no transport for four days. When I finally got back, there was no one to meet me. After a while I saw my father, younger brother and sister walking down from the communications station where my father worked.
See all the pictures in the issue.
This article appeared in The Lord Howe Island Signal, 31 July 2023.
