Dianne Griffin’s From Cornwall to Moonta – Q&A

 

With the steady hand of ones family's history, in-depth research and invaluable experiences to guide her please read along as we interviewed author Dianne Griffin for a behind the scenes look of her new book From Cornwall to Moonta and more!

Q: How did you mediate between fact and faction in the process of producing From Cornwall to Moonta from your family history? 

 

A: I depended a lot on research. Over a 15-year period I interviewed all family members, especially old aunts and uncles who actually knew the central characters Ben and Emma—asking for their stories. I quoted many tales from my grandparents’ book, History of Agery. I searched thousands of old newspapers, acquired hundreds of books on the subjects of emigration, early South Australia, and books such as Life and Death in the Age of Sail. From the information I had, and some psychological profiling, I began to compose their personalities.

Example: William Trethowan emigrated first, and, looking at his choices, I deduced he was the more adventurous of the two men. Ben was more cautious. Ben’s wife was a bit like her brother, hyperactive.

I stayed as true to events as I could. There were a lot of stories that were true. And once my characters had been through one event, it was easier to follow on. I acquired British weather records to understand the extremely wet weather of the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s. And I have a book of calendars that shows the full moons. Full moons upset some people, and yet it is great for a night out in the 19^th century when there were no lights. People scheduled events for the full moon. I travelled to Cornwall several times and visited the relevant addresses.  I spoke to local historians and cousins of Emma and Ben’s. I researched every inch of Helston where Emma worked as a servant. And I walked in their footsteps when we took the train from Falmouth to Plymouth.

Q: What was the most fascinating thing about British, Australian or your own personal history that you discovered in the years researching this project?

A: Hundreds of enthralling facts come to mind. It is one of the reasons I wrote the book. These fascinating insights could not be lost to time. 

E.G. Wakefield’s plan for South Australia was called A Cure for Pauperism. And the paupers weren’t treated exactly as promised. Wakefield wrote in his book, Letters from Sydney, (although he never was in Sydney), that land prices were to be kept high enough (one to two pounds an acre) to stop labourers from buying land immediately. Land in NSW was 5 shillings an acre. Ben and Emma’s rail journey through the glorious Cornish countryside from Falmouth to Plymouth, peppered with over 40 of Brunel’s fabulous tall wooden lacy viaducts (we made the journey for research purposes). Migrants staffed the ship throughout the journey. Some of the passengers (labourers) were even conferred Constable status for the journey. 

On a more personal level, I realised how differently each of us views our siblings, parents and grandparents, uncles, and aunts.

Example: my two old grandfathers were pleasant—fun to me as a child. A pat on the head, a few sweets. But don’t ask their children. That is a whole different story. Almost unbelievable. It helped me a lot, to understand their backgrounds.

Q: How did your experience working as a nurse assist you in understanding the health issues faced by migrants to Australia in the 19th century? 

A: Being a nurse is understanding medicine, and how it affects our patients. Probably most important is knowing about cross-infection. Even in the 2020s, non-medical staff still don’t know the simple basics of antisepsis, and how to prevent cross infection.

In the previous centuries, patients, especially women, were not listened to by most of their doctors. I could feel their frustration, their sense of inadequacy and the crushing self-blame, when their families, children suffered and or died.

Q: Regarding the legacy your grandparents and great-grandparents left behind mentioned in From Cornwall to Moonta, the kind of people they were, the life they lived, and the struggles they faced — what are you most proud of?

A: With both my great-grandparents and my grandparents, who were never wealthy, I am most proud of their generosity, particularly their anonymous donations to the poor. Even with their large families, during the great Depression they gave work and food to countless, homeless, jobless men. My aunt complained that she and her sister had no money, and that they paid rent for living at home. “Yet Dad gives money away” she cried. But even my aunt and her sister gave free music lessons to their anxious poorer students. And my grandfather succeeded as a responsible farmer, giving countless years to the committees of the district—schools, church, councils and organisations such as the Wheat and Barley Board.

Q: Having experienced re-immigration to both England and Australia in your own life, what were the biggest challenges you overcame? 

A: Saying goodbye, even when not forever, hurts. And on arrival not having your friends to help you through. Finding our way around in strange places. In Ireland I took my baby to the supermarket in a large pram. It was heavy work, a few hills. As soon as I arrived there was a terrifying announcement, someone had phoned to say there was a bomb in the store. Imagine the chaos as people exited the building! 

When we emigrated to Australia, it was much more relaxed for a while. Then there were the shopkeepers etc., who turned away from our strong accents and served Aussie speakers first. I was incensed. And we were endlessly plied with Irish jokes. The Australians just didn’t see they were basically saying we were stupid. My children were so upset, that I searched around for an “Australian” joke.  They didn’t so much as use it out loud, but it helped, until they made friends.

Q: Will readers who enjoy From Cornwall to Moonta be seeing more from you in future creative writing projects? 

A: Yes. I have begun to write about the next generation, (my mother) and the next, which is my story. As a nurse to the rich and famous I was flown to the Bahamas and also flew a patient who was in status epilepticus, from Adelaide to Greece. I travelled on the Orient Express, having booked for the wrong night. We followed an Easter procession in Italy of a bleeding Christ figure, hoisted on strong shoulders, and shared painted hard-boiled eggs with strangers in Greece. And then there was the search for my father’s story. And my own lifelong journey, silencing the critical little voice in my head.

Click here to Buy a copy of From Cornwall to Moonta now!

Meet Robert Cox: A Compulsion to Kill

A Compulsion to Kill is like no other! Investigating the lives of the murderous and heinous, Robert Cox brings Australia’s earliest serial killers to life in a gripping page-turner.

Cox sat down with Editorial Assistant Sarah Trapski to have a quick chat about his new book.

Sarah Trapski: With your previous work, Baptised in Blood, and now A Compulsion to Kill, it’s obvious you’re not one to shy away from historical research. What, in your opinion, is the big draw? 

Robert Cox: History has always fascinated me. In Tasmania it’s all around you; you’re standing in it or leaning on it or living in it; it’s very unlikely to have disappeared under concrete and steel. But I’m a reader rather than a historian, so my interest isn’t in the dry old stuff of formal histories, like policies and administrations and economic fluctuations, but in the people, the personalities, especially the lesser lights, the ordinary people whose flame briefly flared in some way: convicts, bushrangers, Aboriginal people. And serial killers, of course!

ST: A Compulsion to Kill is about Australia’s earliest serial killers. Researching the history and lives of Charles Routley, Alexander Pearce, and John Haley, just to name a few, would have been a monumental task! How did you go about it?

RC: I’d written about the virtually unknown Charles Routley, Tasmania’s worst serial killer, in a previous book, which got me to wondering whether there’d been other serial killers in the state who’d also been forgotten. Alexander Pearce has been much written about and his story’s also been filmed a couple of times, so he was fairly easy. For the others, I had to rely on books, contemporary newspapers, historical documents, and, in a few cases, websites. It’s quite fascinating when you start with just a name and perhaps just a detail or two but nothing else to go on, then eventually manage to build a picture of a life or an event, bit by bit, through assiduous research.

ST: Any tips for budding historians out there?

RC: I have to say I don’t consider myself a historian; I have no qualifications or training in that discipline. I’m just a writer who happens to like historical subjects. Like Autolycus in The Winter’s Tale, I’m a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, which isn’t a bad thing, given what I do. Like a patchwork quilter, I gather a scrap of fabric here, a scrap of cloth there, and stitch them together into what I hope is an interesting whole. All of which is a rather verbose way of saying: leave no stone unturned. Cast the widest possible net. Accumulate scraps large and small. Send Google on wild and imaginative searches. But where possible, rely only on original sources.

ST: Out of the list of serial killers you documented in A Compulsion to Kill, who did you find the most fascinating?

RC: Probably Rocky Whelan, not least because he operated in areas near Hobart that I know well. Also Thomas Jeffrey. Jeffrey was a warped individual, a sadist, a sexual predator, a killer and cannibal. But Whelan was simply a fairly minor career criminal who underwent a horrific 20-year brutalising in the Norfolk Island penal colony, which hardened him and probably turned him into a killer. When he was transferred to Tasmania, he absconded and in just 24 days killed five men in cold blood.

ST: A Compulsion to Kill is your sixth book. Is writing compulsive for you? Or do you enjoy the research more than the writing?

RC: I do enjoy the research, especially when it rewards me with something new or unexpected. But writing … I don’t know whether compulsive is the right word for me. I just do it — I write every day — and it’s fulfilling and hugely enjoyable, even when it’s not going well. Then it becomes a challenge to get it right, and I enjoy that too. I rewrite constantly —compulsively, even!

ST: What are your thoughts on Jack the Ripper? How does he compare to Tasmania’s killers?

RC: Jack the Ripper was insane; I don’t think anybody would dispute that, especially anyone who’s seen post-mortem photographs of his victims. But I wouldn’t readily say that about Tasmania’s colonial serial killers. They nearly all seem to have had clear motives for what they did: Brown and Lemon killed for revenge, Pearce and Broughton and McAvoy to avoid starvation, John Haley through losing his uncontrollable temper. Routley, Jeffrey, and Whelan, although they killed to prevent being identified by men they’d robbed, all seem to have increasingly enjoyed exercising their power over their victims — the power of life or death. The more they killed, the easier it seems to have become. Jack the Ripper, probably fuelled by an insane rage whose cause we’ll never know, seems to have found murder easy right from the outset.

ST: Do you think reading this book will affect the way Tasmanians view their State?

RC: I hope so. Tasmanians, especially those who come from pioneer stock, are very protective of their history, but all too often they see it through the rose-coloured glasses of hearsay and ignorance and don’t want to face uncomfortable facts. Some terrible things happened here in the early days, but there’s a part of the population that simply doesn’t want to know about them. My last book, the first history of the town of Sorell, which took me six years to research and write, was traduced by so-called historians with local roots who claimed I had it all wrong, but none of them has yet produced an iota of evidence to support the claim because none of them has ever bothered to do any real research. I can’t see A Compulsion to Kill being on their reading list. Too much truth!

ST: What’s your next project?

RC: One’s already with the publisher: Behind the Masks, a collection of friends’ reminiscences about the late and much-esteemed Tasmanian poet Gwen Harwood, which I co-edited and contributed to. My other projects are a New and Selected Stories, which is nearly complete, and Broken Spear, a biography of the Aboriginal leader Kikatapula, or Black Tom Birch. After being raised partly in a wealthy Caucasian family, he went bush, started and led Aboriginal resistance in Tasmania’s Black War of 1823-32, then changed sides to work against his own people, yet the great majority of Tasmanians have never heard of him. His story has never previously been told, and he’s wholly absent from a truly astonishing number of history books, even those about the Black War.

For more information, please visit: http://ipoz.biz/Titles/CTK.htm